New car news

08 December 2011 - 10:00

We chat with the writer of the greatest racing doco. Ever

At TopGear, we've a lot of respect for someone who can tell as story well.

Manish Pandey wrote Senna. Alongside director Asif Kapadia, that puts him quite high on our respect scale, as the two Brits put together one of the most compelling and involving documentaries we've ever seen.

Check out the Senna trailer below:

In line with Senna's release on DVD, we sat down with Manish to find out how he managed to make a documentary about car racing that moved us to tears. Manly, justifiable tears, of course.

TopGear: What inspired you to start writing Senna?

Manish Pandey: Love, frankly. Senna really was my hero growing up. I remember when he won Monaco in 1987, but my most memorable moment was the '85 season. The BBC did a season preview; suddenly Senna appeared in head-to-toe black, looking over his Lotus with absolute intensity, absolute penetration. None of the other drivers had the same look he did; this was not just a man driving a car.

Working Title [the production company that worked on Senna] were originally going to make a documentary about Senna's death at Imola in 1994, but I thought that'd be missing the point. I wanted to make a film about his life.

TG: Senna has a remarkably foreboding tone nonetheless; how did you go about orchestrating that?

MP: I'd love to say that I scripted all the foreboding, but it's all bollocks. As I was writing, visual footage was coming in. I took my 10-page treatment [a rough draft] and turned it into 200 pages.

As Asif, Gregors at Working Title and I were assembling the film, Gregors said, "Look. People know he died. You've got to get people going on the same journey." At that point, we were going to open with the footage of his funeral. I thought it would colour the whole film and people wouldn't relate to him as a person in the same way.

For a while, I wanted viewers to forget about his death until we chronologically reached Imola in 1994. We certainly put markers in from the end of the 1992 season

Back to the latest car news