Speaker 1: All right, welcome back to Another Car Stories with Sun King.
Speaker 2: And Amelia Hartford. So it's the questions. All right, I
Speaker 2: got a question for you. Would you survive a zombie apocalypse?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 1: Would I? Wow, that's a great question. Would I survive
Speaker 1: a zombie apocalypse like right now?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 3: Today?
Speaker 1: If it happened like in five minutes, Well, it depends
Speaker 1: on what kind of zombie? Are they fast zombies? Are
Speaker 1: they slow zombies?
Speaker 2: I'm talking like walking Dead zombies.
Speaker 1: Were they they were slow?
Speaker 2: They were slow?
Speaker 1: Well, I would be yeah.
Speaker 2: I'm not talking the last of us zombies okay, okay?
Speaker 1: Or I am legend zombies that runs super fast.
Speaker 2: The walking dead ones, the ones where they can't run,
Speaker 2: they could walk, but they'll eat your brains.
Speaker 1: I would say that I'm not prepared at home, okay,
Speaker 1: Like I don't have like yeah, sure, actually I do.
Speaker 1: I do have a bag that will last me a month.
Speaker 1: Vin Diesel gave it to me.
Speaker 2: That's awfully nice.
Speaker 1: He gave me a like a survival bag. I don't
Speaker 1: know if it's still good. Wow. So I have that,
Speaker 1: But I don't have any weapons. I don't have guns
Speaker 1: and stuff. But if so, if they were to attack
Speaker 1: my home like there were would I be able to survive?
Speaker 2: I think you're overthinking this a little.
Speaker 1: I would hope, what do you think? Well, how about you?
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, I would survive a zombie apocalypse. You would, yeah,
Speaker 2: I would?
Speaker 1: Well, what makes you say that? Why it's so confident?
Speaker 2: I just it's just my gut instinct. I feel like
Speaker 2: I have those instincts given a life or death situation
Speaker 2: to pull myself out of it.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Would you so if there was like two zombies coming
Speaker 1: in and you would be able to chop their heads off,
Speaker 1: because you know you got to if I need it too.
Speaker 1: Sure they're dead, so you would be okay doing that's all?
Speaker 1: To do that, though, how would you do that depends?
Speaker 2: We're here right now the iHeart Studios. Grab a knife
Speaker 2: out of the kitchen.
Speaker 1: Well, there's no knife there. We couldn't even find a
Speaker 1: fork for that.
Speaker 2: I' found a knife. That's how I cut the sandwich
Speaker 2: and have.
Speaker 1: A butter knife.
Speaker 2: I kill.
Speaker 3: You.
Speaker 2: Go upstairs like a lock on the doors. I could
Speaker 2: scale the side of the building. I could park her
Speaker 2: to the next building.
Speaker 1: You would do that.
Speaker 2: I'd climb down to my car, my truck.
Speaker 1: But what about Teddy? You would just leave him behind?
Speaker 2: We can take Tedgi.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, no, he would be zombie. He would be
Speaker 1: trying to hump that zombie.
Speaker 2: That's true.
Speaker 3: I would hope.
Speaker 1: I would hope I could survive. But I thought about
Speaker 1: this before. I was like, what would happen if zombies
Speaker 1: attacked my house and bit my wife and then she
Speaker 1: turned into a zombie? Would I just leave? Or would
Speaker 1: I wait for her to be a zombie and then
Speaker 1: chop off her head.
Speaker 2: I love that you've thought about that.
Speaker 1: Useless stuff.
Speaker 2: Secondly, why do you have to stay at a chop
Speaker 2: her head off? Why not just leave?
Speaker 1: I don't want her to go around and exist right
Speaker 1: as a zombie.
Speaker 2: But what if they come out with a potion or
Speaker 2: a formula one day?
Speaker 1: Like, yeah, well she still has to go around and
Speaker 1: like eat people. Yeah, eat people, right? I would be sad.
Speaker 1: Like what if like I'm like in the neighborhood, like
Speaker 1: you know, breaking.
Speaker 2: Into casually walking the dog. You see your ambie wife
Speaker 2: running by.
Speaker 1: No, I would have to go get supplies, right, Like
Speaker 1: I would break into someone's house to go get can goods, right,
Speaker 1: you know, during the day, and then I see her
Speaker 1: like walking just like, oh, living dead, right, I would
Speaker 1: be sad. Sure, so I would want to end her misery.
Speaker 2: Okay, I thought this was gonna be a fun Like
Speaker 2: now I'm thinking about what it would take to murder
Speaker 2: a significant other.
Speaker 1: Come on, Like, would you okay, if you saw me
Speaker 1: and I was a zombie and you're like you were
Speaker 1: driving by me, would you just run over me to
Speaker 1: end my misery?
Speaker 2: Would you too?
Speaker 1: I would hope you would.
Speaker 2: Then sure, I'll squish your body so hard to get
Speaker 2: some building with my truck.
Speaker 1: You could do that. Well, yeah, you would do that.
Speaker 2: And put you out a misery if that's what you wanted.
Speaker 1: I appreciate that. Yeah, all right, all right, anyway, Jesus
Speaker 1: speaking of I don't know what, there's no segue speaking
Speaker 1: of kindness, of ending friends misery. One of the kindest
Speaker 1: people I think in the community. And I mean, it
Speaker 1: was just amazing to talk to this wonderful, wonderful hearted
Speaker 1: human being.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Jeff Swart. Swart, Yeah, he is a racing driver,
Speaker 2: he's a director, he's an artiste, photographer, videographer, you name it.
Speaker 1: I mean he was just dropping words of wisdom, all right,
Speaker 1: just his philosophy of people being passionate about what they do.
Speaker 1: That's the beginning and that's the end, you know. So
Speaker 1: it's just a privilege and honor to sit down with them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: be able to just listen to his words.
Speaker 2: So yeah, without further ado, Jeff Swart.
Speaker 1: Now for the listeners that aren't familiar with your career,
Speaker 1: you started in print and then you went into commercial directing,
Speaker 1: and then you went into narrative film directing. So how
Speaker 1: did you get your start in print photography?
Speaker 3: My fourth grade field trip in Delaware we lived in Wilmington, Delaware.
Speaker 3: A fourth grade field trip. My parents gave me an
Speaker 3: instematic camera to actually go take pictures on it. So
Speaker 3: they did that. But funny enough, you know, as you
Speaker 3: grow up, when you stop wanting to be a fireman
Speaker 3: or an astronaut, you know, or at that he's kind
Speaker 3: of all these kind of typical things. My goal was
Speaker 3: to be a veterinarian. I loved animals. I loved that
Speaker 3: whole process, and I always had a dog when I
Speaker 3: was born. My dad, he was a sharpshooter in the Navy.
Speaker 3: When I was born and came home, he took his
Speaker 3: rifle down the street and traded it for a dog.
Speaker 3: Every boy, he and his mind needed to have a dog.
Speaker 3: And so I from that point on, we've always had
Speaker 3: a dog. But so dogs and animals and everything were
Speaker 3: so part of my life and so naturally the veterinary
Speaker 3: part was very interesting.
