Gene Hackman Costarred With A Pontiac To Create One Of The Most Iconic, Reckless, And Dangerous Chase Scenes Ever Filmed

The most famous Pontiacs on television and in the movies are generally flashy things like the K.I.T.T. Firebird, Burt Reynolds’ Trans Am, and the GTO Judge in Two Lane Blacktop, among others. It would seem that a very basic 1971 LeMans sedan wouldn’t belong on this list, but that car has to rank as one of the greatest Pontiacs ever to grace the silver screen.

If you don’t think that’s possible, you need to check out eight minutes of a car chase scene that, in retrospect, even the director says never, ever should have happened.

Yes, There Was A Hackman And A Hickman

With decades of films like Fast and the Furious and Gone In Sixty Seconds under our belts, it’s very hard to be impressed by automobile stunts on film, particularly from over fifty years ago. The chase scene in William Friedkin’s 1971 film The French Connection, however, is a prominent exception. The nerve-wracking scenes still deliver edge-of-your-seat thrills as the action careens through gritty, dirty bankruptcy-era New York streets.

As with most chase scenes, you don’t need to know much to set the scene except for the fact that one of the factions involved is Bad while the other is Good. In the case of The French Connection, the racist, obnoxious, and single-mindedly-driven-regardless-of-collateral damage cop played by Gene Hackman is actually the “Good” guy: detective Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle.

The basic plot of the film involves an attempt by a nefarious Frenchman to sneak around $23 million in heroin into the port of New York, hidden within a car. The only reason I mention this part is because the vehicle with drugs stuffed in the rocker panels was a deep brown Lincoln Mark III with black French license plates, shown initially cruising through Marseille and dwarfing the Renaults and Peugeots around it.

I know, it was just a gussied-up T-Bird, but that thing’s dope as hell (excuse the pun) in that lovely not-quite-black hue. If it was really used in France in 1971, there had to be yellow headlights under those covers, making it even cooler.

Once the Bad Guys know that a tenacious cop is on to them, they make a move. One of the drug smuggler’s henchmen takes a shot at Popeye in Brooklyn but fails to hit his target. The would-be hitman attempts to escape on an elevated subway and manages to evade our anti-hero as the doors close. Popeye doesn’t give up; he commandeers a civilian car on the street below and proceeds to pursue the subject on city streets underneath the train tracks. The first car Popeye tries to get is a VW Beetle that doesn’t stop (thank God, too slow), and a second escapes him, but he’s able to pull the driver from a maroon/brown 1971 Pontiac LeMans and shift the action into gear. (Some sites that I’ve read claim that the car is a lower-level G-37, but it isn’t.)

Friedkin supposedly chose the car because of its “everyman” appearance, and purchased two examples for shooting. Some reports I’ve read state that the cars had Pontiac 400 cubic inch V8 motors under the hood, but I can’t find anything to substantiate that, other than the screen cars’ seeming ability to spin their tires at will.

The elevated Brooklyn train ran at speeds of around 50 miles an hour, and since it had a head start, the car would need to be driven at hair-raising speeds to keep up. The driver that Friedkin wanted to use was Bill Hickman, the man who did the stunt work in his two other car chases, which both rank as groundbreaking: 1968’s Bullitt and 1973’s The Seven Ups. Yes, it’s this guy below, who you will remember as the Charger pilot in Bullitt who looks far less like a skilled wheelman than he does the dude who sold your parents that State Farm homeowners’ policy.

To show how dangerous this drive was, Hickman actually refused the job several times before Friedkin goaded him into doing it. Hickman’s only stipulation was that Friedkin had to ride in the car with him for the driving scenes. Remarkably, Gene Hackman reportedly did around 50 to 60 percent of the driving in the movie. The filming car for in-car scenes had the front seat removed and replaced by a camera stand to capture Gene Hackman’s profile; another platform sat overlapping the rear seat. You can see Gene’s actual reactions since he was actually behind the wheel for much of the driving footage.

The most famous shots, though, were done with the camera mounted on the front bumper.

