A casting call for sexy cars (hybrids need not apply)It is cleaner than a smoking Beetle. Quieter than a roaring Mini. Able to leap through car pool lanes with a single occupant. But the Prius, car du jour among Hollywood insiders, is not looking much like a movie star. Vehicles, both hot (like the fanciful, post-petroleum racers in Speed Racer (released last week), and not (all those Jeep-like things set to bump through the next Indiana Jones two weeks later), have been enjoying an on-screen heyday.Universal Pictures is preparing the fourth movie in its Fast and the Furious series, full of ferocious street racers. The Walt Disney Company’s Pixar unit is at work on a follow-up to Cars and Warner Brothers has been collaborating with Clint Eastwood on Gran Torino setting the Web a-shiver with anticipation of an homage to the Ford car of the 1970s.But Toyota’s slope-nosed, high-rumped Prius—the world’s best-selling hybrid has remained something of a novelty act on the big screen. God drove one, briefly, in Evan Almighty, a comedy that struggled at the box office last summer. Jessica Alba had no luck at all with hers in Good Luck Chuck. A Prius devotee in real life, Alba played a hapless klutz whose silver hybrid had to be jump-started by a red Thunderbird, and nearly electrocuted her rescuer in the process.These days hybrids are seen everywhere on the Hollywood circuit. Even Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corporation owns Fox, drives one (a Lexus). Cars that make a big impression in films can be as clunky as the yellow Volkswagen bus in Little Miss Sunshine or as meaty as Steve McQueen’s 1968 Ford Mustang Fastback in Bullitt. “Any car has a chance” at stardom, said film director F. Gary Gray. To shine in a film, however, Gray said, a car—large or small—must be integral to the plot. In The Italian Job, Gray’s 2003 remake of a 1969 movie that starred Michael Caine, the bandit-heroes led by Mark Wahlberg used a souped-up fleet of Mini Coopers to beat the traffic in Los Angeles and swipe a fortune in gold bars. “The Mini had a purpose, it was a character,” Gray said.The Environmental Media Association, which promotes ecological consciousness in show business, has been urging studios and producers to give the Prius and other hybrids a stronger presence in movies and TV shows.Cameron Diaz, for instance, said in a recent interview on Huffingtonpost.com that her Prius “saves me probably from a lot of tickets,” because it is not as fast as a Porsche.But movie logic often requires that a car—if it is to be more than a casual prop—project something other than sweetness and light.Andre Potten, administrator of the Internet Movie Cars Database, which tracks appearances by vehicles in films, says the most commonly seen movie vehicle appears to be the Ford Crown Victoria, because it plays well as both cop car and taxi. The Mercedes, Renault and Volkswagen are often seen, too. In last year’s hit comedy Superbad, the Prius had a bit part in a street scene. But a Crown Victoria squad car pretty much stole the show with its dying turn, bullet-riddled and in flames. Only three years ago a battered 1963 Volkswagen bug still had enough charisma to command a movie of its own in Herbie Fully Loaded. To date, the Prius’s stand-out role was in The Nines, an independent picture written and directed by John August. Every car in the movie was a Prius, other than a police cruiser. As for his own vehicle of choice, August added: “We’re a two-Prius family. I can’t imagine a nonhybrid again.” -MICHAEL CIEPLY (NYT)
