Steve McQueen - Marc Eliot [103]
Cinema Center’s concerns about Le Mans were real; at the time, sports movies, with the exception of the occasional boxing biography, like Somebody Up There Likes Me, rarely made money at the box office. They depended too much upon the drama of the real-time outcome of the game, or the fight, or the race. Film almost always destroyed that dramatic device.
In the end, though, Cinema Center knew there was nothing they could do but keep their commitment and back the film or their association with one of the biggest movie stars in the world would end. They green-lighted Le Mans.
With the $6 million in place, Steve promptly started looking for a script and a director. He interviewed several candidates, including a young TV director by the name of Steven Spielberg who was looking to break into features (Steve rejected him, according to Bob Relyea, because he was “too young”) and another one, George Lucas (whom Steve rejected for being “too small”). He then suggested that Relyea himself direct the film, and Relyea agreed. Soon enough, though, it became clear that Relyea was not cut out to direct. He had been too much of an authority figure over directors almost his entire career. He knew how to run things, not how to create images with a personal vision. Finally, after interviewing dozens of directors, Steve settled on the one man he knew could make the film, and do it the way he wanted: John Sturges.
The first thing Sturges wanted was for the next Le Mans race to be filmed and the footage used later on as part of Steve’s film. Before leaving for France, Sturges tried to convince Steve that they needed to come up with a real story. Steve had said he wanted the film to be a semi-documentary, but Sturges argued for a full-blown conventional love story, even if it was shot semi-documentary-style, because audiences needed something besides fast cars to keep them in their seats for two hours. Steve said he would think about it.
IN MARCH 1970, to the surprise of many, including Steve, the Academy nominated The Reivers for two Oscars: one for Rupert Crosse for Best Supporting Actor (the first black actor to be nominated in that category; he lost to Gig Young in Sydney Pollack’s They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?) and one for Musical Score for John Williams (who lost to Burt Bacharach for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid). Steve had been passed over for a nomination for Best Actor but professed not to care anymore about Hollywood’s self-congratulatory pomp and meaningless circumstance.2
Instead, he focused on his new movie. In a way that might best be described as “Method racing,” he entered the twelve-hour endurance race held every March at Sebring, Florida. For his co-driver, who would alternate with Steve in ninety-minute stretches in his Porsche Spyder (owned and registered by Solar), Steve chose thirty-one-year-old Peter Revson, a ranked Formula One racer, New York socialite, and billionaire by virtue of his inherited cosmetics fortune. Like Steve, Revson fancied himself good enough to race at the professional level, and, like Steve, he was handsome, smooth, and a consummate ladies’ man. Steve thought Revson was as good as he liked to boast he was. In 1968 he and co-driver Skip Scott had placed twelfth overall at Sebring and fifth in their class, an impressive finish for relative newcomers. Steve felt he could depend upon Revson on the track, and that off it the two of them could have a really good time, which they most certainly did.3
Some reports had Steve and Revson winning the race—the Hollywood Reporter headlined, “Steve McQueen Takes a 1st Place in Sebring Race”—but in fact, as it was later determined, they came in second, 23.8 seconds behind a 5-liter Ferrari driven by Mario Andretti, despite Steve participating with his left foot broken in six places and in a cast up to his knee, the result of a motorcycle