The Making of Senna part 9: The response in Brazil

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Ayrton Senna, Williams, Interlagos, 1994

One scene in Senna which is received with laughter by most audiences gets a very different reaction when shown in Brazil.

Why does one scene get two contrasting reactions?

The film’s writer Manish Pandey explained some of the surprising responses to the film in Senna’s home country.

“I should have kissed him for ’94”

One of the more amusing moments in Senna sees him on stage in a Brazilian children’s television show. He is smothered with kisses – and bright red lipstick – by the host Xuxa Meneghel.

But while this scene is viewed as comedy by many – including the filmmakers – in Brazil it carries more sombre undertones, as Pandey explains:

“Watching that in Sao Paulo, it was one of the darkest moments of the film.

“It just shows you, [what happens] when you’re a bunch of foreigners and you make a film about somebody you never really knew.

“We turn up and Asif [Kapadia, director] and James [Gay-Rees, executive producer] and I watched the film at the premiere in a cinema full of Brazilians for the first time.

“Normally, when you watch it, you know where the funny moments are – like Alain Prost asking if they can be tied on points.

“When the Xuxa thing happens, everyone in England laughs: you’ve got this big world champion dancing badly with lipstick all over his face.

“What we didn’t realise is that in Brazil there’s a big myth about the number of times she kisses him. When she stops, she stops at 1993.

“It never occurred to me, it never occurred to Asif, it never occurred to James, it never occurred to anybody. We were laughing at it. She shook our hands at the end of the film and she was crying.

“And the next day in the Brazilian press she said ‘I should have kissed him for ’94′”.

The Piquet rivalry

Ayrton Senna, Nelson Piquet, Jacarepagua, 1986

The critical reaction to the film in Brazil was also quite different: “They really wanted more of the Senna-[Nelson] Piquet rivalry, because our film is centred around Senna and Prost”.

Pandey contrasts Senna’s view of being Brazilian, given in an interview on a programme called Roda Viva, with Piquet’s:

“He clearly felt that he was Brazilian, whereas Piquet wasn’t. He clearly felt that he’d made this absolutely conscious decision to get on a plane after every race [to return home].

“Ron Dennis told us much the same thing that, at McLaren, even if they were travelling two days to be in Brazil for one, he just needed to do that.

“Whereas Piquet, as he says, lived in Italy, his friends are Italian and he’s got very few Brazilians around him. Nelson Piquet’s name was Piquet Souto Maior and he hid the Souto Maior part because he didn’t want his mother to know he was motor racing.

“He’s a great guy, a funny guy, but he was in some ways an extremely different human being to [Ayrton] Senna. I think the Brazilians loved that playboy image in the beginning but then they found something a bit more earnest. The thing about Senna is, if you’re going to market the two, he’s probably the easier one to, he’s a bit more wholesome.

“But we couldn’t get that into it, and it’s a criticism in Brazil – they just feel, how can you talk about Senna without talking about Piquet. And that’s absolutely fair”.

But Pandey was less interested in another aspect of the story there was much appetite for in Brazil:

“I think the Brazilians also – because they’ve got quite an active tabloid press – they wanted to know why we hadn’t gone into all his girlfriends. And our reaction to that was, well, how would you do it? Do you cut away from a race to a headline in a newspaper?

“Weirdly, I think we were desperately faithful. Because he does come across as a guy for whom, really, motor racing was it. Those girls were interchangeable and that’s the truth of it.

“In the context of a guy who gave his all to become a motor racing driver, I think women, not matter how important they were to him in real life, could only ever have been incidental to him in the film”.

This is the concluding part of “The Making of Senna”. You can find all nine parts of the series here.

See the official website for more information on the film and the official Facebook page for a list of cinemas that are showing it.

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Author information

Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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69 comments on “The Making of Senna part 9: The response in Brazil”

  1. “He’s a great guy, a funny guy, but he was in some ways an extremely different human being to [Ayrton] Senna.”

    I’ll say. He’s come a long way since then, what with his spiteful actions with his son in holding Renault hostage in 2009 instead of coming clean because it was the right ting to do. I wonder if, in seventeen years, we’ll be seeing a documentary about the life of Nelson Piquet, looking at how he went from a World Champion to a bit player in one of the biggest controversies to mar the sport …

      1. Idea for a guest article: Top Ten People/Events Who Need To Be The Subject Of A Documentary.

    1. The less pleasant side of Piquet was evident while he was still active in F1. You’re surely aware of the then infamous interview in which he suggests Senna doesn’t like girls and that Nigel Mansell’s wife is ugly?

    2. So now Piquet Sr. is to be blamed by a cock up done by Briatori, Simmons and Junior in order to favor El Sonso (who nobody will ever convince me that he was not in the know)?

      1. He played his part. He was, after all, involved in negotiations over his son’s contract with Renault. And considering that Nelsinho chose to extort Briatore with his knowledge of Singapore 2008 rather than go straight to the FIA with his claims, I’d say that makes Piquet Snr. complicit in the scheme.

        1. Give me a break. Piquet Sr. is no angel, but if anyone came out of the scandal with integrity left it was him.

  2. Great report Keith, senna was such an enigma that no film, book or article could ever tell the entire story. For me the timeline jumps make the film feel very much as though a friend is recollecting shared memories. Inevitably it sparks a conversation becuase there are things that you remember as even more important to your own understanding of the man, but the friend missed. I for one really hope that a director’s cut is released.

    1. Thanks zecks!

      I hate to rain on your parade but I do keep getting asked this question over and over again: all the footage they could get from FOM was used in the film, so there’s not going to be a DVD with lots of extra bits of footage in unless they go and get more from FOM.

      The DVD/Blu-Ray release includes all the original interviews they recorded cut into the film, which creates a feature with a longer running time, but there’s no extra FOM footage in there.

      More on that in parts three and five.

      1. Keith, what about bits that were cut? (ie Senna/Tamburello at testing a month before his death?) won’t they be on the film?

        1. No, they’re not in the film. Here’s why. It mostly has to do with poor quality footage, footage that didn’t convert well to the big screen, or a lack of footage that meant the film-makers couldn’t portray both sides of the story.

          1. I know they are not in the film, but surely they still have footage of it that could be an extra even if it was cut from the film?

          2. Maybe. But I sincerely hope they are not included. That may sound like a strange thing to say, and even go against the grain of everything being a fan of the sport and Senna is supposed to represent, but there is a method to my madness.

            It is a pet hate of mine when film-makers plan their entire project around the DVD extras they are going to include. JJ Abrams is particularly guilty of this (which is why I refuse to see Super 8). A narrative – whether a work of fiction or a biography like Senna – should speak for itself. The audience should not have to go through all the special features on a DVD in order to understand (or better understand) the story it is told. Any writer or director who feels the need to do this is very bad at their jobs. I have never watched any of the featurettes or extra footage for some of my all-time favourite films (notably Serenity and Inception, among others) simply because I believe that the films themselves are pretty much perfect. They don’t need any extra content; they speak for themselves. And I honestly hope that Senna will be one of those films.

      2. Keith: Surely they have much more footage already from FOM? They cut the movie down from 5 hours into 104 minutes. That means there is footage already from FOM.

        Why do you think there will not be a directors cut?

        1. The answer’s in the question: Why buy five hours of footage and then leave two-thirds of it in the bin?

          Answer: you wouldn’t, you’d only request approval to use the material that’s gone into the final cut.

          Which, given Ecclestone’s reputation for driving a hard bargain, makes sense.

          1. It does not make sense. FOM should release all the videos for anyone interested, increasing F1 popularity. More fans = more $… This logic is flawless…

          2. Hi Keith, your point above regarding directors cuts and relying on additional material to better tell a story, thus make up for a bad job of portraying a story, for my mind is valid, previously I had not looked at it like that before. Sadly this movie fell way short of the mark in telling Ayrtons story. The extras do make up some ground, and assist the movie makers a little, but no where near enough coverage of Ayrton the man as opposed to Ayrton the racer. I was so disappointed leaving the cinema, but still purchased the bluray being the devoted Senna fan I am. I am not Brazilian but also did not laugh at the part of Xuxa kisses as immediately I realised the significance of her stopping at 93. Something lost on the film makers, and they claim perhaps because they are not Brazilian or understand the way Brazilians think. I rate the movie 5.5 / 10.

  3. Interesting to think about Piquet there. He does seem to get lost a bit between Fittipaldi who was there earlier and then Senna who is more widely idolised.

    Very nice piece to end the series with Keith. Thanks for that and thanks to makers of this movie to work with you on it.

  4. Okay, so I’ve been thinking (always a dangerous statement from me). We’ve had all these attempts at making films about racing cars. Most of them don’t turn out too well – you’ve got stuff like Talladega Nights and Driven (which originally supposed to be Stallone’s Senna biopic), which never should have seen the light of day. Even the likes of Grand Prix and Le Mans aren’t that great; lots of fantastic footage, but not much in the way of plot or characters. And fairly predictable. The biggest limitation of films is their running time – two hours is about the average.

    But I’ve been reading the articles on the Senna film, and one of Manish Pandey’s comments stands out: that they had five and a half extra hours’ worth of content to include, but they had to cut it down to ninety minutes. So, what if, instead of making films about racing drivers … we started making television series? I’m a huge fan of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Angel”, and both have year-long storylines (indeed, events in the first three seasons of “Angel” directly influence the fourth season). The standard quota of episodes for a television show is twenty-two to twenty-four (depending on the network). With twenty races in a season, it would be easy to fill that quota. The budget would be an issue, but a lot of the action could take place off the track. Instead of having all the melodrama that was all through Driven, the format of television episodes would allow the characters to be fully fleshed out because they have that time. After all, it has been said that where films are short stories, television shows are full novels. And just think: with all the controversy of recent years – Singapore, the McLaren-Ferrari affair, the Hamilton-Alonso rivalry, etc. – there’s a lot of potential for storylines.

    I actually did a university course in screenwriting a while ago, and we had to write a teleplay for a television show. One of my ideas was to be set in the paddock, but my lecturer didn’t think there was a story there, so I went with something else instead because I didn’t want to argue with him. But I reckon there is potential there. If a group of writers can crash a plane on an island and then spend six years writing about with no idea what’s happening or where it’s going, I see no reason why a television show set in the world of motorsport could be a hit.

    1. Sorry, couldn’t be a hit. I see no reason why a television show set in the world of motorsport couldn’t be a hit.

    2. You were right, dangerous to see you getting some thinking done here PM!

      Actually I like the way this is going. Maybe it would be a start to get a nice storyline going first.

      But it would be dangerous to include F1 politics, the scenarious are just so absolutely unbelievable (like that WMSC meeting and the interviews with Max, Bernie, Jean, … in the last day or two) :-D

      1. Eh, there wouldn’t be able Bernie and Jean could do to stop it. Especially if it was not set in the world of Formula 1, but the “Grand Prix World Championship”.

        As for a storyline, it wouldn’t be ahrd to come up with something good. One the one hand, you’d have the established World Champion (based on Alain Prost) who races with his head, and the perfect rival, a young upstart who races with his heart (Ayrton Senna). But what could be sporting’s greatest rivalry is undermined by a team trying to manipulate the rule book in their favour (Ferrari), by another team cheating (Renault), and by a third being embroiled in an espionage scandal (McLaren). But the big threat is organised crime – realising the potential for making money, a crime syndicate has managed to buy into a supplier of standardised parts, and has managed to incorporate powerful electromagnets into their parts, which fry the electronics of a car at the press of a button, allowing them to manipulate the outcome of the race.

        1. We could have this hotheaded new kid as well, who keept thinking everyone is against him.

          And we would need the playboy type stealing the others girls (those would boost the viewing figueres).
          Don’t forget about a team being cleverest to break the rules in spirit every time without ever failing a test.

          And there would be loads of stories on backmarker teams with all sorts of bad joke troubles based on the greatest of all fails over time. Russian magnates, Italian Mafia, drugs smuggling in containers, Dodgy regime money (take your pick, Ghadaffi, Bahrain, Venezuela, … ).
          And the odd rival championship thinking or media magnate going for PPV and control the sport himself.

          By the way, I meant dangerous not for Bernie or Jean, but for its sheer amount of turns in plot :-)

          1. We could have this hotheaded new kid as well, who keept thinking everyone is against him.

            Maybe, but it’s a bit of a cliche. Especially since it was in Driven.

            No, I’m thinking the main character could be a dignified older driver (like Fisichella) who never really got the shot he deserved (as Heidfeld’s fans believe is the case). But rather than lower himself to the level of trundling around with a backmarker team (like Trulli), he decides to quit while he’s still ahead (like Hakkinen). But after some time on the sidelines, he gets a second bite at the apple (like Glock) with a famous team going through tough times (like Williams). He gets partnered with an upstart young driver with a famous name (like Alonso with Piquet) who beat out other, more obvious choices for the seat (like Maldonado). But as the season goes on, he starts to realise that something is very, very wrong (like in 2007). By the halfway point of the season, he finds himself replaced (like Chandhok) and ends up fighting for his life (like … nobody, actually). At the end of the year, the team gets banned from the sport (like Andrea Moda), and its assets sold off (like Original Lotus). In the second season, the main character acquires the team and runs it as a team principal (like Prost). This naturally opens up a whole new set of challenges, and sets up a whole new set of storylines.

          2. Maybe you would want some aspects of that storyline to go over 2 or even 3 seasons.

            That way we can have the first season where the guy has his last season at a mid grid team before quitting (a halfway heroical drive for the second last race? and crashing out in the pracice session to his final race).

            Then the next season we can show him on the sidelines and starting to get involved with getting back again.

            And the third season can be about the new hope for the famous but trundling team.

            Sounds pretty good. Maybe we should take it further on the forum?

          3. Ah, but you run the risk of things going too slowly for audiences. You could reasonably have three or four episodes showing the final few races of his (planned) last season, another two on the sideline before he joins said famous team, and then finish the season with him buying up the team. The second season would be more political as another team keeps trying to buy the famous team out from under our hero as he tries to keep the team afloat (kind of like Arrows trying to cannibalise Prost through Phoenix Finance in 2002), and the governing body of the sport constantly changing the rules. However, while dealing with this, our hero is blind to the act that his drivers are squabbling amongst one another, threatening the entire team.

          4. You started ok, but the ending was terrible. I think a regular underdog story would be more appealing. Like his team surprisingly develops a good enough car so that he can show his talents and win races.

            Then we could have some plots where someone crashes on purpose and some big shot is covering it but our hero finds out and try to tell everybody. Also his rivals would swap places whenever their teammates were ahead of them but the main guy wouldn’t as it would not be honorous.

            The season finale would be the last race of the championship where he needed to win the race to be the champion. You know the deal…

    3. Yeah, but there is a TV show – every two weeks on BBC1!

      1. And it’s usually got more intrigue and twists than fiction ever could!

        1. Yeah, but we don’t see all the off-track stuff. We read about it, but we don’t see it.

          1. god it woul be like that awful show on sky about football http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream_Team_(TV_series)
            419 shows and counting :-(

          2. well im sick of reality tv that follows around rich spoilt people who are famous for being famous, it would be great to have them follow a driver around, irvine did it in 99 when he almost won the title made a great doco, the shots where hes told he was diqualifed from malaysia and hakkain has the title then a week later when hes told to championship is still on where great. Or maybe even an AIRPORT style show that follow the fia and race stwards, marshals and track staff, before during and after a grand prix, id watch a 4 to 6 part show on preparing and staging the monaco grand prix.

