302, RE: Two of this year's movies ...Ki Posted by blamour, Fri Nov-29-19 02:50 PM
My take is that that's a 'click-bait" headline, ie. intended to sound controversial to generate click throughs, in a click-bait story that, while fairly well written, gently experiments with several aspects of controversy so that the editors can pick one of them to emphasize with a headline.
The new journalism. Everything is outrage because that's what sells ... or creates web traffic.
I hate the idea of a "true story." The very term is an oxymoron: if it's a STORY, it can't literally be true. Anything filtered through the mind of a storyteller is manipulated to make the points they want ... that's what we pay them to do.
There's a LOT left out or acknowledged in subtle ways when it comes to the compressed timeline presented in FvF. The car that was the inspiration for the GT40 was developed by Lola in England, maybe that's supposed to be the first car that Ken Miles tests on the airfield but it's not clear. The Shelby Daytona effort is alluded to by showing the wooden frame of the Daytona and then finally showing a full unpainted aluminum Daytona in the foreground of a shot at the end. That car, which was a pretty mature project even in the early GT 40 days, was developed by Peter Brock. The Shelby Cobras couldn't compete on the high speed straights of places like Le Mans because they weren't aerodynamic enough so the Daytona was created to slice away that drag.
It completely unmentioned in the film that the Daytona was ALSO intended to challenge the Ferrari GTOs and did so very competitively. Ken Miles actually seemed to like it better than the GT 40 but it was neglected when the focus turned firmly to the mid engine GT 40. My uncle drove a Daytona in one of its few races. In my opinion it was a platform with a lot of potential but it was a bit old fashioned even as it got to the point where it was a viable race car.
Once you go to "true" the question is how deep do you dive, how many other details do you include. The characters spend at least 1/3 of the time covered in the film sleeping but we sure don't see much of that! "True" is such a trap.
Some inside poop that would make this film look silly: Henry Ford II probably took on Ferrari because his wife liked Europe. Not the sort of "truth" from which a great film is made!
It is possible, because Daytona creator Brock ended up working for Datsun in the late '60s, that the Daytona inspired the look of the 240Z as much, if not more, than the E-Type Jag.
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