It’s me, Mark Stone, and in this episode of the Backseat Driver Podcast, I’m joined by Nick Pagani, who shares his extensive experience working with classic American cars in the film industry.

Nick talks about his journey from a family repair business in the 1980s to becoming a trusted coordinator for picture cars on major productions. We explore the crucial role vehicles play on screen, and how they help shape the identity and authenticity of a film.

I dig into the realities of working on set, where tight schedules and creative decisions can put pressure on both people and machines. Nick explains the challenges of dealing with directors who may not fully appreciate the significance of certain vehicles, and how that can sometimes put rare or valuable cars at risk.

This episode also looks at how car culture in cinema has evolved, and what the future might hold as modern technology continues to influence filmmaking. It is a fascinating insight into a niche world where automotive passion meets the demands of the entertainment industry.

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I'd like to introduce to the Backseat driver an American gentleman and another American gentleman introduced to me by the one we all meet, Joe Pep, whose life has revolved around cars of the film industry.

So without further ado, Mick Pagani, welcome to the Backseat driver.

Thank you, Mark.

Nice to be with you.

How did you get into the combination of what are now classic American cars and the movie industry?

So I was always around cars, and we had a repair shop, and I specialized in antique cars.

Yeah.

One day I was at a car show, a local car show, and someone approached me with a flyer that they were doing a movie called Riding in Cars with Boys with Drew Barrymore.

Yeah.

And Brittany Murphy.

And they said, we're looking for cars from this period, and we'll pay you X amount of dollars a day and X amount of dollars to drive it.

Are you interested?

Yeah.

Oh, no, I stand corrected.

It wasn't Drew Barrymore.

It was the Robin Williams movie, All right.

Called Seize Today.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Is the day.

And they came with the flyer.

So we went.

I brought six cars with five of my friends and myself, and we drove, and I enjoyed it.

Yeah.

And it was a lot of fun.

And the hours were strange.

The prop master and pitch car coordinator went to another movie, and they said, you want to come to that one?

And that was Angel Heart with Mickey Rourke and Robert De Niro.

Yeah.

And same thing.

We'll pay you.

The drive will pay you for the cars.

And they went to another movie, which was 84 Charing Crossroad.

Oh, yeah.

With Anthony Hopkins and Dan Bancroft.

Yeah, Same thing.

Did that one.

And then I realized that the hours were really strange.

You're always in a different location.

I enjoy routine.

I don't like the disruption of the way a movie set operates.

Yeah.

So I said, you know, my kids were little.

I still had the repair business going, so it was kind of difficult, and I stopped doing it until riding with cars, riding in Cars with boys came out, and someone came around with the same flyer, same kind of flyer.

And a lot of guys came, brought me the flyer because they had gone to this particular car show.

I said, yeah, I did that once.

I don't know if I want to do that again.

And after the fifth or sixth guy coming in the shop with the same flyer, I said, let me go talk to this guy.

And it turned out it was the same guy I worked with, you know, years earlier.

Yeah.

And he lived in town by me in Greenwich, and we became very friendly.

So he took me along on that one.

And then he said, I'm going to another movie right after this one.

I want you to come.

And that was Beautiful Mind, and I did Beautiful Mind with Rob.

With Russell Crowe.

Yeah.

I mean, just out of interest, what sort of cars were these?

Well, most of them were 50s cars, big American 50s cars.

And that's predominantly what I have.

Post war American stuff.

Yeah.

And occasionally they'll call for something a little bit out of my.

My realm.

Yeah.

And I'll find it for them.

But by.

Yeah.

And they would all call me for these movies.

And I became either a picture car coordinator, where I would amass all these cars and orchestrate it, or a picture car wrangler, which would be on the set and telling everybody where to be, or on set mechanic to make sure that if I wasn't supplying the cars, whatever cars they had would function during the day.

Yeah.

And.

And not cause them money.

So.

And that's how I got into it.

I was still doing the repair business, the restoration business.

Yeah.

So the issue with this business, though, is it's really for a young person, you know, you have 12, 13, 14 hours a day on the set.

Yeah.

And you have to get there and you have to get home.