          3. In america they also do a series called “Hard Knocks” on HBO every year where they follow a team through training camp and pre season, its a fantastic series which really gives you an insight into how the sport works and who the players are as people. Im a big NFL fan and I have totally change my opinions of some players ive seen on that series compared to what i thought of them based on their game time and what we read about them.

          4. Not to mention that this time, there could be someone who knows how to have the best shots end up on screen to tell the story of the race.

    4. One thing I would like to see if a doco done like Truth in 24 that follows a team for the entire season, with a film crew in the garage getting great footage of drivers, crew and management with their guard down, and the viewer being able to get a great insight into what an F1 team is like.

      Even if it focused on a small team, seeing what happens when drivers don’t make the cut in qualifying, the disappointment when breaking down, the fight for survival. It could be possible to do one team per year before cycling back to a team which had been covered long enough ago for a significant amount to change to be interesting.

    5. Dude, Driven was despicable but Talladega Nights was hilarious man, that movie is awesome.

      1. That was one of the worst films I’ve ever seen. Looking back on the review I was far too kind!

        Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby

  5. It would have been a weird if there was stronger focus on Piquet, when he won the title in ’87 his main rival was Mansell, and in ’86 Senna won races but faded near the end. After that Piquet didn’t have a really competitive car.

    Having watched the film I have to say I enjoyed it a lot, my only criticism being as you highlighted earlier in the series the fact that rivalry with Prost is too much in Senna’s favour in my opinion.

    For example if you didn’t know about the history of the 1989 season you would infer that Senna had the title stripped from him, when in fact Prost would have won anyway as Senna crashed in Australia. Also not including the bits about Imola ’89 and Estoril ’88 makes it look like Prost simply couldn’t handle a fast driver coming into the team, and doesn’t explain why he refused to accommodate his behaviour any more.

    The best bit about the film is without a doubt the sequence about Imola ’94. I never saw it live as I was too young but have watched footage on youtube, but the horrendous impact of his crash is shocking, and so final. You can see him getting more and more upset over the course of the weekend at the terrible things happening, and the voiceovers from Sid Watkins really paid a fitting tribute to a great driver.

    1. By the same token, Suzuka 1990 didn’t really matter because Prost retired in the subsequent race in Australia.

      1. yes, but the problem is that Senna put both their lives in danger.

  6. Likewise, they didn’t go into the Senna-Mansell rivalry as much as I would have liked either.

  7. When I watched the film in London a couple of weeks back I though “she should have kissed him for 94! It’s all her fault!” as well. I thought it was a great scene for many reasons, including that.

  8. I thought exactly the same thing.

    I was giggling to myself when she was asking what he wanted for Christmas, and he said he just couldn’t say as it’d end up being censored! Then when the kisses began, I thought “wouldn’t it be strange if she stopped before 1994…” – low and behold.

  9. I didn’t think the film needed to show EVERYTHING that happened in F1. It doesn’t even talk about Donington 1993 yet I didn’t even notice.

    The thing about the kisses I did funnily enough think about when she didn’t say ’94. But people can’t seriously think that’s why he was killed.

  10. Saw the film last night. I’m lost for words to describe how good it was.

    The one thing that I hold as an iconic image of Senna that I thought would be included in the end-credits montage was that of Mansell giving him a lift back to the pits at Silverstone 1991.

