25/07/2006
FEATURE BY MIKE LAWRENCE
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In response to my piece on Juan Pablo's departure to NASCAR, I have had an unprecedented mailbox. Everyone who wrote to me direct was broadly in favour of what I wrote and some added more fuel. For some unknown reason, there was a disproportionate response from Canada, but then I did mention a frozen lake and moose. Hey, if I mentioned log rolling and applejack enough, I could be a credible candidate for mayor of Winnipeg. There was not a coherent pattern to the response, but I think I detected what we could call the Howard Beale Syndrome.
Howard Beale was the fictional TV anchorman played by the late Peter Finch in the 1976 hit movie, Network Finch received an Oscar, as did writer, Paddy Chayefsky, never forget the writer. It is the writer who faces the blank sheet of paper or, these days, the blank screen.
In the movie, Howard Beale is told that his contract with the network is to be terminated within two weeks. He has to serve his time and, free from the pressure of having to toe the line in order to keep his job, he deviates from the autocue and delivers a tirade against the media and everything for which it stands. He is a TV anchorman, he is supposed to stand for something, and his life lays in ruins. Howard Beale says, I don't know about the depression and the inflation and the crime on the streets. All I know is that first you have got to get mean. You've got to say: "I'm a human being, god damn it, my life has some value". So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get out of your chairs and go to the window, open it and stick out your head and yell, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it any more."
Beale urges people to open their windows and shout, I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it any more. The TV producer is about to pull the plug on him when word comes through that people are raising their windows and they are shouting, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it any more."
They are not protesting about any specific thing, like nuclear weapons, the rights of women in Iran, or saving the whale, they do it because Beale has empowered them to complain about their bad landlords, their shitty jobs, the poor service they receive, anything which could be better and which is not.
From being a man with no future, Beale becomes a secular prophet and the hottest thing on television. People respond because they are tired of being fed crap.
When it comes to F1, I'm as mad as hell. and I'm not going to take it much longer. There is no point in watching a race when all it does is to interrupt a perfectly good Sunday afternoon.
Juan Pablo has decided he has had enough. The guy has been on pole ten times, he has won seven Grands Prix, he is taking a cut in wages, at least in the short term. Juan Pablo is also that most rare of commodities, he is a star. Look at the man, he has star quality, a star compels you to look at him, or her. If you could define it, and put it in a bottle, you would never worry again about your mortgage.
Montoya was one of the few stars we've had in Formula One, ever. There is always someone who is more successful than the rest, there has to be: someone has to come first, then someone comes second and someone comes third. Someone even signs the cheques to pay Jenson Button's salary. Dear Lord Harry that must be the most depressing job in the world.
Look at Humphrey Bogart. He was a star. His face looked like it had been run over by a tram which then reversed to make sure the job was complete. Bogart was not a handsome man, but women want to shag him and men wanted to buy him a drink, That is a simple, but not unreasonable, definition of what it is to be a male star.
If it's a female, men want to take off their jacket and wrap it around her so she does not get chilly or wet. The protective instinct is always the first. Only then do you want the wild sex. The first thing most men notice is not the lumpy bits, it is the eyes. You have never heard a woman described as 'a mad romantic fool', it is always a man who is a mad, romantic, fool.
Juan Pablo Montoya is a star. Look at the way he walks. He has swagger, sure, loads of people have swagger, but he has something else. You feel that if you met him in a pub you could say, 'What are you drinking, Juan Pablo?' You do not want intrude on his party, but the most natural response for a man is to buy Juan Pablo his next drink. You somehow feel that it will not involve plastic umbrellas.
Now he has gone and none of us knows exactly why he has left us. We are puzzled. Ron Dennis has issued a statement and if you are any the wiser after hearing Ronspeak, please write. Between us, perhaps we can shuffle Ronspeak into English, or some other widely understood language. Hottentot clicks would be a start.
Juan Pablo has decided he wants out. He has upped and left us. We are left looking at a grid which is minus Montoya. The guy has won seven Grands Prix, that is more than John Surtees, and Surtees was F1 World Champion. Kimi Raikkonen is not a star, he is merely a very gifted racing driver.
In every sporting event someone will be first, someone else will be second and someone will be third. All that does is to make them first, second and third, it does not make them a star.
Montoya is a star and I do not think that anybody in Formula One has yet woken up to the fact that Juan Pablo is a star and he has walked away. If Mark Webber, as an example, walked away there would be reshuffling, but life would go on. Sorry, Mark, for picking on you as an example, but if you walked, it would not really matter.
It matters, it really matters, that Juan Pablo has walked. No sport, no medium, can afford to lose a star, there are very few of them around. We have lost one and what rattles my cage is that nobody seems to care. The enthusiasts care, we really care, hence the size of my mailbox, but nobody with a say in the matter appears to care at all. If they do, they are making a very good job of hiding it.
Juan Pablo dedicated himself to getting into Formula One. He scored the wins, he made the pole positions, he had nothing to prove. Then he decides to walk and nobody is asking what is so fundamentally wrong with F1 that a star can get up and leave. Something is seriously wrong, but nobody is addressing the problem.
