Inspiration
The runs were inspired also from movies like the 1971 film Two-Lane Blacktop. A similar film, Vanishing Point, was released in theaters a few months before the first Cannonball.
The Cannonball runs gained notoriety after the 1972 run, but it was Time Magazine's May 5, 1975 story on the race that solidified it in the public consciousness. To the surprise of many, the hilarious reports in Car and Driver were warmly received by the press and the public alike, rather than being condemned for being reckless.
Reportedly, the worst "accident" that occurred in all of the Cannonball runs was spilled lasagna aboard a motor home which made the trip in 57 hours, as Car and Driver Magazine detailed the November 1971 running in their March 1972 issue. That article was reprinted in its entirety in 2005, being chosen to represent the decade of the 1970s in the magazine's 50th anniversary series of article reprints.
However, in his memoir book about the races (see References, below), Yates reports that in the 1972 event, an all-female team consisting of Peggy Niemcek, Judy Stropus, and SCCA racer Donna Mae Mims ("The Pink Lady") suffered a crash near El Paso, Texas, resulting in a DNF (Did Not Finish.) The book contains a first-hand account by Mims, stating that their Cadillac stretched limousine veered off the road and rolled over after the driver fell asleep at the wheel. Although the car was totalled and Mims suffered a broken arm, no other vehicles were involved in the crash, and this was the only serious accident in all the Cannonball races.
Yates began working on a screenplay, originally to be titled "Coast to Coast", but was scooped by two unofficial films in 1976, Cannonball and The Gumball Rally. Eventually, an "official" Cannonball Run movie was made — Cannonball Run — starring Burt Reynolds and Dom DeLuise with Yates in a cameo appearance. Two sequels, Cannonball Run II and Speed Zone!, followed. A later USA Network television program, Cannonball Run 2001, was given official approval to use the name.
Read more about this topic: Cannonball Baker Sea-To-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash
Famous quotes containing the word inspiration:
“Although this garrulity of advising is born with us, I confess that life is rather a subject of wonder, than of didactics. So much fate, so much irresistible dictation from temperament and unknown inspiration enter into it, that we doubt we can say anything out of our own experience whereby to help each other.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Shakespeare carries us to such a lofty strain of intelligent activity, as to suggest a wealth which beggars his own; and we then feel that the splendid works which he has created, and which in other hours we extol as a sort of self-existent poetry, take no stronger hold of real nature than the shadow of a passing traveller on the rock. The inspiration which uttered itself in Hamlet and Lear could utter things as good from day to day, for ever.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“For a painter, the Mecca of the world, for study, for inspiration and for living is here on this star called Paris. Just look at it, no wonder so many artists have come here and called it home. Brother, if you can’t paint in Paris, you’d better give up and marry the boss’s daughter.”
—Alan Jay Lerner (1918–1986)