Speaker 1: Oh wait, wait, wait, why did your dad feel that
Speaker 1: every boy needed a dog?
Speaker 2: And they say dogs are man's best friends.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's also it's kind of it's just nice
Speaker 3: to have a non communicating relationship with something where you're
Speaker 3: not a verbal communicator with it so much you just
Speaker 3: sense this wonderful animal is here for you, and I'm
Speaker 3: here for this wonderful animal. And we don't sit down
Speaker 3: and have long talks about things or share, but there's
Speaker 3: a communication and a relationship that develops that is just pure.
Speaker 3: It's like, you know right now, you know, we live
Speaker 3: in Colorado, and it's just wonderful to just watch the
Speaker 3: dogs go out and be dog every day, no fences,
Speaker 3: no anything, and you just sit there and you kind
Speaker 3: of look at that dog and go, what's going through
Speaker 3: his mind or her mind or whatever. I just I
Speaker 3: don't know, I really like that. So the veterinary side
Speaker 3: was really kind of to help dogs, you know, that's
Speaker 3: a whole other level and to be able to do that,
Speaker 3: and I love the fact that, again, the dog doesn't
Speaker 3: come in and tell you what its problems are. You know,
Speaker 3: you need to look at it, you need to spend
Speaker 3: time with it. And even in the days of when
Speaker 3: I was involved in veterinary medicine, it was you know,
Speaker 3: there weren't even a lot of testing, and there weren't MRIs,
Speaker 3: and there weren't all the things that we do for
Speaker 3: our dogs now. It was really more of just like
Speaker 3: looking and listening to the owners and you know, feeling
Speaker 3: things on the dog and just seeing where are the problems,
Speaker 3: what can we do? And it kind of really very
Speaker 3: spiritual to kind of get in the head and the
Speaker 3: body of the dog to decide what to do with it.
Speaker 3: But anyway, my plan was to go to veterinary school
Speaker 3: in the United States, but then all of a sudden
Speaker 3: it looked like, oh, maybe it would be a little
Speaker 3: easier to get in the ventory school in Europe. So
Speaker 3: I went to Germany. Got oh that's a huge Yes,
Speaker 3: yeah it was. It was a bit. It was a
Speaker 3: big deal.
Speaker 2: This was your hold.
Speaker 3: It would have been nineteen years.
Speaker 2: It's just like it's going to be easier to go
Speaker 2: to vet school or become a veterinarian.
Speaker 3: For the It's very hard in California at that time
Speaker 3: one vetinary school you see David ninety spaces. I think
Speaker 3: it was easier for me to be a doctor than
Speaker 3: it would have been to a ventnor. It was very,
Speaker 3: very hard. It was hard and so but there there
Speaker 3: were nineteen foreign student positions. So I thought, well, I'm
Speaker 3: going to do do that. I flew to Frankfurt, took
Speaker 3: a train to Munich, got off the train in Munich,
Speaker 3: I stayed in the youth hostel, and I went around
Speaker 3: Munich going to all the veterinarians showing up and they're saying,
Speaker 3: do you need an assistant? Because I decided that for
Speaker 3: the first year I needed to go there learn the language.
Speaker 3: Really could and the only thing I really knew how
Speaker 3: to do was to be a veterinary assistant because that's
Speaker 3: what I done in the US. Ultimately, somebody knew another
Speaker 3: veterinarian that needed help, and it was a large animal vetinary,
Speaker 3: and I started working for a large, large animal veterinarian
Speaker 3: outside of Munich. But the thing that simultaneously kind of
Speaker 3: happened once I got settled into that was, as you
Speaker 3: can in Europe. On Friday nights, I would get on
Speaker 3: a train and take the train to somewhere else in
Speaker 3: Europe and go to a race because I loved racing,
Speaker 3: and here I was in Europe to get to see
Speaker 3: racing from Formula one, sports car racing to whatever. And
Speaker 3: so I would spend Saturday and Sunday at the races
Speaker 3: and figure out ways to sit, sneak into the pits,
Speaker 3: and do all those kind of things that you could
Speaker 3: do then.
Speaker 2: And during that era. To be able to go to
Speaker 2: races in Europe. Ivote, God, what a what a time
Speaker 2: to be alive?
Speaker 3: Oh it was, And it was Nikki Lauda and James
Speaker 3: Hunt and you know, all those kind great things, which
Speaker 3: I'll tell you a little funny moment relative to that.
Speaker 3: But I was literally, you know, with my little camera
Speaker 3: that I had kind of evolved from that instematic and
Speaker 3: fourth grade. I had a camera with me and would
Speaker 3: photograph the races and be right there in the middle
Speaker 3: of things. And I just came to this realization that,
Speaker 3: you know, this is where I really wanted to be.
Speaker 3: I was allowed to be around cars, the people that
Speaker 3: were closest to the action were the photographers. So I
Speaker 3: wrote my parents a letter from Europe after being there
Speaker 3: for about nine ten months, and I said, you know,
Speaker 3: I don't think I want to be a Venteroran anymore.
Speaker 3: I want to be a photographer. And you know, you
Speaker 3: have to wait for that to come back now. So
Speaker 3: then the letter comes back, and I opened the letter
Speaker 3: and said, well, you know, that's going to be a
Speaker 3: really difficult life because my parents knew nothing about photography.
Speaker 3: You know, as a career, I really didn't know anything
Speaker 3: about photography. But they just said, we'll support you. But
Speaker 3: you know, if you're a veterinarian, you've got it kind
Speaker 3: of made. You know, you will be a doctor and
Speaker 3: all that stuff. But if you want to be a photographer,
Speaker 3: you need to come back to the United States and
Speaker 3: you need to figure out where you're going to go
Speaker 3: to school, because we can't help you in that. And
Speaker 3: so that was my life change. And it was not
Speaker 3: because I love photography, but because photography was the way
Speaker 3: to be around cars. So that was really it. And
Speaker 3: as it turned out, you know, I did eventually really
Speaker 3: love photography. I did all that. I just in my
Speaker 3: head the driving force was this is my way to
Speaker 3: be around cars.
Speaker 1: You know, you think because you love cars and racing,
Speaker 1: you were able to capture in your photography the cars
Speaker 1: in a unique way compared to other photographers that would
Speaker 1: just take a picture of a car.
Speaker 3: That was really true and it still works to this day.
Speaker 3: I mean, there's so many subjects that relate to what
Speaker 3: you just said, is that. You know, it was the speed,
Speaker 3: it was the motion, it was the thing like that
Speaker 3: to it that I was so attracted to. I was
Speaker 3: less interested in just freezing the car. I wanted the
Speaker 3: motion and things. And my highest aspiration was someday shoot
Speaker 3: something for Road and Track magazine because that's what I'd
Speaker 3: grown up with my family, was this magazine that came
Speaker 3: every month. Well, of course, when I got out of
Speaker 3: Art Center, I thought, you know, if I could just
Speaker 3: do something. So the offices for Road and Track were
Speaker 3: in Newport Beach and I went down to those offices
Speaker 3: and my first assignment was a cover with them, So
Speaker 3: it just it took off from there. But also I
Speaker 3: started covering Formula one for Road and Track magazine, and
Speaker 3: I'd go to the Brazilian Grand Prix and shoot the
Speaker 3: Formula one spotters, guide and do all these things, but
Speaker 3: it was always about motion and action and blurred backgrounds
Speaker 3: and kind of creating it maybe more artful and funny enough.
