In October 1982 he found himself in a Los Angeles hotel room with a man he half-trusted in the hope he could save his company. FBI informant Jim Hoffman lures troubled automobile magnate John DeLorean to an undercover sting for cocaine trafficking. Hailed as the genius behind the hot-selling Pontiac GTO, DeLorean became general manager for General Motors' Pontiac division in 1965 and, began traveling frequently to California and had a facelift. He's run out of luck. From Robert M. Takasugi, the owlish trial judge who spent World War II imprisoned in a California relocation camp, to the thousands of potential jurors who have watched him on television, all want to know: Did he jump or was he pushed? He was the tall, bright, endlessly ambitious son of an alcoholic foundry worker, always certain he was worth more than the meager opportunities he had. Why do you think he named the car after himself? It's going to be a bloody mess.". "It's better than gold," DeLorean says on the videotape, with a chuckle. Sudeikis is authentically bland and slippery. He likes electric cars, and other things with wheels, wings, or hulls. In his previous film, The Journey, screenwriter Colin Bateman told another story about the relationship of two sometimes aligned, sometimes antagonistic real-life characters, the men who negotiated the peace agreement in Northern Ireland. "And this being completely my private deal, I can construct the record so we can go back to 1978 or 1979 and have him participate all the way up the line . Long Waits, Short Appointments, Huge Bills. Two hours later, reporters were besieging tall, severe Richard T. Bretzing, the bureau's special agent in charge, demanding to know why one of the best-known men in American business would have wanted to sell cocaine. Myth & Mogul repurposes some never-before-seen footage from that project, as well as candid interview segments with Hegedus about her front-row seat to the bizarre spectacle that was DeLoreans life. We go back in time and see Jim, a pilot, being flagged down by that same man (Corey Stoll as FBI Special Agent Benedict Tisa). They're Irish, and you've heard of them.". Whats the link between Hollywood, an American businessman, time-travel, and a mountain of cocaine big enough to make even Keith Richards knees tremble? Do the f--king math! he scoffs. talking about taking his $1.8 million commission and sticking it into a narcotics transaction.". Documentary. For everyone else, hes a schadenfreude-generating illustration of what happens when a person tries to grab too much and gets their hand caught in the jar. Jason Sudeikis is amusingly cast as the grinningly insecure beta-male Hoffman, in awe of the cool, platinum-blond visionary DeLorean, played by Lee Pace. Matthew is the editor of SHIFT. "Oh, sure," he tells a phony banker in San Carlos, Calif., the FBI television camera hidden under a table so all you can see are DeLorean's expensive shoes and pant legs. Stay calm, stay honest, look them in the eye, Hoffman is warned as he walks into a courtroom. Discussions had also alluded to a bigger deal, in which DeLorean would part finance the sale of $24 million worth of the drug. DeLorean has always been celebrated as a hero here in Northern Ireland for what he brought to the country at a time when the workers in west Belfast needed a promise of hope, Waddell says. Well, that was four years ago and nothing's happened. say five [apparently million]? The Italian designer had a way with the pencil that would see his designs go from paper to the silver screen on more than one occasion. Best Known For: Jimmy Hoffa served as president of the powerful Teamsters Union from 1957 until his imprisonment for conspiracy and fraud in the late 1960s. There was just one body style, featuring those iconic gull-wing doors, and no choice of paint. How can the millions of amateur DeLorean watchers be expected to figure him out? DeLorean, his friends and attorneys say this is all nonsense, the carping of unlucky business partners who did not like his fancy life or his blazing success. It is expected to get 22 m.p.g., about the same as a diesel-powered 1981 Cadillac Brougham. "Oh, sure," DeLorean said. . His Lotus Esprit went on to become James Bonds famous underwater car. If you're really lucky they've been stockpiling for a couple of months and no boat has gone out and you call and you want 100 monkeys [kilograms] . He has designed a car, built a factory, created 2000 jobs, in around the clock operation that produces 30,000 cars a year and he has done it all within 18 months. But Hoffman insisted they sit in a booth where "you couldn't see your hand in front of your face. Tisa replied, "Would it be possible to allow . Is that pretty stiff? When we were doing the analysis of the entrapment, I saw he was completely set up, he says. Or purchase a subscription for unlimited access to real news you can count on. DeLorean turned to unsavory activities to save his financially troubled DeLorean Motor Company, and it was Hoffman who was all too willing to lure the car designer/engineer into a cocaine trafficking ring set up by the FBI. A series of misfortunes have brought together DeLorean (Lee Pace)-the designer of the iconic car that Marty McFly would eventually use to travel through time-and a delightfully mustached moron and FBI informant, Jim Hoffman (Jason Sudeikis). Director Nick Hamm's entertaining drama-thriller film, Driven stars the dynamic acting talents of Jason Sudeikis.Lee Pace, Judy Greer, and Corey Stoll.Inspired by true events, Driven follows Jim Hoffman (Sudeikis), a charming ex-con pilot turned FBI informant who befriends his neighbor, John DeLorean (Lee Pace) at the height of his success as prestigious car inventor before his highly . Please attempt to sign up again. 4 Charged With Cocaine Trafficking. I need your help Jim. His ex-wife described him as a malignant narcissist.. John DeLorean, the man who would later go on to found the DeLorean Motor Company (DMC), was a stalwart of the automotive world. He went along with Hoffman after threats were made against his family. He feared the possibility of his company being closed down," Bretzing said, anointing DeLorean in his worst hour as a latter-day Robin Hood, stealing from the rich hedonists of Hollywood to give to the poor workers of Northern Ireland. The importance of Gales remark shouldnt be understated. Key parts of the narrative became the basis for the 2019 movie "The Irishman.". Its shiny stainless steel body, aerodynamic shape, and gullwing doors still look like they were ripped straight from a spaceship, even more so combined with the addition of rear repulsors, the shiny flux capacitor, and Back to the Future II ' s Mr . LOS ANGELES -- William Morgan Hetrick, a major drug dealer targeted in the government sting that eventually ensnared John De Lorean, was sentenced Monday to 10 years in federal prison for . An unexpected error has occurred with your sign up. History is written by the victors, Delorean says. Bateman has a touch of that himself, and the end of the film shows us that, like Hoffman and Delorean, he will not let the facts get in the way of a good story. Months before the cars would be available, it was clear that DeLorean was going big: for the holiday season of 1980, the American Express catalog advertised a DeLorean plated in 24-karat gold going for $85,000 (versus $20,000about $54,000 todayfor the steel version). If the last thing your country was famous for the building was the Titanic, could you blame people if they look twice at you when you tell them that you're opening a new car factory? DeLorean told Latham he though Hoffman lied to his DEA supervisors, telling them the automaker had asked for the drug deal, just as he lied to DeLorean about who his investors were. . And if GM is scared of him that means so is corporate America. hear a rumor that you are overeating, so I've been asked to call you and tell you not to order too much food. The show is set during the time between the arrest and the trial. One leading New York public relations executive said he once had to refuse a DeLorean request to have a date arranged with Charlotte Ford. Prosecutors say they have no tape of the telephone call and doubt DeLorean's story. So there is a lot of fun to be had in this film and in the chemistry between Pace and Sudeikis, who are each others yin and yang. 90 people. At the time it's the biggest car company on Earth. Later he says, "If you're running around in the jungle down there somewhere in Peru, you don't just call and place your order for 200 of them because they don't come when you whistle, you see. At the same time, he knew exactly what was going on, siphoning off money from his earliest days of collaboration with the British government. I mean if you don't want to do it. This letter has never been folded and is on embossed DMC letterhead. She had been a 23-year-old model when she fell in love with the rogue car magnate, who was . . There are an awful lot of families in Northern Ireland who need this. DeLorean went on to spend many years unpicking legal cases related to the downfall of his beloved car business. Add this to economic recession and DeLoreans company was on the ropes. But I figured my goose was already cooked anyhow, so it didn't matter . He was the lead engineer behind iconic muscle cars, like The Pontiac GTO, and the Pontiac Firebird. Nell Minow is the Contributing Editor at RogerEbert.com. To that end we provide a growing hypertext documentary of the attack and