William 'Bill' Hickman (25 January 1921 – 24 February 1986) was a stunt driver/actor from the 1950s through to the late 1970s. Hickman played a major role in terms of development and execution in three of the greatest movie car chase sequences of all time.
“In retrospect, I was wrong to shoot it that way, but there was no other way to get it done.” That’s how director Billy Friedkin last week summed up his famously hair-raising chase scene in the Oscar-winning 1971 film. Friedkin was speaking before a rapt audience at the Directors Guild that had gathered for the 45th anniversary of his storied thriller, and he was candid about the challenge of shooting action scenes in the pre-CGI era.
Given budget and time restrictions, the chaotic chase scene could not be not carefully prepped or story-boarded; streets were not cleared nor pedestrians pre-warned, and permissions were not received.The skilled stunt driver careened through the streets, accidentally slamming into first one car, then a truck. “I took human life for granted because I wanted the shot,” Friedkin reflects. “I would never do it again.”Related StoryFriedkin’s film today is regarded as a classic cop movie based closely on an actual heroin bust, but its director was determined to prevent it from playing like a balky procedural. With two non-stars (at the time) as its leads, and Roy Scheider, the film was made for $1.8 million on a 40-day shoot. To fans of chase scenes, Friedkin’s depiction of a car in desperate pursuit of an elevated train surpassed the great contemporary chases in Bullitt and The Italian Job in terms of speed and daring.
With bullets flying, cars hurtled through the streets of Brooklyn at 90 miles per hour with first Hackman, then a stunt driver at the wheel.In his DGA presentation, Friedkin broke down the chase moment-by-moment, detailing why actual pedestrians, not extras, were used in many takes, how passers-by scurried out of the way as cops sped after suspects, guns firing. “No one was hurt but lots of cars were damaged,” the director explained. “And there were close calls.” Friedkin himself shot parts of the chase from the back seat of Hackman’s car. Associated PressIn many ways, The French Connection exemplified the cowboy-style filmmaking techniques of ’70s Hollywood filmmakers, who seemed eager to defy the rules. 2oth Century Fox was initially reluctant to hire Friedkin, whose early movies, like Boys In The Band or Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party, displayed no special gift for action. When he finally landed the job, Friedkin hoped to cast an established star like Paul Newman as Popeye Doyle. Friedkin and his producer, Phil D’Antoni, who had earlier produced Bullitt, presented a $2 million budget, but the studio cut it by $500,000, thereby rendering the action scenes even more of a challenge. Still, Friedkin was adamant about avoiding the prospect of a static surveillance film.
20th Century Fox“I knew we needed action – two or three good chases,” Friedkin told the DGA audience. “But how many times can you show Hackman and Scheider running after a guy?” Two weeks before the start of production, Friedkin and his producer decided to walk the streets of New York and not stop until they had patched together an exciting chase. In their mind, Hackman, playing an obsessive cop, understood that the bad guy was hiding in an elevated train and he would have to relentlessly follow the train as it sped above him.
A creaky elevated line in Brooklyn granted Friedkin last-minute permission to shoot on three weekends but there was no time to deal with police bureaucracy. Extras were hired to serve as passengers on the train but actual pedestrians would be waiting on station platforms, watching the train rush by and witnessing the daring chase on the streets below.While Friedkin had admired the chases in Bullitt, with cars soaring up and down the steep hills of San Francisco, he was determined to enhance the atmosphere of danger. The streets in Bullitt seemed oddly clear of traffic or pedestrians; Friedkin wanted greater reality, but was alarmed when his stunt car started bouncing off stationary vehicles, forcing his crew to apply emergency repairs to keep the scene (and antos) rolling.In staging his scene, Friedkin’s subconscious role model was Buster Keaton, whose silent movies were built around daring train chases. “Keaton’s scenes seemed life-threatening,” Friedkin observed. And, of course, neither Keaton nor Friedkin had the present-day luxury of computers and special effects. Neither could retire to the editing room with computer-enhanced footage.
They had to rely on what they saw in the streets.In his DGA presentation, Friedkin reminded his audience he was not defending that style of devil-may- care filmmaking, putting lives at risk to achieve maximum impact. But the demands of ’70s-era filmmaking, with its extraordinary ambitions but limited budgets, produced memorably vivid scenes and performances.
In the case of The French Connection, it also resulted in five Oscars including Best Picture.Subscribe to and keep your inbox happy.
William Friedkin called The French Connection “a crude poem to the city,” and you can feel this unpolished poetry rendered in every frame. It’s baked into the grit and grime of New York in the 1970s, its glittering storefronts and neon lights, bustling bars and nightclubs, and roaring traffic, streets slick with rain. Against this backdrop, Friedkin sets his story about two policemen hunting an elusive criminal.The film was based on a real NYPD case involving a French drug smuggler who had stashed $32 million worth of heroin in the panel of an old Buick. William Friedkin was enthusiastic about the story and on board to direct, but he never did finish reading Robin Moore’s book about the case.