Speaker 3: I mean, who would have ever thought that somebody was
Speaker 3: reading Road and Track magazine and they're at a company
Speaker 3: that builds fighter planes and they call me up and say,
Speaker 3: could you come up to our offices for a meeting?
Speaker 3: And I come up there and they have all my
Speaker 3: Formula one work from Road and Track magazine. They're saying,
Speaker 3: we would like you to shoot our fighter planes like
Speaker 3: you shoot Formula one, And I'm like, how do I
Speaker 3: get in this situation? Ultimately it led to me being
Speaker 3: Martin Baker ejection seat certified, went through all the training
Speaker 3: that you do basically to be a pilot, and I
Speaker 3: flew back seat with this little card I carried with
Speaker 3: me in F eighteen's and almost everything that way, and
Speaker 3: photographed fighter planes the way I did F one And
Speaker 3: it was just kind of a magical moment. But it
Speaker 3: came from Road and Track, came from shooting the Formula
Speaker 3: one cars.
Speaker 1: So came from something that you were passionate. Yeah, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: what a great lesson.
Speaker 2: Absolutely can you look back in your life and see
Speaker 2: everything connect.
Speaker 3: The amount of full circle moments, it still to this
Speaker 3: day gives me chills just around motorsport or whatever. You know.
Speaker 3: I get a call through my office that Ron Howard
Speaker 3: wants to have a meeting about a movie he's working on,
Speaker 3: and it was the movie Rush, and he said, can
Speaker 3: we meet for breakfast? I really like the way you
Speaker 3: approach shooting cars and action and everything. He said, could
Speaker 3: we just have a breakfast one day? And so I
Speaker 3: go down and I'm sitting there and I didn't know
Speaker 3: what he was working on, but I'm sitting there with
Speaker 3: Ron Howard and then to get his perspective that says,
Speaker 3: this is about James Hunt and Nikki Lauda, and I
Speaker 3: go back to I'm a veterinary working for veterinarian in
Speaker 3: Europe in the pits at Dutch Grand Prix and song
Speaker 3: for it shooting Nikki l Loud and James Hung.
Speaker 1: It's like, wow, well, you know, Ron Howard is a
Speaker 1: is a real special human being.
Speaker 3: Huh. Yeah. I loved his diligence in studying it. You know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I did this table read for a film that
Speaker 1: he was going to potentially do and we never did it.
Speaker 1: And it put things into perspective, like meeting him the first.
Speaker 1: You know, I grew up watching him on Happy Days
Speaker 1: and Andy Griffith Show, right, and Andy griff The show
Speaker 1: is a black and white TV show.
Speaker 2: Room.
Speaker 4: It's great TV. But rn Over was like a little boy.
Speaker 4: He's really the little boy of the local sheriff, right.
Speaker 4: And anyway, so we're in his production office in Beverly
Speaker 4: Hills and and then I went to the bat. I
Speaker 4: was like, hey, can I use your bathroom? And he
Speaker 4: had a bathroom in his office. He goes, hey, you
Speaker 4: can use that one, and I'm using his toilet.
Speaker 1: There was an oscar on the toilet and I was like,
Speaker 1: I guess this is what he thinks of what these
Speaker 1: actually are. I mean, at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: it's really the experience, really, you know that he values.
Speaker 1: It's like at the end, it's just a statue, right,
Speaker 1: And it was like one of those like full circle
Speaker 1: moments to be able to work with this icon.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, no it is. And I think he really
Speaker 3: need to appreciate those moments too, And it really puts
Speaker 3: things in perspective. Even for like fun I shot the
Speaker 3: first I think I shot four seasons of GT Academy,
Speaker 3: the real, real GT Academy. Yeah, so you know, so
Speaker 3: here we are, you know, a million I think about that,
Speaker 3: you know, then the movie comes along. But you know,
Speaker 3: it's like I was living four years with a group
Speaker 3: of kids that basically had qualified by gaming, and then
Speaker 3: we'd put them literally on day one in a GTR
Speaker 3: you know, on Silverstone, and it was to watch the
Speaker 3: mental load, the physical load, the the racecraft developed, all
Speaker 3: these things that would have to kind of all come
Speaker 3: together to succeed in that. It was a fascinating process.
Speaker 3: And then here you are coming off the movie. It
Speaker 3: was just again a really fun, you know, circle moment
Speaker 3: of watching that evolve into something that was bigger than
Speaker 3: we ever imagined in the beginning.
Speaker 1: What were some of the characteristics that stood out of
Speaker 1: the individuals that excelled you know, I mean that's a
Speaker 1: question through life, Yeah.
Speaker 3: It really is. It was. It was kind of hard
Speaker 3: to watch sometimes because people were so serious there the
Speaker 3: competitors that were so serious and tried so hard, and
Speaker 3: you know, it wasn't you know, racing is so much
Speaker 3: a part of economics in a lot of ways today
Speaker 3: is racing, and there was no economics in there. You
Speaker 3: know you qualified or you didn't. It wasn't you know,
Speaker 3: how you were bankrolled or anything. So for them to
Speaker 3: arrive there, it was really kind of multiple great human
Speaker 3: interest stories of guys that are just living, breathing. Everything
Speaker 3: about it was, you know, basically in the hands of
Speaker 3: this one week long event, and the problem in the
Speaker 3: not the problem because the game prepared them so well,
Speaker 3: but there was no consequence in the game for them
Speaker 3: to get there. And I couldn't believe how fast the
Speaker 3: competitors would ramp up. They would go quick right away
Speaker 3: because they'd race with no consequence to get there. And
Speaker 3: then the other side of it, too, was is that
Speaker 3: they would they would be able to manage the cars
Speaker 3: so often because some of this part of this. I
Speaker 3: would ride with them sometimes in film and do thing
Speaker 3: and you just, you know, knowing what I knew, their
Speaker 3: car control was so good, and a lot of times
Speaker 3: it would come back to saying, well, I have so
Speaker 3: little physical feedback in the game, but now that I'm
Speaker 3: in a car, that extra feedback I have actually really helps,
Speaker 3: you know, I really understand it. It's it's obviously something
Speaker 3: you have to adapt to, but the ability to kind
Speaker 3: of ramp up and go quickly right away was always
Speaker 3: surprising to me because I remember in some of the beginnings,
Speaker 3: you know, some of these guys had never even driven
Speaker 3: a manual transmission. You know, they qualified in the game,
Speaker 3: but they never had driven a manual transmission, and the
Speaker 3: things that they'd have to deal with was really fascinating.