So you're up like 14, 15 hours a day at least.

And it's stressful.

There's a lot of downtime.

It's like the army, you know, Hurry up and wait.

The issue is you have a lot of chiefs and not.

Not many Indians.

Yeah.

So everybody's telling you what to do.

And at one point, I've gotten to.

In my career where it's like, listen, I'll wait till they come the third time and ask me to do the same thing.

Because they ask you move all this stuff over here, and then five minutes later they come back and they say, don't put it over here.

And where do you think the stuff ends up the third or fourth times?

Right where it was.

So I just kind of.

Yes.

Of the death.

Walk away for five minutes, look like I'm doing something, and then, you know, it all goes to where it's supposed to be.

Yeah.

Now, the car, the cars you supply, I mean, we had a chat before we went on air, and I know one thing that used to annoy you and still does annoy you is when you get asked for a car that's going to be written off, wrecked and things like that.

And I think there's times when you disagree with the car they want to wreck, don't you?

Well, when we did Beautiful Mind, there was one scene where there's a chase scene and they total an old Cadillac sedan.

And they actually bought the car for me.

I really didn't want to see it turned into paper clips and lawn furniture, but they paid good money for it.

So what they do after that, I just have to.

I have to assume it's like I sold it to somebody and that's the end of that, and I never want to see it again.

Yeah, it's when they arbitrarily destroy stuff on the set because they're in a rush, they're in a hurry, they want to do it a certain way.

And things get damaged for no good reason other than, you know, lack of care.

Yeah, that's when it bothers me.

They'll put camera mounts on things, you know, strap these things down to the hoods and dent the hoods or damage the fenders.

There's a way to do it where you don't have to cause destruction.

Yeah, but they get a belt.

I know you were telling me about one where the hero car, you say, well, I can substitute the hero car for one that if you shoot it in the right way, nobody will be able to tell it's not the same car.

And you will be destroying a far less valuable, far less rare car.

Well, we had Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist was one instance of that where they.

They wanted a van for particular characters, so we had to find.

They found one before I got into it, and it was a real tired, old, beat up Dodge van.

And they said, we need a duplicate of this.

And I found them a beautiful version of it.

And I said, this one you can use for the running shots and the driving shots.

Use the other one for the stage shot where we had to actually cut the sides off of it.

Yeah.

So they could.

They could put the camera outside and shoot into the van and then fasten the side back on with clamps and go to the other side if they had to cut the roof off it so they can shoot down.

And they were in a big hurry, and they said, no, no, no.

Which one.

Which one is finished first?

Of course, the ratty one had come out of the paint shop first.

Yeah.

And that's the one they used for the driving scenes.

The one they Destroyed was the $10,000 Dodge van.

Yeah, that was.

I ended up junking it because there was really nothing left of it to bury by the time they were gone.

So they do stuff like that all the time though.

It's the money has got the issue for them, you know, it's what they want, when they want it.

Yeah.

And sometimes it can be really frustrating.

Yeah.

Because they, you give them too many choices sometimes you give them too many choices.

They we want this particular car, what have you got?

And you'll show them three or four or five and then they can't make a decision because there's too many choices.

Yeah.

The trick with movie industry is the less choices they have, the easier it is for them to make a choice.

You have A or B. Yeah.

I mean, working in the movie industry you'll have discovered which directors you prefer to work with and which you hope you will never work with again.

I mean, without saying anything, shall we say, particularly libelous or anything.

I mean, which directors do you get on with or have you got on with them?

Which will you not do anything with?

Well, I was, I was always lucky enough that I got along with all the directors.

There were some that I worked with that liked to film.

For whatever reason they figured that the more, the more film they shot, the better the movie was going to be.

Yeah.

And, and I can almost liken that to unless you know what you want, you just keep running the camera.

Yeah.

I worked with Sidney Lumet who was fantastic.

He was one take, that was it.

One take.

Yeah.

And we shot before the devil knows you're dead with Philip Seymour Hoffman.

And it was eight hour days, wonderfully controlled, very easy to do.

And that was in the top of the summertime in Manhattan was brutal.

We were out of there by 4 o' clock in the afternoon every day.

I enjoyed working with him.

And then there were some that I worked with.

As nice as they were.

You would swear they just put the film in the camera and walked away from it for an hour and then just came back and said, okay, let's move on to the next scene.

Yeah.

Now I conclude you've mentioned there Manhattan.

I have been to New York but once.

Now I know, man, it's one of those strange things with America.

I regard Manhattan as part of New York, but I get the feeling Manhattan technically isn't part of New York.

I've never quite known it is.

It absolutely is.

The difference is if you're really, if you're really in New York, you call it the city.

Right, Right.

But it is New York.

But then the City is broken up into five boroughs.

Yeah.

So you have Manhattan and Brooklyn and the Bronx and Queens and Staten Island.

But it's all the city as far as real New Yorkers are concerned.

That's just the city.

Right.

I am located outside.

My shop is located right outside of the city.

Yeah.

In Westchester County.

But I conclude, working in, say, the center of New York and Manhattan, it will be incredibly difficult because they can't just shut off a part of New York, can they?

Yes, they do.

Oh, yes, they do.

I have driven.

I drove Matt Damon across the 59th Street Bridge in the middle of the day with nobody else around me.

They shut the bridge, you do what you have to do, then they reopen the bridge.

They have traffic control division.

Yeah.

They have a specific department in the New York Police Department that is for film.

So if they're shooting the TV series or commercial or a movie, those guys are in charge of traffic control.

Yeah.

So they will shut a street off.

We were filming movie called Zurich a. Munich.

Munich, yeah.

Which was about the.

The Israeli team.

Yeah.

Back in the 70s.

Yeah.

And we were shooting in Brooklyn.

They had the streets locked off, that nobody could go down the street.

And there was some kind of incident on one of the bridges, whether it was the Brooklyn bridge or the 59th Street Bridge.

And the police were chasing the suspect.

They chased him through the set.

The guy came screaming through the set.

All the crew scattered.

The guy came driving through the set 100 miles an hour, and we thought that was it.

And then all of a sudden, the police cars came after him.

Yeah.

And, you know, just because they have cones and barricades up and policemen standing at the end of the street, does it mean that, you know, that can't happen?

Yeah.

That people can't drive onto the set.

They'll walk through the set.

They could care less.

When you stop them and say, listen, we're filming.

Could you wait here two minutes?

Yeah.

There's a lot of pushback, a lot of attitude, and it's Manhattan, it's a grid.

You can't walk down 59th street, walk up a block.

You can walk down 60th.

It's not a big deal.

You would end up on the next block anyhow.

Yeah, but you'd be surprised how many people are so adamant about.

Well, I have to go here, because the next block, go up a block and down.

Yes.

They'll walk through the scene.

You know, we have.

You know, the cameras are rolling, and then you have all these.

These people who just meander through either their.

You Know, Chinese food delivery guys or the UPS guys are pretty good about not doing it, but you'll get a lot of people who just could care less.

That's where they have to go.

Yeah, that's where they go.

Now, when you're somewhere like Manhattan filming with however many cars, I conclude either you or you will have to have a team that will look after them when they're not being filmed while you.

Well, when we're filming, we're actually on the set on the day I'm there.

I never just let them go.

And I keep an eye on stuff.

You have to, because things happen all the time.

Equipment gets pushed into it.

We were on Plot Against America one day, which was filmed a few years ago, and some people walking down the set decided they would get in one of the cars and start goofing around and taking pictures and blowing the horn and, you know, slamming the doors.

They didn't belong in the car.

Yeah.

Unfortunately, they didn't realize that the guy who owned that car was across the street.

I thought he was going to eviscerate that.

He came running across.

I'm like, I got out of the car to.

To yell at them from the car behind.

It was, it was a brawl.

It was just, you know, they were just goof around.

They thought it was a prop.

Yeah.

They thought it was just there for them to enjoy and could care less.

So, yes, you do have to watch.

When you leave stuff on the set overnight, they will have what they call a fire watch.

Yeah.

Which are people who are hired to just patrol the set all night long and make sure things don't get stolen or disturbed or vandalized.

Yeah.

And for the most part, you know, that goes off pretty, pretty well.

