VARIETY

DreamWorks goes 'Racing': Film Adaptation of Marshall Curry's Documentary on Track - by tatiana siegel

DreamWorks is revving up a dramatic feature adaptation of Marshall Curry’s documentary “Racing Dreams,” with Kurtzman/Orci producing.

Curry’s pic, which won best documentary at last year’s Tribeca Film Festival, follows three young racers as they compete in the World Karting Assn.’s National Pavement Series. Clocking speeds up to 70 mph, the trio chase the National Championship title and move closer to achieving their dream of becoming NASCAR racers. DreamWorks will attach a writer in the coming weeks.

Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, who have become DreamWorks’ go-to producers for high-concept projects like “Eagle Eye,” are producing. The shingle’s Steven Puri and Bobby Cohen are exec producing alongside Dany Garcia and Dwayne Johnson. Jack Turner, Bristol Baughan and helmer Curry will also exec produce.

Kurtzman/Orci have a number of projects set up at DreamWorks including the Jon Favreau-helmed “Cowboys and Aliens,” which Daniel Craig is circling, as well as “Atlantis Rising” and “Deep Sea Cowboys.”

Project’s development marks a trend in Hollywood, with a number of crowd-pleasing and award-winning docs like Seth Gordon’s “King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters” and Dan Klores’ “Crazy Love” being retooled into dramatic features.

INDIEWIRE

Tribeca ‘09 Interview: “Racing Dreams” Director Marshall Curry

“Racing Dreams”
(World Documentary Feature Competition)
Director: Marshall Curry
Synopsis: “Racing is an addiction, and we’ve got it bad,” says the mother of one of the country’s top go-kart racers. Annabeth, Josh, and Brandon, ranging in age from 11 to 13, all compete for the World Karting Association’s national championship, a huge stepping stone to auto racing’s big show—NASCAR. None of them can legally drive on a city street, but they each masterfully zip around a course at nearly 80 mph. Yet driving fast may be the easiest challenge facing these ambitious kids. Throughout the course of an entire WKA season, they each encounter not just the trials of adolescence but also the realities of a sport requiring great amounts of money to even compete.

INTERVIEWER: Please introduce yourself.

MC: My name is Marshall Curry. I live in Brooklyn, and have had a pretty zig zagged career that has included teaching English in Mexico, working at a public radio station, and producing the website for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A few years ago I made a film called “Street Fight” that was nominated for an Oscar but got crushed by the “March of the Penguins.”

Q: What were the circumstances that lead you to become a filmmaker?

MC: After college I tried out a number of jobs, but in the back of my mind I always thought that making documentaries sounded like the best job anyone could have. I got hired to work on an interactive documentary for a museum about Native American history. But it was 1994, and soon the Internet took off, and the company where I was working started focusing on web design. I stayed there for a few years but knew deep inside that I really wanted to make films. One day I heard about a really interesting election that was shaping up in Newark, NJ, so I decided to take a leap. I bought a camera and started filming “Street Fight.”

Q: What prompted the idea for your film and what excited you to make you undertake it?

MC: Before I started making Racing Dreams, I didn’t really know anything about NASCAR, and I didn’t understand the appeal. I’d say that attitude is pretty typical in New York, but I knew it isn’t typical for the country as a whole. NASCAR is the second biggest spectator sport in the country after football—bigger than baseball or basketball.

I began to think about that: New Yorkers think of ourselves as so worldy and broad minded, but we don’t know anything about a sport that’s a huge part of our own country’s culture. So I wanted to learn a little about it.

And then one day I read about the World Karting Association’s series for 11 and 12 year olds who race karts that go 70 mph. It has become the unofficial Little League for NASCAR, producing some of the sport’s biggest drivers.

I thought that sounded pretty amazing, and one of the things I love about making documentaries is that it lets me spend a year or two learning about things I don’t know about. So I went to a race to scout it out, and it was better than I imagined. The racing was fast and noisy and dangerous. The kids were smart and funny, and at that perfect age where they are young enough to be honest and open, but old enough to be interesting and insightful. So I put aside the project I was working on and got started.

Q: Please elaborate a bit on your approach to making your film.

MC: I think that one of the most important things in making a documentary is earning the trust of people that allow them to reveal themselves to you. I take that trust seriously and think it’s important to show people fairly and respectfully. That doesn’t mean hiding conflicts or warts, but it means showing those things with context and humanity and sense of humor – because we all have conflicts and warts. I think that’s a big part of what ultimately connects audiences with characters in a film.

I also think it’s important to spend a lot of time with the characters, and to keep a small footprint. We didn’t set up lights, and most shoots had just a camera person and sound recorder (I’d do one or the other, depending on what kind of scene we were shooting.)

We finished production with 500 hours of footage, which is a huge—almost absurd—amount of material. It took us almost three months just to screen, and then we spent about 16 months editing. 90% of it, of course, is junk, but when you are shooting, you never know which 90% it will be. There are details that seem irrelevant out in the field, but then become important later, and you are really glad you got them when they happened.

Q: What were some of the biggest challenges you faced in developing the project?

MC: I thought it might be hard to sell the idea of a documentary about kids who want to be NASCAR drivers to potential funders. Most doc people aren’t exactly racing fans, and there’s an attitude in a lot of circles that a documentary has to be about a social or political issue on its face. But Bristol Baughan, who was working for Reason Pictures/Good, saw that racing was our McGuffin. The movie was really about an under explored part of our culture and about being 11 or 12 —figuring out who we are, how we relate to our parents, what romance feels like, and what we want to do. She saw some scouting footage I had shot and jumped right in as my funder and producer.

One practical challenge I didn’t foresee was how much the kids were going to change over the course of the shooting. Annabeth, most dramatically, grows her hair out, gets braces half way through, and really goes from being a little girl to a teenager. It was great for illustrating just how pivotal this period was in their lives, but it really created some challenges in editing.

Q: How do you define success as a filmmaker, and what are your personal goals as a filmmaker?

MC: I make documentaries mostly because I’m curious. They give me an opportunity to throw myself into new and different worlds and really get to know them—different people, different stories, different cultures—whether that’s an indigenous group in the Amazon or local street politics in inner city Newark, or the world of NASCAR in rural North Carolina. And as long as I can keep feeding that curiosity I’ll feel successful.

But I also make films to communicate with and challenge and move other people too. So when I see audiences laugh or gasp or shake their heads at something that makes me pretty happy too.

Q: What are your future projects?

MC: I am just about to start editing a film about a member of the Earth Liberation Front who burned two timber facilities in Oregon and is now in prison. It’s a pretty amazing story. We’re raising finishing funds for that one and are planning to complete it this year.

I have another film in preproduction about a family with ten kids, half of which are adopted and are all different races. It’s a really interesting story about when idealism meets reality.

April 14, 2009

GOTHAMIST

INTERVIEW WITH DIRECTOR MARSHALL CURRY

In 2005 filmmaker Marshall Curry was nominated for an Academy Award for his documentary Street Fight. He recalls his moment of television glory on the big night being when he was “almost hit in the head with a stuffed penguin as the March of the Penguins guys squeezed by on their way to the stage.” Now he’s back for another round with his new documentary Racing Dreams, currently screening at Tribeca Film Festival. Delving into the world of 11 to 13 year old World Karting Association auto racers (the prequel to NASCAR), the subject matter couldn’t be further from downtown New York. Recently the Brooklynite told us about the film, the Oscars, and having his hands on some works-in-progress by The National.

How did you end up a filmmaker?
After college I did a bunch of different jobs—taught English in Mexico, worked in public radio, worked for a web design company—but there was something about documentaries that really attracted me. I liked the idea of spending time finding out about worlds that I don’t know anything about, and I found that I really liked the craft of shooting and editing. So I did a few short films and then heard about an election that was shaping up in Newark, NJ that was going to be exciting and unlike any of the elections I’d ever seen in documentaries. I bought a camera and started shooting Street Fight.

Which filmmakers do you admire?
I like fiction films and documentaries, but I watch a lot more docs. I like the verite gang the best—Maysles, and Pennebaker/Hegedus, etc. It’s really hard to make a compelling, coherent verite, but when it works, it’s unbelievable—so powerful and direct. I also really like Ross McElwee—Sherman’s March completely shifted my idea of what documentaries could do or be. But I’m not a purist—I like films that are narrated and films that aren’t, films that are beautiful and films that are clumsy but heartfelt. Mostly I just like a good story and good characters.

Your second movie is so different from the first, where did you get the idea for this one?
Like most New Yorkers, I didn’t know anything about racing before starting this movie. But I’d heard that NASCAR was the #2 spectator sport in the country after football—bigger than baseball, bigger than basketball. And I thought that was interesting—that there could be something so huge in my own country that I don’t know anything about. Then I read an article about the World Karting Association which has a series for 11-13 year olds that’s sort of like the Little League for NASCAR. I went to a race to check it out and was blown away—12 year olds driving 70mph. I got home and showed some of the footage to Bristol Baughan who was producing for Reason Pictures/Good Inc, and she green lit it pretty much on the spot.

Do you see a connection between the two?
I think I’m drawn to people who dream big and both films have that. In Street Fight Cory Booker wants to become Mayor of Newark, and in Racing Dreams three kids want to become NASCAR drivers. Also, in both films I’ve tried not to lean on stereotypes. I think the media generally portrays African American culture as monolithic, when in fact there’s huge diversity within the community, and after Street Fight, a lot of people told me they were surprised to see that there could be an election that would pit Spike Lee against Al Sharpton. In Racing Dreams, I tried to show real, specific, and complex characters, who in some ways are very different from me, but in other ways are very similar.

What is one thing New Yorkers should know about the World Karting Association and NASCAR?
As a New Yorker, I think that a lot of New Yorkers are snobs about NASCAR. There’s a line I love in the movie where Annabeth’s mom says, “A lot of people don’t understand racing—they think it’s just cars going around in circles. But we don’t understand, like–baseball. It’s just a bunch of guys sitting out in a field hoping someone might hit him a ball.” It shows that pretty much everything is silly when you view it from the outside. But when you get inside and start to understand something—what makes a great pass in racing, or a great pitch in baseball—suddenly the world becomes a little richer. And one of the things that films should try to do is stretch us that way.

What were the Oscars like—did being nominated change your life at all?
It was pretty surreal. I’d shot the film myself and edited it on an old Mac in my apartment, and my wife and I had talked about maybe renting a projector and having some friends come over for pizza to see this project I’d been working on. So when it started winning awards at festivals, I was really surprised, and the Oscars took that to the next level. Of course 24 hours in LA knocked me back down again—there’s a real pecking order at the Oscars and the documentary filmmakers are just below the make up artists, I think.

