By Michael F. Carmichael
Jan. 19, 2012
Cars in movies have been around since, well, since there were movies and cars. Whether it was a damsel in distress in a Model T stuck on the tracks in front of an oncoming iron horse or James Bond in an armed Aston Martin, the two seem to have been inseparable. The coming of television only added additional relationships. And then there are commercials – and music videos.
Sometimes the car is the star and its human plays a secondary role; usually, though, it’s the other way around. Either way, those cars have to find their way into movies and television programs, commercials and music videos with a little help from people like Gino Lucci of Picture Cars East.
Lucci is in New York, where his company started back in 1974. It’s also where he provided the five flaming cars in Lady Gaga’s latest music video “Marry the Night” [caution: if you’ve not seen this video on YouTube be aware that it is ‘out there’]. “We actually burned – and in all the years I’ve done this I’ve never done anything quite like it – five cars that burned so long that at the end of the night you could not tell they were cars. Everything that could possibly burn, burned,” Lucci exclaims.
| Lady Gaga’s latest music video “Marry the Night” also stars five flaming cars supplied by Gino Lucci’s Picture Cars East. |
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In his 37 years, Lucci has been involved with “close to 1,600 major films. And probably in excess of 10,000 commercials. We need to work in order to keep 20 families going.” Those 20 families belong to his mixed bag of employees who do everything involved with modifying motor vehicles for use in production scenes, from making cars larger – or smaller – to making them safe for stunt drivers to providing accurate law enforcement graphics.
It started for Lucci when he was running a small auto repair shop while attending college. Then Hollywood called – or at least the East Coast version. “I had a 1940 Ford convertible that had maybe five different colors of paint on it. Someone came by and asked if I would use it in a movie. It was called ‘Bell Jar’ and my car supposedly belonged to a college student who couldn’t afford anything better than it.” Lucci drove his car to the set but, “they didn’t shoot it until the fourth day. So while I was hanging around I struck up a relationship with the stunt coordinator. I was really interested in what he did.”
A while later Lucci got a call from his new friend. “He asked if I would be interested in preparing some cars for a movie. He said they were going to crash these cars and needed to install the NASCAR-type roll cages inside to protect the occupants. I said sure, I’ve done that before [by then Lucci had become involved in racing] and about six months went by and I did get a call. We had a meeting in Manhattan and they gave me the order to go out and purchase the vehicles.”
The “movie” turned out to be an in-house production for AT&T executives about the dangers of drinking and driving. “They did a vignette about the cars – the husband arguing with his wife in one, the three executives feeling really good in another and so on – and they all meet at this intersection and they crash. Pretty violently. Cars going over upside down, head-on, sideways – we basically destroyed the four cars. The job went really well.”