We were doing TV show called PowerBook.

Yeah.

And the guy who was delivering the cars was from Jersey, New Jersey.

He dropped off a dozen cars where we told him to drop them off.

And they were early 90s, high end, foreign luxury cars like a Jaguar and a couple of Mercedes and a BMW.

And then there were a couple of other not so desirable cars like a Toyota Corolla or Honda Accord.

They were all lined up in this one spot.

So I get to the set in the morning and I go to make sure the cars are there and I count there's six cars or seven cars out of 10.

Yeah.

And I call up Carmine, I said, carmine, where are the other cars?

He goes, what do you mean, where are the other cars?

I said, well, I see these, I don't see the other ones.

Yeah, they were all there.

And what happened was somebody was casing the joint, knew that the cars were there, waited for the firewatch to go to the other end of the block, and stole three of the cars.

There's the keys are in them.

They have to be in them because if they have to be moved at any point, you know, you have to have access to starting.

Yeah.

These guys knew.

Whoever stole these cars knew.

And three of the cars disappeared.

I drove around like half a mile square in the Bronx trying to find this stuff.

And ultimately they found one at a place that did window tinting.

Yeah, yeah.

That the guy was going to have the windows tinted and he was going to change the look of the car and drive it around.

Yeah.

Another car they found in an autozone that the guy was buying, you know, different hubcaps for it or something.

Yeah.

But they found all three cars, but not after the insurance company paid off on them.

Right.

So sometimes that happens.

Yeah, not often.

So working in rural America will be a far less stressful affair then.

Well, I did shoot in Detroit once.

To me, that's rural.

I was in Michigan.

Right.

We were Ann Arbor.

We were outside of Ann Arbor in Detroit proper.

And there have been times that even when you're in a rural location, depending on who the talent is, you could still have almost the same problems.

Yeah.

The last movie I was on was just a year ago, was a Timothee Chalamet movie called Marty Supreme.

And we were filming in the middle of nowhere, New Jersey that was, I don't know, two or three miles from Pennsylvania.

We were so far into New Jersey on a farm.

A literal farm.

Yeah.

And it's two or three o' clock in the morning.

They're in the farm that's maybe four or five hundred yards from the street.

There's a group of high school girls gathered down at the bottom of the set, you know, screaming and chanting, and they want to see him.

And guys, don't you have school tomorrow?

What are you doing down there?

Go away.

And you know, they get in everybody's hair.

And it happens even in rural locations.

You will get a lot of people who want to see the talent and basically.

Basically come up the works.

Yeah.

Now, I know one car you were talking about was the.

I'm trying to think it was a Buick in Rain man with Dustin Hoffman.

And I know you said before that film you could have bought one of those cars for not a bad price.

Then they went to about quarter of a million dollars.

I mean, what car was that?

That was a 49 Roadmaster, I don't think it went up to a quarter of a million.

That was the Tucker.

Yeah.

But the 49 Buick Roadmaster convertible before Rain man came out, you could have bought a beautiful, beautiful version of that car, probably for 20 grand.

Yeah.

And then after the movie came out, it quadrupled almost five times the price of what they were prior to the movie.

Tucker did the same thing you.

Yeah.

I think the Bullitt Mustang, which.

Let's face it, it's a Mustang.

They made a million of it once.

Once Bullitt came out.

You know, everybody wanted the green Bullitt Mustang.

Yeah.

And I think there were only a few big.

There was five or six of them all together built for the movie.

Yeah.

And the last one was, I think, seven digits when it sold.

Yeah.

But again, it's all a matter of who wants.

Who wants to have the car from the movie.

Yeah.

Because I know the.

The color.

That green that the Bullet Mustang was in was a very rare color.

It wasn't one.

People ordered a great deal.

Right, right.

Mustangs, red, black, white.

You know, you.

You didn't see that.

That forest green.

Yeah.

So much.

I mean, the car actually looked quite good in that color.

It is a nice color.

I mean, for that particular car.

But, you know, if you're gonna buy a sports car, you want a red scar, red car, silver car, a black car, green.

Wasn't.

It wasn't so much a sports car color.

