One of 29 Chrysler Imperials used as The Black Beauty in the new movie "The Green Hornet" was displayed at Comic-Con in San Diego in July. (Mick Mayhew / New York Times News Service)
The makers of "Bullitt" reportedly put together the film's legendary car chase in 1968 using two 1968 Dodge Chargers and two 1968 Ford Mustangs. In 1977, director Hal Needham recalls, all of the mayhem in "Smokey and the Bandit" was accomplished with five black 1977 Pontiac Firebird Trans Ams.
For the movie "The Green Hornet," starring Seth Rogen and due to open next month, a staggering 29 vintage Chrysler Imperials were modified to portray Black Beauty, the superhero's luxurious supercar.
"I wonder how they did it with only four cars," Neal Moritz, producer of "The Green Hornet" and the man behind the car-obsessed "Fast and Furious" movies, says about "Bullitt."
Dennis McCarthy, a picture car coordinator, stands next to a 1970 Dodge Charger featured in the 2009 film "Fast & Furious." (Monica Almeida / New York Times News Service)
Despite the ubiquity of computer graphics, big Hollywood movies are destroying more sheet metal than ever. In fact, the demand for movie cars has led to a relatively new title: picture car coordinator. And one of the busiest picture car coordinators is Dennis McCarthy, who often works for Moritz.
"The bar just keeps getting raised," says McCarthy, 43. "Ten or 15 years ago I'd get a (stunt) request and just say, 'You're nuts. You're dealing with five cars and that's all you got.' "
McCarthy and his crew built and modified more than 200 cars for the 2006 film "The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift" and 240 for the 2009 version of "Fast and Furious."
Some of the cars were plucked off used-car lots, given a quick paint job and simply blown up. Others were elaborately engineered, like a 1967 Ford Mustang fitted with a turbocharged Nissan engine and a 1988 Buick Grand National with its body mounted backward so it could appear to be speeding in reverse.
For big projects like the "Fast and Furious" films or "The Green Hornet," McCarthy starts hiring his staff and acquiring cars months before filming begins.
Car coordinators
- Some of the tasks performed by picture car departments:
- • Building cars
- • Deciding how many copies of each vehicle will be necessary
- • Deciding how each copy must be modified to perform its particular task
- • Moving the cars from location to location
- • Repairing damage
- • Keeping vehicles fueled
- • Creating a budget that covers all vehicle needs -- one that can easily run into the millions of dollars.
"We buy a lot of them sight unseen, because we don't care," he says of the Green Hornet's old, rare Imperials. "It can be a rotted-out piece of junk and we'll fill it with Bondo and spray some paint on it, and, you know, wreck it within three hours of its completion time.
"Several cars were absolutely pristine. There's one car out there, I think it had 60,000 miles on it. It was just perfect. It's still alive, but we couldn't leave it in its original state."
By the time filming starts, there can be up to 40 people working in the picture car department. The pace grows frantic and the work is often improvisational. It's a demanding grind that has McCarthy's crew working long hours for months at a time.
"Let me put it this way," says Rick Collins, who works for McCarthy, "I've never had a job that I can work 16, 17 hours a day, go to sleep and I'm not hating the fact that I have to get up in the morning."
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