Open-wheel Leaders Stung by Success of Movie Talladega Nights

Continuing note: Once again, everything below is made up

Indy Racing League officials Monday said they were stunned at the success of the NACAR-focused comedy Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby and revealed they had scrapped a similar movie revolving around open-wheel racing months ago.

The open-wheel version was to be called Sparta Afternoons: the Legend of Wilbur Fitzhue and focus on a 5' 4", 121-pound Kentucky farm boy who defies the odds and overcomes obstacles in order to race with the Indy Racing League at Kentucky Speedway in Sparta, KY.

"We were working on a script for a movie that would have been remarkably similar to Talladega Nights (which opened on Aug. 4 and made $47 million in two days) probably a year ago, but we had to scrap it. We just couldn't make it work," said an IRL insider who asked not to be named. The insider said film producers even had some preliminary talks with IRL Rookie of the Year Sensation Danica Patrick (5' 1", 100 pounds) to play herself in the film.

The insider said the film was plagued by trouble from the outset. Some on the project were still gun shy after the last major open-wheel racing film, the disastrous 2001 debacle Driven starring Sylvester Stallone.

The project was also plagued with anality, like a faction insisting that the film spend 20-plus minutes on wing angles and lobbying to make fuel strategy a major plot turning point or using the film to "introduce a wider audience into the subtle beauty of road racing."

But the main sticking point was the inability for the writing committee to suspend its disbelief in when it came to elements crucial to making a film with general appeal.

"For example," the insider said, "When someone suggested that Wilbur go from the farm to the IRL, everyone asked 'Well, where does Wilbur get 1.5 million dollars? Because everyone knows you ain't going from the farm to the IRL without bringing 1.5 million dollars with you. So where does he get it?' We got into a whole big thing. Every time I suggested that Wilbur gets there based on his talent alone, the room just burst into laughter for upwards of 20 minutes. Same deal when it came to having him race an unsponsored car at Kentucky. Nobody could even imagine that could happen, even in fiction."

The insider said the original idea was to have the final race scenes be at the Indy 500, but nobody could suppose, even hypothetically, even after multiple beers, that someone could run the 500 without a sponsor and/or a check for $1.5 million. So the final location was changed to Kentucky just to try and salvage the concept.

"In the end, it was a dead deal," the insider said. "I knew it was over when someone suggested Danica play a hoty cocktail waitress who longs to drive Indy Cars and said maybe she saved her tips for seven years to get a ride. At that point I just started drinking heavily."

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