Bullitt

In last week's post about the Friends of Eddie Coyle, I mentioned that the director Peter Yates, had also directed Bullitt (1968). For a long time, I've meant to watch Bullitt, so I did.

Bullitt is a neo-noir cop drama about protecting a witness and solving crime. Story wise the plot is really nothing special. I found Steve McQueen as Lieutenant Bullitt okay but not that remarkable. Robert Vaughn as Senator Chalmers is amazingly nasty and slimy. So slimy in fact that when Vaughn tried to get into politics, his performance got in his way since people remembered how oily he was.

Beyond these two we have Jaqueline Bisset as Cathy, Bullitt's girlfriend and Robert Duvall as a cab driver. I don't think I've ever seen him in such a minor role before. All actors do a good job, the cinematography is great and the music is... 60's jazz. Good if you like the stuff. I think...

Where Bullitt really shines is in the influence it has had on the TV and cinema that came along afterwards. This movie became absolutely iconic in its time and I don't think it is unfair to say that Bullitt is the archetype for the cop who plays by his own rules and does whatever it takes to get the job done no matter who gets mad at him.

Bullitt's other huge claim to fame is the car chase that is still amazing to this day. Bullitt drives a 1968 Ford Mustang as he chases two killers in a 1968 Dodge Charger. Seeing these powerful muscle cars race around San Francisco is a treat. Keep in mind that there was no CGI at the time so the hairpin turns and jumps were performed for real. This movie is also probably the inspiration for multiple movies featuring car chases in San Francisco, with its twisting streets and many steep hills.

McQueen is credited as being the driver of the Ford but in fact some shots were filmed with a stuntman, the same stuntman who did the motorcycle jump in the Great Escape – Bud Ekins. When McQueen found out, he was furious as he had gotten quite a bit of flak for not doing the jump himself.

The driver of the Dodge was Bill Hickman, an experienced stunt-driver and racer. Hickman was a good friend of James Dean and was in fact the one who pulled Dean's body out of the crashed Porsche Spyder that killed him.

I could go on listing interesting facts about this movie like how there were no sets built. All scenes were shot on location. The Mayor of San Francisco was keen to promote his city as a film location and the crew got to shut down streets for hours at a time. They even got a hospital wing to film in. The only request that got turned down was to film on Golden Gate bridge.

I said I could go on, but why bother? Check the humongous trivia page on IMDB if you want to know even more. Okay, one more. Bullitt is often credited as being the first movie where the word “Bullshit” was uttered, but it is in fact the second. The first is In Cold Blood (1967).

Do I recommend this movie? Yes, I suppose so. It is a classic and there is nothing wrong with it. If all you care about is the car chase, you can see it on Youtube. Beyond that, movie buffs need to see it but I don't think it's any great loss if you skip it. Again, there is not anything really wrong with it, but I don't think it quite lives up to the enormous reputation it has.

 

 

That's that and all that. Join me again next time and until then, have a great and safe week!

Trivia time!

Now that it behooves us all to stay inside and avoid physical contact, I thought I'd talk movies. Okay, to be fair I talk a lot about movies, since movies are awesome. At least some are awesome. Many many films are the opposite of awesome...

So it's trivia time!

An iconic scene in the awesome Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) is when the Terminator is riding his big bike, twirling his shotgun around one handed, to re-cock and shoots gates open.

This scene is so well done. Smooth and badass to the bone. But, anyone crazy enough to do that would end up badly hurt.

The gun in question is a Winchester 1887 lever action shotgun with the stock and trigger guard cut off. Even though it's technically possible to spin it around like that, it won't end well. The gun you see Arnold spin around was a prop gun, and one time when Arnold accidentally picked up a real one and tried to do the move, he almost broke three fingers. Keep in mind that as a champion bodybuilder, Arnold has to have pretty strong hands, and the torque still nearly broke his hand.

Further, the novel states that it is a 10-gauge shotgun, so unless you really are a Terminator, don't try shooting it with one hand, okay? Don't try this at home!

So that was a lot to digest at once. Quickfire trivia time!

Every time John Travolta's character Vincent goes to the bathroom in Pulp Fiction, something bad happens.

The original raw footage of Apocalypse Now is 1.250.000 feet long, or 381 kilometers. The distance from London to Paris is 350 kilometers as the crow flies.

The warthog Pumbaa in Lion King is the first Disney character to fart on screen.

In that vein, Psycho (1960) was the first film to show a flushing toilet.

Staying with Psycho, it was filmed in black and white to save money. Hitchcock had to pony up most of the money himself and was keen to cut costs.

In Batman and Robin (1997) Batman pulls out a bat-themed credit card that reads Good until: Forever. Imagine trying to use that card to buy anything on the internet. How many shops have Forever as an option?

The original Die Hard is one of the finest action movies of all time and it made Bruce Willis a household name. But he was the seventh (technically eight) actor considered for the role. In line ahead of Bruce was: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Burt Reynolds, Richard Gere, Harrison Ford, and Mel Gibson.

The reason for the technical eight was that due to contract reasons, they had to offer the role to an aging Frank Sinatra...

