Winning at underdog stories — Joseph Kosinski and Jerry Bruckheimer on F1: The Movie

When Joseph Kosinski took the helm of the Top Gun franchise, he was following in the footsteps of one of American cinema’s great blockbuster auteurs. While tonally and narratively reminiscent of Tony Scott’s groundbreaking 1986 film, Kosinski made Top Gun: Maverick his own. Sunkissed action sequences reminiscent of old-school cinema were enhanced using new technologies to create a singular, visceral experience. Ever since he made his feature-film debut with another long-brewing sequel, Tron: Legacy, Kosinski has demonstrated an instinct for pace and movement that feels faithful to the material, but also transcendent. He’s a filmmaker who’s able to bring artistry to films geared toward a mass audience — no easy feat within a system that increasingly feels data- and executive-driven.

Working with Formula One, however, represented a new challenge. Not only was Kosinski back on the ground, but he had to work within the limits of both corporate pressures and live events. Adapting the techniques he created for Top Gun: Maverick to suit Formula One cars, he similarly brought back a scaled kind of blockbuster filmmaking focused on emotional stakes, male camaraderie and unrelenting passion. 

F1: The Movie stars Brad Pitt as Sonny, a former Formula One driver who’s been slumming it for a couple of decades, driving in any race or league that will have him. Desperate to pull together another losing season, he’s approached by former racer and friend Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem) to join his Formula One team to help save them from being sold. Forced to work with an ambitious but green rookie, Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris), the pair must learn to collaborate in order to win.

Cult MTL spoke with director Joseph Kosinski and producer Jerry Bruckheimer when they were in Montreal during the Canadian Grand Prix to present a special screening of the film.

Justine Smith: In several interviews, Joseph (Kosinski), you say that your love for Formula One is fairly recent, inspired by watching the Netflix series Formula 1: Drive to Survive. I’m curious as to how the show shaped your vision of the film.

Joseph Kosinski: What I loved about the show was, because they didn’t have the participation of Mercedes, Ferrari or Red Bull for the first season, they were forced to focus on the other teams — the last-placed teams and rookies no one had ever heard of. I was much more interested in a team that lost every weekend than one that wins. The underdog story. I think that’s instantly relatable to anyone. What’s it like to be at the back, trying to score a win, rather than winning all the time? Who wins all the time in life? Very few people. 

The second thing, which I think makes the sport unique, is that in every other sport, you and your teammate are working together. The construction of Formula One is such that your teammate can become your biggest rival because you’re the only two in the same car. Everyone can instantly compare the two of you and see who’s better, who’s number one. That was a great idea for creating drama. Between the idea of the last-place team and your teammate being your ultimate rival, that was the formation of the narrative we developed for this.

JS: I have a quick question about the opening, because I find it so striking: for a blockbuster film, it’s almost abstract. We see this low-fi accident footage intercut with these moments of relaxation. As the viewer, we don’t have any context for these images at first. It’s such a daring way to open the film. I’d also like to know more generally how you approach shooting for editing, as you’re approaching every race so differently. Some of it is almost Hitchcockian in terms of this emotional cross-cutting. 

Joseph Kosinski: The opening was something that evolved during the editing of the film. The scripted idea was just the waves (mof water) initially. Sonny has this kind of calming routine he would use to block out the noise. As soon as you’ve seen the film, you understand that this incident from the past haunts him. I like the idea of establishing very early in the film that there’s something trying to poke through, something that’s bubbling underneath that’s going to be revealed in the film.

In terms of the different races, I wanted every race to feel different, which I think is important in a racing movie because you can end up with monotony if you do it the same way twice. Every race needs to tell a story and move either the plot forward or tell you something about the character. It was very intentional that every race had its own personality in the same way that in Formula One, every circuit feels different.

JS: This film is made in collaboration with Formula One. What kind of working relationship with F1 had to happen in order to make this film? You obviously had a lot of access, and you even have Lewis Hamilton producing.

Jerry Bruckheimer: They were integral to the making of the movie. Joe (Kosinski), Brad (Pitt) and I met Stefano (Domenicali, CEO and President of Formula One) at Silverstone (the circuit for the British Grand Prix). We met a bunch of the team principals and drivers and pitched them the movie. Joe showed them the technique he used on Top Gun with the planes and then he took a section of an F1 race and showed how we were going to integrate our car in their race. It was designed to bring them on board.

Initially they were reticent because if Lewis is involved, it means somebody’s going to have to be a villain and it’s not going to be Red Bull or McLaren. But, it has to be somebody. They didn’t want a part of that. We told them the truth, which was that the drama was going to be between our two drivers rather than with them. Everything was bounced off of them. We told them what we were going to do and how we were going to do it. We showed them trailers before they hit the public. We showed them everything. You know, Lewis was so integral. One day, we spent seven hours with Brad and Lewis, our writer, Joe and myself, just going through the script bit by bit to make sure it’s authentic and real. All the techniques in the movie that Brad uses have been done by various racers throughout the history of F1. Those all came from moments of reality.

Even the mismatched socks came from a driver who won his first race when he had mismatched socks on, and from then on, that’s all he did. We try to make a movie as real as you possibly can to be immersed in this world. The audience still gets a sense, even if you’ve never been to a race, about what that world is all about and how it works. You get an education on tires, you get an education on everything. 

It’s more than just a racing movie, but since it’s F1, between Stefano and his whole team, it made it possible for us to shoot on nine different tracks around the world. Sometimes you get 15 minutes, sometimes you get 0 and sometimes you get 2 minutes to get a car on the track in front of 100,000 fans. It’s funny because the first time Brad drove it, I think it was at Silverstone with a packed crowd — the crowd had no idea he was in the car.

It was pretty exciting and they trained for three months with Damson and Brad in these cars. Nobody realizes how gifted these drivers are; these young kids, their hand-eye coordination is phenomenal. It’s just three months starting with a road car and moving into an F4 car, then moving up. We also auditioned Damson before he got the part. We took him out to a track to see if he could learn how to handle the car the way we needed him to. The brutality of what our actors went through. Nobody realizes it, but a race is an hour and a half, two hours. They were out there for eight hours driving and rehearsing and working; going into some of these turns at 180 miles an hour and breaking down to 50. The G-forces are hitting 5 GS. We had a masseuse to limber them up. It was so brutal on them. Besides driving at these speeds, shifting and hitting brakes and adjusting themes on the steering wheel, they also had to act. That’s really hard.

JS: One of the driving forces of the film is Sonny’s need to race. It doesn’t seem to matter if it’s F1 or Nascar or some backwoods competition. He needs to drive. How would you articulate or explain this need?

Jerry Bruckheimer: They get this adrenaline rush when they’re in these cars, especially when you’re winning. Your life’s on the line. It’s irreplaceable. It’s a lot like people who are in the military or in combat and when they get out, they join police work, because they need that sense of danger. It’s that dopamine hit. That’s what Sonny wants; he wants that moment where he’s just flying. That came from Lewis, when he’s at a place in a race where he’s at a higher level, he’s just floating, everything goes silent. That’s what these guys look for. When we showed the movie to the drivers, they mentioned that. They mentioned that it’s the first time they’ve seen a movie that really gives you the experience of actually being in these cars and what it’s like. ■

F1: The Movie opens in Montreal theatres on Friday, June 27. 

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