Speaker 3: And and it was interesting because it became more entertainment
Speaker 3: in this as we went through the seasons, rather than
Speaker 3: pure racecraft and everything that you needed to do to
Speaker 3: be a racing driver. It needed to be a little
Speaker 3: more entertaining season after season, and I think that.
Speaker 1: Like a reality show.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, and it became probably the results were less
Speaker 3: pure to what it took to be a racer.
Speaker 1: I mean, when you bought that nine fourteen six, it
Speaker 1: was the affordable Porsche. Yeah, but today that's not a fortune.
Speaker 3: No, I is really, but yeah, it was my cheapest
Speaker 3: way to get into a six cylinder porschew How much
Speaker 3: was that when you bought it? I think thirty eight
Speaker 3: dollars or something like that.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: The story, you know, we can get into it. The
Speaker 3: story of getting that car is kind of very defining
Speaker 3: for my whole kind of world. So I had a
Speaker 3: paper out, like at thirteen years old, and so my
Speaker 3: dad my parents. My dad was a mechanical engineer who
Speaker 3: specialized in plastics, and my mom was a school teacher.
Speaker 3: So it's kind of the environment. I was the only child,
Speaker 3: and so I kind of just you know, grew up
Speaker 3: in that kind of environment. But I had a paper out,
Speaker 3: and his deal was I had to invest half my
Speaker 3: money in the stock market. Wow. And it was just
Speaker 3: kind of like you know, in retrospect, I gets just
Speaker 3: teaching you to be conscious of your money and not
Speaker 3: just like you every month getting my little paycheck from
Speaker 3: my paper out, I was spending it. So it also
Speaker 3: allowed you to kind of research and what would I
Speaker 3: be interested in investing in and things like that. And
Speaker 3: then when I graduated my school, deal was I could
Speaker 3: buy my first car. And my dad had a early
Speaker 3: nine to eleven and which is kind of a fairly
Speaker 3: well known story, but it was actually chassis number thirty five,
Speaker 3: nine eleven. It was a nine oh one, So like
Speaker 3: this would be a revered amazing car to own today.
Speaker 3: It just for my dad happened to be the oldest,
Speaker 3: most affordable nine to eleven. He could buy at the time,
Speaker 3: which was also a used car at the time when
Speaker 3: he bought it, And so I love the sound of
Speaker 3: a six cylinder motor and a nine to eleven. I
Speaker 3: couldn't get a very new nine to eleven at the
Speaker 3: time for the same amount of money, but I could
Speaker 3: get an almost brand new nine fourteen six, and so
Speaker 3: that's what I bought. So I bought a nine fourteen
Speaker 3: six and I still have it to this day. It's
Speaker 3: on display at the Peterson Museum. But the cool things too,
Speaker 3: is that that car. You know, who would have ever
Speaker 3: thought that car kind of provided so many life experiences
Speaker 3: along the way because I went off to college in it.
Speaker 3: You know, people who went to Art Center College Design
Speaker 3: where I went to college, they still remember, oh, you
Speaker 3: drove that yellow nine fourteen six in those days.
Speaker 1: The color of my nine fourteen is it? I have
Speaker 1: a nine for it?
Speaker 3: Yellow? Yeah? Oh really, yeah, well that was the color
Speaker 3: and ex actually made me kind of you know, I
Speaker 3: still really like yellow cars to this day. But but
Speaker 3: the thing was is, you know, like if you look
Speaker 3: at back to the life, it's kind of been the
Speaker 3: common thread in so many ways. And you know, I
Speaker 3: went to college in it. I met my wife in it.
Speaker 3: You know, I was a skateboarder. I was a longboard skateboarder,
Speaker 3: and so I would be up in the hills in
Speaker 3: between classes in Pasadena and at Art Center and skateboarding,
Speaker 3: and I met my wife. She was one of the
Speaker 3: girls giving rides back up the mountain after we'd skate down.
Speaker 3: And you know, I was driving the nine fourteen six then,
Speaker 3: and then if you kind of go years later in
Speaker 3: nineteen already been rallying and doing things in the us
Speaker 3: POR Rally Championship and racing at Pike, speaking different things.
Speaker 3: But I had the opportunity to do a long distance
Speaker 3: event FI Marathon Rally, which was twenty five days, ten
Speaker 3: thousand miles from Panama to Alaska, and trying to decide
Speaker 3: what car to do that in and everything it was
Speaker 3: such a big deal. Well, I decided to build my
Speaker 3: nine fourteen six into that rally car that I could
Speaker 3: do it because that particular event had to be nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy three. In earlier cars, that car being in nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy worked for that. But I entered that car in Panama.
Speaker 3: But the cool thing is you had a service group
Speaker 3: and there were two people in my service crew, a
Speaker 3: guy who we had known from Vasik PULLUK in the
Speaker 3: early days of working with Porsche with my dad of
Speaker 3: having his car being serviced there. He was Spanish speaking
Speaker 3: and English speaking, so it's perfect for an event that
Speaker 3: went through Central America and my dad was in the
Speaker 3: service vehicle. So can you imagine, like the guy who
Speaker 3: made me invest money at thirteen years old with the
Speaker 3: deal I could eventually spend the money when I graduated
Speaker 3: from high school. Here he is following me for twenty
Speaker 3: five days in the car that I had bought with
Speaker 3: that money that I got to invest. It was just
Speaker 3: like it was so cool. And my dad wasn't one
Speaker 3: of those guys who had done a lot of things
Speaker 3: worldly and had done it. He was passionate with cars, yes,
Speaker 3: but he just hadn't done anything like that. He's immersed
Speaker 3: in this full on international event chasing his kid driving
Speaker 3: this car that he'd you know, motivated to invest in
Speaker 3: the stock market, and we finished second overall and had
Speaker 3: an amazing race and everything, and you know, it was
Speaker 3: probably if my dad could share it now, it would
Speaker 3: probably be one of his great moments in life of
Speaker 3: doing that. And so you know, you just don't get
Speaker 3: that opportunity very often, and it was really something special.
Speaker 2: Wow, where do you think you get that drive from?
Speaker 2: You say your father wasn't much of a worldly traveler?
Speaker 2: Did you take that after your mom.
Speaker 3: A little bit? I mean, you know, if you look
Speaker 3: at the racing side of me and uh, you know,
Speaker 3: racing at Pike's Peak, which is, you know, a fairly
Speaker 3: daunting event, and it was some consequence, you know. I
Speaker 3: remember growing up, my mom was the one that had
Speaker 3: to go on the roof of the house to install
Speaker 3: the antenna because my dad was afraid of being the roof,
Speaker 3: you know, up high and heights and things. But I think,
Speaker 3: you know, I think familiar to your point is like
Speaker 3: it's also a little bit of an only child thing.
