TOMMY BYRNE TALKS ABOUT HIS NEW RACING DOCUMENTARY
DOCUMENTARY ON BLACKROCK RACING DRIVER TOMMY BYRNE IS NOW ON IN CINEMAS, CEMENTING HIS LEGEND
IT’S hard talking about a past that still hurts. It’s even harder when your telling of your own past is harsher on you than your critics. But as Blackrock-born former Formula 1 driver Tommy Byrne says in his last press interview in Ireland this year, that’s just the way he is - he takes full responsibility for his own actions, for his own life, for his own mistakes - but he expects others to do so too.
And his actions, life and mistakes are the subject of a new, critically acclaimed documentary by Sean O’Cualain called Crash and Burn and IMC Cinemas around the country, including Dundalk, are showing it for the rest of the week. When it opened in Dundalk last Thursday, Tommy was there for the sell-out screening, but he didn’t sit down and watch the film. He has barely seen it once. It’s too sad he says.
Because he has ripped the plaster off the past once already. In 2008, Tommy, along with renowned sports writer Mark Hughes, released ‘Crashed and Byrned: The Greatest Racing Driver You Never Saw’. It was the first book about car racing that won the Sports Book of the Year prize and helped Tommy to, for the first time in his life, ‘ own’ his story.
The book was extraordinary - revealing to a whole new audience in the no-holds barred account of Tommy’s life in Dundalk and his rise to become the only racing driver Ayrton Senna ever feared, and how, when he was within touching distance of becoming a F1 driver, it all slipped away from him.
Speaking to the Argus, Tommy explained how, after the release of the award-winning book that took almost ten years to write, he was approached about making a documentary by a number of film-makers. It wasn’t until O’Cualain and his team got in touch that Tommy felt they were the right people to handle his story. ‘I had a good feeling about them when I met them’, he said.
Initially, the film-makers got money from the Irish Film Board for a pilot and straight away, set about, Tommy said, ‘of taking shots of me walking here and there, staring out to see and things’.
More money came through and the team recorded 80 hours of footage, and then were faced with the tough task of cutting it down to 86 minutes. O’Cualain spent a lot of time with Tommy, talking to him about his past, his family, many of whom are still based in the Dundalk area.
‘It was hard for me to go back (in time)’, he said. ‘And it was hard for me to watch. I didn’t like the first draft of the film at all; I didn’t like the sadness in it. They did do 11 drafts of the original, but didn’t change a whole lot.
‘But I think what they have done is good, though I don’t watch it any more’.
The documentary was supposed to be shown on RTE and BBC4, but distributor Patrick O’Neill found out about it and wanted to get it into cinemas. The film makers were delighted and Tommy is now coming to the end of a 20-day visit to Ireland and England where he reckons he did around 35 interviews. The Argus was the final port of call ahead of his return to his home in Ohio, where he runs a driving school.
In the past 20 days, he has visited a number of cinemas, including Dundalk, where he did question and answer sessions, but didn’t watch the film. ‘I can honestly answer anything they throw at me’. And despite his reticence at watching himself on the big screen, he’s glad now that his story is out there, rather than people having to rely on what others say about him. ‘I was hearing all these stories about myself and many were not true. Some of the things they were saying weren’t as bad as they really were!’
He will be back in Ohio before the end of the week, teaching defensive driving, taking corporate types around the track, teaching young would-be racers how to make the car work for them. His other passion now is mountain-biking, his regret is that he only took it up ten years ago. But he’s giving it everything, pulling bikes apart, learning how to go faster. At 58, he shows now signs of slowing down. ‘Crash and Burn’ is on now at the IMC Dundalk.