its aftermath, easily browsed archives of evidence, and a body of original analysis based on that evidence. I thought they had me trapped. . In an interview with Esquire, the films co-creator Bob Gale said that the film was offered $75,000 to use a Ford Mustang. During the meeting a briefcase supposedly filled with 27 kg (about $6.5 million worth) of cocaine was laid out on a table. It wasnt just DeLoreans drug smuggling antics that landed him in hot water, he also had a track record of misappropriating company funds. John DeLorean you sold me a piece of st, Carson thunders. Its still possible to buy a DeLorean. "They sent me a telex tonight saying . He agreed and was even recorded on video as saying the white stuff is better than gold.. Every car was finished with brushed stainless steel, which some owners maintain using WD-40, not soap and water like every other car. As we started to unpack DeLorean, particularly his childhood and early years on through to his deviousness in college, we started to see that traits coming out in his character later on had been part of his personality for a long time, Jon-Barrie Waddell, executive producer, told the Guardian. We're looking at a figure of $10 million. If you want to stop . The DeLorean was chosen because of its radical look, and iconic gull-wing doors. The kind that you don't meet in Wall Street offices. And so my idea was, okay, I'm anyhow . . "Driven," stars Jason Sudeikis as DeLorean's neighbor Jim Hoffman, a career criminal turned government informant, Judy Greer as Hoffman's wife Ellen, and Corey Stoll as his FBI handler.. But that wasnt to be, as the car wasnt exactly any good and John DeLorean had a habit for going a bit over the top. Less than 5 weeks until TNW Valncia Uncover all things tech in the heart of Spain , This article was published on April 24, 2020. You'd like one more summer with your kids.". As word gets out that the DeLorean Motor Car is clearly not the second coming of the Ford Model T, DeLorean starts losing key investors, threatening the entire operation. DeLorean told Latham: "He scared the right out of me.". Valestra says, "Then we're not too late." "DeLorean was a maverick who wanted to break away from the industry and do things his own way," Wynne said in a phone interview. When Hoffman called DeLorean four years later, he was in the midst of an federal scheme to lure Hetrick, a known drug smuggler, into an incriminating deal. Write to Lily Rothman at lily.rothman@time.com. The problem is that the movie seems to see them both as endearing rogues in difficult circumstances instead of selfish swindlers, and the perspective of an ancillary character is just not as interesting as what is going on literally across the street. You know people.. The tall neighbor with a poof of white hair explains, casually, I designed it. He is former General Motors wunderkind John Delorean (Lee Pace, perfectly capturing the steel underlying his surface geniality). On the government videotape of the Sept. 20 meeting in the Bel Air Sands hotel here, DeLorean asks Hetrick, "Is there an opportunity for some part of the $15 million in a 10-day period . In 1975 he set up the DeLorean Motor Company with the goal of producing an ethical sportscar. He. Please try again later. But he is not, and he is not the one on trial. "I'm going to be a long way away," DeLorean said. The DeLorean DMC-12 became and remained famous as the time-traveling car in the Back to the Future moviesbut the actual automobile was infamous for years before Marty McFly stepped inside one in 1985. Waddell traces a line from DeLorean to the Richard Bransons of the world, in particular the self-styled space cowboys Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. Was DeLorean an idealist so blinded by his need to save his innovative car company and the jobs of its Irish workers that he became prey for an illegal government trap? . The new miniseries Myth & Mogul: John DeLorean triangulates the truth in hiding somewhere between these two characterizations. . Conceived as a feature for the BBC, now expanded and split into three parts for streaming on Netflix, the biographical documentary takes stock of a man ensconced in ambiguity. As he revealed in an interview with People, he and the crew set out to explore the gold mines Oregon . During the meeting, the government videotape shows, DeLorean telephones Hetrick: "Morgan. DeLorean was promptly arrested at the hotel on grounds of narcotics law violations. Its the future. But in case we dont know how disastrous those investments will be, we are reminded by the sales pitch: Any money youre not putting into Delorean, put into Betamax. Like the Delorean design, the Betamax was a better product wiped out by a competitor with less vision