What’s next for you?
I have another film that is shot which I will start editing as soon as Tribeca is over. It’s about a radical environmentalist who burned two timber facilities in Oregon and is now in prison. It’s a pretty fascinating story, and totally different from Street Fight or Racing Dreams.

Is there anything else screening at Tribeca you would suggest seeing?
I have been in the edit room for most of the past year, so I’m embarrassed to say that I haven’t seen much at all. I saw some early material from Ian Olds’ The Fixer, and it’s really powerful stuff. Liz Mermin has a new doc Team Qatar. And there’s a lot of buzz around Kirby Dick’s Outrage.

Please share your strangest “only in New York ” story.
I was on the subway on my way to work one morning and a sleepy hipster across from me convulsed for a moment and then stopped. A moment later she jumped up and started ripping off her leather jacket and a giant cockroach jumped out.

Which New Yorker do you most admire?
My wife runs a non-profit that gives legal information online to victims of domestic violence. It’s called WomensLaw.org, and she started it as a little side project in our apartment, begging help off of our friends who are designers and programmers. Now it is a huge online resource with a staff, and it has helped hundreds of thousands of people. It’s a great example of having a good idea and then pursuing it relentlessly.

Given the opportunity, how would you change New York?
I’d put some mountains a little closer to it.

Under what circumstance have you thought about leaving New York?
Where I grew up, as a third grader, I could go ride my bike after school and be back for dinner. Or just go play in the woods for hours. I have two kids, and I wonder whether they should have that too. On the other hand, of course, I didn’t have the culture and food and activity and diversity around me that they have, and there’s huge value to that too. I go back and forth on that one.

Do you have a favorite New York celebrity sighting or encounter?
I was in the Corner Bistro on a Saturday afternoon and Norm from Cheers walked in. I thought everyone would say “Nooorm” but no one did.

What’s your current soundtrack?
The Racing Dreams soundtrack contains music by Joel Goodman and by The National. We also have songs by Ryan Adams, the Vines, Steve Earle, and the White Stripes.

My life soundtrack is somewhat similar. As we were working with The National, they gave me a bunch of works in progress, and I’ve been listening to that a lot recently.

Where’s your favorite place to see a movie in the city?
Tribeca Film Festival of course.

Best cheap eat in the city.
Kuma Inn in the Lower East Side.

Best venue to hear music.
They have some great shows in Prospect Park in the summer which I’m looking forward to.

April 23, 2009 8:30 AM

THE NEW YORK TIMES

“Too Young for Driver’s Licenses, but With Full-Throttle Ambitions” by stephen holden

“Racing Dreams,” Marshall Curry’s absorbing documentary examination of the world of professional auto racing, comes at its subject craftily: from below. Instead of profiling the superstars of stock-car racing, glorifying the sport and relating its history, it concentrates on three up-and-coming competitors in its unofficial Little League, the World Karting Association.

Its subjects, Annabeth Barnes, 11; Josh Hobson, 12; and Brandon Warren, 13, are too young to have driver’s licenses. But zooming around oval tracks, in a yearlong national series that has produced many of Nascar’s top drivers, they gun their vehicles to speeds of more than 70 miles per hour. Those speeds are in contrast to the 200-m.p.h. full-speed velocity of a 3,000-pound professional stock car.

This cool-headed film, edited down to 93 minutes from 500 hours of footage, has no extra fat. With any more trimming, it might have lost its smooth narrative flow, in which the everyday lives of the young racers and their families are given more attention than racing scenes.

Like a pint-size “Hoop Dreams,” “Racing Dreams” is the unusual sports movie that is more interested in the lives of children on the verge of adolescence than in giving viewers the cheap thrill of vicarious competition and heaping glory on the winners. Above all, it is a portrait of a rural, working-class society in which families live close to the bone, surviving on meager incomes that are barely enough to support their children’s aspirations; Christianity is woven into their daily routines, including racing.

Even at the World Karting Association level, car racing costs about $5,000 an event. The film follows its competitors to five races in various parts of the country.

Annabeth, from Hiddenite, N.C., is a third-generation racer and a rare female contestant in a male-dominated sport. She dreams of becoming the first woman to win the Daytona 500. Her mother, Tina Barnes, who describes stock-car racing as an addiction, is something of a role model. But as she approaches puberty, Annabeth faces a looming conflict between chasing her dream and having a normal adolescent social life.

Josh, from Birch Run, Mich. (outside Flint), is the most likely candidate for Nascar stardom. Poised, focused and bright, with a 4.0 grade-point average and impeccable manners, he is a student of Nascar. Even though his supportive parents are willing to mortgage their future for him, he understands the importance of gaining corporate sponsorship if he is to advance and pursues it avidly.

The most volatile is Brandon, who lives with his grandparents in Creedmoor, N.C. “He has no fear of nothing,” declares Kathy Petty, his grandmother. By the age of 5, his grandfather Phil Petty says, Brandon had more scars and stitches than most people have in an entire lifetime. At the end of the film’s shooting, Brandon enrolled in an R.O.T.C. program, and his grandmother says she believes he should attend military school to learn some discipline before considering a return to racing.

During the film, Brandon’s father returns from prison. (His absent mother, barely mentioned, is described as a drug addict.) The father’s return brings tension into the house and a sense of foreboding that Brandon’s good behavior won’t last long, which it doesn’t. His father’s presence brings out the core of vulnerability under Brandon’s bravado. His insecurity has already shown in a competition from which he was disqualified for “rough driving” after placing first.

