Speaker 1: Okay, Fast and Furious fans, welcome back to another podcast.
Speaker 1: My name's Amelia Hartford and I'm so kaying the reason
Speaker 1: why I say Fast and Furious. Our guest today built
Speaker 1: all the cars starting with Fast three, one of those
Speaker 1: cars being Hans Are seven.
Speaker 2: Yes, he built so many iconic.
Speaker 1: Cars that we shouldn't try to name them all.
Speaker 2: It's great to see him take his passion for cars
Speaker 2: and convert it over to movies.
Speaker 1: Yeah. We have cool conversations about cars dropping out of
Speaker 1: planes on Fast and Furious seven, and we.
Speaker 2: Also talk about the future of practical cars and CG
Speaker 2: cars and movies.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, we joke a little bit about the street
Speaker 1: takeovers becoming a.
Speaker 2: Thing which we would say this gentleman we're going to
Speaker 2: speak to is actually responsible for unintentionally. Yeah, and without
Speaker 2: further ado.
Speaker 1: Dennis McCarthy. Everybody.
Speaker 2: I think people know the cars in the film, but
Speaker 2: nobody knows you, Dennis. Like I even the people that
Speaker 2: work on the movie. It's like they don't know, like
Speaker 2: where you're from, like where you started, Like you know,
Speaker 2: I want to share that story, Like I want to
Speaker 2: share Dennis's story, Like how'd you get into cars? Where'd
Speaker 2: you grow up, like what was the history prior to
Speaker 2: you coming to fest?
Speaker 3: And fears like why cars?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm like that guy behind the scenes and like
Speaker 4: no one ever sees me, you know, I just you know,
Speaker 4: cars show up and you know, and that's it. But
Speaker 4: I've always been in the cars made since a very
Speaker 4: very early age as long, honestly, as long as I
Speaker 4: can remember.
Speaker 3: I mean, I you know, my.
Speaker 4: First memories, first memory of a car as being you know,
Speaker 4: somewhere around two maybe three years old, my dad had
Speaker 4: a sixty nine Camaro for speed car with the Hurst
Speaker 4: white shift nob and you know, I would reach over
Speaker 4: there and shift gears, you know.
Speaker 3: From the passers.
Speaker 4: City's a little tiny kid, so I think it was
Speaker 4: just something that was always where it was. And with wheels, motorcycles, bicycles, skateboards,
Speaker 4: you know, everything in my life was kind of focused
Speaker 4: on that. I think I had a bicycle repair shop
Speaker 4: in the third grade with my own business cards.
Speaker 3: I'd pass out at school.
Speaker 4: You know, So I was just kind of always working
Speaker 4: on something, fixing something, or playing with something or driving something.
Speaker 3: So you know, long story short.
Speaker 4: In high school, I was a bad example in today's society,
Speaker 4: but I did street racing was like my number one hobby,
Speaker 4: you know, Like my my buddies played football, played baseball.
Speaker 4: I went street racing. So that's what I did, you know,
Speaker 4: And I knew all the hot spots. I knew all
Speaker 4: the times to be there, the days to be there,
Speaker 4: and you know, eventually, of course got in trouble here
Speaker 4: and there for that reason, but nonetheless it was.
Speaker 3: In the long run, I guess it was worth it.
Speaker 2: Where'd you grow up?
Speaker 3: Burbank? Burbank? Wow?
Speaker 4: Yeah, So you know we used to race out by
Speaker 4: u you know, Peoria Street, Roxford Street. You know, we'd
Speaker 4: go way up Wheatland. There was a long stretch there
Speaker 4: we could. You know, there was a lot of great
Speaker 4: places actually right down. It's funny when I started the movie,
Speaker 4: it reminded me because one of the places we would
Speaker 4: race was right off of Fletcher. I remember the first
Speaker 4: time going down and saying, oh man, that's my street,
Speaker 4: right you know, they're all the burnout mark Shore right there.
Speaker 3: Everything.
Speaker 4: You know, it's like one of my favorite spots. But
Speaker 4: h got a job at a dinosh job. I worked
Speaker 4: at the Glen Dail's Speed Center for it. So that's
Speaker 4: like if you ever noticed in Fast nine, the credit
Speaker 4: car says Glendale Speed Center on the hood. I put
Speaker 4: that there because that's where I worked when I was
Speaker 4: in high school. So you know, I always try to
Speaker 4: slip a few things in and it's and it's funny.
Speaker 4: It's like we did some mock up with the car. Actually,
Speaker 4: you know, your friend Jose at Extreme Wraps and I
Speaker 4: do this hood and then you know, I'm asked, well,
Speaker 4: do we have clearance? I go, yeah, and I called
Speaker 4: the owners still around, you know, I got a hold
Speaker 4: of them and we got kind of cleared. But nobody
Speaker 4: asked me where it came from. And I think what
Speaker 4: happens in these situations is I think that probably the
Speaker 4: director maybe assumed the production designer came up with their vice.
Speaker 3: Versa or producer.
Speaker 4: They disassumed that it came from somewhere that nobody ever
Speaker 4: bothers to ask me, what's the Glendail Speed Center?
Speaker 3: You know what I mean.
Speaker 4: But it's, uh, you know, there's so much going on
Speaker 4: when you're you know, when you're you know, doing fifty
Speaker 4: some cars, it just all kind of blends together. But anyways, Uh,
Speaker 4: I started working there and then you know, shortly thereafter,
Speaker 4: you know, I went to a trade school. I went
Speaker 4: to Valley College briefly for engineering and just ended up
Speaker 4: on my own shop by thinking around maybe twenty twenty one.
Speaker 3: I have my own.
Speaker 4: Business, so been doing that ever since. And you know,
Speaker 4: so it's really you know, people always ask, wow, this
Speaker 4: must be great. You know, what's it like compared to
Speaker 4: with this, And it's really the same thing as what
Speaker 4: I did. I mean, I had a shop with you know,
Speaker 4: maybe six guys, what would build a bunch of cars.
Speaker 4: I do the same thing now, just on a much
Speaker 4: bigger scale.
Speaker 3: That's all.
Speaker 1: It's just a tighter deadline, right.
Speaker 4: The deadlines are tight. Yeah, you know, like you know,
Speaker 4: you can say, yea, I'm gonna bild you a custom car,
Speaker 4: you know, frame up, you know everything else. You know,
Speaker 4: you can say, yeah, give me about a year to
Speaker 4: do it. You know, we'll have to build you know,
Speaker 4: sixty cars like that in the span of three and
Speaker 4: a half months. So you know, it's a different it's
Speaker 4: a different speed, we'll say, for sure, grabbing another gear
Speaker 4: there for sure, but you know higher accordingly, get the
Speaker 4: right guys.
Speaker 3: It always gets done.