I began with what I call the Howard Beale Syndrome. It comes down to "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it any more." I shall not watch the next Grand Prix. There has to be something more interesting to do, like watching grass grow. All TV viewing figures are guesswork and/or hype so my little protest will not register. I shall read a book instead. The results I can pick up later from Pitpass. Nothing is going to happen after the first corner, it never does.
I am tired of being fed crap. I am tired of the fact that so many people are conspiring to feed me crap and the buggers are so pleased with themselves they think they are getting away with it.
Let us take a small instance, a mere detail: did you notice the camera angles at the American Grand Prix? It was clear that the director of the coverage was trying to avoid the uncomfortable fact that most of the best seats at Indianapolis, overlooking the start/finish line, were empty. Occasionally, we got a brief glimpse of the fact that people had stayed away. That was a mistake, we were not supposed to see that.
In the theatre there is the term, 'papering the house'. That translates as you give away free tickets (the paper) just so the cast has an audience to play to. When you have a really thin house the audience may be encouraged to move from the cheaper seats to be closer to the stage. In the case of the theatre, there a special reason, it is so that the actors have an audience to play off because it is a live, unrepeatable, occasion.
As an incidental, a well papered house means that the management can slap up 'House Full' notices and that encourages people to buy tickets for what must be a runaway success. It doesn't matter if the theatre is only half full and most of the tickets are freebies, if you are not allowed in, you will never know.
If you can't turn away people at the gate you are not in business. I look forward to seeing a properly audited account of the people at Indianapolis for the GP, together with details of their discounts. I shall not hold my breath.
That is only a detail, but it is symptomatic of the crap we are fed, the crap that we are supposed to devour and for which we are supposed to be grateful.
I used to think that I understood motor racing, it seemed to me to be a microcosm of the wider world. The real world is a bit complicated, what with religion and people firing rockets at each other. Motor racing seemed to me to be an ideal model: it had its good guys and its bad guys, it had its winners and its losers, it had its rules.
It was based on a simple principle which is behind most sport. It is: 'I can run faster than you or I can lift bigger rocks.' Then it got to 'my horse can beat your horse and not only can I afford a better horse than you, I can afford to pay a better jockey to ride that horse.' Nah. nah. nah.
When the World Championship was founded in 1950, the rules could be written on the back of a postage stamp: the rule book read: engines shall be not more than 1.5 litres supercharged, 4.5 litres unblown. That was it. Oh, and it was preferable if the car was painted in the national livery of its entrant, not its country of origin.
At the French GP we saw BMW's new aerodynamic package. It is bizarre, but it is within the rule book, which is now a very thick volume indeed. I bet that every team in F1 is even now evaluating BMW's package. Photographers in the pitlane were sending images to F1 wind tunnels the moment that the new BMW emerged.
Every team has photographers on the pay roll and every photographer has to seek accreditation from the FIA. If you lose your pass you are out of a job. If you are a journalist with a pass and you lose that pass, you are out of a job. There is no redress.
Pitpass is the only leading website where every article has to have a signature at the end. You may not agree with the opinion, but at least you know whose opinion it is. We do not do the pseudonym.
Every journalist who has a decent pass has to obey an unwritten rule, you do not rock the boat. If you cross the line, you can lose your pass and bang goes your livelihood. Nobody will tell you how you lose your pass. You are allowed to be like a court jester, you can mock royalty, whose name is Bernie, but you are only allowed to mock so far.
In King Lear, Shakespeare made a court jester, the Fool, the wisest man in the play, in the whole of a kingdom. When Shakespeare wrote the play, the court jester was long gone. I think that King Henry VIII was the last monarch of England to employ one, but then the point of the traditional jester was to demonstrate the generosity and open mindedness of the king. If you actually criticised the monarch, so it hurt, you could be in deep doo doo, we speak of having your nose and ears cut off, which would limit your choice of spectacles.
Shakespeare put Lear and his Fool in a position of mutual desperation and, since they are reduced to being equal, alone, and exposed to the elements of nature, the Fool can speak his mind and the former king, stripped of all pretence, and power, has to listen.
There has to come a time when Max and Bernie must listen to the wisdom of The Fool. When I am at the pub, I can no longer explain F1 to the guy propping up the bar. I have someone specific in mind, he brews most of the beer on sale in my local. The last time I saw him was at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, he is an enthusiast. How do I, or anyone, explain to him the current and future rules? I have no idea.
I have no idea what is going on. I believe that there is some business going on behind our backs, but I cannot get a grasp on it. There are two things of which I am certain. One is that the biggest star that Formula One has had in years has walked away and it has crossed nobody's mind that this is something that matters. The second thing is that nobody is prepared to say why the star has walked.
About the only thing I can do is not to watch the next Grand Prix which, I predict, will be as boring as the last one. I shall read a book instead. I have the book to hand and I know I will receive far more from it than I could receive from something which was once a sport and which once held my interest.
No sport can afford to lose a star. We are entitled to an explanation. Answer came there none. I am as mad as hell an I am not going to take it any more.
Mike Lawrence
mike@pitpass.com
Editor's Note: For his role in Network, Peter Finch became - and remains - the only actor to receive a posthumous Oscar. His co-star William Holden was nominated but lost out to the British actor. In the movie, Holden played Finch's boss and close friend, Max Schumacher.
To check out previous features from Mike, click here