Steve McQueen's FIM license

I found this great photograph of Steve McQueen's FIM license along with a horde of photographic treasures at: http://themotart.blogspot.com/

Just another GTO

Once upon a time, I received a call from an acquaintance Mario Tosi. He and I both owned Ferrari GTOs and used them as daily transportation. His had been for sale and I came close to buying it before finally purchasing 3987. Mario was calling to say that he had found a buyer for his car and wanted to say goodbye to the car by organizing a track day at Willow Springs Raceway. Would I like to come along, he wanted to know. Indeed I would! Some of what went on that day is documented in this footage filmed by Peter Helm to which I added a narration: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Md_jcC6OnIU

A day or so after this very special event, I found myself having dinner on the Sunset Strip with Matthew Ettinger who owned the Ferrari Breadvan at the time. Leaving the restaurant, we climbed into the GTO and accelerated away enjoying the sound of the engine with its timing chains and intake suction noises and the deep throated sound of the exhaust as it bounced off Nicky Blair's facade. And then suddenly, the GTO made a sharp left turn without any input to the steering wheel. I stopped in the middle of Sunset Boulevard to take stock of the situation. Had I turned the wheel? No. Did we turn left? Yes. I started off again a little more gingerly and made a straight course until WHAM--we turned left again. Clearly the ZF limited slip differential was not happy about something!

Carefully and slowly, we made our way to Peter Helm's apartment just off the Strip. He wasn't home--when was he ever?--so I parked the GTO in his garage and Matthew and I found our way home in separate taxis that night.

Friend and fellow Ferrari enthusiast John Andrews volunteered his garage and skills in dismantling the GTO's rear end. It took some doing but we got it apart and inspected the large crack in the unit which needed to be replaced rather than repaired. This prompted a call to the factory in Maranello. The operator there said no one would be able to help me until after the strike was over. Thoughts of weeks and months waiting for the strike to end passed through my mind. Somewhat hopelessly, I asked, "When might the strike end?" as if she would know. In fact, she did know. "The strike will be over in an hour," she informed me. They do things differently in Italy.

When the two hour strike had concluded, I got through to someone who informed me that I needed to call ZF in Germany as there was no part number on the unit that I could cite. My next call to ZF in Germany confirmed that there was no part number on the unit because there was no such part (!!). ZF merely shipped a solid billet of steel to Ferrari and it was they who machined the part into existence. Another call to Maranello confirmed that they were out on strike again for an hour or so. In between strikes, I was finally advised to contact Luigi Chinetti, Ferrari's U.S. distributor and proprietor of the North American Racing Team. He would know what to do about a broken ZF unit.

The people at Chinetti were extremely helpful and directed me to a machine shop in Greenwich, Connecticut, as I recall, where a replacement was made using the original as a model. To reinstall the part, the GTO was moved to Matthew Ettinger's garage which it shared with the Breadvan--a great garage duo!

It took a couple of long evenings, but Matthew and I installed the limited slip, reassembled the rear end and buttoned everything up. A long job but worth the effort and we were more than ready for a test drive to enjoy the fruits of our labors.

The GTO had been backed into the garage so as Matthew opened the garage door, I started the engine and moved the gearshift into the dog-legged first gear. Matthew waved me out, I engaged the clutch and--the GTO went backwards!

Having installed the unit the wrong way around, I found myself the proud owner of the world's only Ferrari GTO with five speeds in reverse and one forward. We should have gone to a local bar and made some bets. Instead, we gave up and corrected the situation the following day and 3987 became, once again, just another GTO.

Look Into Darkness

In writing about Languid Visions of the Mind's Eye, I noted that my offer to the actress in question was that I would interview her in our first taping and she would interview me as the author in our second taping. So it was that we went into the studio about two weeks after we taped her episode to do the Sean Miles (Interview) segment. The character I created to play was a former L.A.P.D. homicide detective who had retired amidst some controversy. He had been part of a task force that dealt with serial killers. His book, Look Into Darkness, was his recounting of his term of leadership on the task force, its impressive abatement statistics and an answer to critics' accusations about its methods and procedures.

Sean looked like anything other than a homicide detective and was well into a reflective part of his life at the time of the interview. He was a character who was resolved but playing in pain. He had seen too much and, by his estimation, had accomplished too little. Many of the cases he investigated advanced quickly until an arrest seemed imminent and the scent would grow cold. Arrest statistics began to trail off yet the killings stopped. This trend raised certain questions amongst critics and watchdog agencies. The underlying implication was very dark and nothing Sean offered into the record provided the clarity his critics were seeking. One could think that Dirty Harry was the inspiration for the character I created though he wasn't. Sean was a composite of people I met subsequent to the kidnapping of my girlfriend in the 70s by two members of the New World Liberation Front (NWLF), which was loosely linked to the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA). In the process, I met some very special people doing a very special job. It all ended well for my girlfriend and me. Not so well for others perhaps.

The Sean Miles interview aired about a month later. I was happy with the result and I'd gone on, in the meantime, to tape at least two more interviews with other actors. I wasn't really prepared for the reaction provoked by Sean Miles. The first was an inquiry from a producer with whom I later became friends and with whom I would go glider flying. She was Pippa Scott. As a young woman she had acted for John Ford in The Searchers and I remembered her well from Richard Lester's Petulia with George C Scott. She was a founding partner of Lorimar Productions, smart as a whip and elegance personified.

There were other developments that took another direction. I was working out in a gym several times a week and it is customary to find others there to spot you and they, in turn, come to you for a spot. One of my new-found spotters whose company I enjoyed was a semi-professional weightlifter. He might have been in entertainment--many were in that gym--but he knew what he was doing and he trusted me. One day, it became obvious that he was ignoring me. He wasn't saying hello let alone asking for spots. This was a radical change in his demeanor and it puzzled me. I approached him and asked what was up. "Man, you turned cop on me! You said you were a writer." He had seen the Sean Miles interview and, like most who watched the show, thought it was real. I explained what it was he had seen and he got the joke immediately. We were friends again.

On my way out of the gym that same day, I was stopped by a young couple. They, too, had seen the show on television and wanted to tell me they supported my (Sean's) handling of crime and wished me the best. At the Raiders game on Sunday, I came under further scrutiny with people pointing me out to their friends and staring. Walking into my favorite pizza joint in Brentwood, someone in a passing car called out, "Hey, Sean!"

It had been but a half-hour of screen time but Sean had made his mark. He drew reactions of all sorts from an extraordinary assortment of people challenging their perceptions and values in the process. Every time the segment aired, I saw a palpable reaction whenever I was in public. I wasn't an actor who had played a notorious character, I was that character in their minds. This phenomenon was to repeat over the years and I would hear stories from many of the actors who appeared on (Interview) about being taken for the characters they had played.

I love making movies but I don't know that any have been as fulfilling as any single segment of (Interview).