Speaker 2: We're at number ten, fast and fear as ten and
Speaker 2: you started the same time you did, Yeah, Fast and
Speaker 2: Fear As three. So could you give us thenus a
Speaker 2: little history of how you got into the whole Fast
Speaker 2: and Fear As franchise.
Speaker 4: Yeah, sure, I mean it's uh, it's going way back.
Speaker 4: But I was just you know, custom car builder had
Speaker 4: a business in Burbank for forever, like literally since I
Speaker 4: was twenty years old, and somehow, through a front of
Speaker 4: a friend, I ended up working on. His name was
Speaker 4: Jim Brubaker at the time, he was the head of
Speaker 4: the studio. Yeah, so he got referred to me to
Speaker 4: work on his cars through a friend of his son.
Speaker 4: So anyways, it really just started off working on I
Speaker 4: think he had he had seventy one L Camino.
Speaker 3: He had a couple of cool cars, you know.
Speaker 4: So one thing led to another and he wanted me
Speaker 4: to build a modify a vehicle for a scene in
Speaker 4: a movie called Dragonfly. Okay, it was a movie, Uh
Speaker 4: Kevin Costner and his wife dies going off a cliff
Speaker 4: in a bus. So they had purchased this old army vehicle.
Speaker 4: Probably the worst possible choice, you know. I mean, there
Speaker 4: could have been a lot of things that you could
Speaker 4: as bought and would have worked. But anyways, they bought
Speaker 4: this old army vehicle that had no suspension, manual transmission,
Speaker 4: no power. I mean, it was just very not user
Speaker 4: friendly at all. So they wanted a V eight. They
Speaker 4: wanted air ride, suspension and automatic, you know, just all
Speaker 4: this different stuff so we could go down the hill
Speaker 4: smoothly with a camera mount. It was a point of
Speaker 4: view shot as all it was. So they had basically
Speaker 4: the front of the bus then goes off.
Speaker 3: It's cliff.
Speaker 4: So I said, yeah, no prom at all, you know,
Speaker 4: So got that done for him, and then he called
Speaker 4: me again for Bruce Almighty needed some help with some cars.
Speaker 4: They had a Saline S seven. Long story on that one.
Speaker 4: I won't go into a bit.
Speaker 2: It was I want to hear the story, please, That's
Speaker 2: why you're here to tell his stories.
Speaker 3: All right, Well this is a funny story.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it's really not funny, but I guess
Speaker 4: it was funny from being on the outside of it.
Speaker 4: So he asked me to come to set to check
Speaker 4: out this Saleine S seven and it had been postponed,
Speaker 4: postpone because the car wasn't ready. This was literally right
Speaker 4: when that car was debut. It was just you know
Speaker 4: there was one in existence, which was owned by Steve Salan.
Speaker 4: That was the only car that existed. So they kept moving,
Speaker 4: the shop moving, the shot waited on this car. So
Speaker 4: I'm there that day. He wants me to wait and
Speaker 4: stand by and just check this car out, make sure
Speaker 4: everything's cool. He wants me to be the guy that
Speaker 4: places it. You know, shows Jim Garrey had to get
Speaker 4: in out of it, all that good stuff. So like, okay, yeah, great,
Speaker 4: it sounds like fine. So I head out there and
Speaker 4: trailer roll up and the car had to be still right.
Speaker 4: Don't if you saw the movie, but there's a scene
Speaker 4: where the car, his silver Z morphs into the same lane.
Speaker 4: So the color was a critical part of it. And
Speaker 4: they'd already shot the Z. So trailer shows up, but
Speaker 4: it's got a yellow one and a sober one. That's strange.
Speaker 4: Wonder what they're bringing? A yell, I mean, what good
Speaker 4: does a yellow car do us? So anyways, cars getting loaded,
Speaker 4: and the rep says, hey, I apologize, but the silver
Speaker 4: car is not done. It's it's cosmetically cool. It's a
Speaker 4: good static car, but it doesn't run. And we just
Speaker 4: figured you guys could just you know, either do a
Speaker 4: static shot or you just do a change the car
Speaker 4: to yellow. I'm going, well, that's not that's not my call.
Speaker 4: So anyways, everyone comes over and that's not gonna work.
Speaker 4: It's a driving shot. The car has to be silber.
Speaker 4: They're talking about Tobar's is that. Nothing's going to work. So, uh,
Speaker 4: you know, I'm asked, hey, can you fix the car?
Speaker 4: I said, I look inside the car. You know, there's
Speaker 4: no wiring, harness, there's no fuels. It's been haws a
Speaker 4: motor sitting it. But that's about it. I go, not today,
Speaker 4: you know, that's not gonna happen. So this is right
Speaker 4: about the time that there was something called peel coat
Speaker 4: paint that was around. It just kind of started, you know,
Speaker 4: being used in the studio business. Basically, yeah, exactly, but
Speaker 4: it's but not as good. It's like it's almost like
Speaker 4: a rubberized it feels like a Latex glove on the car.
Speaker 4: And then you spray paint basically the latext you know
Speaker 4: how it works, and you have to spray it on
Speaker 4: with a special gun kind of like a gun similar
Speaker 4: to like a linex or a rhino lining gun.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: So we send guys in all these different directions to
Speaker 4: get the gun, to get the paint, to get the
Speaker 4: you know, the peel coat product, and we reconvened in
Speaker 4: a body shop. A friend of mine jacked out a
Speaker 4: body we I called, I got a nine to one one.
Speaker 4: I have to have this car back on setamorrow five am,
Speaker 4: you know, get this down overnight.
Speaker 3: And he goes, yeah, yeah, no problem. This is, you know,
Speaker 3: probably three in the afternoon.
Speaker 4: By this point, by the time we get all the materials,
Speaker 4: it's probably five and we start trying to spray this
Speaker 4: car and it was freezing cold, right, spraying the stuff,
Speaker 4: spraying stuff, but the stuff is too cold and it
Speaker 4: just keeps orange, peeling really bad, and then we have
Speaker 4: to clean it all off, start over again.
Speaker 3: We go through this process.
Speaker 4: By the time I get to uh god, it was
Speaker 4: probably ten pm, eleven pm at night, and I'm just going, man,
Speaker 4: it's not gonna work. You know, we can't. It's just
Speaker 4: it's about twenty five degrees too cold. So I call up,
Speaker 4: call up, you go, hey, man, I got a little problem.
Speaker 4: I said, It's just it's not gonna work. I said,
Speaker 4: the only way I can, you know, have this car
Speaker 4: for you tomorrow morning. At five am, and Silver is
Speaker 4: if I just paint the car. I don't want to
Speaker 4: use profanity on your show. But he goes, yeah, I
Speaker 4: paint the car. I go, okay, all right, great man.
Speaker 4: So next thing, you know, man, I got a crew
Speaker 4: guy sand in this you know, brand new sanely S
Speaker 4: seven and we painted at silver and we were up
Speaker 4: on set the next morning five am. I'm touching up
Speaker 4: the little little flaws with a sharpie. You know, I'm
Speaker 4: just like, I'm literally right there as they all come out.
Speaker 1: I been silver sharpie.
Speaker 4: I was using a black sharpie because I didn't have
Speaker 4: a silver sharp but the black was better than yellow.
Speaker 4: So it was kind of like in the door seams
Speaker 4: and everything, I'm just using a black sharpie and I'm
Speaker 4: trying to hide any kind of any that's of yellow.
Speaker 3: And we got it done.
Speaker 4: There's a lot of discussion after that about that whole
Speaker 4: process and potential legal action there, but anyways, we got
Speaker 4: the car pain and we had it on set. It
Speaker 4: looked great, and uh, you know, everything went well from
Speaker 4: that one.
Speaker 1: So not only paint but also prep a car within
Speaker 1: that timeframe. I hope people listening can understand how unreal
Speaker 1: that is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was. I mean we did the car.
Speaker 4: By that point, it was probably eleven at night and
Speaker 4: we had it, you know, probably gave us about four
Speaker 4: and a half hours.
Speaker 1: To was it was the paint dry when you showed
Speaker 1: up on Satacky.
Speaker 3: We brought it back in an enclosed trailer so get
Speaker 3: the bugs off of it.
Speaker 4: But now it all worked out. But it was a
Speaker 4: that was kind of my start in the business I got.
Speaker 4: I got some sidetracked there. So back to the original question,
Speaker 4: that's how I got kind of hooked up with Universal
Speaker 4: and then uh, you know, one thing led to another,
Speaker 4: and in regards to Fast and Furious, I get a
Speaker 4: call once again, same same same man, Jim brup Hair
Speaker 4: calls me after Zombe because, hey, what do you know
Speaker 4: about this sport and drifting? You know, in my head,
Speaker 4: I'm thinking when I was in high school, man, I
Speaker 4: you know, slide cars right into a curb, you know.
Speaker 3: So anyways, I said.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that sounds yeah, I know, I know everything about it,
Speaker 4: like you know, the usual answer, you know. So he goes, great,
Speaker 4: can you do can you do a little research on
Speaker 4: the topic for me? He doesn't tell me what it's
Speaker 4: about or what it's for I mean, in retrospect, it
Speaker 4: feels like I turned it like an eighth grade report
Speaker 4: on the sport of drifting. You know. I did a
Speaker 4: notebook with a picture of a card drifting and just
Speaker 4: kind of went through the history of the tracks, the
Speaker 4: key players and everything else, and uh, very rudimentary, but
Speaker 4: just you know, brought to him and kind of sat
Speaker 4: down them and just kind of went through a page
Speaker 4: by page and showed them where it's at, the different
Speaker 4: organizations that run and everything else. He sayes, great, Great,
Speaker 4: I totally appreciate this. I said, okay, all right, thank you,
Speaker 4: I can no problem. You know, left thought that was
Speaker 4: that was the end of that. He calls you back
Speaker 4: a few days, Lady, just had like you to come
Speaker 4: up and talk to a few people. I said, yeah, no,
Speaker 4: no problem. I head up to the Universal. We'll go
Speaker 4: up to the eighth flour conference room and you know,
Speaker 4: there's a whole bunch of people there. I'm you know,
Speaker 4: horribly underdressed. You know, I'm just I was not not
Speaker 4: expecting this. And they've actually made a copy of that
Speaker 4: book and they've spread it around the whole table to
Speaker 4: everybody there, and I'm just like wow, I woke. A
Speaker 4: little heads up would have been nice, you know, like
Speaker 4: a little bit of a hey, this is what we're
Speaker 4: going to do. But just you know, I come and
Speaker 4: blind and say, you know, same conversation, Can you explain
Speaker 4: the sport of Christian to us?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: I did a little pitch on it, and uh. At
Speaker 4: the end of that meeting, they say, well, hey, we'd
Speaker 4: like you to go to Japan and do some research
Speaker 4: for us. I'm like, great, you know, but it happened
Speaker 4: that quick. It was literally, you know, walked out of
Speaker 4: that room, hooked up with travel, looked a flight.
Speaker 3: And you know, I think within a few days I was,
Speaker 3: you know, I was in Tokyo. So that's how it started.
Speaker 4: That's how I got hooked up with the franchise, and
Speaker 4: that's you know, that was my first experience with you know,
Speaker 4: fun with a whole bunch of cars.
Speaker 2: Amelia and I were talking about the street takeover donut scene.
Speaker 2: Do you understand that, Dennis, I do.
Speaker 3: Not understand it. All I've ever seen and it goes back.
Speaker 4: I mean, this goes back to when I was a kid,
Speaker 4: probably the sixth grade. You know, my my buddy's dad
Speaker 4: was a big stock cartan. We'd go out to Sagas
Speaker 4: and I remember, you know, when getting the seats, you'
Speaker 4: always said, oh yeah, you never never sit on the
Speaker 4: outside of the turn, you know, like we'd always you know,
Speaker 4: you know, PLoP down in front of the straight away
Speaker 4: or somebody.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, you know, the cars can climb the fence.
Speaker 4: I've seen it, you know, all this stuff, so at
Speaker 4: a very early age, you know, don't stand on the
Speaker 4: outside of a sliding car.
Speaker 3: And I watched these street takeovers. The cars are.
Speaker 4: Doing donuts and the streets are packed five or six deep.
Speaker 4: I mean, if something does go wrong, you can't get
Speaker 4: out of the way.
Speaker 3: It's just but it does, and it does.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I just excited over getting hits.
Speaker 3: I watch it.
Speaker 4: I just don't understand what has happened to common sense,
Speaker 4: you know. I mean that's something like when we were
Speaker 4: like even my buddies, like, we would never do that,
Speaker 4: you know. I mean, yeah, we might go into an
Speaker 4: air so that should do a bunch of donuts, but
Speaker 4: it's going to be, you know, somewhere where there's nobody
Speaker 4: else around. And that was great, and we drive away
Speaker 4: really quick to it. Don't get a ticket, you know,
Speaker 4: but to do with a huge crowd. It's I don't know,
Speaker 4: it's beyond me. No one's you know what. I just
Speaker 4: I just figured it out.
Speaker 1: Huh.
Speaker 4: I know where it came from. It came from I
Speaker 4: might be off one movie, but it came from Fastened
Speaker 4: Furious Sport. We did that sequence down at downtown LA.
Speaker 4: We had a BMW doing donuts. We had a huge
Speaker 4: party scene.
Speaker 5: It was down I want to say, take that back movie,
Speaker 5: But it is so funny though, I just we have
Speaker 5: the FBI.
Speaker 4: I know, it's just so funny. When you ask that question,
Speaker 4: where did it come from? I thought about I know,
Speaker 4: I've seen this one before and it just popped in
Speaker 4: my head. That's where I saw it. But we rigged
Speaker 4: at BMW. Now what we did was we actually had
Speaker 4: a BMW that was rigged like a like a track
Speaker 4: on a spinning thing, so it couldn't get away. It
Speaker 4: couldn't go anywhere, but you know it could had the
Speaker 4: right look on screen.
Speaker 1: On the set of Grand Tarrismo, I saw my first
Speaker 1: pod car, and for the listeners who don't know what
Speaker 1: a podcar is, everything that controls the car is now
Speaker 1: on the roof and the actor gets to sit in
Speaker 1: the driver's seat where you can't see anything because the
Speaker 1: cameras are blocking your view, and the stunt driver drives
Speaker 1: and you get to pretend like you're driving.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because you can always tell when you're watching a
Speaker 4: TV show of film or whatever if they're on a
Speaker 4: process trailer just has that no suspension. Look, the car
Speaker 4: sits too high. It's just it's just not the same.
Speaker 4: But with the pod, it's really the car's doing what
Speaker 4: it should be doing, but a stuntman is on the
Speaker 4: roof driving it. So just imagine if you had a
Speaker 4: roof rack with a lawn chair and a steering wheel.
Speaker 4: That's about what it is. He's sitting up on the roof.
Speaker 4: He has gas pedal, he has Oh, this was another
Speaker 4: first too on Grand Turisma was a pod with a
Speaker 4: manual transmission. Now, the only way we could do it
Speaker 4: was because it was electronic shifted, so we didn't actually
Speaker 4: have to have shift linkage because it was on the
Speaker 4: steering wheel. So he basically just took the GT three
Speaker 4: steering wheel, put that up on on the top, rewired
Speaker 4: everything and put a coluct pedal up there, which was hydraulic.
Speaker 4: So but it was pretty cool. Because that's something that
Speaker 4: you usually don't get with the pod. But anyways, bottom
Speaker 4: line is it just puts the actor in the car
Speaker 4: for reel at real speeds and it just sells. It
Speaker 4: just makes it makes the movie that much better. When
Speaker 4: you can do that, it's a pretty cool way to
Speaker 4: film an action car movie, for sure. I mean it's
Speaker 4: really the best.
Speaker 1: What's the fastest you've been in a quarter mile?
Speaker 3: M Let's see. I don't know.
Speaker 4: I've driven a lot of fast cars, but I can't say, okay,
Speaker 4: this is a quarter mile. I'm gonna hammer this car
Speaker 4: and go, oh you know what, Okay, I do have
Speaker 4: I do have something to back this up. So on
Speaker 4: Tokyo Drift, we built these Monty Carlos right and uh
Speaker 4: one of them had a five seventy two was a
Speaker 4: Richmond four speed, had a fourty six gear in it.
Speaker 4: We went out to uh Cameral Airport and we literally
Speaker 4: marked off a quarter mile with Edmunds online. Then we
Speaker 4: ran all the cars. I got in that car to
Speaker 4: make a pass and something broke.
Speaker 3: I forget it.
Speaker 4: I think the shift link and something something happened. I
Speaker 4: couldn't make a pass, so we came back. I went
Speaker 4: through everything just to the valves, got anything ready to go.
Speaker 4: In the meantime, we ran the other car, which was
Speaker 4: a five hundred and nine cubic chain car, which coincidentally,
Speaker 4: I still own that car. I have that car in
Speaker 4: my shop right now. But in that car, i'd have
Speaker 4: to go back and watch. I think you can still
Speaker 4: pull it up. But I think it ran an eleven
Speaker 4: something in the quarter mile. And they had, you know,
Speaker 4: all the proper equipment and everything else. And anyways, long
Speaker 4: story short, I get back in the car with a
Speaker 4: big motor and it's got slicks, I've got the air perer.
Speaker 4: I'm really I want to get a ten second time
Speaker 4: out of this car. And uh, you know, they got
Speaker 4: the light green go, and for whatever reason, the first
Speaker 4: you know light didn't trigger the car.
Speaker 3: So I never got a quarter mile time.
Speaker 4: But I went through the lights in one hundred and
Speaker 4: thirty miles an hour, which is pretty damn fast. I mean,
Speaker 4: in a nineteen seventy Monet card, to go through the
Speaker 4: lights at one hundred and thirty miles an hour, it
Speaker 4: had to be I'm going to in my mind, I
Speaker 4: believe it had to be a ten second pass. But
Speaker 4: you know, it never got officially recorded, so that.
Speaker 3: Was very impressed about.
Speaker 4: And the other thing that was horrible about that day is,
Speaker 4: you know, that's not a real incredibly high Revy motor,
Speaker 4: and there was no and I knew there was a
Speaker 4: light at the quarter in the quarter mile, but there
Speaker 4: was no visual reference, like we should have put a
Speaker 4: traffic car. So I didn't want to shut up early,
Speaker 4: so I was going to hold it in extra long. Well,
Speaker 4: I kept going forth, gear, ran out of ran out
Speaker 4: of gear, and I ended up scattering that motor. I
Speaker 4: mean scattered it to the point where you know, connecting
Speaker 4: rods came through the side.
Speaker 1: Of the block, windowed the block.
Speaker 4: Yeah, oil on the airstrip, and I think that was
Speaker 4: the last time we were ever allowed to do that
Speaker 4: again because of that, because it dumped you know, seven
Speaker 4: quarts of oil right onto the airstrip. But anyways, all
Speaker 4: that lawn the motor up, and I still want to
Speaker 4: get a recorded quarter mile, So I'm still very depressed
Speaker 4: about that.
Speaker 3: It's okay, there you go.
Speaker 4: I'll tell you guys a sad story of the car
Speaker 4: that I wanted more than any new car. I can
Speaker 4: probably say my whole life was the new CTFI V Corvette.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, black Wing, black Wing Cadillact.
Speaker 1: I got one hundred and twentieth anniversary one.
Speaker 3: You're gonna love it.
Speaker 1: I'm so excited for it.
Speaker 4: So when the black Wing, I started reading about it
Speaker 4: as I going, oh my god, this is a car.
Speaker 4: I can get a Cadillact with four doors on a clutch.
Speaker 4: I said, I must have this. So and we were working,
Speaker 4: we were on a show, we were doing something and
Speaker 4: I missed the order day.
Speaker 3: I just missed it.
Speaker 4: And I was devastated because they were they all they
Speaker 4: sold out like instantly.
Speaker 3: Luckily, I have a couple of friends.
Speaker 4: Her named Sandy from General Motors, but she was huge
Speaker 4: help in making some phone calls to Michigan. She got me,
Speaker 4: she got me the opportunity to order one. So I
Speaker 4: ordered you black, the carbon seat, everything exactly what I wanted.
Speaker 4: And uh, it's the coolest car ever. I mean, it's
Speaker 4: absolutely Yeah. It's in my garage. But this is a
Speaker 4: sad part that I have. I've had it for I
Speaker 4: think a year and it has a thousand miles on it.
