Director Nick Hamm's battle for DeLorean biopic
Belfast-born film director Nick Hamm tells Kaleem Aftab about his battle to make a biopic about John Z DeLorean, inventor of the most iconic vehicle in movie history
When Doc Brown turned a stainless steel DeLorean DMC-12 into a time machine in Back To The Future, he made it the most famous car in film.
Earlier this year, Steven Spielberg celebrated the gorgeous vehicle with winged doors in his ode to movie memorabilia Ready Player One, and now a new film, Driven, takes a look at the man who lent his name to the iconic creation, and discovers a beast.
The remarkable story of John Zachary DeLorean — in many ways the Elon Musk of his day — is recounted in Belfast-born director Nick Hamm’s comedy drama, starring Lee Pace as DeLorean and Jason Sudekis as FBI snitch Jim Hoffman, who aided and abetted the car designer in a multimillion-dollar drug-smuggling operation.
It’s this episode that Hamm (60) focuses on in the film, but he could have chosen from many more — DeLorean’s deal with the Labour government in the 1970s to build a plant in Belfast, designing the all-time classic Pontiac GTO, or a biopic that was just about DeLorean’s ego.
“He’s one of the first CEOs that put himself as the product,” says Hamm. “He cultivated an image that was, ‘I’m sexy, I date models and you can own the car that I drive’.”
What could possibly go wrong? Well, it might have helped if he had built a car that wasn’t so terrible to drive and kept on breaking down, because they used cheap parts.
The film posits that, when his dream car company was about to go bust, DeLorean saw dealing cocaine as his way to save the day.
“I would say there is an honest guy that loves cars,” says Hamm about his depiction of DeLorean.
“He was so deluded. Was he crazy enough to think that he was going to save a car company by making a cocaine deal? Or was he trying to line his own pockets? I don’t know. That’s why I leave it ambiguous in the movie.”
Hamm was born in Belfast in December 1957 to parents Patrick and Marian Hamm. He attended the University of Manchester, graduating with a BA in English and philosophy, before beginning his acting career on the London fringe.
He went on to become resident director at the Royal Shakespeare Company, where he focused on working with contemporary playwrights, including Howard Barker, Edward Bond and Arthur Miller.
He moved into cinema in 1989, directing The Bottom Line, a documentary about the crisis of culture, featuring Dustin Hoffman, and later worked with actors Edward Fox, Robert De Niro and Keira Knightley.
In 2011, he directed Killing Bono, starring Ben Barnes and Robert Sheehan as two brothers struggling to forge a path in the 1980s’ Irish music scene in the shadow of their now-famous schoolfriends, U2.
But Hamm is probably bestknown for directing The Journey (2015), which dramatised the remarkable relationship between Ian Paisley, as First Minister, and Martin McGuinness, as Deputy First Minister.
The friendship between the erstwhile diehard political rivals, played by Timothy Spall (Paisley) and Colm Meaney (McGuinness), became so close they were dubbed ‘the Chuckle Brothers’.
It was DeLorean’s incredible risk-taking and deal-making that first brought the Detroit-born engineer to Hamm’s attention.
“I’m not a car enthusiast,” says the director. “I knew who DeLorean was, because I grew up in Northern Ireland and I was fascinated by this guy who convinced the-then Labour government in Westminster to build a car factory in one of the worst areas of Belfast.
“Today it would be like putting a factory right in the middle of Beirut. It’s insane.”
It seems insane today, but governments around the world were fighting to get the plant, with west Belfast beating Puer-
to Rico to the punch. Labour offered a huge subsidy on the promise that 2,500 jobs would be created in one of the poorest parts of Northern Ireland.
“Half the workforce was
Catholic and the other half was Protestant,” says director Hamm.
“They didn’t know anything about building cars. They were ship workers. They were building a product aimed at a market that was thousands of miles away.
“There were all sorts of problems and (Margaret) Thatcher was furious.
“When she was elected, she wanted to close it but ran into the problem that it would result in lots of working-class jobs being lost. Money was poured in, something like £120m.”
Hamm left this part of DeLorean’s story out of Driven, because he wanted to tell a more sexy and fun tale about a man who owned an estate in New Jersey that is now a golf course owned by Donald Trump.
The film takes place when DeLorean was living in San Diego in a house he eventually gave to his lawyer as part of his payment for defending him in court.
“If you look back on our favourite movies dealing with that era — American Hustle, Blow, Boogie Nights — there is a spirit and style that I wanted to capture,” says Hamm.
The fun, showy style of those films, aped by Driven, is reminiscent of the lifestyle of DeLorean and his ego.
“It’s hubris — and when you deal with hubris, it becomes fascinating,” says Hamm.
Driven begins with the FBI busting a drug deal linked to DeLorean, in a sting operation designed in conjunction with Hoffman.
DeLorean’s defence relied upon the case being dismissed because of entrapment.
The film takes the position that a friendship developed between Hoffman and DeLorean that would save the car engineer from jail.
“In the end, there is a side to the movie that is a bromance,” explains Hamm.
But would the cocaine deal ever have happened if the DeLorean dream car sold as planned?
Seven thousand were built, and only 1,000 were sold off the production line, as car enthusiasts soon started to criticise the build quality.
Those looking to buy a DeLorean today do so because they want a piece of a classic movie, rather than automobile history.
They want a time machine, rather than a dream car.
❝ Today it would be like putting a factory right in the middle of Beirut. It’s insane