As we prepare for the impending release of Rush – a riveting biography of the intense rivalry between Formula 1 racers Niki Lauda and James Hunt – we had the great pleasure of sitting down to discuss the feature with its director, Ron Howard.
The two-time Academy Award winner for A Beautiful Mind and Frost/Nixon – Howard discusses his latest picture, and his own personal experiences with the sport and the characters featured. He also tells us of how this was the quickest casting experience he has had yet, and his delight of working with Daniel Brühl and Chris Hemsworth. Despite his apprehensions towards the latter, Howard also tells of of his upcoming project In the Heart of the Sea – a screenplay brought to him from Hemsworth himself.
Meanwhile, given our interview took place just moments after being told that David Frost had sadly passed away, he spoke to Howard about his own experiences with the renowned television personality.
To start with, we have of course just learnt of the death of David Frost – do you have any defining memories of the time you spent with him?
I enjoyed my meetings with him and one of the highlights was that I finally qualified as an appropriate interview subject and ended up being interviewed by him, and that meant a lot to me. I have so much respect for his audacity and courage in the way he approached his career and I think that he was also a pioneer as a television producer, some of his ideas. I think the Nixon broadcast that we made the movie about, the business decision once the networks had all turned it down to bundle together all of the independent stations and still create a major seismic television event in America, proving that a fourth network was viable and I think that without it there would be no Fox, or any of the other networks. So it was definitely sad news this morning.
As for Rush, were you a big fan, or did you know much about Formula 1 before getting involved?
I’d been to one race. George Lucas had invited me to a race when he found out I was in France and said he was going to Monaco, which he does every so often and see the grand prix there. So I went and I found it exciting because I love sports, although I’m not a motor sport fan particularly but I’d been to Indianapolis and Nascar races and others. So I enjoyed it just as a spectacle, but when Peter (Morgan) started talking about this, I knew it was cool and sexy and international and not upscale, there was an element of glamour, but I also knew that it was visceral, to experience Formula 1 live is to first hear it, and then feel it in your chest before you’ve even laid eyes on the cars. That’s what I remembered from the race, or walking over some of the bridges, and feeling the whole bridge vibrate and having it all boarded so nobody can watch the race from it, but you’d walk over it and hear this thing charging through and on a primal level, if this was nature you’d be running for the hills – that would be a hell of a herd coming along [laughs].
Giving the intensity and the dancing with death these racers do, it must have given you so much to work with as a director?
I thought it was rich territory because really it had not been dealt with an interesting, complex, psychologically focused way in a long, long time. I also felt that as a contemporary filmmaker there are a lot of tools that I would have at my disposal, to give the audiences something truly experiential and yet it’s a smart, intelligent, thinking-person’s entertainment, and so the combination of a bonafide, big-screen experience that hopefully transports the audience and these rich, fascinating, entertaining characters was a great combination and the chance to do something remarkably fresh. That’s a hard thing to be able to say about a lot of movies that are getting the green light today.
You recreated this particular era in time – the 1970s – how difficult was it get the look of the drivers, the cars, the venues correct? Which was the hardest?
Well, the cars. That’s the short answer. It was a huge challenge and it was one of the things that threatened our budge and threatened to push it into a realm where the economics wouldn’t be feasible for any set of investors. We had a huge break when early on, just committing to the movie but it was still in an uncertain state, and the investors put out a little money for us to go and shoot at a historic Formula 1 race in Nürburgring in fact, then we decided to shoot some tests on the track where Niki’s accident was. We were just picking out the cars that were in the race and were appropriate to our season and we did well and actually got some shots that were in the movie, learned a hell of a lot, and, more importantly, we began to meet the owners of these cars. When I heard about these people who owned the historic Formula 1 cars, I thought they were just hobbyists, and they would take them out, start them up, rev the engines a few times and wave to the fans and take pictures and drive around – but they race. They compete,. They spin out, they crash, all of that – and they were willing to be part of our movie once they believed it was going to be approached in an authentic, serious way, and they did. By having their cars – not as our primary cars, not the ones we would put in harms way, those were replicas we built, or in some instances when they were going to be destroyed, we’d start with a replica and then have CGI added to it. Everybody involved in the movie knew the replicas being built would have to be side by side with the real thing, and likewise when we chose to use some archival footage in some cases, people also knew that the wardrobe would have to intercut with the wardrobe we were seeing in the archival footage and that the production design and art direction of the sets we were building would have to sit alongside shots of real Brands Hatch, or the real Monaco, or the Nürburgring. That was useful because it gave everybody a guide, but it certainly raised the bar and raised everybody’s standards. That’s the long answer.
Could you tell us anything about your casting process – how did you become convinced that Chris and Daniel could do what they did?
