Hollywood director Michael Mann spent 30 years trying to make his Ferrari movie. Finally, he has achieved his ambition. In an exclusive interview, he tells Damien Smithhow, and why it matters
MICHAEL MANN
The release of Ferrari this month is the culmination of an odyssey that spans 30 years for director and Hollywood big-hitter Michael Mann. The film-maker was in his fifties when he and his friend, fellow auteur Sydney Pollack, first started work with screenwriter Troy Kennedy Martin on a story based on Brock Yates’s colourful biography Enzo Ferrari: The Man and the Machine. The revered Pollack died in 2008, but Mann, now 80, has finally achieved that ambition of bringing his vision of Enzo Ferrari – set in a tight three-month timeframe during 1957 – to life on the silver screen. This one was personal.
For years stories would emerge about this movie, then vanish. Robert de Niro, with whom Mann worked on his masterful crime thriller Heat, was an early candidate to play Enzo. Much later, in 2015, Batman star Christian Bale was in line, but was said to have pulled out because he didn’t have enough time to put on the weight he felt was essential to become Enzo. Hugh Jackman (aka Wolverine) was subsequently on board, until 40-year-old Adam Driver, among the finest actors of his generation and best known for playing Kylo Ren in recent Star Wars films, took the role. So why did it take so long?
“No car racing movie – and this is categorised in that sub-genre – had ever done well at the box office. Ever,” emphasises Mann – who enthusiastically agreed to speak to Motor Sport exclusively for this story because he happens to be a reader. He cites the two big racing pictures, John Frankenheimer’s Grand Prix and Steve McQueen’s Le Mans – upon which his father’s second cousin, Saul Bass, worked – as the prime culprits for turning Hollywood off motor sport. “The visual romantic allure of racing was always there, but those earlier films didn’t have a story,” says Mann. “Beautiful visuals will keep your attention for about eight minutes and that’s it, then the story better show up.
“The first one that really had a great story was Ford vs Ferrari(aka Le Mans ’66).” Mann was “tangentially involved” as an executive producer on the 2019 movie in which Bale did star, as a skinny Ken Miles, sharing the lead with Matt Damon as Carroll Shelby. What was key to its success to a wider audience far beyond car enthusiasts, says Mann, was �
