Teaching Shoshana Stick

By Tony Vallone story, screenplay, associate producer

One of our prop cars fell through and at the last minute we secured an old 66 mustang to fill the roll. Only trouble was that it has a manual transmission and our actress Shoshana could not drive it. The car also had a really harsh clutch, no power steering, and something like 300 horsepower - so it wasn't the easiest car in the world to drive.


As soon as she arrived on set I took her to an empty parking lot and we practiced driving a litte bit. All she needed to do was drive out of frame and around the corner so it wasn't all that difficult. We practiced for about 20 minutes until I thought she had it down. It was important that we see her in the car driving off because we wanted to take it all in one shot.

However, when the time came to actually shoot the scene, Shoshana had to practice again. The tricky part became timing, because Shoshana could launch off alright but it took about 4 seconds for her to get the clutch in a comfortable position. We took the drive off shot about 7 times until we got the timing correctly. In the end I was very impressed with Shoshana's skill. She was even able to chirp the tires a little.