Film oddities or coincidences in The Hustler

chariots of fire is about olympic runners. Never saw it but it picked up an academy award or two I believe so it must have been pretty fair. I noticed around episode three Cades County starring Glen Ford has him idly rolling pool balls across a table as he talked too.

A note: Grand Prix and Lemans were about the same race so I may be crossing the two this many years later. One stars Steve McQueen, one James Garner with a super strong cast. Great actors and great racers and drivers. Put Garner and McQueen in a race together and I would bet on Garner though both raced.

A chuckle, Garner's firebird he used in the Rockford TV series looked and sounded pretty plain jane. It had dual paxten superchargers under the hood though. There was a scene where he was supposed to drive ten miles of twisty road while a chopper filmed from overhead. The first take Garner stood on the throttle and outran the helicopter forcing a reshoot!

Anudder note: I haven't watched racing or any other TV in ten years or so. Grabbed a 55" TV a month or so ago, seem to have wasted money since I don't turn it on. At least it was cheap. Anyway, noticed DQ's of respected drivers in a recent race and looked to see why. They failed the plank test after the racing. First thing I thought of was the planking craze but that didn't make sense. A few other things come to mind but I have to admit none seem weirder than the truth!

They are attaching a board, a wooden board, under these multi-million dollar cars. It is to judge how low a car is getting. It has a couple of titanium strips in it from what I read. Dragging titanium makes sparks, lots of sparks. This helps alert officials as to which cars to test.

The test is to measure the thickness of the wood. It starts off at exactly 10mm. If it loses 1mm anywhere the car was set up too low or with too soft of suspension and it is disqualified! A rough track did some cars in. Skilled driving too. I would think the exact same car with a more skilled driver would push the cars limits harder and wear the board more. The whole idea but declaring a car and driver illegal by how hard it was driven is BS.

I just read an article about recent DQ's when looking for the movies but I have to admit the whole idea of the plank and plank test seems goofy to me. Seems the plank can be worn down by skilled driving and hard charging, just plain racing! The better driver will be more likely to wear the board down. I suspect there are strict specifications for the plank, or planks issued to each team, but if they had put boards under the top Nascar division in the sixties or seventies there would be some very creative boards!

Sorry for the deflection of the thread. Everything about the plank and reason for it offends me. It seems like saying pool players could only use a forty inch or eight ounce cue. Buncha damned furriners! Putting a board under a race car is unAmerican.

Hu
 
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Formula 1? They’ve had that plank there for years and years. Keeps the playing field level. Everyone’s suspension is stiff enough to “protect “ the plank.

The are running ground effect cars the last couple of years. Oversimplified, the bottom of the car acts like an inverted wing. Instead of lift, the wing sucks the car down.
Interestingly, if the car gets too low, the wing stalls & the car pops up. Then the wing works car goes down, wing stalls, car goes up & down & up & down. Long straights were brutal with the constant banging called “proposing”.

The first go round with ground effects spawned active suspensions AKA anti-roll technology.

Great reading about McLarens mysterious black box suspension component. The reality was the shocks were all on one hydraulic system, when the aero lowered the car the hydraulics pushed against a piston that ultimately limited the travel of the shocks so the car couldn’t get too low and stall.
Brilliant. Simple. Effective. And at the time, well within the rules. Loophole any one?

And to get this back on the Hustler track….
I always thought that Sarah was a working girl waiting to pick up a client in the bus station. Based on her interaction with Eddie at the door to her apartment.

The French restaurant was still there in the 80s. Then it was called La Parisienne or Coc Au Van. Maybe both through the years. The venison stew was wonderful. Down the block you can see Patsy’s. Sinatra’s favorite. They still keep fresh flowers on his table.

Every time I hear Tom Waits sing Invitation To The Blues, I picture the bus station scene…..
 
Mr Machine said:
Formula 1? They’ve had that plank there for years and years. Keeps the playing field level. Everyone’s suspension is stiff enough to “protect “ the plank.

The are running ground effect cars the last couple of years. Oversimplified, the bottom of the car acts like an inverted wing. Instead of lift, the wing sucks the car down.
Interestingly, if the car gets too low, the wing stalls & the car pops up. Then the wing works car goes down, wing stalls, car goes up & down & up & down. Long straights were brutal with the constant banging called “proposing”.

The first go round with ground effects spawned active suspensions AKA anti-roll technology.

Great reading about McLarens mysterious black box suspension component. The reality was the shocks were all on one hydraulic system, when the aero lowered the car the hydraulics pushed against a piston that ultimately limited the travel of the shocks so the car couldn’t get too low and stall.
Brilliant. Simple. Effective. And at the time, well within the rules. Loophole any one?

And to get this back on the Hustler track….
I always thought that Sarah was a working girl waiting to pick up a client in the bus station. Based on her interaction with Eddie at the door to her apartment.

The French restaurant was still there in the 80s. Then it was called La Parisienne or Coc Au Van. Maybe both through the years. The venison stew was wonderful. Down the block you can see Patsy’s. Sinatra’s favorite. They still keep fresh flowers on his table.