Speaker 4: Like I don't drive it. You know, it's in my
Speaker 4: garage at my house with the car cover on it,
Speaker 4: and it's like we're going out here.
Speaker 3: No, I can't ballet park this car.
Speaker 1: Really burn the clutch out.
Speaker 3: Screw it up. I'm not I'm not doing that. I
Speaker 3: don't leave it anywhere.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel that way about the Corvettes. But I
Speaker 1: like when I tell you I'm so excited for this
Speaker 1: black Wing, I like, I literally just can't wait to
Speaker 1: go get it. It's like, what the last combustion manual
Speaker 1: transmission car.
Speaker 3: That is the coolest car ever. Like I said, that's
Speaker 3: so cool. It's the one that I'm.
Speaker 1: Going to daily drive. That's going to be like my
Speaker 1: I joke that I'm buying the car from my dog.
Speaker 1: I'm not that, you know, it's not really the case,
Speaker 1: but like I don't even know if she's ever gonna
Speaker 1: sit in it. Now they say it, but I was.
Speaker 3: That was my intent. It was gonna be my daily driver.
Speaker 3: But I'm gonna try to start putting some more miles
Speaker 3: on it, for sure.
Speaker 4: Congratulation. That's that's fine that we own the same car.
Speaker 4: At first we work on the same movie and then
Speaker 4: we own the same car.
Speaker 3: Pretty cool.
Speaker 2: Then, as you know, I have to working in the
Speaker 2: Hollywood and with all these cars, what is your favorite
Speaker 2: like car movie like that you've worked on or that
Speaker 2: you just go, okay, this is this sets the bar
Speaker 2: for a film that has cars in it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that is a great question, you know, and I
Speaker 4: mean I lean back to like the older stuff, you know,
Speaker 4: like seventy stuff. I mean, as a young kid, my
Speaker 4: all time favorite movie was The Gunball Rally.
Speaker 3: One of my favorite.
Speaker 4: Scenes in that movie is it's a four to twenty
Speaker 4: seven Cobra and a Ferrari Daytona racing through the La
Speaker 4: River and it's just awesome. And there's there's backstories so
Speaker 4: that too. There was a body shop in in Bertman
Speaker 4: called Auto FM, which is coincidental where my dad took
Speaker 4: all his cars. But he was one of the guys
Speaker 4: that was responsible for fixing the Cobra overnight because they
Speaker 4: spun the car out and went into the channel in
Speaker 4: the center and you know, this is the old days
Speaker 4: of film, and they had one Ferrari, they had one Cobra,
Speaker 4: so when they wrecked it, they had to bring the
Speaker 4: car back overnight, bring it back and it was it
Speaker 4: was a.
Speaker 3: Real one too, a woman and body car.
Speaker 1: But it was a real Cobra. For twice seven.
Speaker 4: Yeah, which back in nineteen seventy eight or seventy six whatever,
Speaker 4: it was meant next to nothing. You know, it was
Speaker 4: a four thousand dollars car back then.
Speaker 1: But today there worth so much of course.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so anyways, but if you ever get a chance,
Speaker 4: check that movie out, you know, and really, I mean
Speaker 4: what I like in the movie is realism. I'm not
Speaker 4: a huge fan of massive CG. You know, I really
Speaker 4: like it. You know, to me, if you're watching a
Speaker 4: movie and you you can believe that the stunt is
Speaker 4: really happening as you're watching it, I think it just
Speaker 4: adds to the project. And I think that's one great
Speaker 4: thing about the Fast and Furious franchises.
Speaker 3: We try to do that now.
Speaker 4: Obviously over the years, the cg's gotten a little bigger,
Speaker 4: but we still try to keep the car stunts, you know,
Speaker 4: being a real car stunt.
Speaker 1: Do you watch car movies the same too? I mean
Speaker 1: you're probably working on all of them, but do you
Speaker 1: watch them the same today? Are you constantly looking at Oh,
Speaker 1: I see how they did that? That's an interesting element.
Speaker 4: I nitpick things that you know, like, hey, the wheels
Speaker 4: are different on that car. You know, it's just little
Speaker 4: things like that that I'm because I you know, I
Speaker 4: would always criticize myself, you know, and it happens if
Speaker 4: we screw something up, if a car looks a little bit,
Speaker 4: you know, like I said, we're building to set it
Speaker 4: ten cars, they all need to look identical, and if
Speaker 4: something's off, I'll definitely catch it when I'm watching it.
Speaker 4: But I unfortunately, I can't get that out of my mind.
Speaker 4: So every time I watch a liver of the car chase,
Speaker 4: I'm looking for a flaw. I'm looking for a double
Speaker 4: car that has a different seat or a different interior, things.
Speaker 1: That a lot of people probably wouldn't notice just watching it,
Speaker 1: but you probably those tune die for it.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah exactly.
Speaker 4: I mean everything else is probably blur outside of that,
Speaker 4: but the cars I'm focused on.
Speaker 2: It was really cool on the last film where you know,
Speaker 2: the director was leaning on you to like help the
Speaker 2: dialogue to make it, you know, like legit because in
Speaker 2: the past, I mean, the fans are complaining, They're like, yo, man,
Speaker 2: you guys are in space. Well bro right, there's like
Speaker 2: it's seventy thirty. It's it's like seventy percent. You know,
Speaker 2: Like when I'm outside there. You know, the fans will
Speaker 2: be like, I'm gonna watch the movie anyway, but hey man,
Speaker 2: it'd be nice if, like, you know, you could go
Speaker 2: back to the cars. And then thirty percent is like,
Speaker 2: fuck you guys, man, you guys this bullshit. You guys
Speaker 2: are in space and what the fuck is that?
Speaker 3: Like, it's not a car movie and you are right,
Speaker 3: so right right, yeah, no, I'm with you.
Speaker 4: I mean, like I said, I I would love to see,
Speaker 4: you know, like a flashback, like an old school flashback
Speaker 4: and that maybe the maybe the history of uh, you know,
Speaker 4: Toretto Seniors street racing days or something just kind of
Speaker 4: ran that back. I mean, it's really it's hard to
Speaker 4: do it today because it's just not really done today.
Speaker 4: If it is, you know, it's like you said, it's
Speaker 4: more of the street takeover. I don't know of any
Speaker 4: you know, or I mean, I know it's out there,
Speaker 4: but I guess I'm just out of the loop on it.
Speaker 4: But uh, but I think it'd be great to have
Speaker 4: like a flashback or something that goes back to the
Speaker 4: to the real roots of you know, maybe you know,
Speaker 4: the unknown where the franchise came from or something like that.
Speaker 4: You know unknow where the Touretto name came from, you
Speaker 4: know where where that'll stem from. Would be pretty awesome.
