Steve McQueen: The Man & Le Mans Page #7

---

Just make one of them.

NEILE ADAMS:
And you, Steve,

will lose your salary,

will not get your points.

You have nothing to do with

this picture, except act.

MAN:
We don't got no picture.

Last night, they took

the picture away from us.

It says, I have

read the foregoing

and agree to render

services only as an actor

in the picture.

And then my dad signed

his name, "in blood."

It's brilliant.

It goes in character

with my dad.

I love this sh*t.

STEVE MCQUEEN:
There's a great

deal of compromise involved

in movies, I suppose, and I get

a bit undone when people try

to use me, or there's

compromises, or injustice,

and I fly off the handle.

Steve was furious

with my father.

At this point, in

McQueen's mind,

my father had gone over to

the other side of the fence

and betrayed him.

This racing picture was

so close to all of us

that when the

studio took it over,

Mr. McQueen felt that

that had put a knife

in the heart of the company.

And Steve and I did

not speak again.

You betrayed me.

You stabbed me in the back.

I'll never talk to you again.

CHAD MCQUEEN:
Loyalty was

a big thing with my dad.

If my dad felt in any way that

he had been burnt, that was it.

I don't think my

father betrayed Steve.

But I think he fell again,

as a business person,

as a professional, that that

was going to be the course it

was headed for, no matter what.

Thanks very much, Bob Relyea.

Thank you very

much, Mr. Sturges.

Bye.

John came to me.

And he said, I'm going to quit.

And it came about because of

the relationship with Steve.

MAN:
John Sturges was

brought in to make

a theatrical motion picture with

characters and a story in it.

The more John tried

to have it his way,

the less ground

Steve would give him.

He said, I'm too f***ing

old and rich to put up

with this type of sh*t anymore.

Goodbye.

Now, here we are, half

way in the production,

and they don't have a director.

Now, what?

STEVE MCQUEEN:

There's a lot of ways

that man can be

hurt in business.

They can hurt your head.

They can hurt you financially.

They can gut you.

Or they can cause that thing

to pop up in your throat.

A couple of times

a day, you start

thinking about it a little bit.

He was nothing but success

up to the point of "Le Mans."

Everything that he

did turned to gold.

And now, "Le Mans,"

everything turned to sh*t.

MAN:
I've always wanted

to know if Steve had

walked off the production

at that point, what

would've happened.

MAN:
Call it ego.

Call it his name.

It's not good press if the

world's number one box office

attraction walks off a film, a

film that meant so much to him.

CHAD MCQUEEN:
There

was no quit in my dad.

He had something

that he started,

and he wanted to finish it.

MAN:
We're rolling, guys.

Thank you.

Guys, settle, please.

[Laughing]

I come in on a Monday morning.

And Jerry Henshaw

comes in, says how

would you like to go to France?

That's how it happened.

They had no story.

They knew that Steve was

never going to win the race.

That's about what they knew.

MAN:
I can see him

now with the glasses,

and that funny hat he

wore the whole time.

He wasn't this mogul, this

great icon of the movie world.

He was a guy called Lee Katzin,

who nobody had heard of.

Poor old Lee didn't know the

front of a car from the back,

so that wasn't helpful.

McQueen hadn't chosen

him, didn't like him,

wasn't impressed by him.

And he was obliged

to work with him.

MAN:
They did a

take in the pits.

And Lee said, one more please.

Steve got up.

And he said, listen, a**hole.

I'II tell you when

we get one more.

Move to your next shot.

And if I like it, I'll show up.

The problems of individual's

egos were there.

It wasn't a lot of

fun that way, at all.

[cars racing]

Come on.

I want to show you something.

Come on.

Walk with me.

I want to get down here, because

this is where Dave Piper lost

it, right in this right hander.

We'd been filming

in the morning.

Everything went according

to plan, no problem.

Went to lunch, came

back to the circuit,

and the director wanted

the Ferraris to be

leading with a Porsche behind.

They haven't decided what

the script was going to be,

and they wanted both options.

[cars racing]

I drove just as I had

driven in the morning, went

into this right hand corner.

The back end just went.

[crash]

Word had gotten

back to the compound

that there was an accident.

And I got that.

And I was thinking, geez,

I hope it's not my dad.

I hear the triad a lot.

And so what's going on?

He says, I want to show you

what can happen in motor racing.

Steve, I'm calling you to tell

you that we're having accident.

David Piper, he's been

taken to hospital.

This was all grass, and

I remember a couple cows.

And there was a wheel assembly,

sitting out in the middle

of f***ing nowhere.

Uh, well, he had a crash.

MAN:
He was left bolted

onto the engine in the seat,

and the rest of the car

took off and left him.

You can see there's quite a lot

of blood coming out of your leg

in your overalls.

But it's a tremendous

relief that you're

still conscious and alive.

MAN:
David has been injured.

I just spoke to the pilot.

He will come in at night.

It was my doctor.

He said, we're going

to have to amputate.

I said, well, take it off

four inches below the knee,

and I'll take my chances.

My mom took me, my

sister to see Dave.

And I remember

the room was dark,

and I remember he

had a sheet over him.

And you could clearly see

that below his knee was gone.

I lost it there.

I lost that much.

INTERVIEWER:
Would

your accident have

happened if a proper

script had been in place?

Oh, no.

It probably wouldn't

have done, yeah.

Definitely wouldn't have done,

because they wouldn't have

wanted to do the shot twice.

MAN:
It shouldn't have happened.

[engine vrooming]

MAN:
With David Piper,

Steve was very, very aware

and very worried about it.

You'd think it was his fault.

MAN:
It's his film.

The bucks stops at the top.

I never saw him afterwards.

No.

Just never happened

to see him again.

STEVE MCQUEEN:
It was a film

that took us four months

to shoot, and was

very difficult,

and we had a couple

of very bad accidents.

It was the most difficult

film I've ever done.

MAN:
One morning,

at Solar Village,

no one else was there

but myself and Steve.

And he said, Lee, I see

what you're trying to do,

and I'm not going to fight you.

I'm not going to be against you.

I want to work with you.

From that time on,

it was wonderful.

We battered out an outline

that Steve agreed to.

It took 6, 8, 10 weeks

for this to happen.

And finally, we got basically

what we had in the movie,

in terms of dialogue.

When people risk their

lives, shouldn't it be

for something very important?

Well, it better be.

MAN:
He was trying to vindicate

the purpose of the film

by making sure it was

finished and would be

a testament to the personal

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes