FRAMING... JOHN DELOREAN
In Greek tragedy, hubris is the defiance of the gods, leading to nemesis. Shakespeare saddled his tragic heroes with a ‘fatal flaw’, a technique that also illuminated the darker corners of humanity. DeLorean was an engineer and automotive executive, but his life unfurled in a way that will forever stand as a metaphor for overweening ambition, ego, lust and redemption – although the jury’s still out on that.
All he wanted to do was build a car, but somehow he ended up cradling 100kg of cocaine in an LA hotel room, caught apparently red-handed after an elaborate FBI sting.
It’s a tale that’s told in the new film Framing John DeLorean, the punning title of which touches on two key aspects of the saga: why has it taken so long for this almost impossibly Hollywood story to be given the movie treatment, and was he stitched up by the authorities?
Co-directed by Don Argott and Sheena M. Joyce and produced by Tamir Ardon, is also notable for its meta construction: it’s neither a conventional documentary nor a full-blown fictional account, but a hybrid of the two. DeLorean is played by Alec Baldwin, who deconstructs his character as he prepares to shoot re-enactments depicting critical junctures of the story. “No man without a strong sex drive ever accomplished anything,” DeLorean observes at one