For all its craft, “Racing Dreams” leaves you longing for more information about the sport. There are smidgens of advice on how to maneuver a go-kart around turns. But a few more details about the sport’s rules and basic mechanics — and its considerable risks (one accident is shown) — would have been welcome.

That said, “Racing Dreams” is one of the rare documentaries you leave wishing it was a little bit longer.

lOS ANGELES TIMES

REVIEW BY ROBERT ABELE

Called the Little League for professional racing, the World Karting Assn. is a storied training ground for NASCAR. It’s also the backdrop for Marshall Curry’s finely tuned documentary “Racing Dreams,” which takes a sympathetic look at three kids whose stock car aspirations and zest for speed must also contend with the realities of a fast-approaching adulthood. The competition scenario — in this case, WKA’s five-race national championship held over the course of a year — is a familiar one for personality-driven docs, but Curry’s impressionable, charismatic young subjects are impossible not to care about.

Annabeth is a gangly, boy-crazy, 11-year-old racing fanatic with eyes on gender role-smashing, Danica Patrick-like fame. Josh, 12, is a behind-the-wheel natural and budding professional who’s already practicing his interview skills. The sport’s priciness, meanwhile — which necessitates an early skill at fundraising and securing sponsorship — means this could be the last year for 13-year-old Brandon, a troubled kid from a poor, broken family. The film doesn’t always follow up on its more interesting issues: safety, technique, financial hardship, even the sport’s history. But the emotional dynamics of its trio of formative hopefuls, and their touching relationships with the parents or guardians who work hard at enabling their passion, set a solid pace.

THE WASHINGTON POST

“Facing Reality the Silverdocs Way” BY Ann Hornaday

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Movie fans will be spoiled for choice when the Silverdocs Documentary Film Festival gets underway Monday. Many of the tent-pole screenings are no-brainers. Who would want to miss the festival’s opening-night feature, “More Than a Game,” about LeBron James, or the retrospective of films by Charles Guggenheim Symposium honoree Albert Maysles?

But what about the hundred-plus other nonfiction films? What to watch and what to skip? Luckily, a few of them have played the festival circuit, so we can single them out for must-see status.

Among those not to miss: “Racing Dreams,” Marshall Curry’s absorbing portrait of young go-kart racers who compete for the World Karting Association championship and future NASCAR glory (Curry directed the fabulous 2005 documentary “Street Fight,” about Cory Booker’s first mayoral campaign in Newark); “My Neighbor, My Killer,” Anne Aghion’s deeply moving account of Rwandans coming to terms with the ethnic slaughter of 1994 and its aftermath; “Trimpin: The Sound of Invention,” Peter Esmonde’s portrait of the eccentric eponymous Seattle-based sound installation artist; and “Still Bill,” Alex Vlack and Damani Baker’s captivating portrait of legendary R&B singer Bill Withers. (Withers appears in another terrific Silverdocs film: “Soul Power,” about the concert that preceded Muhammad Ali and George Foreman’s historic face-off in Zaire in 1974.)

High on our want-to-see list: Joe Berlinger’s “Crude,” about oil companies, environmentalists and indigenous tribes in Ecuador locked in battle over ecological remediation; “Afghan Star,” about Kabul’s version of “American Idol”; and “The Horse Boy,” about a couple taking their autistic son on a trip through Mongolia.

NEW YORK MAGAZINE

REVIEW BY DAVID EDELSTEIN

On the other side of the cultural spectrum is Marshall Curry’s ridiculously engaging documentary Racing Dreams, which follows three kids, 13 and under, who’d like to grow up to be NASCAR idols. I freely admit a prejudice: the sight of 11-year-olds in cars (even when they’re small and called “karts”) going 80 miles an hour gives me the heebie-jeebies. And never mind that peak oil is coming and we should wean the young off driving and blah blah blah. But these kids really, really love racing, and Curry’s camera captures their sudden sense of autonomy behind the wheel when they begin to feel at one with their vehicles.

The movie is a mix of rough and slick, edited (tastefully) for melodrama and pathos, but it’s never condescending. Its three subjects grow and change before your eyes. Eleven-year-old Annabeth Barnes, a rare girl in contention, is all long limbs and goofy effusions—until she begins to wonder if the racing obsession isn’t her dad’s and she’s missing out on life. Joshua Hobson is a sweet little wonk with tunnel vision who studies Nascar stars giving interviews while his father tries to raise $5,000 for every race. Brandon Warren is the most heartrending: the hothead daredevil with the mostly absent screwup dad, the kid whose life could go either way. The five races begin in black-and-white with the cars of the protagonists in color. The journey is thrilling—even if, on some level, you know that these kids are going in circles.

HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

“Tribeca Dreams: Fest movies you need — and may be able — to see” By Steven Zeitchik

We’ll admit it. We were skeptical that, despite all the talk about a slimmed-down slate and a refined filtering process, this year’s Tribeca would overcome many of its previous struggles. We worried it would suffer from Passover Syndrome — why should this Tribeca be different from all other Tribecas?