Speaker 4: But uh yeah, I like, you know, street races that
Speaker 4: are you know, as real as they can possibly be,
Speaker 4: you know, I think would be great.
Speaker 2: A lot of people ask what happens through the cars.
Speaker 1: From I was just thinking that.
Speaker 4: The cars usually, as you know, they get destroyed during filming.
Speaker 4: You know, for instance, let's take a domb charge in
Speaker 4: a Fast and Furious movie. You know, if we get
Speaker 4: two that make it through, you know whatever, we've built ten, twelve,
Speaker 4: fourteen of them, we're doing pretty good. And when I
Speaker 4: stay destroyed, I mean really destroyed. I mean you know
Speaker 4: it's on some effects rig, it's cut up, there's things
Speaker 4: well to do it everywhere, So it's uh, you know,
Speaker 4: we're definitely hard hard on vehicles. The ones that do remain,
Speaker 4: you know, we'll always go into Universal's asset warehouse and
Speaker 4: then they'll be used for tours, for special events, they'll
Speaker 4: be on display at the theme park. Eventually some of
Speaker 4: them do get sold. They're typically to sold to you know,
Speaker 4: someone that has a museum or as a collector, you know,
Speaker 4: so not a lot of the cars really survive and
Speaker 4: I actually get out there.
Speaker 3: I mean, you see them.
Speaker 4: And the other thing too. This is something else that
Speaker 4: always cracks me up. There's a lot of fakes that
Speaker 4: are portrayed as real cars, so that I see all
Speaker 4: the time. You know, cars like I know how many
Speaker 4: cars were made and how many cars survived. And there
Speaker 4: are several cars out there that I know none survived,
Speaker 4: or if there's one, I know that it's part of
Speaker 4: the universal. But yet here's one for sale, you know,
Speaker 4: for a million dollars or something. So yeah, so you
Speaker 4: have to be careful of that one. You know, a
Speaker 4: lot of a lot of counterfeits out there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like anything, I'm sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, who would have guessed?
Speaker 3: I guess.
Speaker 4: I guess you're doing good. Yeah, they're kind of fitting
Speaker 4: your cars he built, that's I guess. I said something.
Speaker 2: But you're right by Jay Leno's garage right where else
Speaker 2: You're very close.
Speaker 3: Yeah. We see him every day, you know. I mean,
Speaker 3: he's one of the coolest guys ever.
Speaker 4: He's always riding a motorcycle, driving a steam car, driving something,
Speaker 4: you know, And like I said, he drives right by
Speaker 4: our shop. Sometimes you'll see him three different times in
Speaker 4: the day driving a different vehicle. But one time I'm
Speaker 4: coming down San Fernando. I'm making a left onto my
Speaker 4: street and I see him pushing a motorcycle like an.
Speaker 3: Old the Indian or hardy.
Speaker 4: I don't know any what it is, but he's pushing
Speaker 4: his motorcycle. Then he's a ways off. I mean, he's
Speaker 4: probably a good mile from his shop or more so.
Speaker 4: I pulled over to go, Jay, what are you doing?
Speaker 1: Man?
Speaker 3: It broke down?
Speaker 4: I go, well, do let me let me call State Bed.
Speaker 4: I'll get someone down here. We'll load your bike. We'll
Speaker 4: get me O.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, no no. This is a this is my
Speaker 3: exercise planning.
Speaker 4: I ride the bike. When it breaks down, I push
Speaker 4: it back and he was like, take off, go I'm good.
Speaker 4: He's all by himself, just pushing a motorcycle, you know,
Speaker 4: through the streets of Sime Valley and a true car
Speaker 4: lever motorcycle lever.
Speaker 3: I mean it's yeah, what are you working on next?
Speaker 3: Anything you can talk about?
Speaker 4: Yeah, we're working on let's see right now, I'm working
Speaker 4: on the Joker too.
Speaker 3: We're working on a joker too.
Speaker 1: Cool?
Speaker 3: Yeah, what are you building for?
Speaker 2: Are you building the moment?
Speaker 4: His car or no, well, still in production there, so yeah,
Speaker 4: I can't reveal too much about it, but I will
Speaker 4: say there is a couple of cool cars. It's well,
Speaker 4: as you know, this isn't a secret, but those cars
Speaker 4: always have kind of like a late eighties early nineties
Speaker 4: feel to them.
Speaker 3: You know, it's they're never really like a peerod movie.
Speaker 4: They just don't specify what it is, but all the
Speaker 4: cars are in that era.
Speaker 3: But it's cool.
Speaker 4: We're working on another movie this this one's very painful.
Speaker 4: I'm working on another movie. Jennifer Gardner's in it, and
Speaker 4: we're We've built five sixty nine Camaro convertibles, which is
Speaker 4: one of my favorite cars. You know, not maybe the
Speaker 4: convertible apart, but sixty nine Camaros in general. I really
Speaker 4: has always been one of my favorites. And I love
Speaker 4: it because it's such a cool thing to do. But
Speaker 4: I hate damaging sixty nine Camaro convertible. There's systemthing that's
Speaker 4: so painful, but you know, it's it's funny. So that
Speaker 4: the car count kept increasing and we bought I started
Speaker 4: with three real convertibles, and then we built a couple
Speaker 4: of stunt cars, and then we needed another stunt car.
Speaker 3: Gosh, and I.
Speaker 4: Don't have time to start over and buy hard top
Speaker 4: and cut it because luckily the top is always plays down.
Speaker 4: So yesterday we were you know, had to put you know,
Speaker 4: all this rigging and rollcats and safety stuff in the car.
Speaker 3: And I was so depressed about it. But my guys can.
Speaker 4: Get Hey, man, you won't believe how you know, fucked
Speaker 4: up this car is? We you know, we pulled the
Speaker 4: convertible top bad. You can see the quarter pounds them
Speaker 4: and smashed in and spliced and patched poorterally. And I
Speaker 4: was like, ah, thank god, it's a piece of shit,
Speaker 4: you know, I was so happy that the car was,
Speaker 4: you know, not a nice car. But we're always maintaining,
Speaker 4: you know, whether it's batmobiles, we're prepping some cars for
Speaker 4: the next Ghostbusters movie, you know. So it's always there's
Speaker 4: always something going on there. It's always you know, it's
Speaker 4: never a dull moment.
Speaker 3: Put it that way, Hey, Dennis.
Speaker 2: For folks that are listening that want to do what
Speaker 2: you do right and get in the business of what
Speaker 2: you do, you know, there's no book and there's no
Speaker 2: class they can take on like how to go and
Speaker 2: break into Hollywood. I mean, what are some of the
Speaker 2: values that you've taught your children like that you apply
Speaker 2: and you're because you're super successful, you're like at the
Speaker 2: top of your game, like you know, And if you
Speaker 2: were to give like a young person advice on you know,
Speaker 2: the traits that they need and the habits they needn't
Speaker 2: need to be successful, and not just in Hollywood, but
Speaker 2: in anything, what would you advice?
