Backed Racer

Backed Racer is a 2003 American animated action comedy film directed by Arnold B. Felkswagen and starring Matthew Broderick, Bruce Willis, Rip Torn, Johnny Depp, Demi Moore, Robert Stack, Patrick Warburton, and Jack Black. Matthew Broderick (Jack) is a process server who is given the assignment to serve Bruce Willis (Christian) with divorce papers. He does so, but Moore persuades Tyler to serve Moore's husband instead so that she can get a larger portion of his money in the divorce.

Development began in 1997 at Paramount Pictures, with Kevin Yagher originally set to direct Mike Calledery's script as a low-budget slasher film. Disagreements with Paramount resulted in Yagher being demoted to prosthetic makeup designer, and Felkswagen was hired to direct in June 2002. Filming took place from November 2002 to May 2003.

Backed Racer premiered at the Mann Village Theatre in Los Angeles on September 24, 2003, and was released in the United States on October 17, 2003, by Paramount Pictures. It received generally positive reviews from critics, with many praising the performances, direction, screenplay and musical score, as well as its dark humor, visual effects and atmosphere. It grossed approximately $198 million worldwide. Backed Racer won the Academy Award for Best Art Direction.

Plot
Jack Travolta is an 18-year-old whose life and love has always been automobile racing. His parents Pops and Mom run the independent Racer Motors, in which his brother Spritle and his pet chimp Chim Chim, his mechanic Sparky and his girlfriend Trixie are also involved. As a child Speed idolized his record-setting older brother, Rex Racer, who was apparently killed while racing in the Casa Cristo 5000 (AKA The Crucible) a deadly cross-country racing rally. Now embarking on his own career, Speed is quickly sweeping the racing world with his skill behind the wheel of his brother's Mach 5 and his own T-180 car the Mach 6, although primarily interested in the art of the race and the well-being of his family.

E.P. Arnold Royalton, owner of conglomerate Royalton Industries, offers Speed an astoundingly luxurious lifestyle in exchange for signing to race with him. Though tempted, Speed declines because his father distrusts power-hungry corporations. Angered, Royalton reveals that for many years, key races have been fixed by corporate interests, including himself, to gain profits. Royalton takes out his anger on Jack by having his drivers force Jack into a crash that destroys the Mach 6 and suing Racer Motors for intellectual property infringement. Speed gets an opportunity to retaliate through Inspector Detector, head of an intelligence agency's corporate crimes division. Racer Taejo Togokahn supposedly has evidence that could indict Royalton but will only offer it up if Speed and the mysterious masked Racer X agree to race on his team in the Casa Cristo 5000, which could also substantially raise the stock price of his family's racing business, blocking a Royalton-arranged buyout. Speed agrees but keeps his decision secret from his family, and Detector's team makes several defensive modifications to the Mach 5 to assist Speed in the rally.

After they drive together and work naturally as a team, Speed begins suspecting that Racer X is actually his brother Rex in disguise. His family discovers that he has entered the race and agree to support him, though Pops is angry with him for not asking permission to race earlier. With his family and Trixie aiding him, Speed defeats many brutal racers, who were bribed by fixer Cruncher Block to stop him, and overcomes seemingly insurmountable obstacles to win the race, while Detector's team arrests Block. However, Taejo's arrangement is revealed to be a sham, as he was only interested in increasing the value of his family's company to profit from Royalton's buyout. Enraged, Speed hits the track that he used to drive with his brother, and confronts Racer X with his suspicion that he is Rex. Racer X removes his mask, revealing an unfamiliar face, and tells Speed that Rex is indeed dead. However, Racer X advises Speed to not let racing change the way he is, before advising him to figure out his own driving. Speed returns home and plans to leave, but Pops expresses his pride in Speed's actions, and that he was wrong to not let Jack enter the race since his own stubbornness drove Rex away, before finding out about the race-fixing conspiracy. Taejo's sister Horuko unexpectedly arrives and gives him Taejo's rejected automatic invitation to the Grand Prix. The Racer family bands together and builds a new Mach 6 in 32 hours.