Every time I hear Tom Waits sing Invitation To The Blues, I picture the bus station scene…..
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One of my boyhood heroes was Mario Andretti. A good Irish lad that went from dirt short track to Indy, Formula One, and Nascar's highest division and won at all of them. I remember when downforce became a big deal and even played with it not to mention some of my cars had bigassed wings on top of them to affect the cars at short track speeds.

I built a new car, a new wing on top of it. A 67 Camaro for those that cry easy. The back tip of the wing was even with the back bumper and it came forward to about a foot of the wing being over the roof best I recall. Brand new car, I took it out for hotlaps and brought it in two laps later. While I had first set the wing at a modest angle it was still too much and the front of the car was coming off the ground. Didn't help that by bending every rule to the limit I had a midengine big block Chevy under the hood, um, dashboard!

I started working with air with my first car, a nice sleek '57 Chevy late model, as aerodynamic as a boxcar! I whittled on the body and cut out most of the firewall, everything on the passenger side. The idea was to get the air to pass mostly through the car instead of having to push it out the way. It had a huge wind tunnel and a tiny cockpit I sat in. I had bought a used car, a very good car, but a bit dated. Still I learned and scored a few wins in it.

The early days of air in the fast cars were exciting. Lose air in traffic and things could go to hell in a hurry. A chuckle, when they were running the IROC Camaros a couple Nascar guys could ease up either side of a furriner, from Indy or Formula cars, and pick the back of the middle car up over a foot. Wheels in the air, the middle car was just along for the ride at superspeedway speeds until the good ol' boys decided to set it back down!

I am not keen on restrictions. However, I do think the right solution is tires. You want the cars to slow down, put them on skinnier harder tires. I drove an antique sprint car on skinny tires that were a few decades old. It was a blast!

Hu
 
A note: Grand Prix and Lemans were about the same race so I may be crossing the two this many years later. One stars Steve McQueen, one James Garner with a super strong cast. Great actors and great racers and drivers. Put Garner and McQueen in a race together and I would bet on Garner though both raced.


A minor point:

Grand Prix is about F1.

LeMans is about the 24 hour LeMans Race.- sports cars. Stuff like the GT 40 etc.
 
Dead Money said:
A note: Grand Prix and Lemans were about the same race so I may be crossing the two this many years later. One stars Steve McQueen, one James Garner with a super strong cast. Great actors and great racers and drivers. Put Garner and McQueen in a race together and I would bet on Garner though both raced.


A minor point:

Grand Prix is about F1.

LeMans is about the 24 hour LeMans Race.- sports cars. Stuff like the GT 40 etc.
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I thought they drove both cars and multiple races in the Lemans movie but I certainly won't disagree after all these years. An article said that both movies were about the same race but that ain't nearly the first time an article got something wrong!

Hu
 
jimmyco said:
F1 Grand Prix average around 90 minutes. Two hour maximum per rule unless a red flag halt, then three hour max.

An F1 car would grenade long before completing 24 hours.
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Naah, if they wanted to run twenty-four hours they would build an engine to run thirty hours.

When you didn't have to start the race with the same engine you qualified with, teams had started building qualifying engines that wouldn't hold together five laps. Cars were qualifying with engines with no water in them. Resin in the engine block, no water, radiator or anything needed to circulate water.

Guys with tens of millions of dollars budgets can put together an engine that won't last ten minutes or will last ten years on the street out of many of the same components. Tell a F1 engine builder you need an engine to run 24 hours he will build you an engine to run 24 hours with a margin added. They build engines to last two hours because that is what is called for.

Hu
 
pwd72s said:
Hu?? Andretti Fan? Me too...you might enjoy this. By the way, he's Italian, not Irish as you said earlier:

www.theplayerstribune.com

Letter to My Younger Self | By Mario Andretti

Dear Mario. If you’re reading this, it means you've arrived in America. It's 1955, your family doesn't speak any English and your father has $125 to his name.
www.theplayerstribune.com www.theplayerstribune.com
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Italian? Who wudda thought it!(grin)

Thanks for the link. Last time I heard about him he was on a full session of a one hour show I believe. Seems besides playing family patriarch he was growing wine grapes, very good grapes and good wine. Best I recall he had just won a very prestigious international award for his wine.

Hu(50% Irish, 50% Italian, 100% American!)
 
ShootingArts said:
Naah, if they wanted to run twenty-four hours they would build an engine to run thirty hours.

When you didn't have to start the race with the same engine you qualified with, teams had started building qualifying engines that wouldn't hold together five laps. Cars were qualifying with engines with no water in them. Resin in the engine block, no water, radiator or anything needed to circulate water.

Guys with tens of millions of dollars budgets can put together an engine that won't last ten minutes or will last ten years on the street out of many of the same components. Tell a F1 engine builder you need an engine to run 24 hours he will build you an engine to run 24 hours with a margin added. They build engines to last two hours because that is what is called for.

Hu
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They don't.
 
Dead Money said:
Have you seen American Flyers?

A good cycling movie. Filmed around the Coors Classic a prominent stage race in the US at one time though they call it something else in the movie


👍
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I’ll see if I can find it streaming. Lost net, Merckx and Van Zandt. Thanks.
 
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jokrswylde said:
The thug that broke Eddie's thumbs always resembled Ned beatty to me...
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Maybe not...
 
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