Speaker 3: I went to a different school every year till I
Speaker 3: was a junior in high school. It wasn't always because
Speaker 3: we were changing houses and moving and things. But my
Speaker 3: dad was in the plastics business, which was like an
Speaker 3: emerging big business and so he was always getting offers
Speaker 3: to do things elsewhere and things like that. But that
Speaker 3: kind of having to do things for yourself and adapt
Speaker 3: to environments and to be kind of very aware of
Speaker 3: you're on your own and you got to do this,
Speaker 3: and my parents were very supportive. It wasn't like I was,
Speaker 3: you know, in my own in that way. But you know,
Speaker 3: you as a kid, you know there's a generation you
Speaker 3: want to be taking command of it. You know, you
Speaker 3: didn't have a lot of friends because you weren't dropping
Speaker 3: into you weren't living a life where you know, you
Speaker 3: had lifetime friends and things like that. I was having
Speaker 3: to constantly make new friends.
Speaker 2: It's so fascinating to hear you say this because I
Speaker 2: doesn't sound like I want to as many different schools
Speaker 2: as you did. But in my high school years, I
Speaker 2: went to a new high school every single year. And
Speaker 2: the traits that you're talking about of like I fortunately
Speaker 2: have the childhood friends who I'm still in touch with today,
Speaker 2: but constantly having to meet new people, almost growing up
Speaker 2: on your own terms in a way, and there's just
Speaker 2: a certain element that at the time I didn't understand,
Speaker 2: but looking back at it really gave me this grounding
Speaker 2: that it sounds like we share.
Speaker 3: And you know, I think also the other thing that
Speaker 3: for me at least, and I mean, this is more
Speaker 3: career oriented, but it really spawned a lot of creativity,
Speaker 3: you know, because you had to. You know, we weren't
Speaker 3: internet bound. We weren't you know, entertained naturally by technology.
Speaker 3: You had to figure out ways to be entertained. And
Speaker 3: you know, for that, since I didn't you know, I
Speaker 3: came home from school, I wasn't really hanging with my
Speaker 3: friends because I was new to the school, you know.
Speaker 3: So I ended up being I think, more motivated to
Speaker 3: be creative and be self self motivated to make something
Speaker 3: on your own because you didn't have that reliance. And
Speaker 3: in a lot of ways, you know, if you look
Speaker 3: at going into ultimately photography and then directing, is that
Speaker 3: it kind of comes back on you. You have to
Speaker 3: own it. Yes, in filmmaking, we have an amazing support
Speaker 3: system and all these departments that work for you, but
Speaker 3: it still comes back to it's got to be your signature.
Speaker 3: It's got to be your vision. Otherwise, you know, your
Speaker 3: your shelf life in the business probably isn't that great.
Speaker 3: And I do remember the first time when I started
Speaker 3: visiting production companies that wanted me to direct, they told
Speaker 3: me flat out, you know this is you know, you've
Speaker 3: got about a seven year shelf life in this world
Speaker 3: of advertising directing because you know, it's a very much
Speaker 3: an on to the next the new guys, the new views,
Speaker 3: things like that. But you know, I'm in my thirty
Speaker 3: fifth year of doing that and it's still just as
Speaker 3: fun and as exciting as it was in the beginning.
Speaker 3: And I think that, like I told you at the
Speaker 3: beginning of this, it's kind of like you know, like
Speaker 3: I said, the good news is I've I've been doing
Speaker 3: this for a long time. Bad news, I've been doing
Speaker 3: it for a long time because I also want to
Speaker 3: always have things evolve, always have things changed, because that's
Speaker 3: what stimulates me the most.
Speaker 1: Now that's really beautiful because a lot of folks, even myself,
Speaker 1: I catch myself being stuck in the old ways, right
Speaker 1: and then it kind of I'm just turning into the
Speaker 1: old guy. I'm like these young it wasn't like that
Speaker 1: when I was young worldwide, and I could take it
Speaker 1: to another generation, you know.
Speaker 3: And it's funny because you know, in the beginning of
Speaker 3: your career, you kind of you just want to be
Speaker 3: so focused and you want to just be you know,
Speaker 3: no outside influences. This is me. This is who I'm
Speaker 3: going to be, and you you have to kind of
Speaker 3: hand it off to being Okay, who around me is
Speaker 3: doing the cool stuff? You know? I got to start
Speaker 3: being aware of that, And I think that that was
Speaker 3: one of the keys. Is I kind of handed that
Speaker 3: off earlier. Maybe I didn't hold on to just this
Speaker 3: like I don't care what anybody else is doing. I'm
Speaker 3: doing this. I really wanted to know what was going on.
Speaker 3: And it's almost like, you know, in the creative process,
Speaker 3: almost like a flip book, like you want to go
Speaker 3: through a whole bunch of images really quickly and take
Speaker 3: what you think you saw, not open up and study
Speaker 3: a picture and say I'm going to do something just
Speaker 3: like that, but like flip through something and see these
Speaker 3: things all flashed by anything. I think I saw something
Speaker 3: kind of cool, and then where's your mind taken? You know,
Speaker 3: it's great so that you don't end up like just
Speaker 3: copying somebody. You know, you don't want to do that.
Speaker 3: I think, you know, one of my greatest compliments from
Speaker 3: my kids a few years ago was she said to me,
Speaker 3: how do you stay so relevant? And I thought, well,
Speaker 3: that's pretty cool, But the reality is, if I am relevant,
Speaker 3: you know, it's from people like you guys, from people
Speaker 3: like you know, the race service guys or the whatever.
Speaker 3: You know, there's so many people in our business that
Speaker 3: I love watching evolve. You know. I think that one
Speaker 3: of the single important things that leaves for me is
Speaker 3: leaving room to be in awe of others beautiful. That's
Speaker 3: to me. I wish so many people, filmmakers and people
Speaker 3: that I see knew how in awe I am of
Speaker 3: what they do. You know, because my crews are sixty
Speaker 3: to eighty people. I mean you've been on features, you guys,
Speaker 3: and you've seen all this, and I mean like when
Speaker 3: you're on a feature, it's one hundred and twenty, one
Speaker 3: hundred and thirty people whatever. But I'm in all of
Speaker 3: the guys that go out with two or three people
Speaker 3: and just do wonderful film. And I take that influence
Speaker 3: into my own life all the time, every day virtually.
Speaker 3: But leaving that room to be in awe is so
Speaker 3: important as opposed to I'm just this. I'm that I'm
Speaker 3: going to go out every day now, you know, got
Speaker 3: to leave that window open. You know, it's like bad weather.
Speaker 3: You know, we're in a business of filmmaking. You got
Speaker 3: to have great weather. You gotta have this. But Honestly,
Speaker 3: bad weather has given me more opportunity than it's taken away.
Speaker 3: You know, the amount of times I've been filming in
Speaker 3: a wall of blacks coming this way and everybody's worried
Speaker 3: that we're going to have this or whatever. The scenes
Speaker 3: it's created, and the opportunities and even the motivation to
Speaker 3: move quicker and get things done, it's all it's just cool.