In the close city quarters, you really get the sense of speed with these low shots that were done with Hickman doing the insane wrangling of the rather large “mid-sized” sedan:

The “hero” car was the one that would take the abuse as its exterior was filmed. In the film, you see shots of three pedals, but Hackman is driving a car that is clearly an automatic. From what I can ascertain, the camera car had a column-shift slushbox while the “her0” car had a four-speed, but that’s such a rare car to specify that I have my doubts.

Friedkin had his cars and his driver; all he needed to do was get the proper permits to make it happen. Well, that’s another story.

Yeah, Sorry About Your Car, We’re Making A Movie

To film on the train, the movie’s producers did things the correct way; well, the correct way for early 1970s New York, that is. In order to get permission to film, they reportedly bribed an official with $40,000 and a one-way ticket to Jamaica (and I don’t think they meant Jamaica, Queens). The official’s assumption was that he’d be fired anyway, so why not get out of town?  It looks like winter in the filmed scenes, may as well go someplace warm.

As for filming on the street below the track, that was a different story. The French Connection was based on true events that happened in the sixties, and the two real cops involved in the bust (upon whom Hackman’s and Roy Scheider’s characters were based) were consultants on the film. They were “consultants” in that they were sufficiently connected to assemble enough off-duty cops to close off the streets for the filming, or at least try to. You see, it’s a big area to secure; nearly impossible, really, even early on a Sunday morning.

Here’s a rough map of the path the chase that follows what is now the “D” train, but at the time was the “B.”

The scenes with the hero car could naturally be broken up into shorter segments, but it’s that one-shot point-of-view work with the bumper-mounted camera and Hickman driving that were possibly the most insane. “We went 26 blocks at 90mph, and there was absolutely no control,” Friedkin admitted in an interview much, much later.

We had no police control, we didn’t stop cross traffic, we didn’t stop pedestrians from crossing the street. And the only thing that got us through the traffic was (that) we had a gumball (a flashing light) on top of the car and a police siren (obviously on the camera car shots only where it wasn’t visible and the siren could be sound edited out)… we had a few ‘bumps’ that weren’t supposed to happen…(but) it was irresponsible. Thank God no one was hurt.

Yes, some of the hair-raising scenes, like the Pontiac narrowly missing an (empty) baby carriage and driving through strategically placed prop garbage were totally planned out; as you can see below, there was miles of room for error.

However, one of the most serious and dramatic impacts in the chase is with a white Ford that collides with the Pontiac, sending it skidding off course and causing the other car to spin like a pinwheel. This seems like an incredibly difficult wreck to plan out and get right, and there’s a reason for that: it wasn’t supposed to happen.

As you’d expect with limited makeshift control on a sweeping 26-block area, not every intersection was properly secured; the driver of the white Ford entered the intersection of Stillwell and 86th entirely unaware that a chase scene for some movie was being filmed. He appears to have locked up his brakes when he noticed the speeding Pontiac, but it was too late not to hit it. Reportedly, there were no serious injuries, and the film production crew paid for the repairs to the hapless driver’s Ford; there were no Top Dog Law ads on the radio then to spur on as we have in today’s litigious society.

Oh, wait, you want to see the actual chase? Sorry for the delay; here you go:

Knowing what we know now, how the hell did nobody get fined, arrested, or worse?

“Detective Doyle Can Return Your Pontiac To You Now”

I sort of doubt that the speeds in the chase reached 90 miles an hour as Friedkin claimed happened, but it doesn’t matter; Bill was at least tripling the posted limits in these tight Brooklyn streets. In many ways, The French Connection was likely the high-water mark in insane no-nets car chases. With CGI and other tricks today, there’s very little likelihood that anyone will be injured in even the most dangerous-looking stunts on the silver screen.

That’s a very good thing, and even Friedkin claims that he was reckless and never, ever should have filmed the French Connection chase the way he did fifty-five years ago. He’s well aware that he put too many lives – including his own – at risk for a mere film. At the same time, when asked what he thought of the finished product today, he said he “wouldn’t change a single frame.” I think we can all agree with that.

Pontiac Points: 95/100

Verdict: Sure, it could have been any car in that scene, but it’s almost impossible to imagine it being anything other than Pontiac.

Top graphic image: 20th Century Fox (screenshot)