Urban Outlaw

Urban Outlaw is a portrait of Magnus Walker, the rebel Porsche customizer who turned a hobby into an obsession, and an obsession into a successful business … He obsessively harvests fragments from donor 911s, grafting them onto vintage frames to create one-off automobiles with the spirit of Ferdinand Porsche but an ethos entirely of his own.

An extract from the press release for Urban Outlaw, 2012.

By this point in my story, you can see that I’ve had a modest amount of publicity – the Venetian Paradise coverage, the Serious days when Karen and I were sometimes featured but also, of course, when rock stars and celebrities were wearing our clothes on magazine covers, and then the building and film-location business at Willow. I’d even had those handful of articles about my Porsche builds that I just mentioned. However, nothing could have prepared me for what happened next … the thirty-two-minute short documentary film, Urban Outlaw, released in 2012 by Tamir Moscovici.

The story starts with just an email in late 2011 from this Canadian guy called Tamir. Basically words to the effect of … ‘Been following your story, I’m a commercial film director, I’m thinking that you’d be great subject matter for a short documentary film, any interest in that?’

Now, remember, I’d been in the film business for ten years at this point, and over that time as the cars had evolved we started to get loads of people offering to make videos of me driving. I had always turned that sort of stuff down and so – aside from those few articles – in terms of my cars, I was pretty much under the radar. You might think Why turn down someone wanting to film you?, but I guess ultimately I just didn’t click with the people who had previously been asking. I’m all about relationships. Some fast-talking film dude might have been shooting something at the warehouse and he’d like my cars, so at some point in the day he’d say, ‘Hey, let’s strap a camera on your car and we’ll shoot some footage …’ but I wasn’t really clicking with that. It’s all about people – whatever you are doing, you have to click with the people involved.

However, when Tamir got in touch, there was just something about his email, I just got a vibe that hadn’t been there all the previous times when the other film guys had machine-gunned the idea of filming the cars. So instead of emailing him back, I actually called him. I always talk better than I text or type; you can get a lot more across in a verbal conversation than you can in an email chain. So I phoned him, we had a conversation and kinda instantly clicked. I think the fact that Tamir wasn’t part of the Hollywood set was a major factor.

Turns out a copy of Total 911 had made its way into the hands of Tamir over in Canada. Now, he was already a Porsche guy, he has a 993 and was an enthusiast. He had also been loosely following my thread on Pelican Parts, then he read the Total 911 article and shot me this email.

Initially, his goal was to create something a little bit more edgy for his commercial film reel; he was looking to branch out beyond doing beer and fast-food commercials. With that in mind, he’d already done three pieces, including a short five-minute film on a tattoo guy, as well as a documentary with Honda on Indy racing called Between the Walls. He shot me some links and they were cool, stylish, cinematic, very well done and, yes, edgy. I’d watched a lot of these reality car-building TV shows, and in my opinion they always come off slightly cheesy and not that well shot, but Tamir’s material had such a cinematic blend.

At first, he just wanted to shoot a three-to-five-minute short YouTube documentary. We knew that momentum was really building with the car collection and my profile in that world, so I said to Karen, ‘What do you think?’ She was also of the view that it felt right. We’d dipped our foot in the water with Maurice, Erik and Total 911, so now it felt like the right time and with the right person to dive in with Tamir. Gut instinct again. I know I keep saying that, but it’s so true. Our logic was, ‘We’ll get some great footage, probably some images to put on a blog … fuck … what’s the worst that can happen?’

When Tamir arrived to film the documentary, I’d never even met him face to face. He flew down using his frequent-flyer miles on a Wednesday ahead of a meeting at the warehouse on the Thursday morning for a four-day shoot. He hired a very talented crew here in LA. Luckily, these people were all available, such as Anthony Arendt as the Director of Photography who’d worked with Tamir on a brilliant biker build film. The film crew arrived before Tamir, and again we all just kind of clicked. So it quickly felt like the stars were aligning – everything just slotted into place.

Tamir has his own production company, Supplemental, and he’d been able to raise the funding through that for the film, so it was essentially a very independent passion project (the actual press release for the film would use those exact words). The whole Urban Outlaw documentary, as it would become known, was shot on a low budget. I don’t actually know what the cost was, truth be told, but it was essentially shot on two Canon 5DSs. It was the first filming I had ever done. Obviously, I’d been around film crews at the warehouse for ten years, but I’d never been the subject matter myself. In terms of being on the other side of the lens, I didn’t know anything about the process, so it was super-exciting. I was pretty eager and keen, but I didn’t really know how it was going to go … you quickly learn. Over the next four days, we basically hung out for twelve hours every day, spoke about Porsche and drove the cars as the story evolved.

