Behind the NHRA Movie ‘Snake and Mongoo$e’

From http://www.snakeandmongoosemovie.com

Like any good Hollywood drama, the story elements that make up “Snake & Mongoo$e” are almost too good to be true, and yet, they are true. While the over-arching scope of their rivalry was known in racing circles, even there, the context and depth and motivations behind that story were missing. Journalist Alan Paradise was among the first to realize the cinematic possibilities in the story when he was working on a documentary about the Snake and Mongoo$e after years covering their world as an automotive journalist.

Paradise knew that most of the public remained keenly unaware of what lay beneath the surface of the legendary Snake/Mongoo$e rivalry. And he was savvy enough to realize that it was a story possessing all the essentials that successful movies require—deep and compelling characters, rich drama and comedy mixed together, tragedy, triumph, and redemption.

“Many in this generation know who Don Prudhomme and Tom McEwen were as the Snake and Mongoo$e, and we know them from the Hot Wheels cars, and probably many of us had those toy cars and played with them as children,” Paradise relates. “But what we probably didn’t know is the back story behind all that. The more I kept digging into this, the more intriguing the story got, and the deeper the story got. There was so much texture and color behind it, so I said to myself, this is more than a magazine article, more than a book. There is real cinematic value here.”

Photo - Robin Broidy's facebook page

Photo – Robin Broidy’s facebook page

Once producers Robin Broidy and Stephen Nemeth put the project together and brought director Wayne Holloway’s unique cinematic eye to the project, making the movie was another issue entirely. To properly execute their mission, filmmakers needed the real-life Don Prudhomme and Tom McEwen on board. And both men did bless the production, joined up as executive producers, and more importantly, served as uniquely open and helpful on-set consultants throughout production.

For both of them, however, principal photography on “Snake & Mongoo$e” over 24 days in May and June of 2012 must have seemed a bit like they had entered a time warp.

Not only did they encounter two actors in Jesse Williams and Richard Blake who looked and dressed and talked exactly like they did about four decades earlier, but they also saw both their own restored dragsters and funny cars from that era, and exact replicas, back out on a familiar track—the Famoso Raceway in Bakersfield, California, where most of the movie’s racing sequences were shot, and where both Prudhomme and McEwen made names for themselves early in their careers.

There, over the course of the production, Famoso was dressed and later in post- production, digitally altered and extended to double for a series of other vintage tracks from the era of the Snake and Mongoo$e. Holloway and cinematographer John Bailey, using state of the art Arri Alexa digital camera systems, had the privilege of shooting a variety of sequences involving Prudhomme’s and McEwen’s actual, restored cars in some cases, and exact duplicates in others. Among the vehicles the production was able to utilize were Prudhomme’s 1970 Yellow Cuda Hot Wheels Funny Car and the iconic yellow hauler that carried it across the country, a spot-on reproduction of McEwen’s famous 1970 Red Duster Hot Wheels Funny Car and it’s iconic red hauler.

Also taking part in the production were Prudhomme’s actual Plymouth Arrow Funny Car from the mid-1970’s, once again sporting its US Army sponsorship decals; McEwen’s English Leather 1978 Corvette; and other vintage cars. Amazingly the production was also granted access to two very early and important dragsters in the careers of Snake and Mongoo$e. The first was called the Greer Black Prudhomme, which was restored and owned by mega car collector and Salt Flats racer, Bruce Meyer, as well as the Baney, Yeakel Plymouth Special, restored and owned by Lou Baney’s son, Frank Baney. Of course, the welfare of the vintage cars, not to mention strict safety requirements, prohibited the staging of practical, all-out, 200mph-plus drag races along the lines of the fierce battles that Prudhomme and McEwen once routinely engaged in. And so, the production made extensive use of vintage footage from the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA), which fully cooperated with the production, to bring audiences inside many of the actual competitions in which the two rivals participated. Filmmakers also secured original 16mm film footage from the real-life Snake’s personal vaults as well as from other film collectors around the country.

Producer Robin Broidy is our next guest on Fan4Racing Fan2Fan NASCAR-NHRA Talk, Monday, September 9th at 9:30pm ET. Call 347-996-5176 to interact with Robin Broidy during the LIVE broadcast Q&A segment.

 

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