Wednesday, November 14, 2018

It probably is no surprise that Steve McQueen liked Meyers Manx, not if you recall the Thomas Crown Affair dune buggy scene, or if you recall him driving the Hurst Baja Boot. I am surprised to learn McQueen owned this Manx though, and that it hasn't come out of obscurity before now


it was meant to be a stunt car for a movie McQueen had in pre-production that was set to be one of the biggest films ever made called “Yucatan,” which had a role that was perfect for it.

 It was an action adventure about a marine salvage expert enlisted to search for treasure hidden at the bottom of deep wells in an ancient Mexican ruin.

 It also included chase scene in it with a dune buggies and dirt bikes

Unfortunately, after the financial failure of McQueen’s labor of love film “Le Mans” about the 24-hour race, the “Yucatan” project collapsed. The roughly 1,700 pages of notes and storyboards his development team created for it over a two-year period from 1969 to 1970, were bound into leather books and put into a chest and stored away


they were uncovered years after his death, in the 1990s, by his son Chad, who would love to sell them, and the movie rights, to anyone. After all... there isn't much left for Chad to sell of his dad's stuff.

These 16 leather-bound notebooks are full of drawings, photographs from period magazines, and a detailed script continuity — a screenplay without dialogue — written in a kind of hyper-stylized poetry. These materials were his plans for "Yucatan," the vanity project he yearned, but failed, to make.

Picture an archaeologist from the Museum of London who enlists a renegade Navy diver, (Steve McQueen) who works for the oil companies and races motorcycles in a plan to explore the caves in the Yucatan jungle that reveal underground lakes. The movie would have the diver looking to prove the rumor that Mayan priests sacrificed virgins covered in gold and precious jewels, a fortune rumored to still adorn their skeletons at the bottom of these sacred wells.

The writing includes a motorcycle chase that McQueen planned as the most elaborate ever committed to film, in the grand style that Hollywood in the late 1960s was loving to get on film. In William F. Nolan's biography "McQueen," the actor describes the film as follows: "Our story will center on a guy who takes his cycle into the Mexican wilds on a personal treasure hunt. Naturally, I'll play the guy on the cycle."

So, a heist film and adventure epic, along with some ancient history thrown in for good measure.

The trunks sat in the basement of a house in Trancas Canyon in Malibu, Calif., until they were unearthed by McQueen's son, Chad,  in 1996. (22 years, no one wants to buy the books for the asking price, nor make the movie)

https://www.foxnews.com/auto/exclusive-steve-mcqueen-linked-dune-buggy-may-be-a-stunt-car-from-his-unfinished-epic-film-yucatan
https://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/14/movies/14cull.html

3 comments:

  1. Everytime you post a FOX link, I get access denied.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I do on my laptop too... but not the computer at work. Computers are weird like that. I can get there the long slow way, by https://www.foxnews.com/ then add auto, then go down page after page... I suspect they have a block to direct links, as that prevents you from seeing the obligatory pop up ads.
      They're trying to make money, I'm not. So.... no pop ups from me!

      Delete
  2. cant believe some studio hasnt bought this,

    hollywood has totally run out of ideas, based on the fact that half the TV shows and movies are reboots, remakes etc.

    ReplyDelete