When we had location shooting going on at the warehouse, Karen and I used to joke about how it was all, ‘Hurry up and wait’, like that time I told you about with Bruce Willis. It takes for ever to set up a shot that might only last a few seconds. Well, very quickly I got a different vibe from these guys, a relatively small team, only eight people or so. Tamir and his crew were super-efficient. Not quick for the sake of it or because they weren’t being precise, far from it. They were just very, very efficient.

Even though this was the first on-screen interview I’d done, I said to Tamir, ‘Don’t bother showing me any questions, I don’t want to think about it, just ask me.’ Therefore the whole documentary is completely unscripted. Also, we didn’t pull a single permit, the whole film was shot bootleg-style, meaning there was no traffic control, no police officers co-ordinating traffic, we didn’t have any film permits. It was guerrilla film-making at its finest. Looking back, I guess it was pretty intense, but I think I tapped into my inner reserve and put 110 per cent in; I gave it my all. Karen was completely involved, and it was a spectacular time for us both.

Truth be told, there was a spell around day three when I was getting a bit restless. There were elements that I found mildly tedious. I had hit my stride by this point, but we still hadn’t really shot anything to do with fast driving. Believe it or not, Tamir and I actually got in a little bit of an argument, and I’m like, ‘Dude, when are we doing the fucking fast driving?! This is all bullshit talking …’ but I didn’t understand his vision. I was naïve, I didn’t see the bigger picture. I was just impulsive; I wanted to go and do some spirited driving. So I’m not gonna lie, there was a little bit of tension building during that third day, but other than that we got on like a house on fire.

There were three cars featured in Urban Outlaw. The period correct ’66 Irish Green 911, the ’68R (Liam Howlett’s car) and then obviously 277. I’d asked Liam if I could keep the 68R a little longer so that Tamir could film it, and he was cool with that. The 68R is kinda the hero car in the film.

There was a lot of talking and a lot of driving; it was a really enjoyable experience. Tamir would say, ‘What does Porsche mean to you?’ and I’d ramble on for like twenty minutes. Being a real talented guy, Tamir knew how to make me look good on camera, and obviously later on I realized it is all in the editing.

On the fourth day, after we’d finished, we threw ourselves a little wrap party at the bar next door and realized we’d probably shot at least twenty hours of great footage. Tamir had obviously been looking at the footage at night-time – the dailies and the raw footage – and he had started to believe that there was more to my story than a short five-minute documentary. Tamir sensed he had captured something a little bit special. He was somehow able to bring this story out of me and that coincided with me being ready to open up. That night at the bar there was talk of a longer film, which was obviously really exciting. That film is not just a Porsche story. It’s the story of me coming to America, about never giving up on my dream, about going with my gut instinct, taking risks, working hard, being creative and individual, about everything that I have spoken of here in this book. Tamir, I think, had seen some spark in me that went beyond just talking about my story and the passion for Porsche. It was a perfect storm.

Hurry up and wait again, I guess. I just left him to it. I didn’t want to rush him; I wasn’t bugging him for footage. He might occasionally have emailed a couple of little fifteen-second teasers, but otherwise I kept out of the way. Then he sent us a three-minute trailer, which was subsequently posted on his social-media channel in June 2012.

By that summer, I’d finally got on Facebook, although I wouldn’t say I was exactly an expert at that point. I still didn’t have an iPhone. I’d only signed up because a guy called Brian who was doing graphics for us said I should be on Facebook in case this thing took off. It was essentially still just my thread on Pelican Parts and the S Registry; I didn’t even have a website at this point.

With Tamir being an inspired film guy and a great storyteller, he had pieced together a very compelling three-minute trailer. I posted the trailer on Pelican and the S Registry, as well as my Facebook page, and Maurice had helped me set up my magnuswalker911 blog, so it was posted on there too, but I had absolutely no idea how many people were going to view this mini-clip. No idea whatsoever … a hundred, a thousand, maybe three thousand? Who knows?

The trailer went live around 8 a.m. and by nine o’clock I think it already had five thousand views. I remember calling Karen and she said, ‘It’s unbelievable … what’s happening here, Magnus?’ By lunchtime, it was up to twenty-five thousand views and we were like, ‘What is going on here?’ Well, either it was a quiet news day or people had connected with what we were doing.