The raunchy Mel Brooks comedy Blazing Saddles was shot on the same set as Westworld

The passport James Bond shows in Skyfall was actually issued by the British Home Office. Besides being made out to a fictional character, it's absolutely genuine.

That's that. Until next time, stay safe, wash your hands and have a great week!

Did you know?

Hello and welcome to Eccentric Spheres for another movie trivia post.

Today, we're looking at ten interesting movie facts:

1. It's common for a director to shoot more than he needs but some took it a bit too far. Apocalypse Now has a running time of 153 minutes, but Coppola shot 230 hours of film. That's 1.250000 feet or 381 kilometers of film.
2. In the same vein, when Stanley Kubrick made 2001: A Space Odyssey, he allegedly shot 200 times the length of the movie. According to Wikipedia, 2001 is 142 minutes so that is 28400 minutes or 473.3 hours of film. In other words 19.7 days of raw film.
3. In 1939 Wuthering Heights was released, starring Laurence Olivier, Merle Oberon and David Niven. A then rather unknown actor called Vivien Leigh auditioned only to be told that the studio had no intention to cast “a nobody” in an important piece like Wuthering. Instead she starred in Gone with the Wind the same year. Gone with the Wind was nominated for thirteen Oscars, winning eight, including Best Actress. Wuthering Heights won Best black and white cinematography...
4. Daniel Radcliffe went through 160 pairs of prop glasses during the Harry Potter series.
5. In 2002, Stephen Spielberg went back and finished college after a 33 year break. As his student film, he handed in Schindler's List. You think they could have just handed him his diploma immediately and sent him on his way.
6. Pierce Brosnan played James Bond between 1995-2002, and during that time he couldn't appear in a non Bond film wearing a tuxedo. It was in the contract.
7. In the final scene of Grease (1978) Olivia Newton John wears skin tight black clothes. So skin tight in fact that she couldn't take off her pants. They were sewn on due to a zipper constantly breaking.
8. The original Fast and the Furious became a hit and spawned a long franchise but the during the filming, neither Jordana Brewster nor Michelle Rodriguez had a drivers license. Not even learners permits.
9. In Pulp Fiction when John Travolta has to inject Uma Thurman's character with adrenaline, the entire scene is shot backwards.
10. In Django Unchained, Leonardo DiCaprio slams his fist on a dinner table and cuts his hand. In fact he cut himself for real but just kept on with the scene. The blood is real and the discomfort the other actors seems to feel is just as real.

There you have it, more amazing facts from the world of film. Until next time, have a great week!

Where the magic happens

Hello boys and girls and welcome to another installment of Eccentric Spheres!

Today we're going to the land of magic and make-believe, or Hollywood to exact. I have a hankering for odd movie trivia, so that's the main feature of tonight's performance.

We'll star off with a true classic: Gone with the Wind.

They originally shot half a million feet of film (152400 meters), and then edited it down to 20000 feet. (6096 meters). Since it's 238 minutes long that means that every minute is about 84 feet long. Had they left it uncut (impossible, I know) Gone with the Wind would have been 5952 minutes long, or 99 hours, in other words just over four days!

As anyone who has read the book knows (I haven't by the way) Scarlett O'Hara has green eyes. Now Vivien Leigh has blue eyes. So what? Well, the GwtW was produced by David O. Selznick, who was a stickler for details. Sure contacts did exist back then, but Vivien couldn't wear them. So they did all they could to reflect green into her face, and when that wasn't enough, they recolored her eyes on the final print, by hand. By hand! They went through 20000 feet of film with a pen in hand painstakingly recoloring her eyes. I'm getting a cramp just writing this...

Keep the above mentioned fact in mind. Now consider that 1400 actresses were interviewed for the role, and 400 got as far as doing readings. And still they ended up with a blue eyed girl.

OK, enough with the romantic drama. Time for some crime!

Most of you have probably seen The Godfather, right? Even if you haven't, you have most likely heard of the famous horse head scene right?

In a nutshell, a big time movie producer, Jack Woltz (based on Warner chief Jack L. Warner) refuses to do a favor for Don Corleone, so one morning, he wakes up with the severed head of his favorite horse in his bed.

That was a real horse head. A real, severed head.

They practiced with dummies, but got a real head from a dog food factory. Eewwwwww.

Finally, did you know an X-rated film has won an Oscar for Best Picture? It's true, but not the way you think. It's not a porn film so good it got an Oscar. You would have heard about that!

No, it's Midnight Cowboy, starring Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight.

Back when the MPAA came up with the movie ratings system, the G, PG, PG-13 (invented later), R and X, they intended for X to stand for Mature Audiences Only. Sure sex is that, but Midnight Cowboy is a drama about male prostitution, poverty and the mean streets. It's by no means a skin flick. The MPAA however made a huge mistake. They forgot to copyright the X rating, and in no time, every porn producer out there used it so sell their films.

And when one X wasn't enough, they added a couple more. That's where the “XXX stands for hardcore sex” thing comes from.

So find yourself a good movie, settle down and wait out the rest of the winter.

See you next spring! (That's next Monday in case you didn't know).