“The only thing we had permits for was to ride the elevated train,” explained William Friedkin, director of “The French Connection.” He and his producer met with the Chief of Public Relations for the New York Transit Authority. They explained what they wanted to do and asked his permission to do it. “They are crazy,” admonished the official, “I could never let them do something like what they just described. First of all: there has never been an elevated train that has been hijacked, there has never been a train accident on the elevated system in New York, and we’ve never had a car chasing a train. It would be really HARD. ” The director and production manager were getting up to leave. Fortunately, the producer was clairvoyant enough to await the conditions the New York transit official was referring to. “How HARD?” The producer asked knowingly. The official’s response was the first step toward creating what is arguably the largest car chase ever filmed in movie history; a sequence that was so bold in its execution that it could never be done legally again. “$ 40,000 and a one-way trip to Jamaica,” he replied. He was serious and that is what the production supposedly paid him. However, according to Friedkin, the movie did not originally have $ 40,000 earmarked for payments. The budget for the entire film was approximately $ 1.5 million and the film would exceed that by $ 300,000; due in part to the payment of bribes such as the one just described. Friedkin convinced the studio that this was the way it had to be done. He asked the man why he specifically needed a “one-way ticket.” “Because,” the transit official confirmed, “if I let you do what you just told me on that train, I will be fired. I want to live the rest of my life in Jamaica.” And so he did; Happy forever.
“The French Connection” is based on an actual drug case in New York City. Real-life detectives Sonny Grosso and his partner Eddie Egan (the inspiration for Gene Hackman’s character of Popeye Doyle) broke an organized crime ring in 1961 and seized 112 pounds of heroin, a record amount at the time. The investigation was the subject of a book by Robin Moore and an Oscar-winning film. For legal reasons, the names of Egan and Grosso were changed to Doyle and Russo. However, despite the name changes, Sonny Grosso has been quoted as saying the film is an accurate description of 95 percent of the events of the 10-month investigation. The only event that did not actually happen in the case was, in fact, the car chase scene in “THE FRENCH CONNECTION.”
William Friedkin felt he needed the car chase or else he would have nothing more than “a police surveillance photo.” Friedkin goes on to say that “policing is like watching paint dry. It’s very boring.” He knew the movie needed the scene, but didn’t know until a couple of weeks before starting principal photography what the car chase scene in “THE FRENCH CONNECTION” would involve. One day, he and his producer decided to take a walk starting at 86th Street on the east side of Manhattan. They walked 55 blocks south. “We’re not going to stop, we’re not going to back down until we can think of a chase scene,” Friedkin recalls that the two decided. They heard the noise of the subway under their feet, they saw the smoke rising from the streets. They saw the traffic and the crowds of people that make up New York. “We started improvising the chase.” This became the genesis of the scene that would obviously become the film’s signature sequence.
Gene Hackman’s stunt driver was named Bill Hickman. He was also the host of “Bullitt,” starring Steve McQueen. Steve McQueen is said to have been one of the original choices for the role in “The French Connection” that Gene Hackman would inevitably play. Both “Bullitt” and “The French Connection” were produced by Philip D’Antoni. It was the car chase in “Bullitt” (which had only preceded “French Connection” by 3 years and was still very much in memory) that set the bar for how exciting the car chase scene was in “The French Connection. “. . It would eventually be decided that they would overcome Steve McQueen’s car chase with Gene Hackman’s elevated train car chase.
According to the director, he did not storyboard the chase. “I didn’t write it,” Friedkin insists. “It wasn’t in any script. But we went to various places. There’s a guy named Fat Thomas who gets credit as a location manager. Fat Thomas was a 425 pound bookmaker in New York who had been arrested 52 times for making bets with a conviction. But he knew New York like the back of his hand. He took me and showed me the area where I got permission to film the chase. ” This neighborhood was the Stillwell Avenue line at Bay 50th Street near Coney Island. Friedkin would take the team to all of these locations about a week before they started principal photography and discussed what could potentially happen while taking some notes. “We did not have permits to fire the chase. None. We did not have permits from the city to be on the streets. But I had these cops off duty with me and if something went wrong, they just showed a badge.” and the problems would disappear. “
When they finished shooting everything they had planned, the director looked at the reeds and decided that he was not satisfied with the final results. “I thought it was a pretty silly thing,” Friedkin admitted. One day when they were supposedly finished, Bill Hickman, the stunt driver, accompanied the director to a downtown bar for a drink. The stunt driver turned to Friedkin and asked, “Well, boss, what do you think of the chase we filmed?” The director was forced to admit that he felt that it was not very good and that it was not as exciting as he would have hoped. Hickman blushed a little and responded with a challenge. He asked that the car be placed under the elevated tracks the next morning at 8am. “Get in the car with me,” he promised Friedkin, “and I’ll show you how to drive.”
They were planning to shoot elsewhere that day, but the director went to the production manager and arranged for the car to be mounted with a camera on the bumper. He decided he would operate the other camera over Bill Hickman’s shoulder because “he was young and single, and the cameramen had families.” Bill Hickman then drove 26 blocks through city traffic at 90 miles per hour with no paid extras and no permit. As a warning to pedestrians, they installed a police siren on top of the car that was never photographed. The only thing that was staged was the shot of the woman with the baby carriage.
Actor Randy Jurgensen describes what it was like: “The car was completely disassembled … and I sat on the passenger side. It was wrapped in a mattress and Billy Friedkin was in the back and he was facing the camera.” Jurgensen goes on to describe the conversation that took place just before the cameras rolled: “Before getting in the car, Billy [Friedkin] spoke to Bill Hickman as follows: ‘We can only do this once, we are not protected, we are lucky if we get out of this without being arrested, we are going to steal this opportunity, so you have to give it to me. You REALLY have to give it to me. ‘ He zigzagged, we hit the sidewalk once, we faced oncoming traffic once. ” The car even lightly struck a city bus in such a way that it prevented the doors of the stunt vehicle from being opened.
The stunt driver kept his foot on the gas until he had to brake and the director kept encouraging him to do more. During the second drive, they needed to film some footage of Gene Hackman driving the vehicle. What they had not anticipated was that someone would leave their house, get into their car and enter the outlet. “All of a sudden, I see this blur,” Hackman recounted years later, “and this guy stops in front of me.” Hackman hit the other driver and the collision sent Hackman straight into a pillar. The cameraman was thrown to the floor of the trunk by the force of the impact. Fortunately, Hackman and the cameraman were not seriously injured.
Gerald Greenberg, the film’s editor, recalled, “Billy always wanted more of those things in there and he certainly played against the face of Gene Hackman and all the frustration Hackman could conjure up. Many years after he shot the chase scene from cars on “THE FRENCH CONNECTION,” admitted William Friedkin: “It was a terrible thing to do, it was very dangerous and life-threatening. I have to tell you that I would never do something like that again. “