BULLITT (with full details)!

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For those of you who are just joining us in progress, this is the last 72 hours of my 3rd Annual "Steve McQueen Film Festival".

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Buckle your seat belts. In the history of Cinema, there has never been (and it is widely considered inconceivable that there ever will be) another car-chase that can equal that of "Bullitt". While the script is still difficult to follow after 40 years, the inescapable truth about this film is that audiences are cleverly interrupted from figuring out the complex plot line. It involves a dubious Senator with national ambitions (played brilliantly by Robert Vaughn) who enlists San Francisco Lieutenant Frank Bullitt (Steve McQueen) and his partner Delgetti (Don Gordon) to guard a mafia witness for a weekend in a seedy hotel so that the witness can provide Senate testimony the following Monday morning.

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Director Lawrence Kasdan ("The Big Chill", "Grand Canyon") observed that any serious acting student has watched "Bullitt" over and over again to observe how McQueen walks, how he gets into and out of a car, and of course those wonderful improvised facial expressions McQueen was gifted to employ so successfully in each of his movie roles with little dialogue. The casting of then 21-year old Jacqueline Bissett as Frank's girlfriend, Norman Fell and Simon Oakland as police Captains, not to mention (but I choose to anyway) using actual doctors in San Fransisco's General Hospital as part of the acting crew lends a marvelous authenticity to this police drama! Entire websites and even memorabilia (some of which I own) are enjoyed by millions worldwide who make their way to the film's location of San Francisco, California where the May, 1968 car chase scene was completed over a two-week period. The filming of the chase itself earned a 1969 Academy Award for Best Editing, and this is due to the fact that the various locations of the original car chase spanned 22 city blocks (primarily in the Russian Hill area of San Francisco, and then south of the city in the Guadalupe Canyon Parkway vicinity of Daly City). Thus, It is impossible for me not to sound apologetic when I say that I must discuss the chase, because it overtakes a complicated script that was rewritten numerous times. Moreover, the chase scene has been and will always be an iconic part of the American culture. Just this year Ford Motor Company manufactured a second and final limited edition of the Ford "Bullitt" Mustang in honor of McQueen (the first was in 2001). So, I must discuss it here. Plus I'm test-driving one for fun here in Arizona if I can find one (only 7,000 were built).

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British Director Peter Yates and Producer Phillip D'Antonni enlisted race car driver and constructor Max Balchowski (of "Old Yeller" movie fame) to modify two identical "Highland Green" 1968 Ford Mustang 390 cubic inch GT Fastbacks. Solar Productions also bought two identical Black 1968 Dodge Charger 440 cubic inch R/T's (driven by the movie's two mafia hit men: Actor and Stunt Driver Bill Hickman and featuring Actor Paul Genge). Carey Loftin was the Stunt Coordinator. A bit of trivia that Sheryl Crow knows: It was Hickman's unhappy lot to be following Actor James Dean driving his station wagon towing an empty flatbed trailer on the afternoon of September 30, 1955 when Dean was fatally injured in a tragic collision en route to a Salinas, California road race. As Hickman arrived on the scene and attempted to rescue Dean from his demolished aluminum body Porsche Spyder, he died in Hickman's arms.

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Hickman was a veteran Stunt Driver who began his career in 1949 and drove for Walt Disney's 1969 movie "The Love Bug", for Gene Hackman in 1971's "The French Connection" and Robert Urich in 1973's film "The Seven Ups". While Hickman did all of his own driving in "Bullitt", insurance constraints required McQueen to share the more dangerous driving (notably the 30 foot long airborne jumps off steep hills around Taylor and Filbert Streets) with long-time stunt double Bud Ekins with Carey Loftin handling some of the driving as well. Two scenes in which McQueen is very much involved as the driver involves a mistake at Larkin and Chestnut, where driver Hickman was told to glance his car off a parked 1956 Ford Victoria. In the second DVD disc that comes with the movie "Bullitt" featuring the 10 minute special feature "Steve McQueen's Commitment to Reality", unused footage captures Hickman accidentally destroying an un-manned tripod camera after smashing into the Ford as he continues the scene. This was an unplanned goof that was left in the film. Immediately thereafter, McQueen who is chasing Hickman, himself overshoots a right turn, jams the transmission into reverse, sticking his head out of the drivers car door window and smokes the tires for all its worth to resume chasing Hickman. Afterwards, Loftin halted filming and ordered McQueen out of the Mustang so that Ekin's could get dressed as McQueen's stunt double to wrestle the Mustang around the turns and over the steep hills.

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The second scene of note is where McQueen is back behind the wheel chasing Hickman south out of San Francisco proper on their way to Guadalupe Canyon. Bud Ekins (who doubled for McQueen in the motorcycle jump in "The Great Escape") insisted on driving a motorcycle toward the chase cars on the Canyon Road where Hickman's character panics and swerves head-on into the oncoming traffic. Ekins lays down a BSA motorcycle as Hickman swerves behind him to the right, forcing McQueen off the left pavement into gravel and dirt, which is quite dangerous at speeds well over 115 miles per hour. It is here and on the level runs where McQueen himself is actually doing his own driving, manhandling the Mustang to get it back under control in the gravel and dirt to again, resume the chase after Hickman on the Canyon Road. McQueen is double-clutching the Mustang to keep up the RPM's (today's manual transmissions no longer require this technique). McQueen recalled the following of Ekin's stunt.