Speaker 3: You know. It's like, as a director, you want to
Speaker 3: control everything, but you have to respect the fact that
Speaker 3: there's so many elements as you don't have control over.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is I think this is something I
Speaker 1: really needed to hear. Same on a personal level and
Speaker 1: in terms of, like, you know, career as well, because
Speaker 1: as I start getting older, like I go, I wonder
Speaker 1: if you know, I'm going to be like aged out
Speaker 1: of like opportunities. And what you just said is like
Speaker 1: it rings like I mean, it's just great words of
Speaker 1: wisdom that I'll you know, walk away with and it's like, okay,
Speaker 1: being a roof for the younger people, right, And it's
Speaker 1: like I think about it and I'm like, hey, the
Speaker 1: fact that you know I was there early on and
Speaker 1: you can kind of like you know, pave the way,
Speaker 1: and then you see all of these great opportunities that
Speaker 1: other you know, people of color are having, or Asian
Speaker 1: American men are having. It's like being all yeah, right,
Speaker 1: and it's such a beautiful positive way to be present,
Speaker 1: right and still and and and it's not about you anymore.
Speaker 1: It's about like the whole.
Speaker 3: You know, really beautiful. It's a handoff of competing, which
Speaker 3: is important in the beginning, yeah, to collaborating. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: it's a simple process that I don't think you realize
Speaker 3: you kind of have to go through, you know, in
Speaker 3: a way. And and I think that that's you know,
Speaker 3: filmmaking is so definitive in so many ways. And interestingly,
Speaker 3: my parallels, you know, if I were to just take
Speaker 3: from my racing side, the event of Pike's Peak, which is,
Speaker 3: you know, a mountain we race up. I've raced over
Speaker 3: twenty years there, I've done well there. I understand the place,
Speaker 3: the place is home. But it's still so definitive. And
Speaker 3: it's one run on race day. It's a finish line
Speaker 3: that is at fourteen and fifteen feet, it's there's no
Speaker 3: pit stops, smiling. I want to do that so bad,
Speaker 3: but yet all those same variables we have in filmmaking
Speaker 3: of weather and crew and you know, budgets and all
Speaker 3: this management goes into you know, I'm under ten minutes
Speaker 3: racing there, one of the few people are under ten minutes,
Speaker 3: and it's like you got to put all into that
Speaker 3: little package in the same way. But it's definitive. Again,
Speaker 3: You've got to get to the summit no matter what.
Speaker 3: And there's no second chances. There's not like you can't
Speaker 3: bring it back in the way in filmmaking, and we don't.
Speaker 3: In my entire career, I've never gotten to a sunset
Speaker 3: and said, you know, we didn't get everything. We need
Speaker 3: to come back tomorrow. That doesn't happen. That's in my world.
Speaker 3: That's a two hundred thousand dollars vault. You know, you
Speaker 3: don't just say, oh, didn't get it all. I gotta
Speaker 3: come back tomorrow. That sunset, that thing the day that's
Speaker 3: managed through your assistant directors and crew and everything else.
Speaker 3: It's all for that moment of being done at sunset.
Speaker 3: You know, we don't just start bringing out the lights
Speaker 3: when the sun goes down. We don't have the chance
Speaker 3: of bringing the sun back up all of things. And
Speaker 3: I love that pressure, and I think that's why my
Speaker 3: racing paralleling with my filmmaking. There is so many things
Speaker 3: in the process that I approach in the same way.
Speaker 1: But when, for instance, like if you need to make
Speaker 1: your day on a film set, or you need to
Speaker 1: get to the finish line and you don't make it, like,
Speaker 1: how do you find peace with that? Because it's add to.
Speaker 2: Your question because we're going on a path of a
Speaker 2: conversation we haven't had yet, you and I personally have
Speaker 2: been not on this podcast is also adding to Song's
Speaker 2: question of what's your relationship with failure when that comes?
Speaker 3: You know, that's a complicated one, I guess because in
Speaker 3: my head, failure is a big deal. You know, I
Speaker 3: don't take it lightly. I want it to work. I
Speaker 3: can think of the moments of failure in motorsport, which
Speaker 3: is pretty definitive, usually because you've crashed or done something
Speaker 3: like that. In filmmaking, it's you know, you fret over
Speaker 3: scenes that you might have missed and you didn't have
Speaker 3: a chance to do it. But experience gives you confidence
Speaker 3: knowing that you have the best people to edit, the
Speaker 3: best people to finish these things. But it's it's hanging
Speaker 3: over you. But in general, you want to be in
Speaker 3: a proactive position, not a reaction of position. Your experience
Speaker 3: is going to give you the opportunity to be reactive.
Speaker 3: But the more you can plan and be proactive, it
Speaker 3: creativity comes out. Creativity is in two areas. Creative pure
Speaker 3: creativity is being aware of the moments you're filming and
Speaker 3: working on to enhance it in the best possible way
Speaker 3: to tell the story, both visual and from an editorial standpoint.
Speaker 3: But there's also creative to the solution. You know, your
Speaker 3: experience of I can creatively make this scene work even
Speaker 3: though I don't have all the right elements there. So
Speaker 3: it's a it's a balance, I guess in that way.
Speaker 3: But I guess to your point, I, you know, fear
Speaker 3: of failure. If you're fearing things in the process, creativity
Speaker 3: has a hard time coming out. It really does. It's
Speaker 3: like a blocker, you know, when you all of a
Speaker 3: sudden have to just be reactive, reactive, reactive, you're kind
Speaker 3: of on your heels, you know, and you want to
Speaker 3: be on your toes. You want to be able to
Speaker 3: move forward and have the big picture of the way
Speaker 3: things go.
Speaker 1: Together, being able to relinquish that control as a creative
Speaker 1: It's very hard, right, I mean we were talking about
Speaker 1: that earlier, Like you know, you know, do you when
Speaker 1: when something doesn't go right then it all comes back
Speaker 1: on you. But if you can relinquish it, you're like, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not just my fault, your fault. You know,
Speaker 1: you started shooting basically it was analog, right, and today
Speaker 1: moving into CG and you don't even yeah, a whole
Speaker 1: other thing. Are you as open minded about that as well?
Speaker 1: Of like that pushing the bar for action sequences with cars.
Speaker 3: It's really interesting. And again it's kind of like I
Speaker 3: started in film and you had four hundred foot magazines,
Speaker 3: you know, and that that ran for a certain amount
Speaker 3: of time. You know, it's like everything was based on
Speaker 3: changing film and things like that. You know, now we
Speaker 3: leave cameras rolling, We have multiple cameras working, and you
Speaker 3: know if when even when I was at Art Center,
Speaker 3: I got into mounting cameras. I was mounting cameras on
Speaker 3: my skateboards, on biplane wings, on all sorts of things,
Speaker 3: and I just love doing that. And my first road
Speaker 3: and track cover was actually a camera rig on a
Speaker 3: car going down a road, and so it was like
Speaker 3: this time tunnel blurry. Look, it really kind of showed
Speaker 3: action and I love that. And you know, now we're
Speaker 3: in the GoPro and all things. Everything's gotten smaller, everything's
Speaker 3: gotten more usable. And you know, there was a moment
Speaker 3: in time too where changing over from film to digital,
Speaker 3: I shot with a different camera system every job. You know,
Speaker 3: it was evolving so quickly, and the way things are evolving,
Speaker 3: it's an opportunity, but in some ways it stands in
Speaker 3: the way. And I was very much a person that
Speaker 3: I felt like I needed to be genuine to filmmaking
Speaker 3: and genuine to the car. I was in an area
Speaker 3: where I was a high action specialist, so generally I'd
Speaker 3: be shooting cool cars, you know, that were truly capable
Speaker 3: of that, and I always felt like if they needed
Speaker 3: to go into special effects and different things at that time,
Speaker 3: it was kind of taking away from the you know,
Speaker 3: believability that that car could really do it. So my
Speaker 3: goal was by working with people like Rees and Tanner
Speaker 3: and pulled all on back these guys as it could
Speaker 3: put a car anywhere and do everything. I wanted to
Speaker 3: really show the real action. I really wanted to be
Speaker 3: part of that. So that if you ever pulled back
Speaker 3: on the curtain on it, you actually saw it happen.
