The future has a birthday - 100 years of the automobile
| TV show with a film | |
|---|---|
| Original title | The future has a birthday |
| subtitle | 100 years of the automobile |
| Country of production | Germany , Norway |
| original language | German , English (for the feature film) |
| Production company |
Süddeutscher Rundfunk , Jubilee Production, Music 33 |
| length | 165 minutes |
| Theme music | On the way to the freedom of Wencke Myhre and Karel Gott |
| Director | Michael Pflegehar |
| idea | Michael Pflegehar |
| script | Marc Princi (feature film) |
| production | Michael Pflegehar |
| Moderation | Hansjörg Felmy |
| First broadcast | January 29, 1986 on ARD , ORF , DRS |
| occupation | |
|
Main actor:
Supporting cast: | |
| Guest appearance (s) | |
The birthday of the future - 100 years of the automobile was a television show broadcast on January 29, 1986 on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the patent application for patent motor vehicle number 1 by Carl Benz .
The event was originally planned as a celebration by Daimler-Benz . The television producer Michael Pflegehar ( Wünsch Dir was , Klimbim ) was commissioned with the conception and designed a “multimedia spectacle” with a car parade on the stage and a recorded feature film. For cost reasons, the event was to be implemented as a television show by Südfunk Stuttgart under the direction of Pflegehar and then marketed worldwide.
The hitherto most expensive show production on German television received devastating reviews.
production
The production budget amounted to 20 million DM and was financed 50% by the Norwegian Bergen Bank , 15% by Pflegehar and the rest by several Norwegian investors. Daimler-Benz took on 6 million DM of the costs, the remaining amount was to be brought in again through international marketing and licensed products such as toys for the Centomobil computer car and a book production with vintage car photos . With well over 100,000 DM per broadcast minute, the show was the most expensive on German television at the time.
However, the search for investors had taken a long time, so that actual production did not start until October 1985, too late according to Pflegehar's later assessment. Nevertheless, the concept was implemented in full.
The show started with a parade of old-timers and current car models (Auto-Corso der Nation) , which were to be driven across the stage by celebrities and accompanied by dancers. For this purpose, Pflegehar collected around 400 copies from different manufacturers all over the world, whereby the cooperation with other manufacturers who did not want to take part in the presumed PR campaign for Mercedes-Benz turned out to be difficult.
Michael Pflegehar's then wife Wencke Myhre complained about the production conditions: “The car bosses, sponsors of the show, first talked my husband into everything. There were hardly any conditions that my husband had to take into account. Then they left him alone. Those in charge did not keep the agreed appointments, no longer took care of the show, but only gave their instructions over the phone. "
Film
Surrounded by the show elements of the event, a feature film was to be presented to the audience in the hall and to the television viewers, for which Michael Pflegehar also took over the production and direction, and which alone devoured around 10 million DM of the budget. The screenplay was written by the American Marc Princi , and Pflegehar had it approved by the writer Martin Walser, among others .
In order to better market the film internationally, it was shot in English in five countries, including Italy, France and the USA. The synchronization required for the German market failed at the first attempt, the contract had to be reassigned to another recording studio, and the final audio version was only available four hours before the broadcast began. According to Myhres, the film could not be shown to the client in advance: "It could only be edited at the last minute because the Südfunk Stuttgart did not provide editing rooms in time."
In the film, the main actors Niki Lauda and Ross Harris travel through time in the glass computer car Centomobil to understand the history of the automobile. In supporting roles are u. a. Michael Degen , Franziska Walser , Werner Kreindl , Heinz Weiss and Peter Chatel can be seen.
