![]() Bonin drove through a door and down the highway. SIDEBAR - I DROVE A FUNNY CAR THROUGH A DOOR Retired Journalist Jon Asher once penned an article for Super Stock & Drag Illustrated titled “I Drove A Funny Car On Fire.”Īs impressive as his expose is, Gordie Bonin, if he ever wrote an article believes he’s got a better storyline.Īsher drove on fire. “Nobody else has ever asked me to play in another movie,” Light jokingly lamented. Light’s acting career has stalled since the cameo in Fast Company. About the fourth time I just decided on myself to say, ' lane choice will be determined by the flip of a coin' and that's what they went with.”Įven though his role was small, Light was required to join the Screen Actors Guild and after paying his union and actor guild dues, pocketed about $22. I said, ‘I understand, I understand." So, we do the second take and I said the same thing again, 'toin coss'. “They said, ‘hold it, hold it … it's coin toss, not toin coss. Action and I walk in and I say, 'Hold it, hold it, we gotta have to have a toin coss …” “I had to go down and tell the two drivers the lanes would be chosen by the flip of the coin,” recalled Light. Under the influence of the villainous team owner, instead of using the traditional lower ET earning lane choice, Light was sent scurrying to the starting line to inform drivers lane choice would be determined by a coin toss. Light played the role of the track’s race official at an important race. “I guess they felt they owed me something because it was my racetrack,” admitted Light, with a laugh. It took four takes, but Light got it right after some creative ad-libbing. Light, who was also a Top Fuel driver at the time, did most of the dragster-related stunts in the movie, in his own dragster as well as behind the wheel of another expendable rail. “They occupied my race track pretty much the whole summer,” recalled Light. Light was employed by EIR at the time and witnessed the majority of the filming. If it looked like it was shot in Canada, no one would have come to see it.” The film was mostly shot in Western Canada and Alberta, as Bonin puts it, “So it would look like it was shot in the United States … so people would want to watch it. “They gave us $3,000 every time we fired that car.” “He told me they wanted to do a story on our lives,” Bonin told in 2010 of the producers. The two had a common friend in Fast Company’s producer Gordon Smith. Hodgson was familiar with Bonin because of a longtime team owner/driver relationship. At the time, Bonin was one of the leading drivers on the NHRA Winston Drag Racing Series and his driving talents were far above average. There were plenty of fires and a number of explosions, some skin from the female actors and a great measure of ludicrousness from producers not familiar to the sport.īonin’s involvement in the movie came through fellow Canadian Ron Hodgson, owner of Edmonton International Speedway in Alberta. The two drag racing figures teamed up as drivers in the 1979 B movie Fast Company.įast Company featured lots of Funny Car footage in its storyline about an aging Top Fuel driver and a sponsor-driven team owner who walked outside of traditional ethical lines. Gordie Bonin, the freewheeling Funny car driver who passed in November 2013, felt it was a balanced mix between fun and the absurd. Former NHRA VP of Operations Graham Light described the summer of 1978 as a lot of fun.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |