MovieChat Forums > Gone in 60 Seconds (1974) Discussion > Slavs and Cars

Slavs and Cars

posted 17 years ago by dorian06
2 replies | jump to latest

I was just watching Vanishing Point, and I got to thinking, all the characters in Gone in 60 Seconds are Ukrainians (the wedding, the two times 'pollock' is used as an insult) and the protaganist in Vanishing Point is named Kowalski (a polish name), is there some secret tie between Slavs and car driving that I don't know about? Are alot of race car drivers Slavs? Am I just reading too far into a coincidence... at the very least the writers of both these scripts must be by descent, cause we aren't generally thought of when people are making movies.... You never have a guy writing a script and just randomly naming his character Ivanovich or something, it just doesn't happen. Any thoughts?

[–] MrTaft 17 years ago

They are Polish in "Gone in 60 Seconds", not Ukrainian.

[–] chester-copperpot-1 14 years ago

Boy, did you get everything wrong when you woke up that morning?

The crew in Sixty Seconds had Polish immigrant roots, many polacks immigrating to the Unites States after their country was divided and ceised to exist. Many of them were poor, leading to derogatory remarks, as in the 'polish jokes'. When they call themselves 'polacks', it's the same as when blacks refer to themselves as the N-word.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_joke

Kowalski in Vanishing Point was played by Barry Newman, who is jewish, with Swedish/Austrian roots. I don't know about the character name, but I always thought the name of Kowalski was a nod to Marlon Brando as Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar named Desire.