Tales From Behind The Scenes of Stroker Ace

so um let's talk about one of my favorite movies of all time especially in motorsports uh i think the best well second to last american hero of course with junior johnson but stroke race um you played a significant role in preparing the cars and and putting things together to be able to you know for them to be able to have the resources they needed to be able to make the movie um and uh i guess there was a there was a t-bird that got wrecked um and uh you can tell us about that but i mean where how does that even start how does that conversation even start up so my you know i know you got your shop you're doing anything and everything you know you your jack of all trades you can do it all right a guy needs a body on a car whatever um so how did you get connected with the movie industry to be able to provide all the cars for this movie well i i was doing some work with uh elliot forbes robinson in 82 and it was a car that i had built um from a donor car i i updated a car and we qualified for the race if you check it it looks like we didn't but we we qualified for the race but in the last practice after the last after the last practice but before the race we stuffed that thing in a second turn and scuffed up the right side really bad and somebody came up to me and the people at the six-pack movie were getting ready to do their filming the following week there in atlanta they say we need a car for a crash scene and they hired me to stay over with jury rigged that car where it would run enough they put automatic transmission through it in a little can and the stunt guy squirted the transmission fluid into the fuel line made the car smoke really really bad into the carburetor made it smoke for a bad then he run it up against the wall already been crashed and they just were doing it but they never they never they cut it out of the movie i i don't never even made it i don't think it made them they paid me you know i didn't care but from that i get home and the people from universal studio were calling other people that had been in that movie and just say we're going to have this movie could we get you to be interested well in the kenny rogers movie they paid us by the day some you knew how much money you were getting but the gentleman with universal studios called said no we're not gonna we're not gonna do that he says well here's how you're gonna get paid if you we're going to give you a piece of paper that guarantees somebody 30 seconds exposure in a bert reynolds movie and you can take that contract and sell it for whatever you know whatever whatever you can get out of it that's why nobody else was interested that's that's that's not very good yeah well it requires some ingenuity apparently or some work but i said well have you got anybody so far and they had uh 7-eleven and and in the movie it's called a four-star whiskey i don't know i don't drink so i don't know if yeah if there is a four-star is there i mean i don't know i don't know i don't think that was made up yeah i do too but anyway she says we got some money from the four-star for the four-star whiskey car we got some money for uh from seven to eleven he says you got thirty thousand to start with but i had to have cars i mean i had i had to put cars in them movies so i built i built a lot of cars i had probably four cars in mind only two were really good race cars but we fixed them all up so i got money for all four of those cars and then i leased back some cars from people that i built cars for and painted them up like the movie cars yeah and then they so they'd give me the money so my money came from other people not from universal studios but then they hired me to keep track of the keep to do the maintenance work on the cars and that sort of stuff and if you look in that movie there's this scrawny guy in a green hat you see everyone's smiling they didn't pay him to say nothing oh man they didn't have any lines but uh you'll be forever in uh movie lore because that's what all of the great stories all the pit equipment was mine the proto tool people gave me 10 toolbox tops and two complete tops and bottoms and those two top and bottom sets were completely full of tools oh wow that's cool and uh so the deal was that's what got exposed in the movie so if you see anything in the movie that lids up on the toolboxes and there's a decal it says proto so what what scene can we see you in or the very first scene when he comes in he stands up he gets up on that stand and there's people in front of him when he walks up to be announced or something i'm in a union 76 driver's hat and a hell uh suit and a it's a white hat with a green front or something okay but the the and others i'm in that bar scene but i found that really i was in there but i wasn't in the fight they must have known about me the guy's got a hammer headed somewhere don't get him yeah don't muck what that dude um but that was a hard part for me because you had to act like you were talking to somebody without saying nothing yeah yeah she's like i i found that hard but the best part for me was there was a scene where the johnny hayes from u.s tobacco was supposed to blow an air hose up lonnie anderson's dress yes she's up on pit road trying to watch her husband be introduced in the infield and i'm standing right there our knees are about that far apart he's standing on it and my knees i got one leg up on and all that pit equipment was mine and i think as part of screwing around there i got to hook up with the guy that was doing the the bee crew or something but if they're shooting over here you're over here getting ready to shoot so i'd be helping him do stuff and we set up the pit equipment for that scene the night bef this one particular day and they never got to it so you come in the