Following the first broadcast, the film was to be recut for the international market. A new version of the film was also offered to German television stations again. The film Top Kids by Michael Pflegehar, which was brought to American television in 1987 (later released in Germany as the VHS video SAM - Reise durch die Zeit ) is based on the material shot for this film. In addition to the actors mentioned, u. a. Anthony Ko , Scott Nemes , Jared Rushton , Jacques Perrin (as Émile Levassor ), Cyrielle Clair (as Louise Sarazin ), Fabio Testi (as Giovanni Agnelli ), Joëlle Miquel (as Mercédès Jellinek ) and José Carreras (as Enrico Caruso ).
broadcast
The event took place on Wednesday evening, January 29, 1986 in the Hanns-Martin-Schleyer-Halle in Stuttgart in front of 4,000 invited guests and was broadcast live as a Eurovision program by ARD , ORF and DRS .
The opening speech was given by Federal President Richard von Weizsäcker , the evening was moderated by Hansjörg Felmy , supported by Niki Lauda during the car parade at the beginning of the show . Karel Gott and Wencke Myhre , among others, contributed to the background music for the evening .
About an hour after the show began, the 80-minute film was presented to the audience. The broadcast time for the entire program was originally set at 105 minutes, but was ultimately exceeded by around an hour. The Swiss and Austrian television broke off the broadcast prematurely during the event. Half an hour before the program ended, Richard von Weizsäcker let Daimler-Benz CEO Werner Breitschwerdt , who was sitting next to him in the first row of the audience, know that he would leave if the program did not end immediately. Breitschwerdt then tried unsuccessfully to stop the broadcast.
The ARD delayed the planned connection to the broadcast evening news -Liveschaltung to correspondent Fritz Pleitgen from the Kennedy Space Center on the occasion of the Challenger disaster from the day before, even though the satellite connection was already booked.
With around 11.7 million viewers, the broadcast reached an audience rate of 33% on ARD.
reception
The program was not favored by critics, guests, automobile companies and officials of public television.
Günter Stiller from Hamburger Abendblatt called it a “tragedy” and particularly criticized the film, which “didn't move at all” and in which Lauda showed “nothing but a frozen Indian face during the agonizing 80 minutes of crime”. It was about the "spread of deadly boredom on a public television channel called ARD". The audience in the hall was also restless and complained about the boring and "annoying" performance. Simon Philip, also from the Abendblatt , saw "some pretty scenes" in the film and "as a feast for the eyes a lot of dashing, brisk oldtimers", but also "embarrassing things", an over-staged show and all in all a "somewhat tedious pleasure". Der Spiegel came to the conclusion that "[a] on this day [...] there were two terrible things to report in the world: the Stuttgart show and the explosion of the space shuttle 'Challenger'". The FAZ called the film the "hair-raising stupid automobile history". In view of the budget, the time wondered about "two and a half hours of torture" and had to "watch helplessly as the friendly man [Richard von Weizsäcker's] face, feared by pain, visibly petrified". Benedikt Erenz from the same newspaper later called the show a "terrorist attack [in which] Beethoven's hymn to joy (of freedom) was mutilated into consumer fanfare".
BMW sales manager Eberhard von Koerber thought that the “horrible Tingeltangel” proves that “you can't buy taste and style like the AEG ”. Helmut Werner from Continental found the program “so flat, it fit under the rug.” At Daimler-Benz, personnel consequences are said to have been drawn. The management consultant Herbert Henzler (who himself found that the program looked as if it had not been rehearsed) remembers that the Daimler supervisory board chairman Alfred Herrhausen was "quite angry about the anniversary celebration" and assumes that the "failure for the anniversary [...] the beginning of the end of the CEO Breitschwerdt ”.
Also at a meeting of the ARD directors after viewer protests one wanted to discuss possible personal consequences, but above all about "sponsor advertising" in general and about the correctness of the procedure, that "the show was treated like a football game" and the broadcaster did not intervened. The director of the Süddeutscher Rundfunk , Hans Bausch , considered the broadcast to be a failure, but rejected allegations that the broadcasting system's standards had been violated, since the responsibility for the program and its financing lay with Pflegehar. The editor-in-chief of Bayerischer Rundfunk , Wolf Feller , considered the program “a scandal”, while Heiko Engelkes from Norddeutscher Rundfunk was ashamed of himself “as a journalist for the entire ARD”.