Speaker 3: You know, there was a genuine nature to it. I
Speaker 3: was fortunate to be shooting a car that was genuinely capable.
Speaker 3: Let's film it in a way that it's really doing
Speaker 3: those things. And so again it's up to you as
Speaker 3: a filmmaker to put cameras in places. I wanted to
Speaker 3: not just watch a car. I wanted to make you blink,
Speaker 3: to feel like it was going to hit you, or
Speaker 3: defy logic or do things like that. You know. It's like,
Speaker 3: like you said, as a filmmaker, I want to be
Speaker 3: on my toes. As a viewer, I want to be
Speaker 3: on my heels like whoa, you know, this is it?
Speaker 3: You know, so I look at what's happening now, And
Speaker 3: obviously AI is going to be a whole nother category things.
Speaker 3: But there was a moment in time where effects and
Speaker 3: plates that we would shoot and all these kind of
Speaker 3: tedious parts of filming ultimately didn't add up to as
Speaker 3: pure experience of watching a car as I wanted, And
Speaker 3: so my goal was always to put that car on
Speaker 3: the edge. And as a director, I've spent twenty years
Speaker 3: of my life racing up the side of a mountain,
Speaker 3: putting wheels, half the tread on the pavement, half the
Speaker 3: tread touching the edge of the road. You know, putting
Speaker 3: those moments in precision on a mountain with huge consequence.
Speaker 3: You know that perspective plays out in my own filmmaking
Speaker 3: because I'm already looking at things that way. I have
Speaker 3: a funny handoff, like I run the Colorado Hill Climb Championship,
Speaker 3: which is dirt roads up the side of a mountain
Speaker 3: and a Gt. Three Cup car. It's raw, it's pure.
Speaker 3: It's a bunch of old timers who quit racing at
Speaker 3: Pike's Peak because it got paved. They just all want
Speaker 3: to be on the dirt and side. I will pitch
Speaker 3: a car in the corner, rotate the car, drive on
Speaker 3: the throttle. I'll feel that right front wheel just bound
Speaker 3: a little bit over a rock or something corner and
Speaker 3: I feel it go light. I feel it touched back
Speaker 3: down and the attitude is just right. The wheels are set.
Speaker 3: You just can feel the outside wheels tearing at the earth.
Speaker 3: All this stuff's happening, my head will go, oh, I
Speaker 3: hope somebody is out there with a two hundred millimeter
Speaker 3: frames that be right shot, you know, and then I
Speaker 3: do it. And it's funny because lately at Pike's Peak,
Speaker 3: I think about what it looks like on the outside.
Speaker 3: That funny, and I try to put the car exactly
Speaker 3: in those moments, you know, and my perspective is already
Speaker 3: at the edge of the mountain. My perspective is already
Speaker 3: taking something to the ragged edge limit that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: So I almost pick up in filmmaking at that point
Speaker 3: rather than build up to it. So it's it's that
Speaker 3: kind of perspective that I bring to it. And I
Speaker 3: actually think that my racing has fed the longevity to
Speaker 3: my career because if I sit in a client meeting
Speaker 3: and somebody's got some new hot carry about, I can
Speaker 3: put it in perspective of what that car can feel like,
Speaker 3: look like, and be emotional about it. This isn't just
Speaker 3: a job for me. This is a quest to share
Speaker 3: my passion with the rest of the world through filmmaking.
Speaker 1: You know, our friend Brian Scotto, you know, I feel
Speaker 1: like he is really pushing the envelope, or I guess,
Speaker 1: redefining like how cars are shot action sequences, and he
Speaker 1: coined this phrase. I don't know if he coined it
Speaker 1: or he borrowed it or maybe even looked stolen from you,
Speaker 1: but he has he has a phrase called honest angle, right,
Speaker 1: and he's like, and we were talking about because I
Speaker 1: was I always ask people, what do you think the
Speaker 1: problem with fast like action sequences from the Fast and Furious,
Speaker 1: And it's like it's not honest.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, they're cool cars, but when the
Speaker 1: car is like going from like one building to the
Speaker 1: other or outer space, it's like it's that it's not honest.
Speaker 1: And it's like what I'm listening to you is like
Speaker 1: you shoot the car honestly, like because you understand how
Speaker 1: the car would actually perform in reality, you were able
Speaker 1: to convert that, you know, onto screen and then the
Speaker 1: audience it's a it's it is like a visceral reaction.
Speaker 1: I'm so opposed to Oh that's a special effect, right,
Speaker 1: and it kind of just you just kind.
Speaker 2: Of appreciate it less.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just it's like it's like it's like junk food, right,
Speaker 1: it's just easy, Like you.
Speaker 2: Know, it's like I don't know, you did see your
Speaker 2: favorite pizza was nominoe.
Speaker 3: Know, you know what, there's a certain that you give
Speaker 3: up inconvenience.
Speaker 1: It's delicious pizza.
Speaker 3: It's good stuff should taste like a pizza.
Speaker 1: Anyway.
Speaker 3: Well, I don't know whether Brian told you, but there
Speaker 3: is a directorial team known as Zwardo. That's Jeff Swart
Speaker 3: and Brian Scotto. We collected. We directed Climb Kana together,
Speaker 3: and so when Ken Block, which makes sense, yeah, we
Speaker 3: directed that together. And fun. It was fun because the
Speaker 3: amount of times I would sit in a client meeting
Speaker 3: in Detroit or wherever, I say, you know, we want that,
Speaker 3: we want to see the kind of like that Ken
Speaker 3: Block stuff, you know, they they would refer to it
Speaker 3: or whatever. And Ken was so good at putting a
Speaker 3: car on the edge and doing all that. So naturally,
Speaker 3: when this project came up and I always asked to
Speaker 3: direct with with Brian, I was just like, wow, this
Speaker 3: is so cool, and I learned so much in it
Speaker 3: to your point of like, you know, this style and
Speaker 3: look and feel of filming, and you know Ken, I'd
Speaker 3: actually I think I'd even raced with him at one
Speaker 3: point or things. But we'd been, you know, certainly been
Speaker 3: around each other and seen all the Jim Kannas and
Speaker 3: everything at that point. But what was super cool was
Speaker 3: Ken would have his opinions about the way we needed
Speaker 3: to film, and you know, it's kind of like in
Speaker 3: your mind, you have a routine and the way you film,
Speaker 3: and this is your process and stuff. And I started
Speaker 3: to understand why things were different in a lot of
Speaker 3: ways with the way Scotto had approached it and the
Speaker 3: way their teams had film Ken and then Ken's ideals.