next morning she gets up there and johnny hayes goes to blow that air up her dress and it just it was the humidity the moisture was in that hole is from being out on it did just wet her from you know ankle the belly button she was just oh my gosh and part of the scene is you're supposed to be able to see her underwear so that that screwed things up for a little bit so she couldn't go back and just dry off and change underwear she had to go back and get that underwear squared away and come back out and they did we've been doing this for three or four weeks by now and she's walking back up pit road there i see a penny on the ground so i pick that penny up and she says hey will what are you doing he says i'm picking up this penny she said why'd you picking it up i said you find a penny with a heads up that's good luck she takes it let me have that penny she took that penny and stuck it down in this side of her brassiere obtained spanish and stuck that penny down inside her and said there's some good luck i still have that penny do you i was going to ask that do you still have it oh my i gave it to my nephew but i know right where it's at yeah the 42 d that's a story did you ever meet bert yeah yeah we had a lot of fun yeah that you know we weren't friends or buddies enough but yeah we hung out i i fixed something on on his tour bus and his got his guy let us come inside we were shooting pool before before that movie started burt reynolds gave me one of his jackets the movie jacket because they changed the name of the movie and the name on the back of the jacket he gave me was the original name so it wasn't anything yeah what was the name stroker ace was the name of the movie but the book was called stand on it yes the book was named i got a book stand on it yeah i got the book in my bus stand on it and if you if you look during that thing that movie the thing that impressed me or that enthused me was he always wore elevator tennis shoes and if you act he doesn't i don't know how to say that i'm not an expert but he was the same sitting here talking as he was acting i mean he just he just talked he didn't like get into character or something i don't know he was burt reynolds all the time he was funny and you know that's pretty cool if you watch if you watch those movies at the end of them there they show takeouts or something you know funny stuff that happened yeah yeah and most of that stuff happened was after they'd shoot that film that day the film would go to california it'd come back the next day and after the filming they'd go in there and look at what they shot the day before and those people just cracked you up you just barely hurt from laughing at the he was just funny he was just funny all right how many months was it that you all worked on that movie uh i think maybe six or seven weeks it wasn't oh it was quick it wasn't it just seems like it would have been so much fun a lot of work i'm sure but still it was in in the movie i do here's some things about your dad we we first go down there and then in that movie the car that looks like the chicken pit car is actually two cars and and the car that the bad guy drive is actually two cars his two cars for the bad guy were my two real race cars some 82 bricks those other two were the two of only five prototype cars made for those 83 thunderbirds so they bring me these two cars and the guys call says you're getting two of these two new thunderbirds and the guys in the truck called on the way and said when we get there we're going to be there about 10 o'clock at night we need to have a fire out in your front yard with four foot flames on it you know i don't know and in hindsight maybe they just wanted they were going to cook hot dogs or something they just wanted this flame outside the yard well they come in these two cars this big truck come down our driveway the cars are in gunny sacks and they you know unzip them and uh fold those stuff up put it back in the truck and they said you put them cars in the shop he says run all your people home then i saw you kept just kind of my shop guy and me and they made us strip everything that would burn out of them two cars and put it in that fire just burn it up they're prototypes they didn't want somebody they didn't want me selling it to somebody or you know taking advantage of it or something so we burn all that up so next in the next thing in the morning here comes this guy from the motor from ford motor caught me just eating my lunch you ain't supposed to be having them cars nobody told me they were going there missing don't you touch them cars i said i said i'm going to have to dig a couple barrels full out of the burn pile [Laughter] i said we burnt that stuff last night and i heard that old phone slammed down he's mad he is mad as he can be he's a advertising guy and some marketing guys gave us the cards or something not me i said you have to talk to universal studios i didn't do nothing with them he's matter and snot he said well this afternoon there's gonna be a guy come down there and you're gonna have to pick him up at the air terminal and go over to the freight terminal and get a box so we do that in that truck that in a little pickup truck this guy comes down and raises the hood of them cars gets up in there loosens the coat takes off his coat loosens his tie puts a shop coat on crawls up in and he took off his electronic fuel injection and put carburetors on him didn't anybody want to see those the injector system sequential field injection on those cars so and he gets all his stuff back up put that box and we send him home and calls the next day this guy's still just mad as he can be but we fix up these two cars because when they're filming we did things four laps at a time and one time one four lap segment the camera would be on the bad guy's