Los Angeles documentary film producer Tamir Ardon is bringing his latest project, “Framing John DeLorean,” back to the place where his fascination for the DeLorean and the legendary man behind the iconic car began.
The Naperville native was 5 years old when he first saw a DeLorean in the 1985 movie “Back to the Future” at the Tivoli Theatre in Downers Grove. That experience would send Ardon on a 34-year journey to learn everything he could about the car and its maker, culminating in a documentary starring Alec Baldwin as the infamous automobile company founder, who’s been hailed as both a visionary and a con man.
The film will have a special screening at the Tivoli on June 19 followed by a run at The Music Box theater in Chicago starting June 28.
Ardon, born in Naperville in 1980, attended Naperville District 203 schools, including Steeple Run Elementary, Kennedy Junior High and Naperville North High School.
As a Naperville North student, he designed a pop bottle launcher for then-science teacher Lee Marek to use during one of his frequent appearances on “The Late Show with David Letterman.”
Ardon recalls seeing a DeLorean at a gas station when he was 6. “The owner let me sit in the driver’s seat,” Ardon said.
He was hooked.
When he was old enough to drive, the choice was obvious. “I had my DeLorean while I attended the last two years of high school,” Ardon said.
In his late teens, Ardon said he built a website devoted the DeLorean as he researched what he could about its maker.
“In 1989 I cold-called John and he invited me to come see him,” Ardon said.
Through that encounter Ardon not only became acquainted with DeLorean but befriended his children, relationships that years later would prove helpful when Ardon started working on a documentary about their father.
Although he graduated from Beloit College in Wisconsin with the intention of pursuing a degree in medicine or science, Ardon decided to apply to film school and was accepted into the UCLA program. He now serves a head of the documentary division at XYZ Films in Los Angeles.
Ardon said the timing is right for a documentary about DeLorean.
“Streaming services opened a new market for documentaries,” he said. “It’s been said it’s the Golden Age of documentaries.”
While he’s followed DeLorean, Ardon said went in knowing his subject was a flawed man and the film draws no conclusions. “It’s a character piece about John,” he said.
“I always knew he was kind of a mixed bag of the good, the bad and the ugly,” Ardon said. “What I can say was that he was a super-charming guy, no matter what opinion you have of him.”
The plan was to mix typical documentary interviews and news footage with dramatic reenactments. “People said they didn’t think it would work,” he said.
Ardon believes he’s proven cynics wrong, and it helps that Baldwin was onboard to play DeLorean. “(Baldwin) had immediate interest,” he said.
Apparently in 2004 Baldwin agreed to portray DeLorean in a similar project that DeLorean was creating himself through his production company. That fell through when DeLorean died a year later.
Ardon said in 2015 he finally got the funding he needed to produce the documentary he’s always wanted to create.
“Framing of John DeLorean” was released June 7 in New York and a week later in Los Angeles.
It will be screened June 19 at the Tivoli Theater in Downers Grove and shown at The Music Box in Chicago starting June 28.
If You Go
What: Screening of “Framing John DeLorean”
Where: Tivoli Theatre, 5021 Highland Ave., Downers Grove
When: 7:30 p.m. June 19 followed by a Q&A with producer and Naperville native Tamir Ardon and “Grand Delusions: The Cosmic Career of John DeLorean” author Hillel Levin