  11. Xuxa failing to kiss him for 94 is instantly perceived by brazilians… and it’s certainly one of the darkest, hardest scenes…

    I don’t know if you have the precise notion about Xuxa’s importance. Se is not just “a” host in a TV show for children, but THE most famous, loved and controversial – for her nude pictures and movies in her early days – TV show host in Brazil and, at the time, it was her appex. She had also dated Pele before… She still makes eventual TV shows, but nothing like it was before…

    So every brazilian who sees Xuxa kissing Senna for happy new years until 93 has in mind two equally famous pop icons that dated each other during the peak of their careers…

    Also, you can’t dissociate that kissing scene from her devastated face in the funeral. They weren’t dating anymore… he was with Adriane Galisteu at the time, than a beginner, know a famous model in Brazil, that was harshly accused by critics and humorists for building her career around her “widow image”, but most people in Brazil believe Xuxa was the love of Senna’s life…

    1. Unosposklin
      4th June 2013, 0:47

      This is not true, Xuxa is who was criticized by posing false widow at the funeral of Senna. Because he was the boyfriend with Adriane over a year. And people here in Brazil do not think Xuxa was the great love of Ayrton, they dated in 89 and 90. Little seen, she working in Brazil and he with F1 in Europe.

      What happens, unfortunately, is that Xuxa is always privileged, being famous and is hired TV GLOBO. The same TV GLOBO that transmits F1 races here in Brazil, since that time, until today.

  12. Good news for those in the UK from Manish:

    “Huge UK demand means that Universal are expanding Senna film into more cinemas this week. Details to follow. Thank you British fans!”

    http://twitter.com/mpandey69/statuses/78060108671754240

    1. Let’s just hope it opens in regional Australia.

      1. and Canada.

    2. Cluffy_Wedge
      7th June 2011, 23:21

      They can probably thank Top Gear for that…

  13. I always find it interesting when people talk to a couple of Brazilians and extend their opnions to be “what Brazilians think about” this or that (the 200 million of them). I am Brazilian and the last thing I would like to see in a movie about Senna are sections his girlfriends or any aspect of his personal life. I was a fan of the driver, I didn’t know the man and besides that, I wouldn’t watch a documentary talking about the private life of the best friends of mine, let alone about a sporting figure. Regarding his relationship with Piquet, they hated each others guts – in fact Piquet would not miss an opportunity to insinuate that Senna was gay (not a bad or good thing in itself, but Piquet meant to disparage him in doing so). Perhaps the whole subject came to fore because quite some people, mostly Piquet fans, would suggest that Xuxa was a sort of PR girlfriend… Anyway, I would not pay to see movie talking about things like these in a million years.

    1. Yeah, and a deeper focus on Senna-Piquet relationship would certainly have to show these insinuations…

      Anyway, the documentary is mostly focused on the driver, but I don’t see any problem in talking about the man behind the driver…

      Xuxa and Senna, for their fame and their public appearences, is not exactly private life, it is, at worst, a “PR relationship”, so its mention makes sense…

      But the most important thing in the film is, certainly, his career, his many success, his incredible stories…

      So go see the film and don’t be afraid to throw out your money… you won’t regret.

  14. I had read on this site (I think) about how many kisses Xuxa gives him, i’m not a suspicious guy but I see how it can be construed that way. That part of the film was quite weird, I just imagined seeing one of todays crew doing something similar!

    I think it was a good idea to not include that much information about the women in his life. This film was about his motorsport career, well, F1 career. Anything else would have felt a bit shoe-horned in and could have cheapened the film.

    Thanks for this series Keith, it’s been a good read.

  15. Truly a great film and a really good series of articles Keith. Thank you.

    The film really did change my perception of Senna. I never fully appreciated the politics he had to fight against in his duels with Prost and I always saw him as the bad guy. I better understand the reasons for some of his actions now, however right/wrong the may have been.

    If you haven’t seen it, seriously, what are you waiting for? It’s that good.

    1. If you haven’t seen it, seriously, what are you waiting for?

      Uh, for it to be released?

  16. Hmmm, as Someone that has worked in the entertainment business for nearly twenty years (including Universal music) I find the speculation fascinating. Perhaps You Guys could get Me a treatment that I could pitch. Seriously though, there are several motor-sports stories floating around/being considered. Unfortunately, they all wish to depict NASCAR. How fun…, NOT!