car yeah and the next time four four laps of camera would be on the good guy's car and in the second the third time they'd film from the camera truck they had a camera truck to go 50 miles an hour yeah big old truck them camera guys tied a belt to a rope on them handrails on the back of them trucks i was afraid somebody'd run over him if you ever look if you're watching that movie and you're looking in the windshield at burt reynolds that camera truck is towing that race car because the car won't go as fast as a camera charger whoa they had old stock four-cylinder motors and they didn't they didn't the cars did the race cars yeah the the burt reynolds over the bermuda yeah oh they were i was gonna ask what prototypes were these there's 83 thunderbirds real street cars yeah and he you embodied out you put you put roller coasters roll cages quarter panels and fenders and then it made it look like it looked like a race car but they were ruined i mean you couldn't fix them back no nothing but that's what i said so yeah so what happens if we get we get down there to talladega and this guy comes up looking for me says you know where's that will cronkite guy i took off over the trucks and made him find us for a little bit so the stunt guy around noon stunt guy spins one of the new prototype cars and chunks up the left front suspension this all new car there's no sus you can't go to a hardware store and you know or a car dealership and buy any parts but he come up and he again his neck's all red and knotted up and he said you better have that car fixed when we get back from lunch and hal and needham and him hal and bert was standing there and bert just shrugged his shoulders like that when that guy walked off i looked over his shoulders and he had driven the third one of those prototype cars to talladega so i figured out how i was going to fix my car i went out in the parking lot and jacked his car up took all the stuff out from underneath the left front of his car and put it on my race car so you know how happy he was when he came back too that was the third car that i'd screwed up for him yeah but bert said you told him he could do it anyway he had to wow i don't know how he got that car home yeah i couldn't drive it wow doing that filming i was driving one of those cars one of the cars that i'd made for somebody and the stunt guys were having problems driving my two race cars and your dad was down there with bud moore doing tests i'm not quite sure how this was both going on but you know owners don't want drivers to drive somebody else's car i understand that but i went down the bud and i said you know these guys are complaining about my car i said would you let dale drive drive it to see if i'm okay i mean you know you go through all this stuff i've been doing it for 10 to 12 years i kind of thought i was and it was talladega and uh he said yeah so your dad come out he came in he said there's nothing wrong with this car he said what are they talking about and i said they're having a little trouble going into three and uh he says them stunt guys is one of them a tall one the other one is short blonde and he said yeah he said well wait just a little bit and as them guys crawled up walked up on us they got close to us he leaned in front of me a little bit out of the car and he says there's nothing wrong with these cars he says if if you've got guys that can't drive his cars i'll give you my mom's phone number she can drive these cars you know so them guys and what i think and i'm i guess i'll ask and fear and put it what i think i remember him telling him was you don't just jump out of the gas when you're going it says just just maybe trail break a little bit yeah feather out or something but but but they got that fixed but i thought it was your dad your dad's help and then one of them guys said that tall guy said is it true you can see air oh no it was in another conversation they were there and i said i'm having trouble dale i'm cars just jumping all over i'm i'm scaring myself i guess i'm maybe going we're driving it yeah maybe i'm going 180 or something you know i know when the cars are going under 90. i need them going at 170 maybe and the car's just jumping around i'm thinking i'm just scared so i come in put more tape on the top of the wheel adjusted my belts and stuck my elbows in when i did the same thing i said dale man you got to help me i said i'm you know what my you know my car is this car is set up like those other cars you know my background you know what's wrong he said no it just does that he just says the car is just dart and just jump around i mean you're you're confirming that right and i know that's right and he was telling me about the cars react different if you run up against guard rail then if you run against concrete or if you come across the gate it'll upset you and uh and that was when that guy says is it true that you can see error and your dad turns to me and he says well you know what darlington i guess it was then on the front stretch where that grandstand drops off a little bit and continues on down the track i said yeah he says well i can tell you when a fat lady in the third row gets up and goes after popcorn life is best lived in motion and that's why tire pros gets you ready for all your driving adventures whether it's along corners and curves across city and state lines because we're more than just tires we're auto care too tire pros so you can focus on the road ahead [Music] you

Channel: Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s Dirty Mo Media

Views: 86,240

Rating: 4.9430246 out of 5

Keywords: Dale Earnhardt Jr., Dale Jr., Stroker Ace Movie, Burt Reynolds, NASCAR, Chicken Pit, Dirty Mo Media

Id: vMbFQID_3j0

Length: 17min 26sec (1046 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 06 2021