Wencke Myhre defended the work of her husband Michael Pflegehar: “He is not to blame. The audience in Stuttgart was one of the stiffest I've seen in my career! ”He himself emphasized the international reactions to the show, after which the Italian evening news showed a five-minute excerpt and it was “ Bravo bene Benz ” in the newspaper La Repubblica. was called because the plant did not celebrate Daimler-Benz, but the car world par excellence.
In a survey carried out by Hans R. Beierlein's media telegram among several television critics, Die Zukunft hat Geburtstag 1987 was voted the second worst television program of 1986 (after Karl Schnelting's test ).
Supporting program
Independently of the television broadcast, the anniversary of Carl Benz's invention by Daimler-Benz was celebrated with other events under the motto 100 years of the automobile , including a reception by the state government around Lothar Späth in the New Palace in Stuttgart followed by a gala at the opera and that of Helmut Kohl Accompanied exhibition Welt mobil on the Killesberg . The latter was also opened on January 29, 1986 and was more popular than the TV show (Günter Stiller, Hamburger Abendblatt: "a triumph for the noble Mercedes star and a big show like the one by Cecil B. DeMille").
In addition, the group made bonus payments to shareholders and employees, and in the same year established the Daimler and Benz Foundation for the “Promotion of Science” and “Research into the interrelationships between people, the environment and technology”.
Web links
- The future has a birthday in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t Car TV show: That fit under the carpet . In: Der Spiegel . No. 7 , 1986, pp. 108-112 ( online ).
- ↑ a b c d Auto-Show: Does Pflegehar have to pay millions? In: Hamburger Abendblatt , February 6, 1986
- ^ A b c d e f Günter Stiller: The show for the 100th birthday of the automobile bored millions of viewers - Pflegehar's terrible television flop . In: Hamburger Abendblatt , January 31, 1986
- ↑ a b c Dieter Reichel: Pflegehar can be denied by Wencke . In: Hamburger Abendblatt , February 3, 1986
- ↑ a b BR: 100 years of the automobile: TV show for the anniversary . In: Hamburger Abendblatt , January 29, 1986
- ^ SAM - Journey through Time . VideoMarkt
- ↑ SAM - Journey through Time in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- ↑ Peter Bruges : Crap up to the second floor . In: Der Spiegel . No. 6 , 1986, pp. 201-203 ( online ).
- ↑ a b c Thomas Borgmann: Centenary at Daimler - The 1986 fiasco . In: Stuttgarter Zeitung , January 29, 2011
- ↑ a b Susanne Knabe: Company anniversaries. Historical awareness of German companies from 1846 to 1997 . (PDF) Dissertation, Ludwig Maximilians University Munich, 2004.
- ↑ Simon Philip: Seen yesterday - The future has a birthday . In: Hamburger Abendblatt , January 30, 1986
- ↑ Time mosaic . In: Die Zeit , No. 7/1986
- ↑ Benedikt Erenz: Listen and become . In: Die Zeit , No. 18/1986
- ↑ Herbert Henzler : Always at the limit - McKinsey's top manager remembers . Econ-Verlag, 2011, ISBN 978-3-430-20093-6
- ^ "Auto Show": topic for ARD directors . In: Hamburger Abendblatt , February 1, 1986
- ^ Dpa: SDR-Intendant: "Automobile Show" had failed . In: Hamburger Abendblatt , February 14, 1986
- ↑ The twelve worst shows of 1986 . In: Hamburger Abendblatt , February 25, 1987
- ^ Günter Stiller: Triumph for the good star - Stuttgart celebrated the 100th birthday of the automobile. In: Hamburger Abendblatt , January 30, 1986
- ↑ Daimler-Benz AG: Annual Report and Financial Statements 1985 . ( Memento of the original from July 7, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF), Stuttgart 1986.
- ↑ dpa: Daimler anniversary: 14.50 marks dividend and bonus shares . In: Hamburger Abendblatt , May 2, 1986