The true story involved more than 60 law enforcement officers, but Friedkin’s The French Connection pares it down to two detectives: Eddie “Popeye” Egan and Sonny “Cloudy” Grosso, who assisted production of the film, acted in it, and even inspired its scenes and its ad-libbed dialogue.William Friedkin envisioned the relationship between Gene Hackman’s Popeye and Fernando Rey’s Alain Charnier as a modern-day version of Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty, a cat-and-mouse dynamic that became a blueprint for crime movies to follow (see: Michael Mann’s filmography). Friedkin imbues The French Connection with realism that extends to its tense, iconic chase that reflects the obsessive drive of Popeye Doyle. Popeye Doyle is complicated, an antihero or maybe worse. He’s racist, violent, and self-righteous. He shoots a sniper in the back and he accidentally, but remorselessly, kills a Fed. The film opens with Hackman and his partner Cloudy (Roy Scheider) interrogating, chasing, and beating up a suspect. Our introduction to Fernando Rey’s Alain Charnier involves a loving exchange of gifts with his wife.
Friedkin notes on the film’s commentary: “That’s really the theme of the film, the thin line between policeman and criminal. The cop who has the badge is basically an obsessive, brutalizing racist, and the narcotics smuggler is a gourmet; he dresses well, he loves his wife, he’s in every way imaginable a charming human being.”When New York Times crime reporter Ernest Tidyman first adapted The French Connection, no one would touch the script. So Friedkin, producer Phil D’Antoni, and Tidyman decided to put a car chase in it. The scene doesn’t feel like an afterthought, though, it’s the perfect synthesis of car chase, character, and story. And it isn’t your standard chase, either—Popeye pursues a train. D’Antoni had also produced Bullitt and did not want borrow from its chase, so D’Antoni and Friedkin agreed to do something inventive. They wanted a chase with a twist.
As the two explored New York, the concept of a car chasing an elevated train was born.The chase begins when Popeye Doyle commandeers a 1971 Pontiac LeMans. Production had two Pontiacs for the chase: a hero car, and another with its back seat removed so they could slip in camera mounts. William Friedkin had been riling up stunt driver Bill Hickman (who had driven Bullitt’s Dodge Charger) for weeks. Friedkin told Hickman he had no guts. He questioned his driving ability and masculinity.
Hickman told Friedkin, “I’ll tell you what. I’ll show you some driving if you get in the car with me.” During their run, Friedkin operated a camera over Bill’s shoulder, with another camera on the bumper. Hickman drove between up to 90 mph for 26 blocks, blowing through stop signs and traffic lights, with only a siren on top of the car to warn other drivers and pedestrians. Miraculously, no one was hurt, and most shots of the chase come from that one take. To say that the filming of the chase scene was reckless is a terrific understatement. Whereas the productions of and had carefully blocked off streets with the help of the police—and Bullitt had exclusively employed stuntmen as drivers and pedestrians—these were busy city streets with no traffic control, and anyone on the road was at risk. Buddy rider installation directory 2017.
Friedkin designed the chase and staged the action with the actors, but didn’t share that information with his cameramen, in the hope that they’d capture an “induced documentary feel.” They used few stunt cars and extras. After speaking with the Transit Authority—and giving a New York official $40,000 and a one-way ticket to Jamaica—they obtained a permit to shoot on the elevated train. Otherwise, there were no proper permits, so assistant directors, off-duty officers, and Egan and Grosso made sure no one gave the production trouble.It took five weeks to shoot a 15-minute sequence, and there were only five staged stunts. Thankfully, they’d rehearsed the near-miss of a woman with a baby carriage. Other staged moments include Popeye narrowly missing a car in an intersection, Popeye driving the wrong way on a one-way street, Popeye causing a collision after narrowly missing a truck, and nearly hitting a fence. Unsurprisingly, there were some unplanned accidents.
What was intended to be a near-miss at the intersection of Stillwell Avenue and 86th Street became an actual collision between Hackman and a stunt driver, their cars bouncing off each other like accordions. Friedkin kept the crash in the film to enhance the chase’s realism. The first cut of the chase looked awful, and Friedkin credits at least 50 percent of the scene’s success to great editing and sound, which was done after the fact on a Fox backlot.
The other 50 percent of the chase’s greatness is a result of Friedkin’s and D’Antoni’s inventiveness, the impeccable stunt driving of an enraged Bill Hickman, Owen Roizman’s and Friedkin’s cinematography (Friedkin says he operated the camera for key shots because he was young and single, and his cameramen had families), and of course, Gene Hackman acting his ass off in the driver’s seat. Friedkin explains: “The other thing to remember about this chase is the old admonition by F.
Scott Fitzgerald, the great American writer, that action is character. What a person does and how they do it is what and who they are, and this chase embodies the character of Popeye Doyle.”William Friedkin’s style, mastery, and documentary background help create a palpable sense of danger and authenticity throughout The French Connection, especially during its iconic chase. Friedkin recognizes in retrospect that the way he filmed the chase was life-threatening and “a terrible thing to do,” and he explains that he “had no reservations about doing it then, because I was a callow, heedless youth. But I wouldn’t do anything like this now.” When asked once by filmmaker Christopher McQuarrie whether he’d do anything differently, however, William Friedkin responded, “Nothing.
I wouldn’t change a frame.”.