BULLITT & JUNIOR BONNER!

This is Week #3 of our 5 week "Virtual Film Festival" honoring the life and the art of one of the greatest actors who ever lived: STEVE McQUEEN. The date is October 17, 1968 at The Radio City Music Hall in New York City. The place is "SOLD OUT" for a screening of the Solar Productions/Warner Brothers thriller "BULLITT". For this particular film Steve chose British Director Peter Yates after viewing his film "Robbery", that included a car chase. Interesting Note: The future Mrs. Steve McQueen, Ali McGraw (who would achieve enormous success two years later with "Love Story") was also in the audience. The all star cast included: Steve McQueen, Robert Vaughn, Jacqueline Bisset, Don Gordon, Robert Duvall along with some fine supporting cast members who have sadly passed on: Simon Oakland, Norman Fell, and Stunt Driver of the menacing Black Dodge Charger Bill Hickman. This is a complicated story that the audience never understood completely because the history-making car chase that won the Academy Award (c) in 1968 for BEST EDITING has never been duplicated since. McQueen plays Lieutenant Frank Bullitt, an all guts, no glory San Francisco cop becomes determined to find the underworld kingpin that killed the witness in his protection. He played a cop at a time when police officers in the United States were not at all popular. I'm going to turn over my BLOG to the following comments from Director Peter Yates reflecting on the film that became so closely associated with Steve's stardom.

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"My name is Peter Yates. And I had the pleasure of directing this film "Bullitt" that you're about to see. It was the first film that I made out of England, the first film in America and it was entirely due to Steve McQueen who had invited me over because he had seen a film of mine called "Robbery". I really considered myself very lucky and I had a wonderful time shooting it. The opening sequences were originally going to be shot in Chicago, but what in fact happened in the end was the long shots, the exteriors are all Chicago but the interiors were shot in San Francisco because the whole film was shot on location. This is something I had asked for because I felt that I knew more about location shooting having done almost nothing but location shooting with films like "A Taste of Honey", which was directed by Tony Richardson. And he had brought me up really learning to shoot on location. And William Fraker (Director of Photography) who had, in fact, lit "Bullitt" was also somebody who had used a lot of locations and had in fact shot commercials and this allowed us to use all sorts of lenses and effects most feature people didn't understand at that time. This whole opener is really part of the grabber. It is really part of the number one story and the whole point really of this film is that it's main story is really the minor story. And the minor story becomes the main story. It's about the character that Steve McQueen plays. I gather it's sort of set now to Film Scriptwriting Classes: the main story becomes the secondary story. We chose to film in San Francisco because I thought it would give me more freedom. Originally the script had been written in Los Angeles. The feeling was that if we were away from Los Angeles then we would have fewer people 'looking over our shoulders'. And while there are some good shooting locations in Los Angeles, we felt they had all been used by television police stories. My film "Robbery" had a car chase in it and Steve McQueen--as I think is fairly well known is mad about cars. But again, "Robbery" was all shot on location and he liked the style of the picture a lot. He was very keen on getting people to start shooting in San Francisco, because this was before Coppola or anybody had started shooting there. We really wanted to make a film that was a modern Western. The Western, after all is something which is part of Hollywood's background and also funnily enough with Westerns, they were shot on location. Whereas films like "Bullitt" which had major actors in it were never shot on location--they were too much away from the pool. Steve is a marvelous actor. He always felt that he was a 'reactor and not an actor' . He said to me on one or two occasions, 'I'm a reactor. Don't give me too much dialogue'. And of course he dealt very well with dialogue. His reactions, his eye movements it's just extraordinary. But you just watch his eyes. The (car) chase came about because Phil D'Antoni who was producing the film had seen "Robbery" and knew of McQueen's love of fast driving. But I was a bit concerned. We were given two weeks at the end of the schedule to complete the chase. It wasn't very fast shooting. All of these streets had to be cleared with the police, who as long as you told them what you were going to do and they knew what to close off, they were extraordinarily helpful. It was exactly a gunfighter's strapping on his belt outright. There's always been this question about the VW Bug appearing here twice. And the answer is I was only allowed to shoot this (chase) one time on a morning. And what we did was we shot it with two camera's and it was just so popular after we put it together that instead of running it once we ran it twice. We had a great problem with the English language because I said 'Well, you'll go past the lorry and then you'll go on the other side of the drophead and come round the other side of the caravan' (to stunt driver Bill Hickman). But we managed to sort that out. We have the music at the start of the chase but once you get into it, the engine sounds are so loud and the tire scenes are so loud that your music would not come through. The word "bullshit" really summed up how the McQueen character felt about the (Robert) Vaughn character and during The Radio City Music Hall Showing they had "Bullshit" taken out. But then I was sitting in a screening studio in San Francisco at the time and the head of Warner's--Len Ford tapped me on the shoulder and said 'Put it back'. I have always liked 'less is more', but I don't think this story would have the tension or the reality if there was more descriptive dialogue or descriptive music wich would just be really telling you, warning you how something was going to go. The story about the "Bullitt" character in the end doesn't finish there. Because again, he has to go back home and get himself into a reality and into an existence. I wanted very much to show, especially at that time, police were thought to be using their guns too much. He (McQueen) puts his gun away and uses water (in the bathroom scene), as water is so often used in films to show innocence. To show a 'washing off orf a responsibility' . That's really what the look in his eyes again --the eyes of somebody who has just experienced something and though they didn't enjoy it, it was a job that was well done, and was indeed just a job. My name is Peter Yates. I hope you enjoy running the DVD".

