When The Future Was Faster

2019 was supposed to be Hollywood’s year of Intersectional Diversity, but the handful of good films—such as Once Upon a Time in HollywoodJokerThe Irishman, and now Ford v Ferrari—keep turning out to be period pieces about straight white men made for straight white men by straight white men.

Reliable Matt Damon plays Texan race-car impresario Carroll Shelby (one of the more glamorous names I recall from my 1968–1970 Car Craze years), and Christian Bale is inspired as Shelby’s hotheaded English test driver Ken Miles.

While sizable opening-weekend audiences gave this buddy picture an A+ CinemaScore grade, presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg’s media empire was incensed by it. Hannah Elliott complained in Bloomberg that the hit film dared to lack today’s obligatory Diversity-Inclusion-Equity (DIE):

But what I saw is a devastating picture of the lack of diversity that permeated the industry in the 1960s…. Because ‘Ford v Ferrari’ shows a generation best left dead and gone.

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Picture this: …men dominate the screen for 98% of the time, by my unofficial count. They are in the executive suites at Ford and Ferrari, in the workshops and garages in Venice, on the track out at Willow Springs Raceway. (And when I say men, I mean white, straight men.)

Well, yeah, the Ford that went 218 mph way back in 1965 was built by white, straight men.

Guilty as charged.

The critique I heard most often about ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’ could easily apply here: This is a film celebrating those nostalgic golden days when white men ruled.

Being compared to the elysian Once Upon a Time in Hollywood isn’t actually the worst thing somebody can say about a movie.

Ford v Ferrari is the largely true story of the corporate rivalry to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans auto race during the Peak America years of 1963–1966.

The film’s concept had been in and out of development hell for decades, with names like Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt attached over the years. While Hollywood titans deliver tedious speeches at the Oscars about how much they care about social justice, the truth is that the best movies usually get made by guys who love fast cars, big explosions, and beautiful women.

Thus, the film industry has made countless auto-racing movies over the generations, even if the genre tends to be more hit-or-miss with fans than with the car-crazed stars and directors.

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