Making a Spectacle
A movie about the first Indy 500 gets the green flag.
By Mark Dubec
After bouncing around Austin, Chicago, and Los Angeles working on music videos and film production, local filmmaker Justin Escue, a graduate of both IU and Ball State, has returned to Indianapolis to finish his next big project: a film based on the events and people of the first Indianapolis 500 in 1911. With a script written by Angelo Pizzo of
Hoosiers (1986) and
Rudy (1993) fame, the movie introduces real-life characters such as visionary Carl Fisher and his drive to put on an auto race in an era when most people had never even seen a car, let alone witness one fly by at speeds in excess of 80 miles an hour. Slated for release in May 2011, the project is already getting some buzz in industry rags
Variety and the
Hollywood Reporter, but Escue has plans to make the movie (considered the final piece in Pizzo’s trilogy of Indiana sports films) something of a hometown project. “We are currently negotiating a land-use deal for a site north of Indianapolis,” Escue says. Renowned track architect Paxton Waters has been brought on to help design and build a scale replica of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway as it was from 1909 to 1911. As for those old-timey crowd scenes, Escue plans to tap into Indiana’s central-casting stockpile. “There will be plenty of opportunity for extras to participate.”