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It is now 1972, and Sam Peckinpah, a director so closely associated with movies containing violence directs this film with Steve McQueen as JUNIOR BONNER a one-time Rodeo champion who hits his 40's and pitted against the violence of the sport, is his unwillingness to let go of a lifestyle that is obviously coming to an end. Ace Bonner (Robert Preston) returns to his family in Prescott, Arizona for a Fouth of July celebration after a several year absence and we are privy to the West along with horse trailers, McQueen's parents are separating forever, and his home town has become a place filled with strangers. "Junior" is aging as an athlete, and his best days are behind him. Interestingly, even his weathered Cadillac depicts the down side of a once successful career. This movie is about the triumph of a man who stays true to his own values, regardless of how irrelevant others may begin to perceive him. This, I must say was a box office disappointment, but strangely enough received a 5-Star review. It was Sam Peckinpah's favorite film and Steve McQueen was terribly disappointed that the studios never promoted it better. As you may have grasped by now into our third of five weeks with the "Virtual Film Festival", Steve uses many major actors repeatedly in Don Gordon, Robert Duvall, Simon Oakland, Charles Bronson Joe Don Baker and others.

The cast here is extraordinary as well featuring: Robert Preston as Ace Bonner, Ida Lupino as Elvira Bonner, Ben Johnson as Buck Roan, Joe Don Baker as Curly Bonner, Barbara Leigh as Charmagne, Mary Murphy as Ruth Bonner. Time is changing fast and the Bonner family explodes with internal tensions created by Junior's dubious real estate broker brother, his father Ace's cockeyed dream of finding Gold in Australia and the McQueen character coming to terms with his own mortality. It is in fact a "character study" of a man so determined to live life on his own terms that it's impossible to see anyone other than McQueen play it. Again, I must say that as an understated actor, McQueen commands one hell of a screen presence. When he says, `Rodeo time, I gotta get it on down the road,' it is his way of saying, `Life's destiny awaits me.' It touches something in each of us about our dreams. And it's quite a shocker from the director who brought us "The Wild Bunch", "Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia", and "Straw Dogs".

My choice of JUNIOR BONNER in Week #3 is for it's quality and it's contrast. It is a salient point that will not fully hit you until weeks 4 and 5 are complete. Thank you for reading this long BLOG. Now go enjoy the show!