But at that time in America, a lot of cars were that dark green.

Right.

Whether it was a Dodge Coronet or a Mustang or, you know, a Buell collector, they were all that dark green with black interiors.

Yeah.

I mean, as he has this phenomena happened to any other cars?

They've.

They've been not worth very much, and as soon as they've appeared in a film, they're then worth a small fortune.

I mean, we all know that's why product placement takes place.

I mean, absolutely.

I mean, Tom.

Tom Hanks wears Oakley sunglasses.

All of a sudden, everybody wants Oakley sunglasses.

Yeah.

And they have product placement people in the movie.

Yeah.

Who call up and.

And ask them, listen, if we put this particular soda or beer on the table here, will you send this as much as we want?

Yeah.

Because when we did, I think it was whip out in.

Out in Detroit.

That was beer.

You know, there was a lot of.

Lot of beer consumption in this movie.

Yeah.

And they called all these beer distributors.

We'll put your product on the tables very visibly.

And trailer trucks of it showed up.

Yeah, no kidding.

You know, Corona Tosekis.

Whatever it was, it was like there were cases of beer every place.

Yeah.

So.

Because I know.

I know Stallone promotes a particular bourbon.

I can't remember which one it is, but I know he always has a bottle of this bourbon around him.

And Burt Reynolds always had.

I think it was Jack Daniels.

Yes.

Yes.

But again, they.

And they have to be very careful about.

If they need product placement clearance.

I did a commercial force.

I can't remember what it was.

It was just a commercial for a day.

Yeah.

And they wanted my Roadmaster wagon, you know, in the scene.

Yeah.

But they didn't want to pay royalties to Buick.

So somebody went when I was looking the other way ending.

Scrape the nameplate off the back of the car without telling me.

Yeah.

So they wouldn't have to pay royalties to Buick.

Yeah.

Infuriated me.

Did they put it back afterwards?

No, they handed it to me.

So you put it back.

Now, what's.

I know you mentioned it in.

When we spoke before previously.

What's the most unusual cars you've been asked for?

Because I know one was a Yugo, wasn't it?

Or Hugo.

That was.

That was a pretty unusual car.

We had call for that in Nick and Orison for the playlist.

I had to find four of them.

Yeah.

Which was an impossibility when they were selling them in this country.

So imagine not having to find them 20 years after they stopped building them.

And.

And they were disposable six months after you bought them.

Yeah.

So that was one of them.

When we did Whip It, Drew Barrymore was directing.

Was her debut.

Directorial debut.

Yeah.

And she gave me a very specific list of what she wanted.

And, you know, I went out to Detroit as the picture car coordinator, and I said, how tough could this be?

It's Detroit.

It's full of cars.

You know, how.

How tough could it be to find X, Y, and Z?

Well, one of them was a Carmen gear that she wanted.

Yeah.

Another one was a dune buggy, which.

Okay, dude, buggy.

I had to find a.

A short bus.

And then there was a.

A Buick Century she wanted.

Yeah.

And I found all this stuff.

The funniest part of it was the Buick came from a location five minutes from my shop.

Yeah.

In Westchester that I had that one of my guys drive out to Detroit because I couldn't find one anywhere in Detroit that matched the parameters she set up for the car.

Yeah.

You know the dune boogie I found, I think it was Kansas City.

And I made a deal with the guy that it wasn't running hadn't run in years.

And I said, if you get it to me and let us use it for the month of filming, I will give you back a running, driving dune buggy.

Yeah.

And.

And I'll pay you X amount for the use of the car.

And that's what he did.

He trailed it to us.

I got the car running and road worthy.

We used it all through the movie.

He came, picked it up and brought it back.

Same thing with the Carmen gear.

Yeah.

There was one guy couldn't.

You couldn't buy one.

People didn't want to let them go for reasonable money.

So I rented it from one guy with the.

The codicil that he could meet Drew Barrymore.

Yeah.

And, you know, he drove the car, he dropped it off, they had lunch, he went away, came back a month later, picked his car, Very happy.

Now, when they asked for you, as for cars from you, I conclude they'll be specific about make and model.

Are they specific about color?

Yes, they're very specific about color.

