'Earnhardt' director reveals unguarded moments in telling a family story of 'The Intimidator'

NBC Sports

23-05-2025

Near the start of the four-part 'Earnhardt' docuseries on Amazon Prime, there's a moment when 'The Intimidator' begins an interview in full intimidating fashion.
'It's hot in here,' Earnhardt complains immediately upon sitting down and being mic'd up, and his grumpiness continues as he is told the interview his for a personal feature.
'I don't care, just ask the question,' he snaps. 'What feature? You're going to have to do more than this. Come ride around at the farm with me, I'll show you the personal Dale Earnhardt bullshit.'
It's a remarkably unguarded moment because it essentially takes place outside of the formal interview, and those were the 'little gems' that director Joshua Altman and his tireless production team of meticulous editors were seeking as they sifted through more than 10,000 hours of footage (that would be boiled down to roughly four hours).
'A lot of those moments reveal character and personality,' Altman told NBC Sports. 'Once the cameras are really fully rolling and all the things are dialed in, that there tends to be a lot of times a show that people put on or a script that they're reading from, and I think anytime you can deviate from that. For us, the core of this is really about revealing people and humanity and understanding who Dale was and really understanding who everyone else was within the context of it.'
There are many of those moments during 'Earnhardt,' which chronologically traces the seven-time NASCAR Cup Series champion's rise from unknown racer to cultural icon.
'One of my favorites and it's more on the darker, heavier side, but at the end of episode two, after Neil Bonnett's death, Dale is sitting down and trying to read this script that he's written but not wanting it to sound reed and really struggling to suppress the emotion,' Altman said. 'They can just tell that he's feeling all this sadness and just doesn't want to be present with it. That's always really affecting for me.'
The new 'Earnhardt' (the first two episodes were released May 22, the final two on May 29) is touted for using 'rare archival footage' to pair with dozens of interviews. Though the raw snippets from the sitdown interviews were unearthed for the first time, Altman is unsure of how many other scenes never had been seen – though he has a good source for knowing there were a few.
'Dale Jr. has said to us that there have been clips of his father, specifically his grandfather, that he was like, 'I've never seen that of Ralph before,' ' Altman said. 'That of itself is a win because Dale Jr. is such a historian and a fan himself.'
After passing on countless similar projects in the 24 years since their father's death, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and his older sister, Kelley Earnhardt Miller, gave their approval for 'Earnhardt,' which was produced by Imagine Entertainment, the film production company co-founded by renowned director Ron Howard and producer Brian Grazer.
CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA - MAY 22: Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Kelley Earnhardt Miller pose on the red carpet for the NASCAR on Prime Presents The World Premiere of Earnhardt at The Revelry on May 22, 2025 in Charlotte, North Carolina. (Photo byfor NASCAR and Prime Video)
Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Kelley Earnhardt Miller pose on the red carpet for the world premiere of 'Earnhardt' at The Revelry on May 22 in Charlotte (for NASCAR and Prime Video).
'This one stood out because of Ron Howard and his team and their success and their ability to tell amazing stories,' Earnhardt Jr. recently told reporters. 'And I only told them what the standard was, or the threshold of in terms of the storytelling and the quality that I was hoping for. And we are so far down the line from his passing and his impact on the sport and when he was here. We're so far removed from that, a large portion of our fan base in NASCAR has never seen him race. And I see a lot of people ask the question, new fans that are coming in saying, 'Why is this person so respected appreciated? Why was he so loved? Help me understand.' And so I feel like it was a great opportunity to introduce him to people that maybe don't know him that well, or don't know much about his career.'
Kelley Earnhardt Miller said her three children got an education in the history and impact of their grandfather by watching the docuseries.
'They were introduced to so many new things that they had no clue about, about our dad, about our life, about our families,' Kelley said. 'And so I hope that is what a lot of people that Dale described take away about our dad and his legacy and his history. We want that legacy and history to live on for as long as it can in the sport and above that.'
Director Joshua Altman spoke with NBC Sports this week about the making of 'Earnhardt' (this interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity):
Altman: 'Well, I think that's kind of obvious in that having Dale Jr. calling the races (on Amazon), it was one of those things where it seemed just like that partnership made sense. It was important to have a place that was going to sort of champion this and have it reach as wide an audience as possible.'
Altman: 'No, not at all. Yeah, we all came in as NASCAR newbies. And I tend to gravitate toward projects like that. I don't come to things typically that I'm a fan of. I tend to look for things that have some sort of hook in me that I don't know about, and I just come in as a sponge absorbing all of that stuff and getting as best as I can to communicate that to an audience. I find that it's helpful in being able to take that stuff in and find an audience outside of the fandom, too. Ultimately, I think the show is going to resonate with people, hopefully both as fans, but also non-NASCAR fans as well.'
Courtesy of Prime
Altman: 'We had an incredible team. Archival producer Kelsey Arlington really sort of took hold of that. And then just down below that from assistant editors to producers, everybody's taking all the footage apart. We went to NASCAR, and they had 15 petabytes of material that they were like, 'I don't know. You've got to point us in the direction of what you want.' We didn't just want the typical clips. As the kind of filmmakers that we are, we want the handles on everything. We want to see the moment the camera turns on, the microphone being adjusted. All the little bits and pieces around it.
