Here’s a trivia question for you: How many movies have been made throughout history? I don’t mean class projects, industrial films or shorts, I mean full-length feature films.
After spending a little time on the Internet, I was able to come up with this definitive answer: Nobody knows. I found estimates ranging from 140,000 to more than half a million – and that higher estimate was more than seven years old. So the short answer is –
More than you could ever watch. Okay, now for my next question, which occurred to me here at the North American International Auto Show. How many car movies have there been, and which was the best one of all time. Not surprisingly, that’s not all that clear either.
First of all, there’s a question of defining just what a “car movie” is. When I looked at auto buffs lists of car movies and the best car movies, they are all over the place. Some people think Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver is the best car movie. Others don’t even think it qualifies as a a car movie at all. Not surprisingly, the Mad Max movies got a lot of votes.
So did Stephen King’s Christine. My two personal favorites, at least without thinking deeply about it, are the immortal Thelma and Louise, and also a wonderful 1988 biopic called Tucker, The Man and his Dream, a too-little appreciated collaboration between George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola. With those two guys behind it, how could any movie be bad?
But my two favorite car movies of all time are two movies that have never been made. Here are the plots: Movie number one: At the dawn of the automotive era, a brilliant if erratic genius named Billy Durant takes over a struggling automaker called Buick, builds it into the top-selling brand in the country, and then uses it to create a holding company that takes over Oldsmobile, Pontiac, Cadillac and other automakers. He calls his creation “General Motors.”
He almost succeeds in buying Ford too. But he fails, and is forced out of the company by the stockholders. Unfazed, he starts a new car company, calls it Chevrolet, and before long uses it to get control of General Motors again. But eventually, he is again fired in a palace coup.
Billy again starts another car company, but the coming Great Depression does him in. He ends his career flipping hamburgers and running a bowling alley in Flint.
Sound too crazy? Maybe – but every word of that is true.
Okay, here is my second movie. Another genius, this one half crazy, actually invents the modern auto industry, and puts the world on wheels with his Model T Ford. He becomes insanely rich, but mistreats his brilliant and cultured only son, who worships his father. Nothing the boy does is good enough, even when he saves the company by insisting on a new model.
Instead, his father, yes, Henry Ford, prefers the company of a goon-like former security guard. The two of them drive the heartbroken son into an early grave, and nearly drive the company into bankruptcy, till his 26-year-old grandson, aided by a team of young former Air Corps officers, manages to win control and save the Ford Motor Co. from destruction.
Once again, that is all true, and just a smattering of the highlights of the stories of both firms, whose rich and storied history goes on and on and continues still.
Can you think of any better real-life sagas than those two? Why the very dramatic stories of Ford and General Motors haven’t been made into movies is a mystery to me.
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