Joseph Kosinski on putting Brad Pitt in the driver's seat for 'F1'
Looking ahead, the filmmaker, who has also directed Tron: Legacy and Cruise's sci-fi thriller Oblivion, has spoken in other interviews about wanting Sonny's story to continue in a crossover with Cruise's 1990 racing drama Days of Thunder.
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'Well, right now, it'd be Cole Trickle, who was (Cruise's) Days of Thunder character, we find out that he and Sonny Hayes have a past,' Kosinski said about his dream pitch in a recent chat with GQ Magazine UK. 'They were rivals at some point, maybe crossed paths … who wouldn't pay to see those two go head-to-head on the track?'
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But before that storyline becomes a reality, Kosinski lifted the hood on his latest starry vehicle with Pitt in the driver's seat.
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I've always been interested in racing and machines. I did my undergrad in mechanical engineering. So I was always a project-oriented kid; building cars, rockets, airplanes, so it was a world suited to my interests. But it was that first season of (the Netflix docuseries) Drive to Survive that hooked me. That season they focused on the last-place team. The team that doesn't win every weekend. The rookie trying to prove himself in a car that's just not as fast as everyone else's. To me, that was a way into this world. Telling the story at the back of the grid, and a racer who was once thought to be the next world champion that lost his way and gets one more chance to prove he belongs there. That was my way in from a story point of view. Then it was about building the ultimate team around me to make it. Luckily, I was able to do that.
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In Maverick, you had six cameras inside the cockpit. When people watch F1 they're going to wonder how you got all the cameras in the cars. Tell us about the technical challenges you faced making this movie.
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Working with cinematographer Claudio Miranda, who also shot Top Gun: Maverick, we wanted to take everything we learned and push it further. So the first thing we had to do was take that camera system and miniaturize it and make it much smaller. We worked closely with Sony to develop a whole new camera system that was a third of the size and much lighter. Then we worked with Mercedes and Formula 1 to design a race car that had 15 different mounting positions built into the chassis that had space for a camera, recorders, batteries, transmitters and receivers built into the car itself. We were able to mount four cameras at a time in those positions and then we developed a panning camera mount, so we could control the movement of the camera and move it left to right while we were shooting, which is an innovation beyond anything we could do on Top Gun. It allowed us to connect the action to the actor and give you a perspective of what it feels like to be in a Formula 1 race. That was the challenge Lewis (Hamilton) gave me from the beginning.
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I knew that he was interested in racing … Driving a real race car, going to real events, capturing it during race weekends, those were all things Brad was up for doing.
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Luckily, F1 is run by Stefano Domenicali, who is a man that has a real vision for the sport. In our first meeting with him, he instantly got what we were going for. We also showed him Top Gun: Maverick to show him what it meant to capture it for real versus CGI. So, he understood the vision and opened the doors for us. All the teams and drivers embraced us as the 11th team on the grid for two years and made space for us and provided their feedback and expertise. Without that collaboration we wouldn't have been able to make it the way they did.
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Winnipeg Free Press
2 days ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
Fringe at its gut-clutching best when it layers on the cringe
I have just laughed as hard as I have at the Winnipeg Fringe Festival in 20 years. Prodded in the gut until air escaped me in the most embarrassing way. The offending object was a play by Winnipeg performer Donnie Baxter called Shit: The Musical, which has its last show at 8:45 p.m. tonight. Supplied Shit: The Musical possesses a kind of gonzo spirit. My bright, witty peer Jeffrey Vallis gave it a one-star review in the Free Press last week. '(It) feels like a '90s after-school show gone horribly wrong — like if Barney sang about bowel movements instead of friendship,' he writes. 