and quality. In April of 1981, he bought a new house in what was then one of the largest residential real-estate deals in New Jersey history. Do you know how many people were murdered in Detroit? You know this and that. When he became an independent film-maker, he tried a couple times to make a film on DeLorean, and I became more and more aware of the core subject matter the roller coaster of dynamics between DeLorean and the British government as I came up through my teens and early 20s.. Hes remained a subject of interest ever since then, being a huge part of the early-80s industry in Northern Ireland I was only 10 around the time, but I remember more about the car and its cultural significance rather than everything going on behind the scenes. probably of . Strap in, because its a wild ride. Authentically slippery Jason Sudeikis in Driven. The story is insane, all the more so because it's based closely on what really happened. For design of the DMC-12, DeLorean called on one of the most influential yet unknown car designers, Giorgetto Guigiaro. In the final minutes before his arrest, DeLorean raised champagne glasses with Tisa and Hoffman and watched as Valestra opened a briefcase stuffed with cocaine packets. You have reached your limit of 4 free articles. DRIVEN stars Jason Sudeikis, Lee Pace, Judy Greer and Corey Stoll. Instead, Hamm and Bateman tell us the story of DeLorean's rise and spectacular fall as seen through the eyes of Jim Hoffman (played by Jason Sudeikis) the small-time con man who befriends him and then later sets him up in an ambitious FBI sting operation. Hoffman, in order to clean up his drug smuggling criminal record, works with the FBI to try and nab DeLorean in a drug sting. Most of the world, certainly outside the US, probably had no idea about the eponymous DeLorean until it featured in Back to the Future, which first hit screens in 1985. As collector's items, a top-notch used early . When the receivers investigated, however, they reported that none of those funds had gone to Lotus and that Lotus had billed DMC Ltd. directly for for its engineering services, which totaled about $23 million. John DeLorean Signed Letter To FBI Informant James Hoffman! That's because . He agrees to become an informant and the FBI relocates him and his family to San Diego. I'm -- I'll be there." His career was a promising one: He worked his way up the corporate ladder at General Motors, where he is . Because I'm dead anyhow.". What Driven ends up being about is the American Dream, in particular, that feeling you had about the future when you were young and untested, the feeling that you want to recapture. Lee Pace stars as John DeLorean in Driven. To be driving down the street in the car you built yourself and you know your dad is watching you and you just swell up. Driven takes on a ride that takes us very far from innocence, but it reminds us of what's best in us too. 3.4k members in the delorean community. He knows his new friend Hoffman has some drug connections, so asks him to help set it up. You are looking at what is likely THE most important paper artifact to be found in the thousands of pages from the DeLorean Motor Company bankruptcy files. "What's important, to you? Outcome . He brought me along, as a kid, and thats when I first connected with John DeLorean, seeing him 40 years ago. TNW is coming to Valncia in March, join us now . You're a fu--ing fraud, Carson yells and hangs up. He has the financing, he has opened his Belfast factory, there is strong consumer demand. Mr. DeLorean, the 59-year-old chairman of the bankrupt DeLorean Motor Company, is on trial on charges that he conspired in 1982 to import 55 pounds of cocaine that the Government has valued at. He seems to idolize him unironically and Lee Pace as DeLorean makes you understand just how much this secretly means to the 80's icon. . If they're gonna kill me, let them kill me. But he later admits he has flattered to deceive, and as we will see, the goofiness is strategic and the deception is the reason. But on 2 February 2014, Hoffman was found dead in his New York apartmen. Has never been folded and is on embossed DMC letterhead revealed in an interview with Esquire the... Is set during the time between the arrest and the trial can the millions of DeLorean. The Pontiac Firebird my idea was, okay, I 'm anyhow you! And he is not the one on trial spend many years unpicking legal cases related the. Him in hot water, he also had a track record of misappropriating company what happened to jim hoffman delorean his geniality! Out by a competitor with less vision and quality Valncia in March, join us.! He agrees to become an informant and the Pontiac GTO, and you 've heard of.... 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