Dangerous Pursuit

Photography from the Warner Bros. archives

If there were only one movie in which we could participate, it would be "Bullitt." It's the ultimate car-guy's flick with a cool lead character, lots of attitude, magnificent location, and, of course, hot musclecars in the most realistic, high-speed, fender-banging, gravity-defying chase ever filmed. Even after 30 years, it's the car chase most remembered, admired, and copied. Other movies have had more flips, crashes, explosions, and all-around destruction, but "Bullitt" was a milestone, serving notice to Hollywood that reality was a quality audiences would enjoy.

"Bullitt" did more than excite audiences. It changed the way Hollywood looked at cops at a time when policemen were being called pigs. It paved the way for more movies to be shot entirely on location and outside of the Hollywood mentality. It was a cutting-edge film that premiered in a turbulent year that shaped a socially conscious generation's values, music, and lifestyles.

The car chase in "Bullitt" worked so well because there was little in the film to draw attention away from it. There was only one profane word and no nudity. The plot was confusing to the point of being incomprehensible, but that mystery kept the audience guessing until the click of Bill Hickman's seatbelt. With its innovative use of small remote cameras mounted inside the cars during the chase, "Bullitt" was the forerunner of the concept of virtual reality. The audience was seated behind Frank Bullitt as his Mustang pursued the bad guys down the hills of San Francisco's North Beach.

The "Bullitt" saga started with movie agent John Flaxman who had the rights to a Robert Pike novel called "Mute Witness." Flaxman asked Alan Trustman, who wrote "The Thomas Crown Affair," to develop a screenplay from the book with Steve McQueen in mind as the lead.

"Mute Witness" originally followed a 65-year-old New York cop, but Trustman reshaped the protagonist into Frank Bullitt, a youthful, renegade but honest detective. "The book lacked visual, dramatic tension, so I built in three chases, each with its own danger, uncertainty, and surprise," says Trustman. He also fashioned a strong female companion who was so tangled in the plot that she was killed in the final scene.

In addition to foot chases at a hospital and the airport, Trustman says he developed a car chase, a claim disputed to this day. "Much of it was specified in the first draft," adds Trustman, "like placing the camera low on the front bumper of the following car, the car smashing into the building, the hub caps coming off."