Depending on.

Well, for a principal car, they are specific about color.

And when we did Revolutionary Road, that was Sam Mendes.

And they picked out.

I had a 54 Buick Roadmaster.

I brought them three cars.

I brought them a 55 pack of Patrician.

I brought them the Buick Roadmaster.

And I can't remember what the other car was, or maybe it was one of the Cadillacs.

Yeah.

And they liked the look of the buick for Leonardo DiCaprio's principal car.

Yeah.

That particular car, though mine was beige.

They didn't like the beige.

Yeah.

So they said, can we paint it?

I said, if you paint it back, because it was a California car.

It was a really nice original car.

Yeah.

I said, if you pay to paint it back, yeah, no problem.

I said, but it has to be a 54 Buick color.

Yeah.

So I gave them the color chips and they wanted a matching car, which I had.

And then they wanted a third car, which I located.

And I. I bring them the chips.

They pick out what they call lido green, which was like a color of a dentist drill, you know, that, like.

Yeah.

Florida green.

Yeah.

They said this with a white top.

Okay.

And I had three weeks to do it.

Two cars, take all the chrome off, take all the glass out.

They wanted clear glass and change everything over, paint the cars, put them back together, bring them down to Manhattan for them to see.

And it's noon in the summertime, the sun is directly above.

And these cars looked like they.

Like Chernobyl.

They were glowing so bright because the ecology and they were like, oh, my God, that's too bright.

Yeah.

I said, well, you picked the color guys.

What do you want from me?

Yeah.

You got to paint to the darker colored.

I stood.

We're shooting in a week and a half.

What do you want me to do?

We got to paint to the darker color.

Yeah.

Get the ships back, and they pick out a gray, a dark charcoal gray.

So I took everything apart, reshot them, brought them back, and that was the color they went with.

Yeah.

But they were.

You know, they'll do that all the time.

They'll pick a color for something, and then they don't like the color.

And now you have to do it again.

Yeah.

And I conclude a lot of the people that you're working with doing this are not car people.

Some are.

Some are.

I. I've.

Most of the guys that I have the issue with are the scenics.

Yeah.

And those are the guys who dull the.

The finishes down so the reflection isn't so bad.

Yeah.

You don't want to see.

As the cars going past.

You don't want to see the reflection of the camera in the door.

Yeah.

Of the cars.

So they will.

They will spray all kinds of nonsense on cars to make them not shiny.

I know.

You can't from.

I know photographers use something called a matting sprayer.

A dulling spray.

Yeah.

And if you clean that off right away, maybe it's not so bad.

Yeah.

I. I've run into a few guys on the scenics departments who are actually car guys.

Yeah.

And they had perfected a mixture of, like, basically charcoal and water.

Yeah.

That if you spray it on, it just looks dull.

Yeah.

But it comes off very easily if you rub up against it.

You know, you have to reapply it.

Yeah.

The powers that be are wild about that because the guy's always doing something as opposed to applying it once and then you don't have to touch it again.

Yeah.

Unfortunately, though, if you leave it on too long, the dulling spray can be a problem.

Yeah.

We did a movie with Sandra Bullock about Truman Capote.

Yeah.

And they hired my.

Maybe I have four cars, but one of them I brought was my 60 Cadillac El Dorado.

Yeah.

That I had just finished painting, and the car was, like, brand new.

We went down to the end of the street to get a cup of coffee.

We came back.

I see them coming with the Hudson sprayer towards the end of the line.

I said, what are you doing?

Oh, we're dulling down the cars.

Yeah.

Well, I said, before you leave, you're going to clean whatever that is off, right?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, they leave.

It's, you know, warm out.

We drive from Brooklyn back up to Westchester.

And I'm trying to get this stuff off and it won't come off.

I called one of my friends called me who was also on the scene.

He goes, can you get this stuff off the car?

I said, no, I've tried everything.

Hot water, cold water, car wash soap, dishwasher soap, prep sol.

I said, this stuff is not coming off, whatever this was.

And I called the movie company.

I said, we have a problem here.

I got four cars that.

That are completely destroyed.

Yeah.

That I can't get the stuff out of the paint.

