Dirty Driving: Thundercars of Indiana

I just saw this last night on HBO. Astounding closeups of some of the people involved in short track oval amateur racing in small town Indiana. I grew up in small midwestern town myself, so I am no stranger to car obsession and odd ways to kill time, but what this film shows about current rural America is kind of frightening.

These people drink, insult and intimidate each other, and waste time destroying old cars in this very aggressive form of racing, use disgusting language, all with their children and mothers present. While this goes on, their town is going bankrupt around them, and these folks seem only to want to extract revenge from each other on a dirt track. The meanspiritedness of it all makes the biggest impression, even the women are threatening each other in bar scenes. I don't know what has happened to the US, is this all the result of years of violent movies and bad taste music videos?

The makers of this movie had a specific story they wanted to tell, and they definitely made a movie that told that story. Unfortunately, they took advantage of the people the chose to profile in the film to tell that story, and ignored anything that would have distracted from it.

Anderson, Indiana has a rich history in professional auto racing, which still happens there to this day. Alas, sharing that fact would have gotten in the way of the slanted story the directors wanted to tell.