Corvettes Movie Awards - Great Moments In Corvette Celluloid

Most Dangerous Stunt
2 Fast 2 Furious (2003)

In films, some stunts look easy and risk-free, and are in fact horribly tough and dangerous. And some stunts look horribly tough and dangerous and are, in fact, amazingly safe and simple. But in this past summer's 2 Fast 2 Furious, one C5 roadster was sacrificed in a stunt that was truly tough and dangerous.

After a Saleen Mustang was crushed under a semi's trailer, it was always intended that stunt man Sam Maloof would plow the C5 into the wreckage along a Florida highway. "What's the worst thing that could happen?" Stunt Coordinator Artie Malesci says the production team asked themselves. "The worst thing that could happen was the car would roll over." And in fact that's what happened as the C5, which wasn't equipped with a rollcage, hit the Mustang and rolled over.

Fortunately, because the stunt team had prepared for the worst, there was a grab strap across the passenger seat of the car. "He pulled himself down under the dashboard, which is the strongest part of the car. It was a scary moment, but he's a tough guy too."

So Maloof wasn't injured; but since the stunt hadn't gone as planned, another C5 was prepared to redo it the next day. Fortunately, when the filmmakers saw the footage, they decided it was so spectacular that Maloof's near-catastrophe remained in the film.

Most Spectacular Stunt
XXX (2002)

The 2,428-foot-long Auburn-Foresthill Bridge near Sacramento, California, rises 730 feet over the American River's north fork and is reportedly the third highest in the United States. Throwing a Corvette off it seemed to be a good idea to the makers of XXX, especially if legendary BASE jumper Tim Rigby was "surfing" it down.

Doubling for star Vin Diesel, Rigby rode the hollowed-out C5 down as 18 cameras caught the action. Fortunately (they think of everything!) Rigby had a parachute and floated down to the riverbed. What happened to the Corvette can't be called a "float."

After Diesel's character is arrested for that bridge stunt, what does he say after being hit with a government tranquilizer dart? "It was only a Corvette."

Movie With "Corvette" In The Title No One Has Ever Seen
High Rolling In A Hot Corvette (1977)

"It was about an expatriate living in Australia who conceives a plan to rob a bus," remembers High Rolling In A Hot Corvette star Joseph Bottoms from his Santa Barbara, California, home. "I don't think it was ever released here, but I'm sure it was made for this market. The Corvette didn't play that much of a role in it. And the characters probably ripped it off."

An Australian movie, set in Australia, made by Australians in Australia but featuring a Corvette? Go figure. However, it was, according to Bottoms, the first film for famed Australian actress Judy Davis who has gone on to be nominated for Academy Awards twice and win an Emmy and a Golden Globe for portraying Judy Garland in a TV miniseries.

If anyone has a copy of this film on tape (Joseph Bottoms doesn't), we'd like to see it.

Best Astronaut Movie
Apollo 13 (1995)

During the '60s and '70s Chevrolet issued Corvettes to U.S. astronauts as if they popped out of a Pez dispenser. So whenever there's a movie about astronauts, there's often a Corvette in it some place-or at least talked about. "You know, it's funny," astronaut Gordon Cooper (Dennis Quaid) says in 1983's the otherwise Corvette-free The Right Stuff. "Here I am, I got me $25 grand a year for a magazine contract, got a free house with all the furnishings, got me a Corvette, got a free lunch from one end of America to the other, and I ain't even been up there yet."

In a nip-and-tuck race with 1983's Terms of Endearment where broken down astronaut Jack Nicholson steers his '78 Silver Anniversary coupe into the ocean with his feet, the best astronaut and Corvette movie is Apollo 13. Mostly because, in addition to the red '70 driven by Jim Lovell (Tom Hanks)-whose stalling forebodes ill for the spacecraft-Ken Mattingly (Gary Sinise) parks a War Bonnet Yellow '71 just as the Apollo 13 rocket lifts off. That's two Corvettes, and no other astronaut movie we know of has more than one.

Orson Welles Award For Sheer Quantity
Mr. Deeds (2002)

When local boy Longfellow Deeds (Adam Sandler) inherits billions, he buys red Corvettes for virtually everyone in the town of Mandrake Falls, New Hampshire. For the most part, this misbegotten remake of the Gary Cooper 1936 classic, Mr. Deeds Goes To Town, isn't worth the cost of a rental-except for that one scene of Mandrake Falls (actually New Milford, Connecticut) almost submerged under a sea of Magnetic Red and Torch Red C5s.

There were actually about 30 Corvettes used in the scene with many recruited from local clubs, including the Candlewood Valley Corvette Club, Long Island Corvette Club, and the Monroe Corvette Club. The production company, however, owned the one Torch Red convertible wrecked by Steve Buscemi's character.