And they said, oh, no, you have to do this.

I said, well, tomorrow I'm going to be down at Brooklyn at Steiner Studios.

I said, you send somebody with whatever's going to take this stuff off and get it off this car.

Yeah.

Because we were filming the producers at that time.

Yeah.

And they sent somebody.

The stuff would not come off no matter what you did to it.

They had to pay me for four complete paint jobs.

And it turned out the girl they had hired in the scenic department made a concoction of syrup like.

Like, you know, Hershey's.

Hershey's cocoa syrup.

Yeah.

Graphite dust and like condensed milk.

Yeah.

And spray that.

It burns through the paint.

It burned through the paint.

Well, the graphite.

The graphite.

The graphite just would have been incredibly destructive.

Yeah.

So that was.

That was the concoction they sprayed on.

On like 20 cars.

They had to pay for all those paint jobs.

Now, over the years, I conclude, have you had to give some of the actors lessons in driving them or are the cars, when they're filmed inside.

I can never remember what they're called.

But it's like a very, very low trailer that the cars are put on.

And the car actually isn't driving itself.

It's being towed.

That's called the process trailer.

Right.

And.

And they drag it behind the truck.

Or sometimes they have the truck and the trailer as one.

Yeah.

But yes, they.

Most of the time, if it's a long shot, they will put the car on a process trailer.

Yeah.

There have been times, though, like Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist.

I had to teach Michael Sarah.

How to drive a stick.

Yeah.

Because he couldn't drive a stick shift car.

And they said, can we put automatics in these?

Yeah.

I said, no.

I said, that's first of all.

It's not going to happen, not in the time frame you want.

And it's way too expensive.

I said, just give me this kid for two days and I will teach him how to drive a stick.

Yeah, and I did same thing with Boardwalk Empire.

Yeah, they had all these Model Ts and all these stunt guys who have no idea how to drive a Model T. And one night they gave them kind of a real basic course on how to drive it.

Yeah, it was a long night.

The actor was tired, the stunt guy was tired and he crashed into the camera with the car and caused quarter of a million dollars worth of damage.

And they said maybe we should have somebody on set to kind of give them a class every morning.

And that was my job.

Right.

So taught them how to drive Model Ts.

So you'll have worked with some of the greats then, won't you?

Oh yes.

I was very fortunate that everyone I ever worked with was a well known name.

It wasn't B rated movies.

They were all well known actors and, and producers and directors.

Ron Howard, Mendez, Sidney Lumet.

It was just, I was very fortunate that the guys that I tethered myself to in the prop department were well known names as well.

So wherever they went, I went.

Yeah.

And I got very lucky.

But there's times going on, especially with CGI and AI.

I conclude the movie industry is now moving to that type of thing instead of the actual cars.

I haven't seen it yet, but I can smell it coming.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That don't move.

And when you can in post, if you leave the area clear like on a green screen.

Yeah.

You can just CGI whatever you want in there.

We want 10 cars from this year, a couple of sedans.

They should be blue or green or brown or red or whatever and, and just CGI them in.

Yeah.

And fix it in post and be a lot cheaper.

Yeah.

So modern technology could be causing your retirement.

Oh, I think, I think I'm well, I'm well until I'm retired.

I'm done with this nonsense now.

And listen, 40 years is a long time to do anything.

Yeah.

So I had a good run with this and again I said it's a very, a very stressful situation most of the time.

Yeah.

And young people can deal with the stress Much better, I think, because they don't know.

They don't know what's coming for them 10 or 15 years from now.

I've been, I've been the belly of the beast, Mark.

And I'm like, ah, no, I'm not doing this anymore.

But have you enjoyed yourself?

I absolutely did.

I absolutely did.

And it's, it really has been a wonderful life because what I do, when I tell people what I do tell it.

Wow, that sounds like a lot of fun.

And I feel like telling them, yeah.

Come down to the set at 2 o' clock in the morning when I've been up for 15 hours and sit here and stare at something that nothing's happening.

And you'll see how much fun it is.

But I conclude now you'll be able to devote more time to your own car collection.

I, I do, I am going to try that because I have about 80 cars.

Yeah.

