Trivia / Rush (2013)

• Approval of God: Niki Lauda loved the movie, and has said he wished James Hunt were still alive so they could have seen it together.
• Billing Displacement: Niki Lauda and James Hunt are both the main characters (although since Lauda narrates the opening and closing of the film he could arguably be considered the main main character). Most posters feature Hunt in the foreground with Lauda behind him (some featuring Lauda much less clearly than Hunt◊). Some posters feature only James Hunt. Chris Hemsworth is more well-known than Daniel Brühl but it's still quite glaring.
• Cast the Expert: A non-actor example - many of the cars featured in the film were actual Formula 1 cars from the period, driven by their current owners (many of whom race their cars in historic races). They even managed to convince one of the actual drivers from the real 1976 season (Hunt's teammate in 1976 Jochen Mass, who portrayed himself) to participate in the making of the film.
• Dyeing for Your Art: Chris Hemsworth had to lose the weight he maintained for The Avengers so he could fit more comfortably in the cars and look more convincing as a playboy F1 driver.
• Fake American: Teddy Mayer is played by Canadian Colin Stinton.
• Fake Brit: Chris Hemsworth is Australian and Olivia Wilde is American, they're both playing Brits.
• Fake Nationality:
  • Daniel Brühl is German but spent over a month in Vienna to get the Austrian accent right.
  • Italian Pierfrancesco Favino plays Swiss driver Clay Regazzoni, which has actually led some people to mistakenly think Clay himself was Italian (granted, he was born and raised in the Italian speaking region of Switzerland so completely understandable).
• Multiple Languages, Same Voice Actor:
  • Daniel Brühl and Alexandra Maria Lara dub themselves as Niki and Marlene Lauda in the German dub.
  • Pierfrancesco Favino dubs himself as Clay in the Italian dub.
• Real-Life Relative: Guy Edwards, one of the drivers to pull Niki out of his wreck, was played (via stunt doubling) by Guy's son Sean Edwards.
• Technology Marches On: At the 1976 Japanese Grand Prix, Alistair Caldwell is able to have a dramatic conversation with James during a pit stop and discover that James has an injured hand because of a broken gear shift lever. Such moments of drama are impossible in modern Formula One with the use of paddle shifters and pit stops that now take a little more than a second. Similarly, a major reason open wheel racing in the seventies was so dangerous was due to the addition of front and rear wings on the cars. Speeds increased by 10-20 miles per hour each lap. Those kind of increases generally take decades, so the drivers were not prepared. Formula 1 is safer these days.
• What Could Have Been: Russell Crowe had been considered to play Richard Burton in a cameo.

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