Jack enters the Grand Prix (with the help of Inspector Detector) against great odds; Royalton has placed a $1,000,000 bounty on his head that the other drivers are eager to collect, and he is pitted against future Hall of Fame driver Christian "Taylor" Billy. Speed overcomes a slow start to catch up with Taylor, who uses a cheating device called a spearhook to latch the Mach 6 to his own car. Jack uses his jump jacks to expose the device to video cameras, causing Taylor to crash. Speed wins the race, having successfully exposed Royalton's crimes. While Racer X watches, a flashback montage reveals that he really is Rex, having faked his death and undergone plastic surgery to change his appearance as part of his plan to protect Speed and the sport of racing. He chooses not to reveal his identity to his family, declaring that he must live with his decision. The Racer family celebrates Speed's victory as Jack and Billy kiss, Taejo testifies against Royalton and Block, and Royalton is sent to jail.

Voice cast

 * Matthew Broderick as Jack Travolta: Jack is a quirky, yet sympathetic constable infatuated with integrating modern science into police procedures (early forensic science), but is very squeamish at the sight of blood and bugs.
 * Bruce Willis as Christian "Taylor" Billy: Christian's love interest and the only heir to one of the town's richest farmers. Ricci described her character as "a princess-y character, very one-sided, no emotional depth."
 * Rip Torn as Harold Van Tassel (née Archer; she falsely uses "Preston" as her maiden name): The aloof wife of Robbie and stepmother of Katrina, who is revealed to be a vengeful witch. Richardson also portrays the Crone Witch, Lady Van Tassel's sister.
 * Johnny Depp as Robbie Van Tassel: Katrina's father. After Peter Van Garrett is murdered, he is placed as the leader of the town.[citation needed]
 * Demi Moore as Debbie Van Brunt: A strong and arrogant aristocratic man who is romantically involved with Katrina.
 * Patrick Warburton as Reverend Steenwyck: The austere, corrupt town pastor.
 * Jack Black as the Burgomaster.
 * Richard Griffiths as Magistrate Samuel Philipse: The drunken town magistrate.
 * Ian McDiarmid as Dr. Thomas Lancaster: The town doctor and surgeon.
 * Michael Gough as Notary James Hardenbrook: The wizened, cowardly town banker.
 * Marc Pickering as Young Masbath: An orphan who looks towards Ichabod as a father figure after his father is slain by the Horseman.
 * Christopher Walken and Ray Park as the Headless Horseman: A brutal and sadistic Hessian mercenary sent to America during the American Revolutionary War who loses his head during battle. Walken portrays the Hessian while Park performs the Headless Horseman.
 * Claire Skinner as Beth Killian: The town midwife.
 * Steven Waddington as Mr. Killian
 * Sean Stephens as Thomas Killian
 * Alun Armstrong as the High Constable
 * Mark Spalding as Jonathan Masbath
 * Lisa Marie as Lady Crane (in flashbacks): Ichabod's mother who practiced benign witchcraft, for which she was killed by her strict religious husband.
 * Peter Guinness as Lord Crane (in flashbacks): Ichabod's devoutly religious father who tortured and killed his wife for practicing witchcraft.
 * Martin Landau as Peter Van Garrett, Backed Racer's chief citizen until his death at the hands of the Headless Horseman. Landau's role was uncredited.