Speaker 4: I'm just going to say, it's really not the answer
Speaker 4: people are looking for, but it's it's really a lot
Speaker 4: of it is luck, you know. And that's how I said,
Speaker 4: I end up this business. Was just told you the backstory,
Speaker 4: just working on a guy's car, turn into this, and
Speaker 4: turn to that. But that being said, the best thing
Speaker 4: you can do is get a job on a movie
Speaker 4: with the you know, picture card department of the transportation department.
Speaker 4: You know, at least pet your foot in the door
Speaker 4: sea what goes on, see how it works. I mean,
Speaker 4: I wish I had some some of that history, but
Speaker 4: I don't. You know, I literally started off, you know,
Speaker 4: doing Tokyota, you know, I mean like it was like
Speaker 4: I started off my career doing like the biggest car
Speaker 4: movie ever and the first thing I did is I
Speaker 4: looked up who did the last one?
Speaker 3: I hired them, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: I because I was like, wow, I'm really you know,
Speaker 4: it was it was crazy what a huge production that was.
Speaker 4: And I mean like as you know, you know, we
Speaker 4: were scheduling changes, We had to you know, last minute
Speaker 4: replicate all the cars in Japan because there was not
Speaker 4: time to ship them to Japan. I mean, just crazy stuff.
Speaker 4: So for me to get thrown into like a car
Speaker 4: movie of that scale for my I mean granted it
Speaker 4: was maybe my third or fourth job, and the other
Speaker 4: jobs were like you know, like I mentioned standing by
Speaker 4: here or they're not doing a whole lot. But for
Speaker 4: someone that wants to do this, you know, the key
Speaker 4: would be going to work for someone like myself or
Speaker 4: you know. And it's hard too because it's it's very regional.
Speaker 4: So you know, there's Atlanta, New Mexico, you know, I mean,
Speaker 4: there's just not a lot of big.
Speaker 3: Car guys outside of those areas. I mean, I I really,
Speaker 3: if I.
Speaker 4: Think about it, in Atlanta and La a couple of
Speaker 4: guys in New Mexico, but outside that there's not much
Speaker 4: going on. So but if you could get a job
Speaker 4: with the you know, with a picture car company that
Speaker 4: case you're familiar, gets to your foot in the door.
Speaker 4: And I mean, I have a ton of guys that
Speaker 4: have worked for me to actually do what I do now,
Speaker 4: you know, which is great, you know. I mean, I
Speaker 4: you know, couldn't be proud of these guys. And they've
Speaker 4: done that by just you know, they're being on set,
Speaker 4: they're taking in their cars. I guess to the point
Speaker 4: when hey, this guy's great, he's responsible, I can leave
Speaker 4: him on set to run it and not be there.
Speaker 4: And then you know, sometimes you know, they get hired
Speaker 4: for a new gig outside of that. Okay, great, that's
Speaker 4: kind of the normal sequence of things. But yeah, I
Speaker 4: think you just need to get some experience and then
Speaker 4: meet some people and just do the best job you
Speaker 4: can be as responsible as you can.
Speaker 3: Never be late.
Speaker 4: Try to solve every problem you can solve without making
Speaker 4: a big deal that it's a problem, like that's one
Speaker 4: of the things that I do. We might have something
Speaker 4: absolutely catastrophic going on, and the last thing you want
Speaker 4: to do is we got a blown up car, you know.
Speaker 4: I mean, so I'm like, okay, before I alert that
Speaker 4: there's a problem, how can I solve the problem? So
Speaker 4: you always want to have an answer to the problem
Speaker 4: before everybody knows.
Speaker 3: There's a problem. Now it's not always possible, obviously.
Speaker 1: But were you always like that growing up or do
Speaker 1: you feel that's something that you learned in business over time.
Speaker 4: I feel I was always that way because I had
Speaker 4: a shop and I was always building cars, and as
Speaker 4: you know, in the world of building cars, there's always.
Speaker 3: Problems, you know. So so for instance, you.
Speaker 4: Build a car for somebody, and you know, nine out
Speaker 4: of ten times, it's not your fault.
Speaker 3: The part fails. It just happens.
Speaker 4: So you're always trying to well, back then, I'm trying
Speaker 4: to appease the customer. Hey, I'm so sorry about that.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna get a flat beat out of my ticket.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: I was always into customer service, which is why my
Speaker 4: shop did very well. But I just basically trans transferred
Speaker 4: that same mindset into what I do now. And that
Speaker 4: was the one thing that's that's funny about this business.
Speaker 4: When I got in this business, that was non existent,
Speaker 4: you know, like like when I, you know, would work
Speaker 4: with these old school car guys. It's like that the
Speaker 4: car broke to you bad you know, like everybody kind
Speaker 4: of had that attitude, like, man, how do you guys
Speaker 4: get hired of the next job? You know, it shocked
Speaker 4: me the lack of you know, customer service and you know,
Speaker 4: I always look at the studio as your customer, and
Speaker 4: you want to get repeat business, so you try to
Speaker 4: do the best possibility you can so they call for
Speaker 4: the next one. And uh So it's really I think
Speaker 4: just one of those things that's you know, more of
Speaker 4: a general you know, just I think the way people
Speaker 4: should always be in life that I think has helped me,
Speaker 4: you know, excel in this business and you know, get
Speaker 4: the job after the next job.
Speaker 2: That's great advice, I mean, but don't be a part
Speaker 2: of the problem. Be part of the solution. And anytime
Speaker 2: anytime you and your your boys are on set, like
Speaker 2: there's never any stress, I mean, or at least.
Speaker 3: The right exactly, try not to show the stress.
Speaker 2: There's something that's gonna happen or something that is not working.
Speaker 2: But everyone's like chill and everyone leans on you, Dennis,
Speaker 2: like they're like, doesn't call Dennis, You'll figure it out.
Speaker 3: You're right there. That's it.
Speaker 4: That's the key though, It's just you know, try to
Speaker 4: be a solution person, not a problem person, and and
Speaker 4: just try to you know, not you know, make my
Speaker 4: picture card, apartment problem or whatever. That issue is a
Speaker 4: problem for production, you know, So that's always the goal.
Speaker 4: If something happens, try to fix it, or they call
Speaker 4: for the car, try to you know, try to make
Speaker 4: a handle.
Speaker 3: Then have a backup plan. In the backup plan.
Speaker 4: But you know, like I said, it works ninety percent
Speaker 4: of the time. But you know, sometimes you just plane
Speaker 4: run out of cars. That's the way it is.
Speaker 2: So yeah, do you feel like with you know CG
Speaker 2: and now with all this, you know, the special effects
Speaker 2: that are happening with the volume and stuff, you think
Speaker 2: car builds are going to be limited compared to what
Speaker 2: they were when you started. I'm sure because when we
Speaker 2: started talking drift, they would let me actually drive the cars.
