- Eccentric bunch of car designers, hot-rodders,
and engineers, up against the corporate world and
Ferrari in a big race.
- Not interested.
- Not interested at all. - Pass.
Pass, pass.
With Matt Damon. (laughs)
- Still not interested.
- Christian Bale.
- Oh, I'm in, all right.
- Caitriona Balfe, ding, ding, ding, ding!
The woman from Outlander, done.
(rhythmic music)
- Carroll Shelby, maybe?
- Lee Iacocca, Ford motor.
(engine revving)
- [Iacocca] Suppose Henry Ford II wanted to build
the greatest race car the world's ever seen,
to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans, what's it take?
- Well it takes something money can't buy.
- Money can buy speed.
- Well it ain't about speed.
- Ford v Ferrari is the story
of the race
at Le Mans in 1966,
when the Ford motor company decided to take on
Ferrari and beat them at their own game.
Pow!
- That's not what it's about.
It's not.
- Ford v Ferrari is a story of brotherhood and friendship.
- There you go.
- Jesus Christ. - Get it right, man.
- Ford v Ferrari
is the story of Henry Ford II,
also known as the deuce.
(everyone laughs)
- [Iacocca] You need a pure racer
behind the wheel of your car, that's Ken Miles.
- I don't trust him an inch.
- We heard he's difficult.
- [Shelby] No, no, Ken's a puppy dog.
(loud punch)
(engine revving)
- No, whatever it is, Shel, no.
- Trust me.
- I don't know about you,
you've done your fair share of the choreograph fights,
I have too, I'm really bored of doing that.
It was great to do a fight where you just get
to be a bit of a wimp who
really doesn't wanna get punched, or punch.
'Cause that's the point of their fight.
- They don't wanna hurt each other.
- They're having this knock down fight
but they don't wanna hurt, or get hurt.
- It's like, we talked about it as brothers fight.
You know I'd fight with my brother growing up.
We knew there was a line that you didn't cross,
and we put that beat in, in the fight
where I grab a can
and then I'm like,
I'm not gonna hit him with a can,
and then I pick up like a loaf of bread. (laughs)
You know it's just, it's a totally ridiculous fight.
- You know both of them have done a million fight scenes
where the whole point is to look as lethal
or brutal or unstoppable as possible,
and I think that the,
(Bale laughs) whole point here was--
- [Damon] Was not to look like that.
- Was not to look like any of that.
To look like two guys, just like what Matt said,
two guys getting into a let's not hurt each other fight.
- And they're out in these short shorts,
these very English checkered chicken legs,
very white, with your farmer John tan,
and looking incapable of,
and half the time, you were just chucking me around
you know, so white and flimsy.
- No, I remember, you reminded me of gym class, 1973.
Or something, yeah. - Right, right.
- I heard somebody mutter we were watching
playback of one of the little moments
and I was thinking, I can't believe that's
Batman and Jason Moore.
(laughing)
- What happened?
- Sad, these guys.
- When you read something like that
and then you know your scene partner
is gonna be Christian, I mean that's
what you kind of dream of being able to do.
It was so much fun, but it was also,
we were on a reg, so there was a lot of things
going on, there was a lot of movement,
but it's so central to their relationship.
- Well, the great thing about when you driving though
is you just wanna try and ignore the cameras
every moment in film, all the time,
so it can be a little tricky when it's right there
and you're having to look through it.
- Wait, you ignore it?
(laughing)
- It was great because Jim would
just sort of set me off and I would go off
on the rounds, and I would just sort of do things,
and we'd talk about (muttering)
and I'd do all of that and then
there would be a bit of time so I would
just start chucking the stuff out and then
I'd either pretend I couldn't hear Jim
when he was going aw shit, what are you doing?
You know, it was good until that moment,
now you're awful, oh, can't hear you!
It was so much fun, because even when
I wasn't driving myself,
getting just dragged behind
on this wonderful vehicle, the Biscuit,
it was just so much bloody fun each day.
And I think that was essential with Ken Miles,
he isn't this sort of macho,
stoic race driver
who is impassive and has nothing to say about anything.
He always said, it's not a wresting match,
it's a ballet, and he was very colorful
and exuberant and very communicative, you know,
and expressive, he just couldn't hide his emotions.
And so, that helps so much in trying,
I think, to bring people into that car.
(energetic music)
- [Woman] Do you think you can beat Ferrari?
- I can try.
We're lighter, we're faster,
and if that don't work, we're nastier.
- We're gonna make history.
- I think so much movies, particularly
the movies that people go see in movie theaters
are escapist fair, you know,
really mainly made by computers and CGI
in so many ways, and what Tracy's saying,
like for that first scene where they
collected these actual cars, or when you
walk into the scene and the Ferrari factory,
which I think at one point we had 200 million dollars
of actual Ferraris in that scene.
All of it was really real, and we could feel it
and it really helps us, as actors,
when you're dealing with a car driving by
at 100 miles an hour rather than 200 miles an hour
but still, it makes a big difference
that it's an actual car.
You're not just following a tennis ball.
- I think everybody on the movie felt grateful
to be working on a movie like this
because they're getting made less and less frequently.
And we all love the script, Jim had a great plan,
we all knew what it was, there were no surprises,
we just kind of went to work
and went home every day
feeling like we accomplished the exact thing
we wanted to accomplish, so it was really joyful.
- Of course I blew my voice out the first take,
and I turn to Jim, or maybe even in the rehearsal,
and I turn to Jim and I said
"I can do that 12 more times."
And he said, "Good to know, I'm gonna ask you for 15."
And I think I wound up doing it 18 times,
but it's a great scene, it's a lot of fun.
- It's Lee in this very precise point of time,
and you know, you can't look at him, I think,
as this titan of industry, this huge sort of
internationally renowned businessman.
He's an outsider at this company,
he thinks out of the box because
he's sort of put out of the box and
he's the son of an immigrant.
It was really interesting to sort of
take all of this research, but then
pinpoint this very precise place and time.
- I learnt how to drive
from Christian Bale,
we were doing a scene in the good old Country Squire,
and we had a scene where we had to drive up and get out
and one take he was like, no, get in the front,
you can drive.
And he showed me how to put it into drive,
it was an automatic, and how to reverse and reset it.
So, yes, it was a pretty cool thing to learn,
especially on this movie for all things.
But yeah--
- Especially from Christian Bale, is he a good teacher?
- Yeah, he's, you know he could do better but yeah.
(laughing)
(gentle music)