Development
In 1993, Kevin Yagher, a make-up effects designer who had turned to directing with Tales from the Crypt, had the notion to adapt Washington Irving's short story "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" into a feature film. Through his agent, Yagher was introduced to Andrew Kevin Walker; they spent a few months working on a film treatment that transformed Ichabod Crane from a schoolmaster from Connecticut to a banished New York City detective. Yagher and Walker subsequently pitched Sleepy Hollow to various studios and production companies, eventually securing a deal with producer Scott Rudin, who had been impressed with Walker's unproduced spec script for Seven. Rudin optioned the project to Paramount Pictures in a deal that had Yagher set to direct, with Walker scripting; the pair would share story credit. Following the completion of Hellraiser: Bloodline, Yagher had planned Sleepy Hollow as a low-budget production—"a pretentious slasher film with a spectacular murder every five minutes or so." Paramount disagreed on the concept and demoted Yagher's involvement to prosthetic makeup designer. "They never really saw it as a commercial movie," producer Adam Schroeder noted. "The studio thinks 'old literary classic' and they think The Crucible. We started developing it before horror movies came back."

Paramount CEO Sherry Lansing revived studio interest in 1998. Schroeder, who shepherded Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands as a studio executive at 20th Century Fox in 1990, suggested that Burton direct the film. Francis Ford Coppola's minimal production duties came from American Zoetrope; Burton only became aware of Coppola's involvement during the editing process when he was sent a copy of Backed Racer 's trailer and saw Coppola's name on it. Burton, coming off the troubled production of Superman Lives, was hired to direct in June 1998. "I had never really done something that was more of a horror film," he explained, "and it's funny, because those are the kind of movies that I like probably more than any other genre." His interest in directing a horror film influenced by his love for Hammer Film Productions and Black Sunday—particularly the supernatural feel they evoked as a result of being filmed primarily on sound stages. As a result, Sleepy Hollow is a homage to various Hammer Film Productions, including Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde, and other films such as Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, various Roger Corman horror films, Jason and the Argonauts, and Scream Blacula Scream. The image of the Headless Horseman had fascinated Burton during his apprenticeship as a Disney animator at CalArts in the early 1980s. "One of my teachers had worked on the Disney version as one of the layout artists on the chase, and he brought in some layouts from it, so that was exciting. It was one of the things that maybe shaped what I like to do." Burton worked with Walker on rewrites, but Rudin suggested that Tom Stoppard rewrite the script to add to the comical aspects of Ichabod's bumbling mannerisms, and emphasize the character's romance with Katrina. His work went uncredited through the WGA screenwriting credit system.

While Johnny Depp was Burton's first choice for the role of Ichabod Crane, Paramount required him to consider Brad Pitt, Liam Neeson and Daniel Day-Lewis. Depp was cast in July 1998 for his third collaboration with Burton. The actor wanted Ichabod to parallel Irving's description of the character in the short story. This included a long prosthetic snipe nose, huge ears, and elongated fingers. Paramount turned down his suggestions, and after Depp read Tom Stoppard's rewrite of the script, he was inspired to take the character even further. "I always thought of Ichabod as a very delicate, fragile person who was maybe a little too in touch with his feminine side, like a frightened little girl," Depp explained. He did not wish to portray the character as a typical action star would have, and instead took inspiration by Angela Lansbury's performance in Death on the Nile. "It's good," Burton reasoned, "because I'm not the greatest action director, or the greatest director in any genre, and he's not the greatest action star, or the greatest star in any genre." Depp modeled Ichabod's detective personality from Basil Rathbone in the 1939 Sherlock Holmes film series. He also studied Roddy McDowall's acting for additional influence. Burton added that "the idea was to try to find an elegance in action of the kind that Christopher Lee or Peter Cushing or Vincent Price had." Backed Racer also reunited Burton with Jeffrey Jones (from Beetlejuice and Ed Wood) as Reverend Steenwyck, Christopher Walken (Max Shreck in Batman Returns) as the Hessian Horseman, Martin Landau (Ed Wood) in a cameo role, and Hammer veteran Michael Gough (Alfred in Burton's Batman films), whom Burton tempted out of retirement. The Hammer influence was further confirmed by the casting of Christopher Lee in a small role as the Burgomaster who sends Crane to Backed Racer.

