Jeff Zwart Talks Filmmaking, Car Culture and All Things Pikes Peak!

Brian Scotto (0:00)

And we are back, that's right, another episode of Very Vehicular. As always, I am your host, Brian Scotto, and today's guest for me is extremely special. I've got none other than Mr. Jeff Zwart.

If you haven't heard his name, where have you been? This guy is like the mayor of Pikes Peak. He is one of the greatest filmmakers in our business, started as a photographer, has gone on to make probably some of the most memorable images I remember, sort of coming up in automotive, especially for brands like Porsche, creative director for Luftgekult, creative director for a ton of things actually. And he co-directed with me on Climb Kano, which was an absolute amazing experience. I always enjoy my conversations with Jeff. This one we happen to record and give to you. So enjoy, we touch on a bit of everything. This is a great one if you are creative, we also get into a conversation about motor sports, the future of motor sports, the problems with cars today, all of the things that need to change. And he gives some really great advice at the end. So you gotta listen to the whole, almost three hour show we did.

I've been wanting to have you on since we started this whole thing. And I know you're like somewhat of a faithful listener because you'll occasionally send me notes.

Jeff Zwart (1:45)

Yeah, exactly. I'm more than an occasional listener.

Brian Scotto (1:50)

That's because you drive a lot.

Jeff Zwart (1:51)

Yeah, the good news is I do cover a lot of miles, a lot of hours and it's very beneficial and it's kind of my new way of travel. It's gotta be a part of that.

Brian Scotto (2:02)

So one of the things that I want the audience to understand this. So first off, I try to draw as many similarities in my life to Jeff's, just because I want my life to end up like Jeff's. I look at Jeff and I'm like, that's the right path. So she's gonna call out a few things. One, we both have a slight addiction to Coca-Cola, if I remember correctly.

Jeff Zwart (2:24)

Yes, that's correct.

Brian Scotto (2:24)

Yeah, so there's that. That's not a good one, but hey, it's a connection.

Jeff Zwart (2:27)

It's an opener.

Brian Scotto (2:28)

We both grew up and love canoeing, which is sort of a weird one. Obviously, there's the 9-11 connection.

We also both started in the print industry and haphazardly found ourselves in the moving picture industry by just being there. We both specialize in action. We both worked on a film called Climb Kana.

Jeff Zwart (2:52)

Yes.

Brian Scotto (2:53)

I made that happen.

Jeff Zwart (2:55)

I appreciate it.

Brian Scotto (2:57)

We both been heavily involved with very similar things. I was involved in creating an exhibit at the Peterson for Ken. You would actually currently have an exhibit about yourself.

Jeff Zwart (3:07)

But I didn't curate it. That's fine. You can't curate your own thing. That was a museum request. Yeah. I don't know.

Brian Scotto (3:14)

There's a bunch of good list things. The one thing we don't have in common is I don't really hold any records at Pikes Peak nor have I raced it yet. So that's all the stuff that I'm trying to manifest into my life. I spent a lot of time doing the working. You have managed to figure out how to balance the two, which I've never been able to do. You have figured out how to do all of the cool making, some of the most amazing content that we saw for years.

Then you also get to go do it yourself. I haven't figured the second part out.

Jeff Zwart (3:47)

How do you do that part?

Brian Scotto (3:48)

I'm just bringing you on to figure that part out.

Jeff Zwart (3:49)

I would like to point out because I find a lot of people feel like the racing side of things didn't happen early enough. And for me, quite honestly, my first win at Pikes Peak was when I was 39 years old.

So it wasn't like I came out and I didn't go card as a teenager, didn't kind of do all the things. So I kind of had to wait till I had the time and the money to go racing, but it was always there as a passion. But the balance, it's an interesting thing because the balance is something I do think about a lot and it's the core to life of making two sides of things that are very different work. And for me, the big part was just that it really was a perpetual motion kind of moment of like the racing fed my perspective in filmmaking and my filmmaking fed my racing. And it went, it worked so well hand in hand because like you, I fell into a high performance genre of filmmaking. And if you wanted something racing on the edge and performing on the edge and still looking good as all the clients and agencies wanted, and really understanding car dynamics and all that, I was kind of the go-to person for that. But I really understood it because I'd already lived the high performance side of things too.