But when all was said and done, and we had caught about fifteen of the festival’s movies, we came around. The quality level was in fact higher this year, with many of the films impressively surehanded, not to mention commercial. Here are a few of the better ones we caught as the fest wound down (besides “The Eclipse,” which we’ve been raving about since the beginning, and the powerful “Vegas”) — pics that, if filmmakers play their cards right, will actually make a splash in theaters. Maybe this was a different Tribeca…

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

REVIEW BY ELIZABETH WEITZMAN

The perfect answer to cries of “I’m bored,” Marshall Curry’s outstanding documentary won’t just entertain your family for a little while. It’ll also inspire everyone to get back outside, and find a new passion.

For Curry’s tween subjects, kart racing is the obsession of choice. Brandon, Josh and Annabeth are determined to become professional racecar drivers, and their devotion colors every aspect of their lives. That kind of focused commitment would be compelling enough, but Curry delves much further into their individual histories, with great insight and sensitivity. It’s thanks to him that — whatever your age — you’ll care about these kids long after the lights come up.

“The Big Picture: Tribeca Film Festival heats up” by Elizabeth Weitzman

Yes, it’s going to be gorgeous this weekend. But you’ve got a whole summer of 80 degree weather ahead of you, and only 10 days of the Tribeca Film Festival. So at the very least, make time for a movie or two – you never know what you might discover in the dark. With an especially strong slate on offer this year, you’re bound to find a few titles that’ll draw you inside.

Those looking for buzz today might want to start with “Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench,” a black- and-white musical romance that could become this year’s “Once,” and “Outrage,” an already-controversial documentary about homophobic politicians who just happen to be gay.

As for crowd-pleasers, “The Swimsuit Issue,” a Swedish comedy about an aging synchronized swim team, is likely to draw some laughs, as is the blaxploitation spoof “Black Dynamite,” which proved especially popular with audiences at Sundance earlier this year.

If you really want to stay outdoors, head to the World Financial Center Plaza by dusk tonight for a free “drive-in” screening of “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” (Seats open at 6 p.m., so get there early if you want to stake out a good spot.)

Tomorrow’s highlights are led by the delicate mumblecore tale “The Exploding Girl,” starring Zoe Kazan as an emotionally adrift student who returns home to New York for a dangerously stressful college break.

But if you’re hoping to include the whole family, consider “Racing Dreams,” a terrific doc about three young go-kart champions – one a tween girl – aiming for NASCAR greatness.

Ballet buffs won’t want to miss Sunday’s “Only When I Dance,” the chronicle of two impoverished Brazilian teens hoping to find a better life through dance. And budding cinephiles will enjoy “Downtown Youth Behind the Camera,” which presents the short films of local school kids.

Perhaps afterward, they’ll be inspired to head back outside, with their own camera in hand. The Tribeca Film Festival runs to May 3. Schedules, tickets and venue directions are available at www.tribecafilm.com. Keep in mind that every sold-out event will have a wait line, to be granted admittance – based on availability – prior to showtime.

Friday, April 24th 2009, 4:00 AM

NEW YORK POST

“Putting go-karters before the course” by kyle smith

Real-life grade-school Ricky Bobbys — they wanna go fast — are the winsome stars of the documentary “Racing Dreams,” which is to speed demons what the spelling-bee doc “Spellbound” was to word mavens.

The film follows the exploits of three adolescents driving top-of-the-line go-karts in the World Karting Association racing circuit — the NASCAR training ground where wicked machines do 60 mph.

Thirteen-year-old Brandon Warren is a natural, but he has a wild streak — and his father is in and out of prison. Josh Hobson, 12, is a sweet lad from Michigan whose family can’t handle the enormous equipment bills. Annabeth Barnes, 11, who slips Brandon her phone number by sticking it on the bottom of the racing trophy, has special worries (she can’t be caught dead wearing her racing shoes to school; also, the helmet messes up her hair). But she also has the best shot at making it to the big leagues because of a NASCAR diversity program.

Marshall Curry’s film is rich in humor and heartbreak, wryly observant (there is a Karting for Christ service at one race) yet free from snark. Make a pit stop to see it.

ESPN

“A sports (note)book of dreams” by Jeff MacGregor

A very big American weekend for movies and dreams. Nothing unusual there; the movies have always had a reciprocal relationship with our dreams, each informing the other from the very earliest days of the medium. From George Méliès to Freddy Krueger, and from “Dreamscape” to “Hamlet” and “What Dreams May Come,” movies are the conscious reflection of our collective dream life.

Sports are too, of course.

So the terrific new documentary “Racing Dreams” succeeds not just as a snapshot of sporting life in 21st-century America, but as a trackside dream notebook and Rorschach blot.

The story of three tweens and their NASCAR ambitions, it is a straightforward and unsentimental survey of go-kart hotshoes and young love, of money and sweetness and bad fathers, of broken hearts and soured futures.

Wherever you are, please find it. Already in limited release, it opens this week in Los Angeles.

I’m a sucker for NASCAR, of course, and for racers and racing generally. So I’m not surprised to see NASCAR on the verge of revamping its championship system again. “The Chase,” with its late-season points reset, has never made any sense except as a marketing gimmick. The tour needs to go back to the old Paleolithic system of points won across the grind of an entire season.

I see, too, that they’re trying to phony up some sort of statistics now for the teams and the cars and the drivers. “Quality Passes” is a statistic? Really?

What NASCAR sells is heroes. Folklore. Dreams

NEWSDAY

“Tribeca Film Festival Mini-Review No. 8” by neil best

The final Tribeca/ESPN movie I screened was this documentary about three stars of the go-kart circuit – ages 11 to 13 – who aspire to NASCAR while testing their families’ budgets and dedication.

