Bullit.

This Steve McQueen film will forever be associated with what became in Easter of 1968 one of the most dangerous car chases ever presented on the big screen. It remains unequaled. I open with this comment because as part of a multi-motion picture deal, McQueen's Solar Productions chose a complicated script that actor Robert Vaughn recalls sending back to McQueen "three or four times" with notes stapled to it stating, "This script makes no sense". Despite rewrites and the dedication of British Director Peter Yates to rework the script, Vaughn jokingly said in 2005 that the script "suddenly became increasingly clearer" to him as the price for his performance went up! The Plot involves McQueen as a San Francisco Detective named Frank Bullitt. All guts and no glitter, Bullitt and Don Gordon (a personal friend and frequent Co-Star of McQueen from his "Wanted Dead or Alive" TV series days) and two other cops are assigned to a rather simple assignment: to guard a witness named Johnny Ross for 48 hours before he provides testimony implicating the Mob the following Monday. Ross escapes to San Francisco from Chicago after stealing millions from Mob bosses. When the officers and the witness are killed, a ruthless politician with national aspirations in Washington named Walter Chalmers (Vaughn) is out to pin the blame on Bullitt, and the tension is thick. The vast majority of American audiences, truthfully, could not tell you what the plot was. This is due to the 10 minute car chase between McQueen driving a 1968 Mustang GT fastback chasing down the gunmen and the legendary stunt car driver Bill Hickman. Director Peter Yates called in top stunt driving coordinator Carey Loftin (who doubled for Steve along with Bud Ekins and Lorne Janes up until Steves death). Bill Hickman was already stunt driving for Walt Disney's original "The Love Bug" when Loftin got the call from Yates for a stunt man who could also look menacing as a killer. Loftin said "I have him sitting right here", and that's how Bill got the gig.
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Bill Hickman later drove for Gene Hackman in New York for "The French Connection", and for Roy Scheider in "The Seven Ups" in the 1970's. Bill was simply the best stunt driver in the U.S. Steve, indeed, did most of the driving with the exception of the dangerous airborne jumps and bone-jarring landings over seven hills along North Beach's Chestnut Avenue (and putting down the BMW motorcycle on the Canyon Highway)--both handled by Bud Ekins. Director Yates left one blown turn in the movie where Steve overshoots a side street, smokes the wheel wells in reverse with his head hanging out of the window, and goes after the killers. Hickman did his own driving through the chase in the 1968 Black Dodge Charger. Hickman in fact, worked for two weeks with McQueen (unknown to the producers) at the an abandoned landing strip to rehearse their stunt driving. The car chase was filmed over 22 city blocks reaching speeds of up to 130 miles per hour. A then-21 year old Jacqueline Bisset stars as McQueen's girlfriend. This is widely considered not only one of the best action flicks ever made, but as Director Lawrence Kasdan previously mentioned in an interview, every serious film actor to this day, studies how Steve got into and out of the car, how he walked, how he used his formidable facial expressions --all to humanize the counter-culture view of police officers who at the peak of the Vietnam War (when this film was made) were held in ill repute. The film won an Academy Award for "Best Film Editing". The Cast: Director: Peter Yates; Writers: Robert L. Fish (from the novel "Mute Witness"), Alan Trustman (screenplay); Harry Kleiner: (screenplay); Steve McQueen as Lt. Frank Bullitt; Robert Vaughn as Walter Chalmers; Jacqueline Bissett as Cathy; Don Gordon as Delgetti; Robert Duvall as the Cab Driver; Simon Oakland as Captain Sam Bennett and Norman Fell is Captain Baker. This film today is used in more television ads and is associated with "The King of Cool" probably more than any McQueen film we will feature. Two completely different films--one "Legend". Buckle in for this one!

Article courtesy of: www.moviegoods.com