We Blew Up Our High School Car

We drove like hell to make it to set on time. Screaming down Soledad Canyon, the very road Dennis Weaver faced off with a Peterbilt in Spielberg’s Duel. It was a miracle the car even got started in the first place. A 21-year-old Saturn Ion with a bad battery, broken A.C. and tires that hadn’t been replaced in 15 years. We were with our dad when he drove it off the lot in 2003, and now in just a couple hours, the car would be reduced to nothing more than orange flames and melted plastic. We were driving our Saturn to its funeral. A viking funeral. The only kind of funeral that old hunk of junk deserved.

Some 20 years earlier, for a couple of budding high-school filmmakers, a new car meant one thing above all else … we could finally shoot car chases. A few months later, we’d be arrested for shooting a carjacking scene. Who knew it was illegal to steal your own car? About a dozen cruisers screeched down our quiet suburban street, the cops threw us on the hood of the Saturn and cuffed our wrists at gun point. As we sat in the back of one of the police cars, we only had one thing on our minds: Did the cops take the tape?

They didn’t.

We were happily grounded for two weeks as we edited the car chase into our latest crime saga. Our only regret was not recording the police cars racing toward us – it would have added some incredible production value. We wouldn’t forget that lesson. Every time we got arrested making movies from then on, we let the cameras roll.

In one movie after the next, our 2003 Saturn Ion ended up having a starring role. In retrospect, it wasn’t the most cinematic looking car. It sort of had this bulbous orca whale look, with a thin round smile for a grill, and an arched top that seemed inspired by Fisher-Price. It felt like the kind of car a kid would draw with crayons and not be very proud of. None of that stopped us. We shot dozens of movies in it. Some favorites in no particular order:
lala[mafia]
Rabbit of Doom 3 (the best of the trilogy)
Bill and the Ninja (unfinished)
Monkey See Monkey Kill
The 30 Bones of Unfortunate Joey Jones
Waiting for Peppermint
Do I Smell Motherfuckers
Do I Smell Motherfuckers (the remake)

That Saturn wasn’t just a star on screen, it gave us the freedom to shoot anything, anywhere we wanted. We’d plug clamp lights into the cigarette lighter and pretty quickly we could film night-time scenes in cemeteries and marinas and back alleys.

During our senior year, we shot an unauthorized adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are, and shoved Matt’s entire bedroom set into the trunk and backseat of the car so our pal Andy Gould (playing Max) could wake up in the middle of the forest. I still remember the look of surprise on my dad’s face as Andy opened his eyes in bed and the camera panned to the looming oak trees of Goddard Park. “How’d you get your bed in the middle of the woods?!”

This car meant production value. It meant opportunity. It meant freedom.

In my teens, that car drove my future wife to prom. In my 20s, it took us 3,000 miles to Los Angeles. In my 30s, that car drove my daughters home from the hospital.

Nearly 20 years into our relationship, the car was on its last legs. The A.C. no longer worked, the battery always needed jumping, and the two car seats in the back were beginning to look like car seats strapped to a carnival ride death trap. It was time to trade it in and get a family SUV. I was ready to say goodbye when the offer finally came in for the Saturn. The trade-in for my 20-year-old clunker was worth a staggering $100 … take it or leave it.

I could make more on the gas in the tank.

So, the situation was: Dump the car for a hundred bucks, or … blow it up in the next movie. The answer was clear.

The Saturn would sit in front of my house for well over a year while we raised money for Redux Redux. My oldest daughter would comment on the literal weeds growing out of the cracks in the plastic siding. At one point, she gave it a long stare, then said casually, “When are you gonna throw this thing out?”

The day came one hot summer morning in June. I had the car running over the weekend, and left it on for a couple hours to make sure the battery would be fully charged. We had to do the explosion first thing in the morning, while the wind was calm. (After all, in the dry high desert of the Mojave, fire safety is paramount.) So, of course, on the morning in question, the car wouldn’t start …

Nothing a quick jump couldn’t fix. So I clamped the jumper cables down between my old Saturn and my new Jeep and turned over the ignition to a dead click, click, click.

On an 18-day shoot, you can’t afford to be late, and on a low budget, you can’t afford to show up for the car-explosion day without the car.

With a 50-mile drive ahead of me and closing in on the general crew call, I was out of time. I called a tow truck. It would take hours to arrive. So I got the jumper cables clamped back down, revved the Jeep engine and hoped it could get the battery charged somewhere north of zero percent. The only thing to do was wait until the very last minute and try the ignition one last time. Try it too early and I’d drain whatever battery power I’d gained from the Jeep and all would be squandered.

I typed the movie ranch address into my GPS and waited until the ETA hit the call time exactly, and then with a hope and a prayer, I gave it one last shot. It wheezed a metallic cough, and started. It would be for the last time.

I rolled down the windows, threw in my old burned copy of Led Zeppelin IV and took the old girl for her swan song. When it pulled into set, I blew past crew parking and drove it right to set. It landed exactly where it died. The battery toast. I drove it to her last breath, and that’s exactly where you can find her, immortalized on film, and exploding in a fury of orange flames.

I brought my daughters to watch the spectacle, in hopes of giving them a core memory. My youngest, Margot, slept on my wife’s shoulder through the whole explosion. My oldest, Mae, witnessed it all. When I asked her what she thought, she told me she felt sad. To her, that car felt like a part of the family and now it was hard to see it go. I tried to tell her it was just a car, but, of course, that wasn’t the truth at all.

Featured image shows Matthew and Kevin McManus during the making of Redux Redux; all images courtesy the McManus Brothers.