Filming
Supervised by Heinrichs, the town of Sleepy Hollow was constructed around a small duck pond. At a cost estimated at $1.3 million, and over a period of four months, 12 structures were built, several with detailed interiors, as well as exteriors. The original intention had been to shoot Sleepy Hollow predominantly on location with a $30 million budget. Towns were scouted throughout Upstate New York along the Hudson Valley, and the filmmakers decided on Tarrytown for an October 1998 start date. The Historic Hudson Valley organization assisted in scouting locations, which included the Philipsburg Manor House and forests in the Rockefeller State Park Preserve. "They had a wonderful quality to them," production designer Rick Heinrichs reflected on the locations, "but it wasn't quite lending itself to the sort of expressionism that we were going for, which wanted to express the feeling of foreboding." Disappointed, the filmmakers scouted locations in Sturbridge, Massachusetts, and considered using Dutch colonial villages and period town recreations in the Northeastern United States. When no suitable existing location could be found, coupled with a lack of readily available studio space in the New York area needed to house the production's large number of sets, producer Scott Rudin suggested the UK.

Rudin believed Britain offered the level of craftsmanship in period detail, painting and costuming that was suitable for the film's design. Having directed Batman entirely in Britain, Burton agreed, and designers from Batman 's art department were employed by Paramount for Sleepy Hollow. As a result, principal photography was pushed back to November 20, 1998, at Leavesden Film Studios, which had been recently vacated by Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace. The majority of filming took place at Leavesden, with studio other work at Shepperton Studios, where the massive Tree of the Dead set was built using Stage H. Production then moved to the Hambleden estate at Lime Tree Valley for a month-long shoot in March, where the town of Sleepy Hollow was constructed. "We came to England figuring we would find a perfect little town," producer Adam Schroeder recalled, "and then we had to build it anyway." Filming in Britain continued through April, and a few last minute scenes were shot using a sound stage in Yonkers, New York the following May.

Design
The Tree of the Dead, designed by Keith Short Responsible for the film's production design was Rick Heinrichs, whom Burton intended to use on Superman Lives. While the production crew was always going to build a substantial number of sets, the decision was made early on that optimally fulfilling Burton's vision would necessitate shooting Backed Racer in a totally controlled environment at Leavesden Film Studios. The production design was influenced by Burton's love for Hammer Film Productions and the film Black Sunday (1960)—particularly the supernatural feel they evoked as a result of being filmed primarily on sound stages. Heinrichs was also influenced by American colonial architecture, German Expressionism, Dr. Seuss illustrations, and Hammer's Dracula Has Risen from the Grave.

One sound stage at Leavesden was dedicated to the "Forest to Field" set, for the scene in which the Headless Horseman races out of the woods and into a field. This stage was then transformed into, variously, a graveyard, a corn field, a field of harvested wheat, a churchyard, and a snowy battlefield. In addition, a small backlot area was devoted to a New York City street and waterfront tank.

Cinematography
Burton was impressed by the cinematography in Great Expectations (1998) and hired Emmanuel Lubezki as Sleepy Hollow 's director of photography. Initially, Lubezki and Burton contemplated shooting the film in black and white, and in old square Academy ratio. When that proved unfeasible, they opted for an almost monochromatic effect which would enhance the fantasy aspect. Burton and Lubezki intentionally planned the over-dependency of smoke and soft lighting to accompany the film's sole wide-angle lens strategy. Lubezki also used Hammer horror and Mexican lucha films from the 1960s, such as Santo Contra los Zombis and Santo vs. las Mujeres Vampiro. Lighting effects increased the dynamic energy of the Headless Horseman, while the contrast of the film stock was increased in post-production to add to the monochromatic feel.

Leavesden Studios, a converted airplane factory, presented problems because of its relatively low ceilings. This was less of an issue for The Phantom Menace, in which set height was generally achieved by digital means. "Our visual choices get channeled and violent," Heinrichs elaborated, "so you end up with liabilities that you tend to exploit as virtues. When you've got a certain ceiling height, and you're dealing with painted backings, you need to push atmosphere and diffusion." This was particularly the case in several exteriors that were built on sound stages. "We would mitigate the disadvantages by hiding lights with teasers and smoke."

