¨Day of the Champion¨ may be the greatest movie ever made. In 1965, Steve McQueen abandoned his attempt to make the definitive Formula 1 movie midway through filming. This is a car racing documentary narrated by David Letterman that Hollywood legend and avid racing fan Steve McQueen started production on in the mid-1960s as his passion project, but never completed. Documentary about the Warner Bros Formula One movie 'Day of the Champion' featuring Steve McQueen; and the race to beat 'Grand Prix' to the big screen. Includes footage of the 1965 German Grand Prix at the Nurburgring and Monaco and footage that was made for the movie shot 50 years ago; thought to have been lost forever until its recent accidental discovery.
John Sturges and his friend Steve McQuuen attempted to adapt Robert Daily's book 'The Cruel Sport' to make the best racing film in history, hiring the best Formula 1 race car drivers: Jackie Stewart, Sterling, John Withmore. However, at the same time a similar project financed by MGM was born: ¨Grand Prix¨ produced and directed by James Frankenheimer with James Garner, Yves Montand, Antonio Sabato. There was then strong competition between the two projects, the one financed by MGM and the one produced by Warner Bros, "The Day of the Champion", which was supposed to be more serious and made by the best car specialists. In order to shoot the film, the best British cameraman John Wilcox was shot for panoramic and anamorphic giant screen. There was therefore a competition to shoot the two films, similar to what would happen years later with the pictures: ¨Dangerous Liaisons-Valmont¨ and ¨Tombstone-Wyatt Earp¨. The latter coproduced by Sturges/McQueen failed and went down the drain, being a complete disappointment for Steve who considered it the purport of his life as an expert driver.
There is also a special remembrance of McQueen's career: His first roles were in TV series, such as: West Point, Trackdow, Tales of Wells Fargo. His important first role in ¨Never So Few ¨(1959) was originally going to be played by Sammy Davis Jr, but thanks to Frank Sinatra was to Steve. When MacQueen went to England to shot along with Robert Wagner: ¨Philip Leacock's The War Lover¨ (1962), he spent his time looking for race tracks and practicing with high-speed cars. When he briefly left ¨John Sturges' The Great Escape¨ (1963) during filming, due to the fact that his character did not play as large a part as he would have liked, it was James Garner (his friend and immediate next door neighbor in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California,) who convinced him to return (however, when Steve found out that Garner took the role of Grand Prix, he stopped talking to him.) . Because of the huge success and continuing popularity of the film, it has become his best known role. ¨The Sand Pebbles ¨(1966) was another big hit, when he was in China filming it, he found out that Warner Bros had scrapped ¨The day of the Champion¨, the frustration that this caused him could have increased the severity of the cancer that was still in its early stages. In several films he did most of his own stunts : ¨Le Mans¨, ¨The Getaway¨, ¨Bullitt¨, ¨The great escape¨ with the motorcycle, ¨The Hunter¨ demonstrated McQueen's skill as an expert car driver, these scenes were done without stuntmen and at his own risk.
