Forget those NASCAR dads and their homoerotic Jeff Gordon fixation: the dirt-track stock-car racers who are the subject of Jeff Bowden’s mesmerizing documentary would devour them for breakfast and use their femurs for gearshifts and their marrow for lube. Following the 2002 season of Mesquite’s Devil’s Bowl Speedway, Bowden’s film is a stunningly down-and-dirty epic with more stripped-down, blood-and-thunder melodrama than the Iliad, replete with an oversized cast of characters that run the gamut from outrageous (defending champ Thomas Weeks) to sublime (female racer Gayla Jones, resplendent in her hot pink firesuit). Between the white-knuckle sequences of all that mangled Detroit iron haul-assing around on track, there are heady glimmers of a gritty, grimy, and achingly real Americana off of it. “Ain’t nothin’ better than the smell of a greasy corny-dog and burnt rubber and fuel smellin’ and smoke,” enthuses one racer, and by the end of Bowden’s film, you’d have to be roadkill not to agree. Dirt screens as part of the Documentary Competition on Friday, Oct. 21, 9:45pm at the Arbor, and Wednesday, Oct. 26, 7:15pm at the IMAX.
This article appears in July 14 • 2006.