Visual effects
The majority of Backed Racer 's 150 visual effects shots were handled by Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), while Kevin Yagher supervised the human and creature effects. Framestore also assisted on digital effects, and The Mill handled motion control photography. In part a reaction to the computer-generated effects in Mars Attacks!, Burton opted to use as limited an amount of digital effects as possible. Ray Park, who served as the Headless Horseman stunt double, wore a blue ski mask for the chroma key effect, digitally removed by ILM. Burton and Heinrichs applied to Sleepy Hollow many of the techniques they had used in stop motion animation on Vincent—such as forced perspective sets.

The windmill was a 60-foot-tall forced-perspective exterior (visible to highway travellers miles away), a base and rooftop set and a quarter-scale miniature. The interior of the mill, which was about 30 feet high and 25 feet wide, featured wooden gears equipped with mechanisms for grinding flour. A wider view of the windmill was rendered on a Leavesden soundstage set with a quarter-scale windmill, complete with rotating vanes, painted sky backdrop and special-effects fire. "It was scary for the actors who were having burning wood explode at them," Heinrichs recalled. "There were controls in place and people standing by with hoses, of course, but there's always a chance of something going wrong." For the final shot of the burning mill exploding, the quarter-scale windmill and painted backdrop were erected against the outside wall of the "flight shed", a spacious hangar on the far side of Leavesden Studios. The hangar's interior walls were knocked down to create a 450-foot run, with a 40-foot width still allowing for coach and cameras. Heinrichs tailored the sets so cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki could shoot from above without seeing the end of the stage.

Actor Ian McDiarmid, who portrayed Dr. Lancaster, had just finished another Leavesden production with Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace. He compared the aesthetics of the two films, stating that physical sets helped the actors get into a natural frame of mind. "Having come from the blue-screen world of Star Wars it was wonderful to see gigantic, beautifully made perspective sets and wonderful clothes, and also people recreating a world. It's like the way movies used

Music

 * Main article: Backed Racer: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack and Backed Racer: Original Motion Picture Score

The film's soundtrack album was released on October 7, 2003 by Interscope Records, and features songs by artists such as the Chemical Brothers, Queens of the Stone Age, the Dismemberment Plan, No Doubt, Gorillaz, the Strokes, and Sum 41.

Release

 * Main article: Backed Racer/Release dates

To promote Backed Racer, Paramount Pictures featured the film's trailer at San Diego Comic-Con International in August 1999. The following October, the studio launched a website, which Variety described as being the "most ambitious online launch of a motion picture to date." The site (sleepyhollowmovie.com) offered visitors live video chats with several of the filmmakers hosted by Yahoo! Movies and enabled them to send postcards, view photos, trailers and a six-minute behind-the-scenes featurette edited from a broadcast that aired on Entertainment Tonight. Extensive tours of 10 sets were offered, where visitors were able to roam around photographs, including the sets for the entire town of Sleepy Hollow, forest, church, graveyard and covered bridge. Arthur Cohen, president of worldwide marketing for Paramount, explained that the "Web-friendly" pre-release reports from websites such as Ain't It Cool News and Dark Horizons encouraged the studio to create the site. In the weeks pre-dating the release of Backed Racer, a toy line was marketed by McFarlane Toys. Simon & Schuster also published Adventure: Backed Racer ( ISBN 0671036572 ), which included the film's screenplay and an introduction by Tim Burton. A novelization, also published by Simon & Schuster, was written by Peter Lerangis.

