Steve McQueen: The Man & Le Mans (2015) on Netflix
TV-MA20151h 42mDocumentary
After Bullitt and The Thomas Crown Affair, Steve McQueen sets out to make a film about his own passion, race-car driving. He wants real cars, real drivers and no special effects.
- Netflix3.4/5
- IMDb6.8/101,768 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes75%
Trailer
Plot summary
The documentary follows the making of Le Mans, the racing film Steve McQueen pushed to create. After Bullitt and The Thomas Crown Affair he wanted control of his career, and in the summer of 1970 he filmed the 24 Hours of Le Mans race, using real cars and professional drivers at racing speeds rather than special effects. The budget of $6 million was the largest of any McQueen picture. Newly discovered footage and McQueen's private recordings sit alongside interviews with members of the production team, who describe a shoot that lost its script and then lost weeks to a suspension.
Cast
- Hal Hamiltonas Self (voice)
- David Piperas Self
- Les Sheldonas Self
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Steve McQueen: The Man & Le Mans (2015)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- For their documentary about Steve McQueen's Le Mans, directors Gabriel Clarke and John McKenna followed a vague lead to an abandoned New Jersey warehouse, where a dusty soundstage held between 400 and 600 boxes of film marked 'Le Mans'.
- The Le Mans rushes used in the documentary arrived without sound, so the filmmakers made sure during post-production that every engine growl was authentic, whether from McQueen's Porsche 917 or another driver's Ferrari 512.
- Other sources for the documentary included an unreleased behind-the-scenes 'making of' film by John Klawitter and hours of Super 8mm home-movie footage shot during the race by one of the drivers, Paul Blancpain.
- For Le Mans, Steve McQueen wanted a film free of special effects or artifice, so the camera team installed a camera on his car and the racing was shot with real cars and real professional drivers, in real time, on a budget of $6 million (about $37 million today).
