this one's completely real:
www.bsdunix.ch.nyud.net:809...
http://www.jerrykindall.com/2005/11/07_cetait_un_rendezvous.asp
On an August morning in 1978, French filmmaker Claude Lelouch mounted a gyro-stabilized camera to the bumper of a Ferrari 275 GTB and had a friend, a professional Formula 1 racer, drive at breakneck speed through the heart of Paris. The film was limited for technical reasons to 10 minutes; the course was from Porte Dauphine, through the Louvre, to the Basilica of Sacre Coeur.
No streets were closed, for Lelouch was unable to obtain a permit.
The driver completed the course in about 9 minutes, reaching nearly 140 MPH in some stretches. The footage reveals him running real red lights, nearly hitting real pedestrians, and driving the wrong way up real one-way streets.
Upon showing the film in public for the first time, Lelouch was arrested. He has never revealed the identity of the driver, and the film went underground until a DVD release a few years ago.
Now, thanks to the miracle of the Internets, you can watch it in your browser.
...
Update the Second: The MetaFilter thread raises the possibility that the car was not actually a Ferrari but Lelouch's own Mercedes (the audio from the Ferrari would have been overdubbed) and that Lelouch himself was the driver, but was only given a ticket, not arrested.
this one starts scripted-looking (the bike's making "impromptu" turns too smoothly) but then appears to get real. and the bmw driver's having a ball. tho my favourite's the bit ~11mins where the bike's front's skittish/skittering as he slaloms while accelerating to catch up after an interruption -- that's one of my favourite feelings on the bike
video.google.com/videoplay?...
re the first one- brock/grim, there's only 1 really nasty moment: can you pick it?
and the "redubbing" theory seems unlikely to me. the sound shifts between rear and front tyres as and where you'd expect for the roads and manoeuvres, and the missed gearchange is not something i think a professional driver would be happy about writing into a "script"
Posted by
Brock, 5th December 2005:
Right: Soundtrack is definitely a V8 Ferrari. But it no way relates to the car being driven. The application of power versus the handling of the car is completely wrong. Also, a 275 GTB is a V12, so no go. It sounds almost exactly like the 308 GT4 that I was using for a while.
There are two very definite points - when the car turns left into a much tighter road after the Arc de Triomphe, and later in the tight and twisty bit very near the end - where the soundtrack is completely at odds with the handling of the car. You can hear the switch at one stage where they fade out decceleration noises and fade in acceleration clumsily and they overlap.
No way is that engine note related to the car and the way it is being driven. It very effectively makes it feel like the car is going faster than it is, but that just isn't the case. Nowhere is the car going anything like 140mph, at most I'd say it topped out at 70. It certainly isn't accelerating as much as the gearchanges say it is. There is a mismatch between the number of upshifts and the length of the braking area (none of which are anywhere near long enough to slow a 1970 Ferrari from anywhere like the speeds it is suggesting - I speak from experience, the brakes are shit!) and also it doesn't always go down as many gears as it went up. No 1970/80/90 car can brake from flat in top to slow enough to go around that Arc de Triomphe turn in about a second of decceleration. No way. You'd need huge tyres and carbon brakes for a start. Especially when he goes straight into another change of direction - those cars just take too long to settle to abuse it like that.
For speed references, look at the point when the soundtrack says flat in top (before the Arc de Triomphe) when he is passing the other cars. It takes ages to go past them. I suggest a closing speed of no more than 30-40mph, so unless they are doing 100 mph, he isn't anywhere close to 140. More like, as I say, 70. You wouldn't even see the white lines at that speed, never mind be able to count them. He just is NOT going all that fast. Fast, but not
that fast. Like I say 70 tops.
The soundtrack suggests a fearless, never lift off the throttle style, but the car makes too many full throttle changes of direction - some severe - that would have required significant power/handling balancing to be done in the car that the soundtrack comes from, never mind one that was made in 1967 with wire wheels and shit suspension!
It's a fake. Watch it with the sound off, and see if it feels as fast then.
Also, get the length of the Champs Elysee off Google Earth and time the car down it. It ain't that quick. The car would have to be astonishingly well handling to do the turns that the video suggests at the speeds the soundtrack is implying.
Guff.
I shall look at the second one, now.
"Right: Soundtrack is definitely an V8 Ferrari. But..."
I can honestly say I've never wanted to stop reading a post quicker.
;)
Posted by
Brock, 5th December 2005:
The chase is obviously a set up, the Bimmer driver, as you say is playing to the camera. Altogether too many beautiful slides to be anything else.
Nice driving. Both of then are complete headcases, and there is one or two areas that makes me think that the route has been pre-determined - not least the two passes by the static camera by the side of the road!
There is a lovely (when they turn of the motorway) slide that the car turns into a beautiful flick to the left that says to me he already knew the road (just before the bike goes up the inside of the white car on about a foot of tarmac between it and the inside of the roundabout). Very nice.
A set up, and I can't imagine any bike rider would be
that close to a car at that speed unless they trusted the driver in it and/or knew where it was going next, can you? Way too easy to misinterprete and fall off.
Liked it a lot, though.
Posted by
Grim..., 5th December 2005:
I've got the first one on DVD.
It's a proper film:
www.imdb.com/title/tt0169173
i assumed it was a slow car -- dunno the model's specifics, but took the "140mph" tag with a huge grain of salt
he never actually touched the champsd'elysee did he? i thought he came in on the next road anticlockwise and basically drove a relatively straight line across the roundabout (tho the tyre squealing here is most peculiar and led me initially to think it'd been faked). i've walked and driven across this bit -- pretty safe.
but re the speeds of other cars, suggest you try an early morning walk around paris ;) even on the pre-shops part of the champs delysee, people hit 60+mph
ahh... and re "can't change directions like that" -- i used to get a 1979 corolla stationwagon across tighter roundabouts than that at 50+: though it's very much not something you can then do again till it's settled -- bit of a rhythm thing. and it sure as shit wouldn't have been safe for me to try to dodge that car like that :D whee instant cartwheel