Bonneville: Wide Open

Everybody’s a documentary producer nowadays. Cheap video cameras have led to innumerable media passes at every automotive event in the country, including Bonneville. Travel to the salt flats in August and you’re sure to run across dozens of camera-wielding "journalists" aiming to create yet another documentary about the pursuit of land-speed records. Only problem is, where’s the end result?

Benn Karne, however, is one of the few who actually delivered a DVD from his time spent both on the flats and with a handful of racers in preparation for Speedweek. He originally released Bonneville: Wide Open as a 52-minute documentary in 2004, but recently re-released the DVD with double the footage in bonus features.

It’s by no means a Hollywood production; it lacks narration and jumps from topic to topic with little transition. On the other hand, neither is the topic; land-speed racing remains the last ad-hoc, do-it-yourself racing venue where a slick entrant from GM might follow a rough-and-tumble entrant from a guy from Pocatello, Idaho.

Most of the bonus footage, however, really should have been included in the original version of the documentary. Some of the material expands on the stories of the individual racers that Karne profiled, but the real treat is the complete footage of a run–after all, what better use can one think of for a video camera on the salt flats?