Then Top Gear picked up on it and events got really crazy. That was a special moment in a very memorable day for me.

On their site, they said I was ‘The most un-Porsche Porsche enthusiast’. I am a big fan of that show, so I couldn’t even believe I was on Top Gear in any form. Over the next couple of days, it was just unbelievable, the social-media coverage went crazy. At the time, I’d probably got around a thousand followers on Facebook, then suddenly I’m coming in each day and there’s five hundred friend requests … just from Spain. I’m like, Fuck! What’s going on in Spain? Normally, I’d get a couple of requests at a time.

Turns out this Spanish automotive blog had picked up on Top Gear, but that was the tip of the iceberg … over the next week or so the trailer just went viral around the world. I was getting friend requests from Turkey, Russia, Poland, Australia, all over the place. So the initial Top Gear posting had generated massive attention, then all these countries around the world had picked up on the clip, and also every automotive blog, as well as magazines including Road & Track, Jalopnik, Car and Driver. It was going nuts.

You see, Tamir was ahead of the game. Obviously, people had been making documentaries about Porsches for a long time, but nothing like this had really been done before. It was the first film of its kind. It was Porsche-related, yes, with someone like me that was unknown and … let’s just say unconventional. It was filmed in a really stylish way, and there was a wider story that just seemed to hit a chord with so many people worldwide. That initial trailer went on to get over two million views.

Then I got an email from this guy called Sandy Bodecker, who is the vice president of Nike Action Sports Division. He is a very successful businessman and a Porsche guy (he had a GT2). He told me he had seen the trailer, loved my story and my passion and asked if I would be interested in talking at one of Nike’s huge design/merchandizing/branding summits that they hold for their staff several times a year. The idea soon evolved, and they actually held that event in the warehouse in Willow, a full two-day summit at the loft. Remember, the full documentary by Tamir hadn’t even come out yet. This was all off the back of just the trailer. They even rented Soho House in Hollywood, which has a screening room, and showed a very rough cut of the film to the Nike employees, who were in fact the very first people outside of my immediate circle to see more of the documentary. What an honour, right? Nike was coming to me. This seemed completely bizarre. I was starting to think that maybe something very special was happening.

By now, there was a lot of anticipation for the release of the whole documentary. I was getting messages all the time asking about when the film was coming out – the trailer had simply ended with a ‘Coming Soon’ tease. Well, at this point, editing of the film wasn’t even finished. Then, around September, Tamir sent me the thirty-two-minute documentary on a private Vimeo channel.

Obviously, I watched it with Karen straight away, with great excitement and anticipation.

I was just expecting something a little … well … faster. I thought it was going to be all reckless abandonment, racing, speed, just this blur of fast cars and spirited driving. I didn’t phone Tamir back for a day, and he’s since told me that (understandably) he was getting worried.

But then I watched the film a second time … and I started to see what he had done. I began to see the bigger picture, understand his vision. I watched it again and by the third time I was completely hooked. This wasn’t just a film about cars; what Tamir had done was tell my story, and to do that there needed to be so much more than just fast cars. Some of my favourite scenes are the ones where I’m just sitting quietly working at a sewing machine. Tamir – being the smarter guy and the storyteller – had edited all the footage into a much wider narrative; he’d blended this melting pot of clips into a cinematic statement. There’s not necessarily a lot of dialogue, but it creates a very powerful vibe. And I’d like to think people watch that and get inspired.

There were quite a few spontaneous little moments that happened while filming the documentary that just worked brilliantly but were completely unscripted. There’s a point in the film where I talk about having a ‘Porsche passion’. Well, I’d never used those words before. It just came out in the film. You see that look in my eyes, ‘What does Porsche mean to you?’ … ‘Porsche passion’. There’s also a scene where I’m catching a bit of sunshine, lying on a wall, when suddenly a beautiful Porsche 356 drives past. We never did find out who that was, we didn’t know the car or the owner, he just happened to be driving by. In another scene, you see these people on a street corner taking photos of my car on their phones as I drive around at speed. Those were just some guys who happened to be there, probably heard the car coming and turned their phone cameras on. Then there’s the scene where the camera pans out to the LA skyline as I exit 6th Street on the 110 South, and in the dark sky there’s a searchlight in the background. That isn’t added digitally, nor was it planned by us. It just so happened that the Oscars were on in that area of LA at the same time, so they had these big Batman-like searchlights sweeping the LA skyline. Like I said, the stars definitely aligned.