And some of them I'll probably get rid of because they were not specifically used for movies.

But I relied on them because they were very reliable.

Yeah.

And they, they were, let's say, nondescript four door sedans that everybody could drive.

And I wasn't really concerned about what happened to them.

They weren't my real show cars.

Yeah.

My real show cars they will never see on a set.

I have a 56 Cadillac Coupe Devil.

Yeah.

That I've had 40 something years.

And the original owner was a friend of mine.

That car is spectacular.

Yeah.

And they reached out to me when they were doing the remake of west side Story and they wanted the car for a specific scene in the movie.

And I said, listen, here's the, here's the deal.

You can have the car, I drive the car.

You're not putting any camera mounts on this car.

You're not putting a dulling spray on it.

This is what you're getting.

And I'm not leaving this car.

And you're going to pay to trailer it in and trailer it out.

Yeah.

And.

And they agreed to it, brought the car in.

It was.

I'll never forget today.

Yeah.

It was so hot, it was so incredibly hot that the, the marathon, the city marathon, called it off.

Yeah.

Because they were afraid people would die.

Yeah.

And it was well over 100 degrees.

We never got to the shot.

They contracted me for two days.

They cut the day short and sent everybody home because they had them standing on fire escapes in the sun.

You know, everybody was getting overheated and not passing out, but they were getting Ill.

So they stopped the day.

They never got to the car.

They said, put the car over here where it's safe.

You stay with the car.

Don't worry about it.

Come back tomorrow.

By the time I got the car back up to Norochel, they called this and up the canceling tomorrow too because it's going to be the same weather.

They never shot.

They never shot the scene.

Yeah.

But they paid me for it, so I really didn't care.

It was like having a $10,000 weekend, you know, to go to a car show.

Everybody come by and tell what a nice car, take pictures.

And I know one car you have because Joe Pepitone and I did a program on it.

You have a Chevy Nova, the.

That you're rather fond of.

Corvair.

Sorry, Corvair, which we have used a lot in the movie because they're really reliable.

They're air cooled and never overheat.

Yeah.

Everybody loves driving them.

They're small, they're manageable, they're good on gas.

I specifically got that car to use in movies because I knew it's reliability.

Yeah.

For that particular reason.

And one last question.

What is your daily driver?

What do you walk out of your house every morning and climb into?

You know, that's a.

That's.

Which is your favorite kit.

That's like the same question I have.

I have nine cars at home in my driveway right now.

Yeah.

And for the most part, depending on the weather in the wintertime when it's nasty out, snow on the ground, salt on the ground.

Yeah.

And I've had that car 25 years.

And I put 35,000 miles on that car after I fixed it.

And it's bulletproof.

All my daily drivers are General Motors cars and Buicks.

If it's nice out.

I have a 93 front wheel drive sedan Deville that I'll run around in.

I have a 91 rear wheel drive brome that you know, I call it the funeral car.

Yeah.

Because it's all dark blue.

And when we go to weddings and wakes, that's what we take.

Right.

Is there a modding car you would have or do you look at it and think, not for me.

No, not for me.

Absolutely not for me there isn't.

You know, when people ask me modern car.

To me, any car that has an airbag and a check engine light is a modern car.

It's a sad state of affairs when the car has to tell you that it has a problem.

If you know how to drive and you know cars, you can tell they've got a problem.

Right.

And I, I just, I will not buy a new car.

And when I, when I say a new car, like I said, the, the LeSabre is the newest car I own.

Yeah.

Except for, except for I have an 05 LeSabre.

Yeah.

Only because I said rather than buy a new car, I am going to buy this 25 year old LeSabre with 30,000 miles and it'll last another 175,000 miles.

Yeah.

So I'm good for the next 20 years.

So do I need new cars?

Nick Pagoni, it's been an absolute pleasure chatting to you.

Thank you very much indeed for joining me on the backseat driver.

My pleasure, Mark.

I'll talk to you soon.

Hopefully we can do this again.

Great stuff.

Look after yourself and have a, have a pleasant rest of the day.

You too.

Take care, Mark.

Cheers, Nick.

Bye.

Cheers.

Bye.