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"When he told us he was going to do this stunt, I really didn't want him to do it. 'You're liable to get kissed off, and your wife'll never forgive me', I told him. But he was stubborn, convinced he could do it okay. Man, I'll tell you, I never saw anything as scary as him having to throw that BSA down in front of us. He must have slid at least seventy-five feet along the blacktop. I just twisted the Mustang sideways to miss him, spun twice and slapped the bank---which wasn't in the script!"

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The City of San Francisco gave Director Yates only one take on the 6 AM casting call for the jump sequences, so the dangerous hill jumps at high speeds were filmed by multiple cameras, included those mounted on each cars' roll-bar. Balchowski beefed up the suspension torsion bars, control arms, shock absorbers and shock towers and springs of all four stunt cars, but otherwise left them essentially stock. McQueen had the steering wheel swapped for a 1967 Shelby Mustang steering wheel (today this item costs $7,500 or more); stock wheels were swapped for 15 inch American Racing Torque Thrust D-Mags with headers and an after market ignition system was installed. However, the Ford wasn't nearly as powerful as Hickman's 375-horsepower Charger. On one of the jumps, a puff of white smoke can be seen after the Mustang lands. This was actually caused by the oil pan slamming onto the concrete and bursting open. A quick welding job repaired it. With Director of Photography Bill Fraker filming the level run of the car chase only six feet away from McQueen's driver door, Director Yates (at one point positioned in the Ford's rear seat) tapped Steve on the shoulder and said "We have a problem. I think we're out of film!", to which McQueen replied. "That's not all we're out of; we're out of brakes too!", at which point McQueen began zig-zagging the car left and right in a frantic effort to slow it down. Yates recalls: "I don't know how he ever got that thing stopped". The Mustang GT had suffered such unforgiving punishment on the hill jumps that by the time McQueen begins side-slamming Hickman's car at high speeds, the Mustang began to disintegrate, leaving a steering pitch of almost two feet. Each night, the cars were put on lifts for crews to inspect the undercarriages for cracks, however, the first Mustang GT was so badly damaged that it was scrapped after filming at the insistance of the insurance company.

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The crew included 50 actors, stunt men, drivers, plus camera, sound and communications people. William Fraker and a driver converted a stripped down Corvette chassis for the camera car to shoot film at speeds of up to 130 miles per hour. For those of you "motor heads" like me who want to know the definitive answer about what happened to the cars after the filming was completed, I have the answer for you! Both Dodge Chargers were scrapped, but the second Mustang (Chassis # 8Ro2S125559) was sold to a Warner Brothers employee. From there it was re-sold in 1974. McQueen himself and others tried to purchase the car unsuccessfully. When last seen, it had 66,000 miles on the odometer and had suffered only minor front-end accident damage. The paint was faded, but the welded-in camera mounts and holes drilled to support the lighting and camera equipment remain. After spending years in a Kentucky storage facility it was moved further south and the owner is anonymous as of this BLOG. Car collector Dave Kunz's replica was used by singer Sheryl Crow for the video release of her hit song "Steve McQueen". And to this day, neither "Ronin", "The Italian Job", "The Seven Ups" or any other film can equal the car chase of "Bullitt". Part of this reality is that we live in a very different time and culture where it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible to replicate the dangerous conditions of the "Bullitt" chase. Sadly, Bill Hickman, a heavy cigarette smoker died of cancer in February, 1986.

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The Cast: Steve McQueen is Lt. Frank Bullitt; Don Gordon is Delgetti; Robert Vaughn is Chalmers; Jacqueline Bissett is Cathy; Robert Duvall is Weissman the Cab Driver; Simon Oakland is Capt. Bennett; Norman Fell is Baker; Justin Tarr is Eddy; Feliece Orlandi is Renick; Pat Renella is Johnny Ross; Bill Hickman: Charger driver and thug; Paul Genge is the gunman; Writers: Alan Kleiner and Alan Trustman basd on the novel "Mute Witness" by Robert L. Fish. Directed by Peter Yates; Produced by Phillip D'Antoni; Music by Lalo Schifrin; WINNER 1969 Academy Award for Best Editing.

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Having spent so much time writing here about the car chase, let me add that the intense acting scene between McQueen and Vaughn in the hospital disproves McQueen's much quoted comment that "I'm not an actor, I'm a reactor". It is quite clear to anyone that Steve was not just a good actor; he was a GREAT actor! In summary, whatever McQueen put his mind to---whether lagging coins, playing polo on horseback in "The Thomas Crown Affair", competing as a karate student, as a professional motorcyclist, auto racer, flying his own planes or playing a wide variety of roles as the anti-hero during the Vietnam War era, he lived life to the fullest!

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SIT BACK AND ENJOY THE RIDE!

(This is an Unusually Long Post and Your Patience is Appreciated!)
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OUR FINAL FILM IS TOMORROW!