Michael Mann’s need for speed
THE FERRARI FILMMAKER ON HIS AFFINITY FOR CARS AND HOW THEY FUELLED A MOVIE DECADES IN THE MAKING
WORDS JOHN NUGENT
Adam Driver as Enzo Ferrari
MICHAEL MANN IS a certified petrolhead. It might not always be obvious, but cars and motor-racing have been in the filmmaking DNA of the legendary director behind Heat and The Insider since the very beginning. “The first little short I ever made out of film school was with Mike Hailwood,” Mann tells Empire at the Venice Film Festival. Hailwood was a world-champion motorcycle-racer, and when Mann was studying at the London Film School in the late ’60s and early ’70s, the two of them made a student film at Brands Hatch, the motor-racing circuit in Kent. “He was world champion in three classes. A fantastic character.”