    1. Your on!

      Lets put this in. Seriously, I think it will be hard to do a really nice show (what studio has a range of pit boxes in their facilities?). But TV has been putting in some very high quality shows lately, a lot better than most hollywood movies for less budget.

  17. During the television show scene in the movie, you could see she loved him very much. I thought it was powerful and the saddest scene in the movie for me, and I’m a hot dog eating American. I cant possibly begin to imagine the grief Xuxa felt when she saw that part of the movie, or even the Brazilians for that matter.

  18. Nelson Piquet’s name was Piquet Souto Maior

    Reading it in the paragraph talking about Italy, I thought about “Sotomayor”, an expression used as nonsense: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SofsI4j6i2g&feature=player_detailpage#t=334s
    Probably no one will understand this!

  19. These 9 articels really offer an excellent guide to the film. Thanks Keith!

    1. You’re welcome, glad you enjoyed it.

  20. Well, as a brazilian I can say there’s some misinformation here. First, I don’t think anybody here paid much attention to the Xuxa scene, other than it being funny/awkward. Xuxa made some TV success in the 80’s and then became quite a decadent personality. Most people here don’t even know she dated Senna for a while, and i never heard the story about the 1993 kisses before. But in case anyone’s interested, there’s a Senna interview for Playboy mag in 91 or 92, where he talks a lot about women, and of how important some of they were, contrary to what Pandy suggests.

    As for Piquet, it’s really disapointing that the movie doesn’t talk more about him. This may surprise some of you, but Piquet is by and large hated for most people here in Brazil, mainly because he was seen as a enemy of Senna, and jeaolous of his talent. They fought a lot on the press, and Piquet even said Senna was gay. By the way Pandy is incorrect when he says Piquet didn’t use his last name because of his mother (that wouldnt make sense!). It was because of his father, a politician, that totally disapproved racing. SO he used his mother’s maiden name.
    I’ve put together a series of Piquet interviews with english subs here, if anyone’s interested:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7Z1_sQIxbw

    The ‘Roda Viva’ programs mentioned are also very interesting, there’s one shot in 86 with Senna, when he talks about how Piquet was different from him and arrogant. And there’s another one, from 94, with Piquet. He had already been confirmed in the show, and then, in a strange coincidence, Senna died the day before, so it’s interesting to see Piquet having to talk about his disaffect the day after he died.

  21. I am disappointed that the filmmakers didn’t realize the ’93 kisses connection – I thought that was the reason it was included in the film. The scene was absolutely chilling, to me, not even close to being a ‘funny moment’, so it isn’t just those in Brasil who reacted in a different way, I think the filmakers have completely misunderstood or misappropriated that footage.

    btw if you watch Senna, try and fine the long cut. The short cut is a very different film and not as good as the festival version

    1. There’s a lot of misinformation about the length of the film, largely spread by people who have obtained illegal copies of it.

      For an explanation see this article:

      The Making of Senna part 5: The lost scenes

      And this comment:

      https://www.racefans.net/2011/06/02/making-senna-part-5/#comment-704108

  22. How can we get hold of senna DVD in Africa (Nairobi).

  23. Bob Richards
    18th June 2011, 21:56

    I have seen the film twice, in the Duke of York cinema in Brighton, and I have to say neither time did anyone laugh at the scene where Senna was kissed good luck for every year up to 1993. There was just silence in the cinema, the majority of the people saw the “significance” immediately.

  24. I’ve find it odd that all the key players in making the film were oblivious to the “prophetic” undertones of the Xuxa New Year’s kisses incident. Sure, at the time it was probably funny to everyone, but in retrospect, it does seem a bit eerie that she stopped at “Happy 1993”. I’m not even Brazilian and I thought that the first time I saw the film! How could those guys have missed it completely until they premiered the film in Brazil? Strange.

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