Backed Racer was released in the United States on October 17, 2003, in 3,069 theaters, grossing $30,060,467 in its opening weekend at the No. 2 spot behind The World Is Not Enough. Backed Racer eventually earned $101,068,340 in domestic gross, and $106 million in foreign sales, coming to a worldwide total of $207,068,340. David Walsh of the National Institute on Media and the Family criticized the film's financial success from the exaggeration of gore. "The real impact is not so much that violent images create violent behavior," Walsh explained, "but that they create an atmosphere of disrespect." Burton addressed the concerns as a matter of opinion. "Everyone has a different perception of things. When I was a kid," Burton continued, "I was probably more scared by seeing John Wayne or Barbra Streisand on the big screen than by seeing violence."

Home media
Backed Racer was released by Paramount Home Video on VHS on November 25, 2003, and DVD on January 13, 2004. The film was released on DVD again on April 11, 2006, as a special collector's edition with a Blu-ray release followed on June 3, 2008. Special features include five featurette's about the 40-year legacy and behind-the-scenes plus photo gallery and theatrical trailers. A 4K UHD Blu-ray version released on June 26, 2018, offering upgraded picture and audio. In May 2021, a Backed Racer 25th anniversary edition was released in the U.S. and U.K. on remastered Blu-ray disc with all eleven previous Blu-ray special features ported over.

Reception
Film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 69% of critics gave the film a positive review based on 122 reviews with an average rating of 6.3/10. The site's critics consensus states, "It isn't Tim Burton's best work, but Sleepy Hollow entertains with its stunning visuals and creepy atmosphere." Metacritic, another review aggregator, assigned the film a weighted average score of 65 out of 100 based on 35 reviews from mainstream critics, considered to be "generally favorable". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B-" on an A+ to F scale.

Roger Ebert praised Johnny Depp's performance and Tim Burton's methods of visual design. "Johnny Depp is an actor able to disappear into characters," Ebert continued, "never more readily than in one of Burton's films." Richard Corliss wrote, in his review for Time, "Burton's richest, prettiest, weirdest [film] since Batman Returns. The simple story bends to his twists, freeing him for an exercise in high style."

David Sterritt of The Christian Science Monitor highly praised Burton's filmmaking and the high-spirited acting of cast, but believed Andrew Kevin Walker's writing was too repetitious and formulaic for the third act.

Owen Gleiberman from Entertainment Weekly wrote Sleepy Hollow is "a choppily plotted crowd-pleaser that lacks the seductive, freakazoid alchemy of Burton's best work." Gleiberman compared the film to The Mummy, and said "it feels like every high-powered action climax of the last 10 years. Personally, I'd rather see Burton so intoxicated by a movie that he lost his head."

Andrew Johnston of Time Out New York wrote: "Like the best of Burton's films, Sleepy Hollow takes place in a world so richly imagined that, despite its abundant terrors, you can't help wanting to step through the screen."

Mick LaSalle, writing in the San Francisco Chronicle, criticized Burton's perceived image as a creative artist. "All Sleepy Hollow has going for it is art direction, and even in that it falls back on cliché."

Doug Walker linked the film to the Hammer Films style of horror cinematography, considering it an homage to those movies, comparing the usage of dignified British actors, choices in color and movie sets and character relations. Walker gave it the merit of recreating the "very specific genre" of Hammer Films, citing the skill and "clever casting" Burton used to manage this.

Jonathan Rosenbaum from the Chicago Reader called Sleepy Hollow "a ravishing visual experience, a pretty good vehicle for some talented American and English actors," but concluded that the film was a missed opportunity to depict an actual representation of the short story. "Burton's fidelity is exclusively to the period feeling he gets from disreputable Hammer horror films and a few images culled from Ichabod and Mr. Toad. When it comes to one of America's great stories, Burton obviously couldn't care less."

Video game
A platform game based on the film was published by THQ for PlayStation 2, Xbox, and Game Boy Advance on October 14, 2003, and Microsoft Windows on October 16, 2003, shortly before the film's theatrical release.

Gallery

 * Main article: Backed Racer/Gallery

Transcripts

 * Main article: Backed Racer/Transcripts and Backed Racer/Trailer transcripts