It is cleaner than a smoking Beetle. Quieter than a roaring Mini. Able to leap through carpool lanes with a single occupant. But the Prius, car du jour among Hollywood insiders, is not looking much like a movie star.
Vehicles, both hot (the fanciful, post-petroleum racers in “Speed Racer”) and not (those Jeep-like things bumping through the next “Indiana Jones”) have been enjoying an on-screen heyday.
Universal Pictures is preparing the fourth movie in its “The Fast and the Furious” series. Walt Disney’s Pixar unit is at work on a “Cars” sequel. And Warner Brothers has been collaborating with Clint Eastwood on “Gran Torino,” setting the Web a-shiver with anticipation of an homage to the Ford car of the 1970s.
But Toyota’s Prius — the world’s best-selling hybrid, and a must-have accessory for carbon-conscious show business players — has remained something of a novelty on the big screen.
God drove one, briefly, in “Evan Almighty,” a comedy that struggled at the box office when Universal released it last summer.
Jessica Alba had no luck at all with hers a few months later in “Good Luck Chuck,” from Lionsgate. A Prius devotee in real life, Alba played a hapless klutz whose silver hybrid had to be jump-started by a red Thunderbird, and nearly electrocuted her rescuer in the process.
From the valet stand at Orso to the executive parking stalls at 20th Century Fox, hybrids are seen everywhere on the Hollywood circuit.
On TV these quiet, fuel-efficient cars, which blend electric and internal combustion technology, have been a strong presence since Larry David started tooling around in a first-generation Prius on HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”
But movies are another matter. Cars that make a big impression in films can be as clunky as the yellow Volkswagen bus in “Little Miss Sunshine” or as meaty as Steve McQueen’s 1968 Ford Mustang Fastback in “Bullitt.” But they tend to be assertive in a way that the Prius, with its quiet demeanor and emphasis on efficiency, is not.
“Any car has a chance” at stardom, said the film director F. Gary Gray. To shine in a film, however, Gray said, a car must be integral to the plot. In “The Italian Job,” Gray’s 2003 remake of a 1969 movie, the bandit-heroes led by Mark Wahlberg used a souped-up fleet of Mini Coopers to beat the traffic in L.A. and swipe a fortune in gold bars.
“The Mini had a purpose — it was a character,” Gray said.
The Environmental Media Association, a nonprofit organization that promotes ecological consciousness in show business, on screen and off, has been urging studios and producers to give the Prius and other hybrids a stronger presence in movies and TV shows.
“We’ve got all the studios on our board,” Debbie Levin, the association’s president, said. “They’re all pushing for this when it makes sense.”
Cameron Diaz, Levin noted, often asks that her character drive a hybrid on screen if possible. In a recent interview on huffingtonpost.com, Diaz said her Prius “saves me probably from a lot of tickets,” because it is not as fast as a Porsche.
Emile Hirsch, the hot-shot driver in “Speed Racer,” told The Associated Press that he will only drive “the new-technology cars that are absolutely good for the environment.”
“I have a Toyota Prius,” he said recently. “I don’t have an interest in any car that isn’t good for the environment, other than maybe an aesthetic quality in a picture book.”
According to a Toyota spokeswoman, the Prius goes from zero to 60 miles per hour in 10.1 seconds, but could go faster if, like the Lexus hybrid, it were tuned for performance rather than efficiency. The cars, which were introduced in the U.S. with the 2001 model, are sometimes placed in movies and TV shows on a promotional basis, the spokeswoman said.
In last year’s hit comedy “Superbad,” the Prius had a bit part in a street scene. But a Crown Victoria squad car pretty much stole the show with its dying turn, bullet-riddled and in flames.
To date, the Prius’ stand-out role was in “The Nines,” an independent picture written and directed by John August, which took in just $63,000 at the domestic box office last year. In three parts, the movie examined the disintegrating lives of an actor, a TV show runner and a video-game designer in L.A. Every car in the movie was a Prius, other than a police cruiser. “It was something of a rhyming device,” August wrote in a recent e-mail message.
As for his own vehicle of choice, he added: “We’re a two-Prius family. I can’t imagine a non-hybrid again.”
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Hot cars on screen
The most commonly seen car in movies today is the Ford Crown Victoria, according to Andre Potten, administrator of the Internet Movie Cars Database, which tracks appearances by vehicles in films. The Crown Victoria plays well as both cop car and taxi, he said. Here are some other big players:
— Chevrolet Impala
— Chevrolet Caprice
— Ford Mustang
— Mercedes
— Renault
— Volkswagen
[ NYTNS ]