'Set in a university lecture hall, Dr. Eaton Fartmore teaches a class on the semantics of poop through stories and off-key songs that drag on like a bad bout of constipation.' All of this is essentially true — in fact, the play's narrative is perhaps even flimsier than this. But there's little accounting for taste — or for the tasteless things we savour. I will endeavour all the same. Imagine you are at the beautifully modern Theatre Cercle Moliere, named after France's most renowned satirist of its classical theatre. It's 11 p.m. on a Wednesday and there's a senior citizen singing tunelessly, 'Farts, farts, farts, always stink, don't you think? It's a shame, this awful name.' The awful name in question is his own, Dr. Fartmore, and this professor of linguists is riffing on Shakespeare's line about roses smelling as sweet by any other name. Groan? The audience of 30 assembled isn't laughing. Not yet. The fact they are not, only makes me laugh harder. It's as though we've all been ensnared in one of Ionesco's or Artaud's glorious trolls on audiences in their mid-century absurdist experiments. But for this to be funny for a few, seemingly it has to stink for many — including obviously Vallis, who does have a good sense of humour. I'm sure his bad review wasn't happily received by performer-playwright Baxter because at the end of the day, bad reviews are usually bad business. Fringe performers sink thousands of dollars and countless hours — staking not just their savings, but their reputations — on the chance to entertain us and hopefully break even. And they do it at a time when live theatre is said to be more endangered than ever, dulled by the narcotic pull of screen media: TikTok and Instagram memes, Netflix and the ever-churning algorithm. Believe it or not, we reviewers — as much as some may curse our names in the fringe beer tent — try to bear this in mind. But as Orwell's old adage goes, oddly fitting for the high politics of local theatre: 'Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.' All to say: Vallis's pointed, funny reaction to Shit: The Musical is as valid as the myriad bad, middling and good reviews we've issued through this festival. Still, in ultimately relenting to Baxter's routine I felt I was exorcising something. A resistance that reviewers like me can develop to a certain spirit of fringe that stubbornly eludes the star system. A gonzo spirit shared by another DIY artform supposedly destroying live art like theatre: internet memes. I mean especially those associated online humour styles that go by names like post-irony, shitposting, layered cringe. This is absurdist, often lowbrow humour that echoes older comedians such as Andy Kauffman, Tom Green, Eric Andre and Tim Heidecker. But otherwise, it's distinctly Gen Z — mocking those Millennials whose humour is still stuck in the era of YouTube, Vines and Jim Carrey movies when comedy meant straightforward skits, polished punchlines and mugging for the camera. Maybe it also owes something to a certain stubborn set of ideas still circulating in universities. Most liberal arts students, sooner or later, encounter the work of another French oddball who came after Ionesco and Artaud: Jean-François Lyotard, with his theory of postmodernity. This theory (stick with me) says we now live in a postmodern era — an age where 'grand narratives' have collapsed. Big, sweeping explanations such as Marxism or Christianity no longer hold sway. Instead, knowledge loops back on itself: science, ethics and meaning justify themselves by referencing other systems, not some fixed reality. Lyotard knew this would leave us ironic, skeptical, suspicious of truth claims — and he seemed basically fine with that. His critics weren't. They called it nihilism and accused him of corrupting young minds with moral relativism. Right or wrong about knowledge or modernity, Lyotard was strangely ahead of his time when it comes to understanding humour. So much of online youth humour feels postmodern today. It disdains narrative. Conventional storytelling jokes, unless ironically dumb, are old hat. Humour now is 'irony-poisoned,' as the phrase goes — self-referential, looping endlessly through layers of memes. But in being 'poisoned,' it's also frequently amoral, cruel even. This humour delights in mocking 'theatre kids' and older generations — people who crack earnest, dorky jokes and wear their sincerity a little too openly. Their guileless enthusiasm gets labelled 'cringe,' then enjoyed and recreated ironically for laughs. I am, despite these misgivings and my elder Millennial status, addicted to absurd Gen Z humour. Which leads me to wonder: is it possible I enjoyed the plotless Shit: The Musical and other one-star fare this year for unkind reasons? Was I laughing at Baxter, this 'theatre kid' in his 60s with juvenile but sincere humour who can't carry a tune to save his life, instead of with him? Maybe at first. But Baxter was also clearly laughing at us — trolling us like Eric Andre or an online shitposter, figures he may know nothing about, to test our prudish reflexes. Our lack of whimsy. And a certain point, about halfway through the play, it worked. The audience started giggling, going along with Baxter. Then roaring. So many fringe shows reach melodramatically for the universal in the most sublime and tragic things. Heaven and hell. Baxter's awkward, taboo stories about embarrassing trips to the bathroom on first dates and his surprisingly enlightening explanation of healthy stool shapes felt