What makes it work is the personalities of the racers – two boys and a girl – as they navigate the sharp turns of racing and of growing up.

The film won the festival’s award for Best Feature Documentary.

Director Marshall Curry was nominated for an Oscar for his 2005 “Street Fight,” and some insiders believe this work has a chance, too.

First step: Securing a distribution deal so you actually can see it.

on May 3, 2009 11:11 AM

FILMMAKER MAGAZINE

“TRIBECA: ENTRE NOS, DEVIL, DAZZLE & RACING DREAMS” by Jason Guerrasio

At the midway point of the Tribeca Film Festival most covering it are walking around with a look of relief as this year’s slate of a tolerable 85 films has made it a less strenuous undertaking to get a good grasp of what the fest has to offer (and it’s nice to step in an air conditioned theater during this heatwave). Here are four titles that have stuck out for me.

Racing Dreams

Another filmmaker returning for a second time, Marshall Curry comes back after winning the Audience Award for his Oscar nominated doc debut Street Fight in 2005. Probably the most sellable film I’ve seen so far, Curry’s Racing Dreams is Hoop Dreams for Nascar fans. Looking at the lives of three teenagers who race go-carts (basically the Little League of Nascar), Curry highlight the kids and their parents as they race five times over the course of a few months to declare a national champion of the World Karting Association’s National Pavement Series. Curry captures the intensity of racing in the small carts, making 80 mph look like they’re going 200. But like most docs that highlight something competitive, it’s the human interest story of the subjects off the track that is the most compelling. Curry finds remarkable kids to follow, all with interesting backstories and personal issues that they can escape from when they get on that track.

4/28/2009 10:50:00 PM

MOVIELINE

Review by S.T. VanAirsdale

THE UNDERDOG: I can’t really put my thoughts about the kart-racing documentary Racing Dreams any better than Michelle put her own in this week’s review: “The difference between [director Marshall] Curry and an impatient roomful of critics is that he took several years out of his life to reckon with those ideas, and the result is a spectacularly rich, fully realized portrait of youth on the point of adolescence, and ambition in the face of desperate odds. At the end of the film’s 93 minutes Curry could have invited me to a frog-sexing competition and I’d have happily signed on.” In other words: Don’t let the “NASCAR Little League” subject matter scare off the auto-sports-o-phobe in you. This is just great storytelling about three cool kids who drive really, really fast — period. It deserves to be seen.

“Youth Zooms by in Spectacularly Rich Racing Dreams” by Michelle Orange

A lot of hyperbole gets jacked up and spun around in the opening scenes of Racing Dreams, Marshall Curry’s wonderful and wonderfully surprising documentary about the junior NASCAR set. Three youngsters, we are informed in the hammy voice-over that accompanies a rock-and-roll montage of candy-colored cars streaking around a track, are about to embark on the year that will determine whether they’ve “got what it takes” to “make it” as race-car drivers. To “go the distance,” if you will. Vrrrrrrooooozzzzzzzz.

As an opener it has all the flavor and freshness of an ESPN interstitial, and the New York screening audience I saw the film with deflated accordingly. When one of its young subjects, a comically sober 11-year-old named Josh Hobson, declared that being a NASCAR driver is “the greatest job you could ever have,” a buzz of condescension further thickened the atmosphere. Marshall Curry, the Oscar-nominated director of Street Fight, also had some East Coast ideas about the sport, the first being: a sport, you say?

The difference between Curry and an impatient roomful of critics is that he took several years out of his life to reckon with those ideas, and the result is a spectacularly rich, fully realized portrait of youth on the point of adolescence, and ambition in the face of desperate odds. At the end of the film’s 93 minutes Curry could have invited me to a frog-sexing competition and I’d have happily signed on.

In addition to Josh Hobson, Curry follows Annabeth Barnes, a rangy 11-year-old and the rare female aspiring driver, and Brandon Warren, a 13-year-old pocket McQueen with a tough home life and a need for speed. You may not have known that a Little League for race-car drivers exists; you will probably also not find that to be a happy idea. Curry’s biggest challenge — tied to that corny, amped-up opening — is negotiating the whoa, cool factor constructed around the image of pre-teens racing vehicles at speeds of up to 80 miles an hour. Although there is one crash, no one was seriously hurt during filming (that we know of), but the recklessness of the enterprise is chalked up to the culture surrounding it; hop on or wuss out. If nothing else the racing scenes — which look terrific, crisp and colorful, like the rest of the film — will help the childless get in touch with their inner hysterical mother.

The title is surely a nod to the seminal Hoop Dreams, and Curry adopts a compressed version of that film’s format as well. He develops some of the class and personal issues shaping each child’s quest to transition into stock cars at the age of 12. (Which is apparently legal; who knew?) Unlike basketball hopefuls, NASCAR wanna-bes have no scholarships to support them — they seek to score sponsors, a pursuit Josh cottoned to early on. It’s a little eerie to watch him gladhand after winning a race, dutifully thanking his kart’s manufacturer and offering his co-racers a hearty “Good job!” in the same tones of the announcer in his favorite NASCAR video game.