Speaker 2: I remember, which was great. I drove every single car.
Speaker 1: They don't let you drive them anymore. We can't even
Speaker 1: put them.
Speaker 3: We can't even reverse the car.
Speaker 4: Yeah right, exactly do you pull up there someone else
Speaker 4: comes to back it into the spotroam.
Speaker 1: Oh that's so crazy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I get nervous because the CG. I mean, honestly,
Speaker 4: if you go, like in the in the video games,
Speaker 4: like I'll walk by my kids playing you know whatever,
Speaker 4: you know, Grand Tarisma or whatever game they're playing.
Speaker 3: It's like, are they watching something like that's a game?
Speaker 4: You know, Everything's become so good it scares me because
Speaker 4: you know, I think that at some point we don't
Speaker 4: need cars, we don't need a stunt driver. Just you know,
Speaker 4: draw it out, do a storyboard or whatever it is,
Speaker 4: and do a pre visit. Yeah, do that, and then
Speaker 4: it'll just show up on screen. So I don't know,
Speaker 4: I think. I mean, like I said, we talked about
Speaker 4: it before. I want to go to a movie where
Speaker 4: I see cars doing car stunts and sliding around, and
Speaker 4: you know, I love like French Connection, for instance, is
Speaker 4: a great one. You know, car just sideswiping stuff, hitting stuff,
Speaker 4: but real no CG. Which I guess is why I
Speaker 4: always gravitate to these older movies when I'm looking for
Speaker 4: a good car chase. But yeah, so I think you're
Speaker 4: definitely onto something there. We could be in trouble.
Speaker 3: So but people can tell the difference.
Speaker 1: I mean, when you when you feel like you can, you.
Speaker 2: Can they at one time there were they know we
Speaker 2: don't need actors anymore.
Speaker 3: But you can, you can definitely tell.
Speaker 4: I just I'm just worried about five years from now,
Speaker 4: you know, five years, can you tell?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I just can't imagine even just sitting
Speaker 1: with the green screen acting like you're inside the car like.
Speaker 1: I'm sure they do it now to a certain extent,
Speaker 1: but I don't know. There's also that point of realism
Speaker 1: that an actor wants to have to so they don't
Speaker 1: lose touch with connecting with the character in the moment.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it's I think, what's what helps you know,
Speaker 4: you know, my cause or your cause, you know, for
Speaker 4: realism would be behind the scenes videos that show how
Speaker 4: a stunt is done. I think, Yeah, I think it's
Speaker 4: really important because a lot of people don't realize. I mean,
Speaker 4: for instance, you know Fast seven the cars coming out
Speaker 4: of the plane. You know they're throwing cars out of
Speaker 4: a plane. I mean it's with parachutes, you know. And
Speaker 4: it was a I'll just tell you guys a real
Speaker 4: funny story about that day.
Speaker 3: I wasn't there.
Speaker 4: I sent one of my guys, brad be even you
Speaker 4: know Bright sent to send b rats be rad out
Speaker 4: to Arizona for this whole you know plane deal, and
Speaker 4: we had like maybe eight cars that we were gonna
Speaker 4: you know, launch out of this airplane.
Speaker 3: And it was completely real.
Speaker 4: I mean they had the cars, they had the shoots,
Speaker 4: they had everything, and one Camaro it was one of
Speaker 4: the sixty eight Camaros.
Speaker 3: A shoot didn't open for some reason.
Speaker 4: And uh, I mean pretty crazy to see a car
Speaker 4: that drops out of the sky for a mile.
Speaker 1: And did anyone capture it on video?
Speaker 4: I don't think so. The landing was not caught on video.
Speaker 4: I had the car the aftermath that my shot. But
Speaker 4: then there was another one where they wanted to, you know,
Speaker 4: launch a car.
Speaker 3: I can't.
Speaker 4: I think it was a charger, but they didn't have
Speaker 4: time to pack the shoot because they were losing light. No,
Speaker 4: we just got to just sent a car we just built,
Speaker 4: Like one of my favorite cars is like, we just
Speaker 4: built this car. There's probably with it with labor and material.
Speaker 4: There's probably one hundred and fifty two hundred thousand in
Speaker 4: this off road charger and literally just chuck it out
Speaker 4: of the plane.
Speaker 3: We don't have time.
Speaker 4: I'm like, no, Brad, don't let them do it. Like
Speaker 4: Brad's call me go, no, but you know, some of
Speaker 4: those decisions are way above my head. So they just
Speaker 4: they do it, you know, and we have to be.
Speaker 1: I'd be like, I get it. They have to do
Speaker 1: it because they're like, but that car.
Speaker 3: It's hard.
Speaker 4: It's hard, you know, because I do love cars, but
Speaker 4: so it's hard sometimes with these movies because you know,
Speaker 4: to a studio or product, they're just expendable.
Speaker 3: You know, yeah, it's just in their car. Yeah, bring
Speaker 3: it on the one up, you know.
Speaker 2: So anyways, but because especially with Dom's chargers, that they're
Speaker 2: these super rare cars now, I mean when you started
Speaker 2: there were plentiful.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, I know it kills me because you know,
Speaker 4: we used to wreck a car, scrap it, send it
Speaker 4: to the scrapyard, and you know, today I'm spending twenty
Speaker 4: grand plus for some damage crash charger from nineteen seventy.
Speaker 4: We've been working with, you know, a couple of different companies,
Speaker 4: Buddy Mind, Dave Selvagio last time built us complete carbon bodies.
Speaker 4: So it's really ninety five percent. It's not a charger.
Speaker 4: You know, there's some pieces that aren't made yet, but
Speaker 4: I think next time around, but you know, like we'll
Speaker 4: use like the factory firewall and eight pillar for the
Speaker 4: door hinge mounts. You know, some of the sheet metal
Speaker 4: towards the back of the car, but that's about it.
Speaker 4: Everything else, quarters, roof doors, everything's carbon fiber.
Speaker 3: But I'm hopefully in the next movie.
Speaker 4: I really, I think we just have to have a
Speaker 4: charge that we can build purely from the ground up
Speaker 4: with no you know, no original car.
Speaker 3: I mean literally, we're finding chargers out and so.
Speaker 1: You're the reason I'm struggling to find one.
Speaker 3: Well, I don't know.
Speaker 4: I think the Dukes of Hazzard still has us beat
Speaker 4: on wrecking chargers. I don't think we've hit that number yet,
Speaker 4: but but yeah, we definitely have destroyed our share, that's
Speaker 4: for sure.
Speaker 2: It's been great insight to get to know you more,
Speaker 2: get to know the man behind the cars, you know.
Speaker 2: So thank you Dennis so much.
Speaker 3: This has been so great. It was great to meet. Yeah,
Speaker 3: totally appreciate me. Thank you.