Speaker 3: And one of the things was interesting because I always
Speaker 3: my office is a Cayenne armed camera car, the arm
Speaker 3: on the roof, and you know, I go, you know,
Speaker 3: that's my world and always tracking and doing moves and things,
Speaker 3: and King goes, I don't like those. I don't like
Speaker 3: camera cars. And I thought, well, you know, this is
Speaker 3: the way I work. You know, we'll have camera cars.
Speaker 3: But you started to realize that the moment the camera
Speaker 3: was traveling with his car, it slowed his car down.
Speaker 3: You know, as soon as you start matching speeds, things
Speaker 3: start to slow down. And I kind of knew that,
Speaker 3: I did know it, but I hadn't really applied it.
Speaker 3: And it wasn't until Ken kind of said, I don't
Speaker 3: like camera cars. I started to put the whole thing
Speaker 3: together and stylistically, that's what I really liked about Timkana.
Speaker 3: And we always have conversations about what was the best one,
Speaker 3: Which is the best one. We all look at different
Speaker 3: ones of which the best, But the first one that
Speaker 3: I ever saw, and this is when I'm well into
Speaker 3: my filmmaking career, I felt like I'd climbed over the
Speaker 3: fence and gotten into something that I shouldn't be there
Speaker 3: for such a way and got to record it and
Speaker 3: see something that like, let's just put that away before
Speaker 3: anybody catches us. You know, is that kind of that
Speaker 3: tension and everything of like I'm in here, I'm going
Speaker 3: to get this, and then I got to get out
Speaker 3: of here because somebody's gonna bust me. You know that
Speaker 3: moment and spontaneity and the way that played out in
Speaker 3: front of you with them just ripping it up at
Speaker 3: El Toro Marine Base, you know, it was like, yeah,
Speaker 3: that was cool. And you know there were times where
Speaker 3: it maybe got too polished or times where it got,
Speaker 3: you know, a little bit of away from that purity,
Speaker 3: but then it kept coming back to that and and
Speaker 3: Ken also just developing as a driver everything about it
Speaker 3: was such a great franchise and without it really you know,
Speaker 3: consciously affecting me. I just know that so much of
Speaker 3: their work played out in influencing me and on a
Speaker 3: you know a little over a year ago, when I
Speaker 3: got the phone call that Can had passed, it was
Speaker 3: when that really kind of all rained down on me.
Speaker 3: This guy was a huge part of my life, even
Speaker 3: though we weren't directly hanging out best buddy friends. The
Speaker 3: effect of my life, my industry, everything about it will
Speaker 3: it really came to me at that moment and still
Speaker 3: affects me in that way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, speaking of that, you know, as one gets older
Speaker 1: in life and you deal with loss. I mean something
Speaker 1: that I'm noticing. It's like every few months now, I
Speaker 1: get a phone call and someone is passing, and it
Speaker 1: scares me. You know, It's like it really really scares me,
Speaker 1: and I still don't know how to deal with it.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I'll ever know I deal with it.
Speaker 1: I mean, how do you deal with loss as you
Speaker 1: get older.
Speaker 3: I got to say that within my family, at least,
Speaker 3: I've been very fortunate that I haven't really had any
Speaker 3: surprise losses. You know, my grand my grandparents were farmers
Speaker 3: and they lived in their nineties. My parents lived in
Speaker 3: the nineties. You know, there were no real kind of
Speaker 3: surprises within the family. I've certainly lost race driver your
Speaker 3: friends along the way, because that's you know, what happens
Speaker 3: in the decades that I've been involved in racing, and
Speaker 3: I've started losing some friends who you know, we grew
Speaker 3: up with together and just lately, and I think that's
Speaker 3: part of it. I you know, having the perspective of
Speaker 3: what you've been able to do in your life and
Speaker 3: be part of and like I said before, being in
Speaker 3: awe of others and being inspired of others and kind
Speaker 3: of keeping that going. I you know, Ken was one
Speaker 3: of the more difficult ones because it was almost like
Speaker 3: you just realized you hadn't spent enough time, you hadn't
Speaker 3: taken it as seriously as maybe you should have of
Speaker 3: what that guy provided, not just for you, but for
Speaker 3: the whole car culture all that sort of thing. So
Speaker 3: it is difficult, but I also savor so much and
Speaker 3: I feel it's so important not to have regrets and
Speaker 3: feel like you've been pure to yourself and chased your
Speaker 3: passions and been able to be constantly invigorated. You know,
Speaker 3: it's like perpetual motion when things feed something and it
Speaker 3: just keeps it going. That's the way I look at
Speaker 3: my career. You know, it's always been interesting. Every element
Speaker 3: has been interesting. Every day of a life has been interesting.
Speaker 3: I love going against the elements, you know. I love
Speaker 3: being provided challenges, even at this age. You know, I'm
Speaker 3: not looking for the easy path. You know, the worst
Speaker 3: day is bright and sunny and perfect conditions. You know,
Speaker 3: that's not the worst day. But you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: I like the challenge. I love that fact that you
Speaker 3: are just going against life and succeeding, you know. And
Speaker 3: I love to see that in other people. And I
Speaker 3: love the underdogs. I love the people that have looked
Speaker 3: at life differently. Those kinds of moments just make such
Speaker 3: a dynamic, engaging world. Because elements in life, whether it
Speaker 3: be life or death, or health or weather or anything,
Speaker 3: it's part of our life. And you love to see
Speaker 3: people succeed in that. And that's the part that really
Speaker 3: kind of motivates me and other people is watching that.
Speaker 3: I love watching new filmmakers and people that haven't even
Speaker 3: been educated in school, you know, they've just done it
Speaker 3: on their own. I love that kind of vibrancy of
Speaker 3: because the only reason for success in that environment is passion.
Speaker 3: It's it.
Speaker 1: We Will said, it's really beautiful. This has been a
Speaker 1: great conversation.
Speaker 2: I feel like I'm going to leave this a better person.
Speaker 3: Well, I agree, it's all for us, and I think
Speaker 3: that's the point of our world is just that we
Speaker 3: can kind of feed off each other and and take
Speaker 3: advantage of the relationships in the best possible ways and
Speaker 3: take away the good and understand the bad. And that
Speaker 3: balance of understanding how important a life is around us.
Speaker 3: To be able to come back to and share in
Speaker 3: it and live in it and give people space to
Speaker 3: be part of that is so important going back to it.
Speaker 3: It's like, you know, you guys are my inspiration. It's
Speaker 3: a new generation of inspiration, and I just leave those
Speaker 3: doors open to be inspired by others. But you guys
Speaker 3: are great. Love it.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much.
Speaker 3: Jeff, Yeah, thank you.