Piece of history
Film highlights Buffalo’s lead role in Great Race
“T he Greatest Auto Race on Earth” isn’t really a docudrama, according to director and producer Michael Hamm.
Hamm describes the film as a “documentary with reenactments.” It will see its first screening worldwide in Springville’s Joylan Theater (11 W. Main St.) at 12:15 p. m. Sunday.
“If it were a docudrama, we would have been putting words in people’s mouths,” Hamm said. “Anything people said in the film were the real words.”
The reason, he said, is that every word is taken from books and records of the 1908 New York City to Paris race. The race, which went to Alaska and eventually through Siberia, was won by a Buffalo-made Thomas Flyer, driven by Buffalonian George Schuster, accompanied by Buffalonian George Miller.
The screening is part of the race’s centennial celebration in Buffalo (where there will be a dinner gala at the Buffalo Transportation Pierce Arrow Museum tonight). It continues with a festival in Springville, where Schuster lived most of the rest of his life.
The film stars a pair of Edmonton actors, Stewart Burdett (Schuster) and Mark Stubbings (Miller), as the Buffalonians. It was filmed in Alberta, although Hamm made a pair of scouting trips to upstate New York to make sure his locales matched.
The film was seven years in the making, Hamm said, with great detail going into re-creating the cars, such as the Flyer and the German Protos.
But the story, he said, is really more about the human spirit.
“It was a time before the world changed, where these people from all these different countries had a single mission and an esprit de corps,” Hamm said. “And this young country comes along.
“The race captures the essence of America. All that’s good about America is represented in this story— the helping people out, the camaraderie, the passion to succeed. It’s a wonderful human story.”
The film is being shopped to television markets internationally. It already has been picked up for showing on Canada’s Super Channel national satellite and cable station.
For fans who want a highly— very highly— fictionalized account of the race, the centennial will also include a showing of the Tony Curtis comedy “The Great Race” at the Joylan at 3:45 p. m. Saturday.•
