Sport and film are traditionally a marriage made in Hollywood hell, but the next few months promise to change that as two landmark studies in high-speed thrills hit the cinema.
It is no coincidence that both are documentaries. “I’ve probably seen about 30 scripts for films about this event,” Steve Christian, executive producer of TT3D: Closer to the Edge, said. “Some had big names, some didn’t, but all didn’t capture what the TT is about. The Hollywood script would have a 16-year-old girl winning the TT. Eventually, I had a light-bulb moment and thought, why fake it?”
It is a line that echoes the thoughts of David Peace, author of The Damned Utd, the best-selling novel based on 44 days in the life of Brian Clough.
“I’d always prefer to read about Manchester United than Melchester Rovers,” Christian said. “When something is so obviously fake, I think it comes unstuck because you have the real thing in front of you.”
The makers of TT3D, which gets a national release next month, and Senna, a documentary about Ayrton Senna that won a top award at January’s Sundance Festival and finally comes out in the UK in July, agreed.
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Yet wanting to show the TT in all its glory meant not shirking away from the dark side and so Christian found himself at a crossroads when, during filming at last summer’s TT, the popular rider, Paul Dobbs, was killed.
In the aftermath, Dobbs’s partner and mother of their two children, Bridget, issued a poignant statement, saying their lives had been “immeasurably enriched by the TT and the Isle of Man”. Christian emailed her. “I said, ‘You don’t know me from Adam, but do you mind if we bring cameras to your husband’s funeral?’
“I pressed the send button and thought, what if she sends it to the TT organisers — they could stop the film. I thought what if she sent it to The Sun and said, ‘Look at these callous bastards.’
“There was nothing for four days and then she said she’d do it as long as we didn’t hide anything. What was there to hide? The fact is he was a father of two children and he was still going down Bray Hill at 200mph.”
Christian has worked with Hollywood megastars such as Johnny Depp and Christian Bale, but he grew up on the Isle of Man and still lives there. He loves the TT, but he stresses this is more than a bike film.
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“We haven’t alienated the biker but it’s not a bike-fest,” he said. “It’s about guys who just want to reach out a little bit more than us, guys who have the balls to go out and do something they really want.
“And there’s that mythical aura — the Isle of Man has been here for centuries and for two weeks these guys visit to tame the beast, but the island flicks them away. It’s the same 37 miles. The same roads. Whether you’re Guy Martin, Mike Hailwood or Joey Dunlop, you’re gone in the blink of an eye, but the TT endures.”