If I was blown away by what had happened so far, then I was in for more shocks. Tamir was always one step ahead of the game. He submitted Urban Outlaw to various film festivals like Toronto, Sundance, Tribeca, and, much to our amazement, next thing we know we get a phone call from him – we couldn’t believe it! – the documentary had been accepted for the London Raindance Film Festival. We were like, ‘Fuck, now we’re in a film festival!’ We were just happy that we’d had a documentary made, let alone been included in the rainy version of Sundance. The film was due to be screened in London’s West End in late September. So now all of a sudden Karen and I were going to London. It was all just so exciting … genuinely hard to believe.

Tamir and his wife flew to London, too, then various people that had been following my threads online decided they were going to fly over from Europe. Porsche passion, see? Porsche is first and foremost about people – so, for example, there’s a guy called Joost Hermès (who helped me find my ’64 911, more on which later) who has become a real pen-pal buddy, he flew over from the Netherlands. Then Liam Howlett from the Prodigy, who bought the 68R that featured in the opening shot of Urban Outlaw, came down as well. There was a bunch of us who all met up and had a little pre-screening party at the St Martins Lane Hotel in Covent Garden where Karen and I were staying. My mum came down, my brother and sister-in-law and my sister, too. I remember my brother was all excited to meet Liam because he is a Prodigy fan. One of the journalists from Total 911 was there as well as a couple of other members of the UK motoring press, because there was a real buzz about the film. It was just an unbelievably memorable night. From my point of view, I was like, When do you get to go to a film premiere in central London on a Friday night? Never mind the premiere of my own film! It was crazy. What a memory.

After those pre-screening drinks, about twenty of us walked through Leicester Square to the Odeon in Lower Regent Street for the film, which was sold out. It didn’t matter that there were only two hundred seats in the theatre, it was sold out. I walked in there feeling like a rock star, just floated in, amazing.

We watched a few other short films first, and then Urban Outlaw came on. It was unbelievable, people were shouting and cheering as the credits rolled and the film came on. At this point, we’d never seen the documentary on the big screen; I’d only ever seen it on my computer, not even on a TV. I think at the time my monitor was like 14-inch, proper old-school, none of these big high-def jobs. So to see it on the big screen for the first time at a film-festival premiere was emotional; truth be told, I almost cried. After the screening, we went to a pub right around the corner; it was just an unbelievable experience, you know. Then we hung out in London for a few days and eventually went back to Los Angeles.

One of the very few sad moments from this exciting period was that my father passed away just a month after the London film festival. After the premiere and before we flew home, we’d travelled up to Sheffield and shown him the DVD of Urban Outlaw, but he was struggling. He’d had throat cancer for eighteen months, and when I saw him I came away crying. I said to Karen, ‘This will be the last time we see him alive.’ Remember everything I’ve told you about those turbulent teenage years when I clashed with my dad? Well, as we both got older we had become closer. He had obviously given up on the ‘cut your hair and get a real job’ and was proud of my success. My parents had started to come out to LA, sometimes for as long as a month, which was great. One of the most memorable trips was around 2007 when he came out with me in the Irish Green 911. He and I took that car out and we drove probably two hundred miles to go look at some rust-bucket piece of crap car in the desert, but the point was it was him and me together all day long, just the two of us. That is a very fond memory.

The fact that he saw the film and was really proud of it was real special, but then six weeks later he was gone and we were back in England for the funeral. Looking back, I think of all those times in my childhood when we went to see motor shows and cars and motor racing, and I can see that Dad was a very big influence on certain parts of my life. Driving round LA in the Irish Green 911 was almost as if our relationship had come back around full circle.

Back in LA and with the release of Urban Outlaw fast approaching, I knew that I had to get a few things in order – a logo, my website, some merchandise, just generally a bigger presence online. I’d always liked the TAG Heuer logo, so essentially the Urban Outlaw artwork is very much influenced by that, just ‘Urban Outlaw’ with my name on top and the Union Jack added. I doodled the basic idea on a napkin and then had a graphics buddy draw it up. Then we launched the Urban Outlaw retail store ahead of Urban Outlaw being officially released on 15 October 2012.

When that happened, everything went even more crazy, and I knew that my life would never be the same again …

Chapter 10

Urban Outlaw