'So it was very hard to figure out how to get that stuff. But the team at NASCAR was incredible really pointing us in the right direction. They were just able to sort of tell us where some of the things were and then our editors were also just little like finders. They'd be out there watching stuff and be like, 'We need this race from this thing' and just the level of care that everybody put into this was helpful trying to find all the little pieces that haven't been shared yet. We ended up with like 10 ,000 hours of footage. So taking that 10,000 hours and crafting it down to four hours plus is never easy. It was just very much a team effort.'
Altman: 'I think sitting down for interviews is the biggest part of it. In a lot of ways, it's not just the communication of info that goes up on screen. We would sit down with Dale for four hours at a time. So he was just giving us both his perspective on things, but also helping us understand, coming in as newbies, like, 'No, that's not what happened. This is what happened.' And allowing us to wrap our heads around that. And then later on, specifically once we got to a place, and it was nerve-wracking as hell, but sharing rough cuts with them. And getting their eyes on it and making sure that things were accurate and also felt honest to both their experiences but also to make sure that fans would not poke holes and stuff.'
Altman: 'We have incredible casting tapes in that Dale Jr. has his podcast. I've probably listened to I don't know how many hours of Dale Jr. Download at this point, just trying to wrap my head around all the possible characters. In creating a grid of this person was from this part, or this part and really trying to understand who might have the most insight. David Allen and Hank Parker were two people that really jumped out to us from the Download that he did with them.'
David Allen, a close friend of Dale Earnhardt who helped manage his sponsorship marketing (Courtesy of Prime).
Altman: 'Yeah, we were hopeful of it for a long time, or I was hopeful of it. I don't know if I could say that all of my team was. I was like, 'Eventually it's going to come through.' So we were in talks with her lawyer and trying to go back and forth, but ultimately, I think we just ran out of time and never really solidified it. Which we were told by many people that we were interviewing in the field. They were like, 'Don't hold your breath.' '
Altman: 'Yeah, and I think that was important for us. And that's why we really wanted to interview her. She had such a place in his life and in building up the business. Their relationship is pretty integral to everything that he built. So just wanting to make sure that we honored that and included her as much as possible within that. So, luckily there was enough archival interviews we felt like to at least have that be present and be understood.'
Altman: 'Initially, I didn't want to do it chronologically. Maybe it's just like the editor in me to wonder how to tell this nonlinear. But ultimately, I think the footage really guided us in a lot of ways. As we sat down to break the thing in terms of the chapters, each sort of episode revealed itself. But this is this notion that we were trying to create a time capsule or time machine, and I think a lot of that is most effective when you get to experience these chapters as they unfold and to really live in the '80s. To watch this Wrangler car and then to watch the transformation to the black car and to see the details of the picture start to change. As well as the characters themselves. It just felt like the right way to do this.'
Altman: 'When we were pitching it, we never want to say this, but we when we pitch it for people to say it back to us that it feels like a Greek tragedy in a lot of ways. All the different elements of it, even from Darrell Waltrip, who's incredible walking us through it. But even his relationship of Dale that transpires, and the arc of this to ending with kissing him on the forehead, after he's passed. All of that feels both sad but also real. And I think Dale and Kelley both emerge from this shadow. I think there's still hope in that. And in a lot of ways, it stands for everybody else to have their own takeaway. But for me, a lot of this has to do with processing grief in terms of the series itself. That every time they're sitting down in an interview, that there is an element of that at play. That we as an audience, whether we know it or not, know that they're sitting down after the death of their father and processing that grief.'
Kelley Earnhardt Miller with her father at a Cup Series race (Courtesy of Prime).
Altman: 'Oh yeah, for sure. We watched everything that had Dale in it or that was about him before this. And to be honest with you, every time we sat down in an interview, people were like, 'Why are you doing this? This has been told before. How is this going to be different?' That was the thing that we got asked often. And the thing that we really kept coming back to was that our story was about family more than anything. We wanted to tell the story that was about family. Dale Earnhardt is very much the center of that family. He is the gravitational force within it, and I think part of that relates to the immediate family, whether that be Dale, Kelley, Cathy, Kay, Mamaw. Everybody within that universe. But then there's also the racing family, from Chocolate and Childress and all these other people. And so to make sure that like this all sort of came back in these sort of family dynamics and the way that that played out. That was something that we were like, 'OK, this hasn't been told before.' '
Altman: 'Well, even a lot of that stuff that we had to cut out. In terms of like 'You have to have this race,' and then we try to, and this one actually doesn't fit with the storyline. So it's kind of a push and pull of that of where some stuff is crucial and then other stuff, our editors would just find these little gems that had happened. It would be like, 'Whoa, wait a second. Nobody told us about this, and it's crucial to understand who he is as a person and what transpired.' So again this is a team sport, and I have the most incredible team I could ever ask for both in terms of unearthing little gems and trying to think about how all these pieces fit together. There was a lot of that back and forth and guiding what is crucial to understanding the man and what is crucial to understanding the family story vs. just the Wikipedia page.'
Altman: 'There are just so many. It's chock full of that. I hope in a lot of ways that people take away that, too. People who are fans can watch this and they're like, 'Wow, I've never seen that before.' But it's weird. I don't know what those moments are because I don't know how much really is out there or what people have seen before. For me, all of it is just a really interesting peek behind the curtain that you can only do with archival when you have this much material. You really get to see and understand such an amazing figure in our time.'