MiniWorld June 2019 91
The Minis outrun the Italian
Alfa Romeo police cars by
escaping across a weir.However, for the fi lm moguls in
Hollywood who were bank-rolling
the movie, ‘Mini’ was a foreign
word. Robert Evans, then Head of
Production at Paramount Pictures,
recalled: “I knew what miniskirts were
but I didn’t know about Mini cars!”
Troy Kennedy Martin was savvy
enough to understand how the fi lm
could benefi t the marketing and
publicity departments at the British
Motor Corporation. The executives only
had to read the script to understand that
Minis were the true heroes of the fi lm.
Today, as a result of product placement,
brands have become accustomed to
the idea that movies can act as shop
windows for all manner of consumer
products but, at the time, it seemed a
harder concept to grasp. “Before I’d sold
the script, I’d been to [BMC] and said:
‘Look, I’m going to write this story and I
really want to make the Minis the centre
of it. We had meetings about it and I was
talking to one of their PR guys and they
just wouldn’t do it. They were totally »
Minis enter the
coach at speed.