Page Sections
Film Awards
Winner
- Audience Award, Best Documentary Doc Utah Film Festival, Utah
- Emerging Documentary Filmmaker, Geneva Film Festival, Geneva
- Excellence in Editing, Real to ReelInternational Film Festival, 2011
- Best Documentary Feature, Prescott Film Festival,
Official Selection
- Breckenridge Festival of Film2011
- Newport Beach Film Festival2011
- Rhode Island International Film Festival2011
- Sarasota Film Festival2011
- Carmel Art and Film Festival2011
- Long Island Film Festival2011
- Arizona International Film Festival2011
- Indianapolis International Film Festival2011
- Buffalo-Niagara Film Festival2011
- Ruby Mountain Film Festival2011
- San Antonio Film Festival2011
- Kansas International Film Festival2011
- Heartland Film Festival2011
- Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival2011
- Fort Lauderdale Film Festival2011
Film Description
A new documentary narrated by Patrick Dempsey
Available now on DVD
Boys of Bonneville: Racing on a Ribbon of Salt is about an America that has all but disappeared, when lucrative business deals were cemented by a handshake and state of the art automobiles were designed on the backs of envelopes. It tells the story of an unsung hero and self-made man, David Abbott Jenkins, who, with almost superhuman stamina and boyish charm, set out to single-handedly break every existing land speed record on his beloved Bonneville Salt Flats of Utah. Seventy years later, many of "Ab’s" records remain unbroken and the legacy lives on in his custom car. Looking like something Batman would have owned, the story comes full circle when Ab’s son Marv, restores the 12-cylinder, 4800-pound “Mormon Meteor” to its glory days for a ceremonial lap on the salt.
Using vintage newsreel footage from the 1930s – 1950s, photos, letters, and diaries of Ab and Marv during their twenty-year run on the Salt Flats, Utah-based filmmakers are bringing these heroes back to life for a modern day audience. In addition to the pristine archival materials, the film will feature scenics and interviews shot entirely on high-definition cameras, including those with Jay Leno, Andy Green (current holder of the land speed record), Marv Jenkins, Ab’s grandchildren, and a rich assortment of racing heroes and historians.
In addition, this one-of-a-kind racing phenomenon is in better shape than when Ab took it out on the Salt Flats seventy years ago and the filmmakers hope to take the Meteor to select Film Festivals to allow a new generation of filmmakers and racing enthusiasts to touch and feel the real deal.
Boys of Bonneville is that rare animal: an exhilarating film about an unknown American hero which leaves its audience cheering to the rafters and grabbing for their cell phones demanding to know “who is this guy and where can I see this car?”
Production team:
- Curt Wallin: Director
- John Greene: Producer, Editor
- Michael Chandler: Consulting Editor, Writer
- Jennifer Jordan: Producer, Writer
- Geralyn White Dreyfous: Executive Producer
- Former U.S. Ambassador John Price: Executive Producer