This came together so quickly, shockingly, I don’t think I’ve ever had a cast of characters come together so quickly. Partly because Peter Morgan wrote this script, and he’s a producer on the movie, and he initiated it. He took it to Revolution, he took it to Working Title. It was underway, it wasn’t signed and sealed, it wasn’t a necessarily a green lit movie, but it was well on the way. So all these production companies had a strong interest. Paul Greengrass had expressed a lot of interest, doing a little bit of research and budgeting that way. When Paul decided to take the studio movie Captain Phillips, it left Peter in a position where he had something that was beginning to be a train rolling down the tracks. They brought it to me and I became interested, but he had already thought a lot about the casting. He hadn’t met Daniel Brühl, but he has seen him working, and knew about him – same as Alexandra (Maria Lara). I met them, but Alexandra was only on Skype. As soon as I met the real characters and talked to them, I felt like they were obvious choices and they would rise to the occasion. The German investors were a little reluctant about Daniel, they honestly wished we would get an American movie star to play Niki Lauda, and just do a bad German accent. But that’s not what Peter wanted, nor what I wanted. We knew Daniel was an artist who would take on the daunting task of recreating somebody who is still so well known and iconic. The James Hunt casting threatened to derail the movie, because Looking at the list, seeing who was available, thinking about it, there was no one who was fitting the mould as well as Daniel did for Niki, and my heart began to sink. I began to think we really shouldn’t go ahead with this, it would be compromised, as excited as I was about the project. I’d met Chris and liked him, and liked him a lot in Thor – but had no way of knowing if he could be James Hunt. Plus he was huge when I saw him, he was Thor. Butt he wrote me a note and said, “by the way, Thor couldn’t get into a Formula 1 car, but I’m the same height as James and I’ll be his build, if that’s what it takes” and I didn’t doubt him, he has a lot of discipline. Kenneth Branagh said he really had a lot to offer as an actor, and Anthony Hopkins told Peter the same thing, who he knew from 360. One day Chris just sent in a self-made audition tape, with some of the script, and it was so cool and such a confidence builder. He had the body language, the beginnings of the sound, he had the attitude, he was transforming himself as a good actor does, and it reinforced what Kenneth Branagh had suggested. Then it was done. We knew we had our movie. Olivia I had also worked with and I had been a fan, and we instantly agreed she’d be great and when we found out she was interested that was obvious, so yeah, all the leads just fell into place.
Chris obviously made a good impression then, because he’s working with you again in ‘In the Heart of the Sea’…
I was very flattered because he brought In the Heart of the Sea to me, and I was eager to work with him again – as I would Daniel. Again, we were working very quickly and it was almost like two different movies that I had to stylistically match, but there was this sort of 38 day, kinda like Frost/Nixon, intense dialogue character work. But unlike Frost/Nixon, where we had a lot of lengthy scenes that you could really delve into, a lot had to happen to bursts of one or two minutes, it was a different kind of set of acting challenges, because they had to get to emotional places very quickly, and they did it. They were doing two or three serious scenes a day and it was remarkable because Anthony Dod Mantle’s eye and lighting style and aesthetic we were both very keen to try and achieve, is fast and actor friendly and identifies a lot with the performances – which is very helpful that way But then there is the race unit, which the actors overlapped into briefly, but that was this kind of sports unit, it was slow and dangerous and a lot of money being spent very quickly – it was like two different kinds of directing experiences.
The relationship between James and Niki is incredible to watch because there isn’t a side to take, and easy to watch impartially. Was that quite a challenge for you? To present these two conflicting characters and yet make them equally as likeable and unlikeable at the same time?
That was one of the unconventional aspects of this. People are pleasantly surprised by the movie because they expect a more conventional sports narrative to roll out. These aren’t conventional characters and the good news was, it forced Peter, myself, all of us, to take a narrative that doesn’t unfold the way you would write it in a movie script, and then make it work. I don’t think it’s fair to take sides I don’t think there was a good guy and a bad guy. It was a rival story, and a dual survival story, and the big narrative question was, whatever is fuelling these guys to compete, including their rivalry, is it going to do them in, are they going to navigate this gauntlet that this 1976 season turns out to be? That’s the tension, that’s the drama. I did have friends in Los Angeles who read the script and said, ‘Who are we rooting for?’ but I was excited about the unconventional nature and I was never afraid of it.
Which one are you more similar to?
Lauda…. Lauda. I don’t have that natural confidence and belief that my talent will carry it, whereas James could rely on that. I think he wore that as a little bit of a mask. People who knew him came to explain that there was an undercurrent of insecurity and fear, of course, but Lauda tries to leave no stone unturned, and leaves nothing to chance because he believes that’s his chance to excel, and I relate a little bit better to that.
Rush is out in cinemas on September 13th, and you can read our review here.