oddly more honest. I've had a lovely fringe festival this year. And reflecting back, I think the shows that have stayed with me weren't always the tight, touring shows I may have felt obligated to award high stars to. They weren't the shows with wham-bam, but ultimately safe, humour delivered with the finesse of new Simpsons or old Johnny Carson episodes. They were the ones that really took chances, lowbrow and highbrow. Shows that had at something at stake creatively, not just financially, even if they were messy. Especially plays such as Debbie Loves Bumblebee, The Apricot Tree, Brainstorm, Parasocial and Baxter's bonkers production. Most of which, for me, point in one way or another to throughlines between the wild theatre of modernism and the fringe and the chaotic DIY culture that proliferates online today. Shows that might also help to bridge the generational gap where live theatre is concerned, drawing in more young people to a festival that, let's be honest, skews towards an older audience. There's a couple of days left of the festival, and I hope more audiences take chances on the fringiest of Fringe shows — especially if me or my colleagues have panned them. — Conrad SweatmanReporter Conrad Sweatman is an arts reporter and feature writer. Before joining the Free Press full-time in 2024, he worked in the U.K. and Canadian cultural sectors, freelanced for outlets including The Walrus, VICE and Prairie Fire. Read more about Conrad. Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber. Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
CTV News
2 days ago
- CTV News
Saint John, N.B., gears up for busy festival season
Saint John, N.B., is gearing up for a busy festival season on the waterfront. Festival season kicks off in Saint John, N.B., this weekend, with a string of events along the city's waterfront leading into the peak for cruise ship arrivals. The Boxcar Country Festival runs Saturday and Sunday in the Area 506 Container Village, with headliners Tenille Townes and Tim Hicks. 'The subtitle this year is whiskey, BBQ, and bands,' says Sarah Tippett, a member of the festival's organizing committee. 'We have a second stage which is free all weekend long, with BBQ and whiskey education sessions.' Tippett says up to 7,000 people are expected to attend Boxcar this weekend, which is entering its third year. Next weekend, the Area 506 Festival will celebrate its 10th anniversary on the same large stage. The foundation of Area 506 originally came from stacked shipping containers which became a catalyst for revitalizing the waterfront over the last decade. 'The container village that we used to create for just one long weekend of the summer turned into this semi-permanent seasonal container village,' says Tippett. 'Really, in addition to a music festival lasting for 10 years, the development that it helped to create is really exciting and a point of pride for all of us.' Early August will also see International Culturefest and Buskers on the Boardwalk return to the waterfront area, teeing up a cruise ship schedule which picks up the pace. There have been five cruise ship visits in Port Saint John so far this season, but by November a total of 76 ships will have docked. There are five days on the port's calendar where three cruise ships will be in Saint John Harbour at the same time: Sept. 17, Sept. 23, Oct. 8, Oct. 12, and Oct. 29. Monica Memory is a vendor in the Area 506 Container Village who specializes in offering products from small Canadian businesses. Memory says she's already noticed an uptick in the number of people visiting from Ontario and Quebec this summer. 'I'm really excited for it,' says Memory. 'There's a lot of big ships coming in this year, and so far, the ones who've already been in are really excited about coming in and supporting Canada. So, I'm hoping it may be our best season ever.' Area 506 The Area 506 Festival's main stage in Saint John, N.B. in 2024. (Source: Area 506) For more New Brunswick news, visit our dedicated provincial page.
Winnipeg Free Press
2 days ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
‘Tron: Ares' is set to storm Comic-Con and more of what to expect on Day 2
SAN DIEGO, Calif. (AP) — Comic-Con is about to reenter the Grid. Disney will unveil details about 'Tron: Ares,' which stars Jared Leto, Jeff Bridges and Greta Lee at an evening presentation in Comic-Con's famed Hall H. It will be the third feature film in the 'Tron' franchise that kicked off with the hit 1982 film and had a 2010 sequel, 'Tron: Legacy.' The original starred Bridges as a computer hacker who gets trapped in a digital world. The other major presentations planned for Friday include updates on the final season of 'Outlander' and its prequel series 'Outlander: Blood of My Blood,' 'Alien: Earth' and 'Predator: Badlands.' An estimated 135,000 people from around the globe are expected to attend Comic-Con 2025, which runs through Sunday in downtown San Diego. Fans on opening day got a preview of 'Five Nights at Freddy's 2,' 'The Toxic Avenger,' and a joke-filled session with comedians Gabriel 'Fluffy' Iglesias and Jo Koy.