Brandon is looser and far more antic. “Do you think that girl is pretty?” he asks Josh at one of the races where these disparately located kids develop a rapport. He is referring to Annabeth, but he’s sniffing at the wrong tires. “I don’t know. She’s a good driver, though,” Josh replies, driving to the heart of this moment in his life, and his lack of interest in absolutely anything that does not involve racing. A shot of his face almost trembling with pleasure and wonder as he revs the engine of a prospective stock car (his dreams are costing his parents dearly, thousands of dollars a race) suggests just how many impulses this 4’10” phenom is sublimating into the urge to race and to win.

Brandon does think she’s pretty, in case you wanted to pass it on, and Curry’s attention — alert and intimate without feeling intrusive; outside of the opening voice-over and subsequent race announcing there is no narration — to the puppy love that takes hold between them is one of several personal and deeply poignant threads that he uses to complicate and enrich a familiar and increasingly rigid structure. Brandon’s relationship with his family — particularly an ex-con father who drifts in and out — and Annabeth’s flagging interest in giving up sleepover weekends for yet another race dramatize but also humanize the lead-up to the moment that will supposedly make or break their careers. They all speak openly about racing as a form of escape, and there’s something both precisely right and terribly melancholy about a child using the language adults tend to attach to their dysfunctions. It’s a peculiarly American phenomenon, this pressure to set your winning course in life before you have even put away your toys, and while Curry doesn’t seem as aware of that oddity as I would have liked, he’s aware enough.

Slick without feeling over-determined, Racing Dreams evokes — just as, oddly enough, Toy Story 3 does — the more general feeling of childhood on the precipice. I still don’t think being a NASCAR driver is the greatest job in the world; I can’t even say that I developed a new perspective on racing, or became gravely invested in the outcome of each race. I came to care about those kids, though, very much indeed. I wanted whatever dreams they had — whether they involved first-place trophies or first kisses — to come as true as they possibly could.

TIME OUT NEW YORK

“Three tweens with dreams of go-karting glory” by Eric Hynes

No longer just a weekend amusement, go-karting has become the Little League of NASCAR driving, complete with nifty jumpsuits and pro techniques. Marshall Curry’s sleek documentary captures the second-hand thrill of watching tweens hurtle at 70 mph around a blacktop, as it follows three potential superkarters over the course of a single season. There’s polished, precocious 12-year-old Josh Hobson, a Jeff Gordon wanna-be who pursues sponsors as enthusiastically as he laps competitors; 11-year-old Annabeth Barnes, a third-generation racer toggling between girlhood and trailblazing adult ambitions; and 13-year-old Brandon Warren, a scrappy, danger-courting champion whose emergence from a broken home makes him the bleeding heart of the film.

These young racers aren’t the only ones with a need for speed: Curry and his team of editors keep things moving at a breakneck pace, and the more the movie methodically rotates through its story lines, the less it settles into a spontaneous, lifelike rhythm. Yet poised between childhood and adolescence, arrogance and insecurity, the kids still make for compelling subjects. All three visibly mature during the course of the shoot, yet it’s Warren’s journey—strong enough to sustain its own film—that overshadows the others’ concerns over which starter stock car to buy. Abandoned by his troubled dad and roiling with confusion, this underage Dale Earnhardt makes each upcoming race feel both irrelevant and utterly essential.

BLOOMBERG NEWS

“NASCAR Dreamers” by Rick Warner

Josh Hobson, Brandon Warren and Annabeth Barnes are kids with the same dream — to become professional stock-car drivers on the prestigious Nascar circuit.

“Racing Dreams,” a spirited, candid documentary by Oscar nominee Marshall Curry (“Street Fight”), follows the trio for a year as they compete in the World Karting Association’s national series — the equivalent of Little League for race-car drivers.

Driving karts (they’re no longer called go-karts) that look like toy versions of open-wheeled race cars, they dash around oval tracks at more than 70 miles per hour. It’s an expensive hobby that requires great dedication from the youngsters and their families, who travel around the U.S. seeking top-flight competition.

The three drivers, who ranged in age from 11 to 13 when the movie was shot, come from divergent backgrounds and have contrasting personalities.

Hot Temper

Josh is a soft-spoken honors student from Michigan who hones his PR skills by watching interviews of top Nascar drivers. Brandon, raised by his grandparents in rural North Carolina while his father is in and out of prison, is a hot- tempered daredevil who was once disqualified from a race for reckless driving. Annabeth, a fellow North Carolinian, is a tall, fun-loving girl who wants to be the first female driver to win the Daytona 500.

Curry’s fly-on-the-wall direction gives us an unfiltered look into their lives, including painful moments like Brandon’s reunion with his dad. The kids are so refreshingly open about their fears and hopes, it’s hard not to root for them.

NEW YORK TIMES - WHEELS BLOG

“Nascar Hopefuls Live Out Dreams on Film” by Richard S. Chang

The three young stars of “Racing Dreams,” a documentary on go-kart racing, were in Manhattan on Saturday for the movie’s premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival.

For Annabeth Barnes of Hiddenite, N.C., Joshua Hobson of Birch Run, Mich. and Brandon Warren of Creedmore, N.C., it was their first visit to New York City. Annabeth is 14, Joshua is 15 and Brandon is 16. During their whirlwind trip, they visited Central Park and stayed up late. They also spent part of their Saturday in a public relations office above Times Square doing a press junket for the film festival — another first.

