The Man in the White Suit_ The Stig, Le Mans, The Fast Lane and Me - Ben Collins [126]
We moved on to St Paul’s Cathedral, an unlikely location for a street chase and a showcase in precision driving. Fifty ‘stunt priests’ were roped into the act, which involved handbrake-turning the Mercedes on to the cobbled entrance, then sliding it through the bustling crowd of Bible bashers.
Mr Cage made his way over to the pod and eyed me warily as we were introduced. I tried to act like it was an everyday occurrence to sit on the roof of a car and race through a bunch of monks. He was much slimmer than I expected, delicate even, which explained why my tan suit had pinched my gusset somewhat. The actors climbed aboard, along with the movie’s director. It seemed their fate rested in my hands.
The priests packed together into an area the size of a living room. Steve actioned me through my radio earpiece, and I accelerated the pod into the cobbled square. The priests were thronging around the car, waving their umbrellas and shaking their fists at me in protest. Some of the furious faces were so convincing that on the third take I thought I’d run someone down and abandoned the shot to stop and check. The next take Cage started improvising and I heard him yelling ‘Stop, Stop,’ so I did. The director shouted, ‘They’re just acting; keep going!’
The pod was scheduled to work all the way through the chase, but in the end it only came out a few times. There was a scene where Cage was being shot at by the baddies in the Range Rover. The Merc drifted through a right-hander to get away and slammed sideways into a double-decker bus. As it straightened out, it got rammed from behind by the Rangie.
Rob had perfected the transition slide on the airfield before doing it for real in front of Nelson’s Column and it was on the nail. Then it was my turn to do it with the actors on board the pod. I sat on a throne of a zillion battery boxes with $2 million worth of cameras rigged to the right and front of the Merc beneath me. I didn’t care about the kit, but I was a little apprehensive.
‘We just want a tap,’ came my instruction, ‘to give the actors a feel for what’s going on. Nothing heavy, but it’s got to look real. There’s money in that car, so don’t screw this up!’
No pressure then.
I lined up on a side street at a right angle to the bus’s line of travel. The pod was a pig to turn sharply. As I ran through the ‘what ifs’ in my head, the director turned helpfully to Cage. ‘It’s OK, the driver really knows what he’s doing.’
The stunties were rubbing their hands together; everyone’s ass was on the line.
‘ACTION …’
We set off towards the T-junction and the double-decker barrelled straight at us. It got very big very fast. Every instinct screamed to brake and avoid it. I pitched into the corner and aimed just behind the front wheels. There was a little knock as we hit it and the sound of panels crumpling before I downshifted and accelerated away. I pulled up near the director to confirm everyone was OK and kept my job a little longer.
Some of the most intense scenes were filmed at Southwark Bridge, with little or no margin for error. Cage holds a precious artefact out of the window before throwing it into the Thames in an effort to distract the villains. Duly distracted, the Range Rover skids to a halt, followed by the pursuing beer truck. Rowley moistened his lips uneasily as the rescue divers climbed into their inflatable boats, in case he overcooked his mark. Sure enough, the bridge never looked so narrow as when his truck, laden with phoney beer barrels, handbrake-turned and skidded across four lanes of carriageway to stop with just a couple of feet to spare.
Capturing the essence of speed was essential for a film featuring cars powering through London at 100mph. To keep up with the pace we needed a camera car with serious grunt. The Volkswagen Touareg with its 5-litre V10 Twin Turbo motor manned up to the task and I drew the long straw to drive it.
Gunshots rained down on the fleeing Mercedes