Craig Zablo's StalloneZone

By: Jeremy Hart and Kim Kastrup Translated by Steen Ulrich

London [Ekstra Bladet]

“As Rocky I’ve had MUHAMMAD ALI and JOE FRAZIER as sparring partners, and that went well. But to race against a legend like MICHAEL SCHUMACHER, that can’t be fun,” says SYLVESTER STALLONE.

In his new movie “Driven”, he plays the tough race driver Joe Tanto in the special American kind of racing called Cart series. A race that looks like formula one, except that it’s often faster and driven in the so-called champ cars on specially built tracks all over the world.

SLY toyed with death as the hard hitting boxer Rocky Balboa and as the Viet Nam veteran John Rambo. And as Joe Tanto he flirts with death in the fast champ cars, that can drive as fast as 400 km/h, and where even the smallest mistake, can mean the difference between life and death.

“I practiced at the Derek Daly Academy racetrack in Las Vegas – I started out in smaller cars. It was really crazy. The fastest I’ve driven in a champ car, was 325 km/h,” SLY proudly said during the interview in London. “I was very nervous. And the heat is almost unbearable in a champ car from shear concentration and fear. But then your inner speed demon gets the better of you, and you push the car, as much as you can. I’ve probably raced off the track 50 times during practice and while shooting. But luckily I never got hurt,” says SLY, who during filming made his insurance people bite their nails furiously.

Death Race

“You can’t escape the fear, but you can learn how to use it, before it eats you up. Unlike other sports, you can meet other cart racers at breakfast, and then only hope you see them again at lunch,” said STALLONE, who is the writer, producer and the star of “Driven” which opens in Danish theaters on July 13th
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The movie is about the young race driver Jimmy Bly [KIP PARDUE]. His ambitious brother De Mille [ROBERT SEAB LEONARD] has pushed him so hard the results are starting to fail. Jimmy’s boss, Carl Henry [BURT REYNOLDS] hires ex-cart star Joe Tanto [STALLONE] to get Jimmy‘s tactics back in order. Tanto was once on top, but a terrible accident put a stop to his career, and now Tanto has to once and for all make up with all the demons from his past, to help Jimmy. Of course there’s also a love story between Joe Tanto and journalist Lucretia [STACY EDWARDS].

“Driven” was filmed over a period of eight months during nine real races in five different countries. The plot and the characters blend in perfectly with the real intensity on the tracks, and hundreds of thousands of real cart fans serve as very realistic extras. In the movie there are also real race drivers like Dario Franchitty and Juan Pablo Montoya.

No to Formula One

SYLVESTER STALLONE, who has been a huge fan of racing for many years, originally set out to do a movie based on Formula One. And he spent two years studying various races and negotiating with Formula One king Bernie Ecclestone. “Bernie was actually interested, but he demanded these unrealistic amounts of money for the rights, even though I told him, that in Hollywood, you usually only pay 1 million dollars for the rights to for example a best seller book.”

He doesn’t regret though, that it ended up being champ car races, because on the screen it works much better. In a 180 minute champ car race the lead can change 124 times between 10 different drivers, whereas in Formula One it’s usually much less. STALLONE says he hasn’t made a super realistic race movie. There are some very realistic scenes, but of course I’ve also taken some liberties to intensify the action. Just as it’s interesting to see King Kong running around New York, we also took two champ cars to Chicago, where they end up racing in the streets, explains STALLONE.

He thinks that there are three elements that add to the fascination of extreme racing: “First of all the driver is almost on his back while driving, only a few centimeters off the ground, while he’s doing almost 400 kilometers per hour. Then there’s the intense sound and the fact that you have 900 horsepower behind your back. And last, when you accelerate, and your vision is reduced to blurry shadows, your adrenalin kicks in and makes the drivers one with their cars.”

– Craig Zablo