“Racing Dreams” follows the three young drivers — each aspires to reach Nascar — for a year as they raced for the 2006 World Karting Association National Championship. The press release for “Racing Dreams,” calls go-karting “racing’s version of Little League.” But I think that sells the sport short. I’ve tried go-karts and had my butt handed to me on a platter by kids barely tall enough to ride a roller coaster.

“I wanted in good racers,” said Marshall Curry, the film’s director, who joined the three youngsters for the junket. “But we were more interested in their personalities.”

And their personalities couldn’t be more distinct. Annabeth is quietly enthusiastic, only answering questions directed at her. Joshua has dark, neatly cropped hair and chooses his words carefully, as if he were already a Nascar driver on camera. Brandon is charismatic and full of energy and eager to talk.

Before making the movie, Mr. Curry didn’t know anything about karting or Nascar. The idea came to him when he read an article on the World Karting Association. “I thought that sounded pretty amazing, and one of the things I love about making documentaries is it lets me spend a year or two learning about things I don’t know about,” he was quoted in the movie’s press kit. “So I went to a race to scout it out, and it was better than I imagined.”

Brandon remembers the first time he saw the director. “It was at a kart test, and there’s this guy with shaggy hair behind me,” Brandon said. Mr. Curry approached Brandon, who was with his grandfather, about appearing in the movie. “My grandpa jumps right on it.” Brandon had no idea it was going to take a year of filming. At first he wasn’t comfortable with the camera crew on him all the time. “But it gave me an edge,” he said.

Annabeth laughed at the mention of her first race on camera. It was also her first race on pavement; she grew up racing on dirt tracks. “The first race I sucked,” she said. Joshua was in that race. In fact, he lapped her. “I was so upset,” she said, burying her face in her hands.

The story was told by both parties — Annabeth and Joshua — who were sitting on opposite sides of the conference table. And the story wasn’t over.

“It was Champ Karts,” Annabeth said. She had noticed the film crew following Joshua, who has since moved onto driving stock cars in the ASA Late Model series. “If I beat him,” she recalled saying to herself, “then I’m the bomb.”

Joshua took over telling the story. “In the first race I lapped her,” he said. “But in the last race of the day, I was leading going into the last lap, and she passed me at the finish line.”

Mr. Curry, who had been sitting quietly at the far end of the table, content to let his young stars do the talking, chimed in at that point. “That’s not in the movie,” he said to Annabeth’s feigned disappointment.

“Racing Dreams” is showing on Wednesday, April 29, at AMC Village VII 7 at 7:15 p.m. and Saturday, May 2 at Tribeca Cinemas Theater at 11:30 p.m. Check the Tribeca Film Festival site for tickets.

April 29, 2009, 8:34 AM

A.v. club (milwaukee)

“Milwaukee Film Festival spotlight: Racing Dreams The local film festival opens with the best movie you’ll ever see about go-karting” by Steven Hyden

Racing Dreams screens tonight at 6:30 p.m. at North Shore Cinema in Mequon and 7:30 p.m. at Oriental Theatre in Milwaukee. The film’s three young stars, their parents, director Marshall Curry, and producer Jack Turner will be at both screenings.

Marshall Curry’s excellent documentary Racing Dreams might’ve been funnier—though not nearly as good—if a less sensitive filmmaker had made it. This story about three Middle American tweens competing in the World Karting Association’s National Championship—a training ground for would-be NASCAR drivers—certainly lends itself to cheap laughs if you see it as Days Of Thunder meets Degrassi Junior High. But Racing Dreams, like all first-rate sports movies, is less about who wins and loses than it is about people striving to be the best at what they do in order to transcend the limitations of their lives. So while watching little Dale Earnhardt wannabes whizzing around on go-karts at speeds of up to 80 mph (“with their butts one inch off the ground,” as one racing official observes) is sort of ridiculous (as well as totally awesome), Curry’s focus on the divergent family lives of these young competitors positions Racing Dreams as Hoop Dreams on tiny wheels.

If Racing Dreams treats go-karting with the kind of seriousness normally reserved for health care reform or foreign policy, it’s only because adolescent obsessions often end up charting the course of a person’s life. It’s hard to overstate how lucky Curry was to find such dynamic subjects who could articulate this so well. There’s Josh, a highly decorated go-kart champion who’s already a master of the cliché-heavy post-race interview and is now looking to woo corporate sponsors so he can start training in a full-size stockcar. There’s Annabeth, a girly-girl at school and a monster on the track who’s starting to have second thoughts about whether being the next Danica Patrick is worth missing out on hanging out with her friends. And then there’s Brandon, the film’s most heartbreaking character, a talented hothead whose seemingly stable home life with his grandparents turns upside down when his absentee, ex-con father decides to move in.

As Josh, Brandon, and Annabeth travel around the country and work their way up the WKA standings, the competition gradually takes a backseat to real life and the bittersweet business of growing up. When young love blossoms between Annabeth and Brandon, Curry scores a lovely montage of the couple’s playful flirtations to Ryan Adams’ “My Winding Wheel,” resulting in one of the best romantic movie scenes in years.

It’s sad that there aren’t more scenes in Racing Dreams of kids being kids—while the parents are uniformly decent, hard-working people who are willing to support their children’s dreams to the point of financial insolvency, you never get the sense that racing go-karts is, you know, fun. The surprisingly thrilling racing scenes might make you wish you were still 12 years old, but the clear-eyed depiction of kids forced to become miniature grown-ups before they even enter puberty will send you scurrying back to the relative ease of adulthood.
Grade: A-