Thursday, February 24, 2011
Back in September, after I wrote about 1968’s The Thomas Crown Affair, a friend and frequent reader of these all-too-infrequent dispatches requested that I follow it up with a piece about Steve McQueen’s signature film, released later that same year: Bullitt.
It was an excellent suggestion. I immediately scheduled a viewing of Bullitt and made some notes as I watched, but it became evident during that viewing that a closer examination of the film would be required. Alas, daily life intervened, and I didn’t get around to another viewing.
Then on January 9 of this new year, the film’s director, Peter Yates died, leaving behind a legacy that includes not just Bullitt but also Breaking Away and the excellent The Friends of Eddie Coyle. Finally, my cinematic guilt has driven me to follow through on my promise. With a bit of a vengeance.
Mention Bullitt to even the most casual film fan, and almost invariably, their immediate, somewhat Pavlovian response will be something to do with The Chase. Possibly McQueen. Possibly the Mustang. But almost certainly The Chase.
What no one ever seems to remember when you say “Bullitt,” though, is how badly written it is. And boy, is it ever.
Co-writer Alan R. Trustman’s first three screenwriting credits are The Thomas Crown Affair and Bullitt in 1968 and They Call Me MISTER Tibbs! in 1970. McQueen, McQueen, Poitier — that’s nice work if you can get it. It’s a shame Trustman didn’t do more with those opportunities, though, because after Tibbs his filmography slides into relative obscurity, and it becomes obvious that he peaked with this lazy bit of writing hanging sloppily like saddle bags off either side of the car chase against which all others are measured.
The story is adapted from Robert L. Pike’s 1963 novel Mute Witness (pretty badly written in its own right), about a decidedly un-McQueen-like New York City detective named Clancy. It was apparently being developed as a starring vehicle for Spencer Tracy, who died two weeks after he wrapped 1967’s Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. In reworking the story for a star 30 years Tracy’s junior, the script’s principal flaw is that it persists in being a character study and a procedural and doesn’t realize until it’s too late that what it really wants to be — what it had every right to be once McQueen signed on — is an action movie.
According to the invaluable Internet Movie Database, Robert Vaughn initially turned down the role of Walter Chalmers in Bullitt because he thought the plot was too thin. He was absolutely right.
He was also absolutely right for the part, and thank God that McQueen talked his Magnificent Seven co-star into doing it — and the producers threw a lot more money at him — because without Vaughn, the movie would have no compelling antagonist to speak of.
Sure, there are bad guys, but they’re cardboard stand-ups in a shooting gallery, too vaguely defined to achieve true villain status in the mind of the audience. There’s a bad guy whom Bullitt is enlisted to protect, and there are two other bad guys trying to kill the first bad guy on behalf of a lot of other bad guys, and the only reason we care at all is because we’re invested in Bullitt, whose pride and work ethic are at stake.
But casting Vaughn as Chalmers turns up the heat under our hero. Vaughn, to me, has always exuded untrustworthiness, with his precisely clipped diction and his slightly beady eyes and — let’s face it — his uptight banker’s hairline. If he had a mustache, he would twirl it. Vaughn is cast perfectly to type, and he plays Chalmers to the hilt, even though Chalmers, as written, is nothing but a lot of hot air in a suit and tie.
For starters, we only ever hear him called Mister Chalmers, but every other character in the movie snaps to attention at the mere mention of his name. One might get the impression that he was a district attorney or attorney general1 — these would seem to be the most likely offices for someone who claims to “have a star witness who needs protection” — but one would be wrong.
I’ll stipulate that the film’s Chalmers likely possesses a law degree of some kind, but the primary source of his considerable influence is his wealth, judging by his ostentatious Pacific Heights manse and the massive gathering there of what appears to be a ladies’ garden society, in the scene in which we — and Det. Lt. Frank Bullitt — first meet him. Upon this introduction, Chalmers lays out the preposterous plot of the movie:
“Once and for all, the top men in law enforcement are united. We’re going to expose the Organization.”
“I read your speech,” Bullitt says. “Why San Francisco?”
“Ross is safer here. That’s your province. Keep him out of reach for 48 hours.”
Johnny Ross is a mob functionary from Chicago, now on the lam after embezzling $2 million. He is slated to testify against “the Organization” before a “Senate subcommittee hearing” that, inexplicably, has been convened in San Francisco. Not Washington, D.C., where the Senate is, mind you, but San Francisco, where Frank Bullitt works. Chalmers enlists Bullitt to babysit Ross over the weekend and deliver him to the hearing Monday morning.2
“A senatorial hearing has a way of catapulting everyone involved into the public eye,” Chalmers tells him. “With a subsequent effect on one’s career. It’d be a pleasure to have you along. … Have him in court on Monday, Frank.”
After this meet-cute, Bullitt asks his captain, Sam Bennet (Simon Oakland), if he knows why Chalmers asked for him. Bennet replies, “He’s grooming himself for public office. And you make good copy. They love you in the papers, Frank.”
While this last exchange confirms that Chalmers is nothing more than a well-to-do dilettante with nebulous political aspirations, it is also the only indication, aside from the casting of McQueen, that there is anything special or noteworthy about Bullitt. To this point, we have been shown nothing, except for his partner, Det. Delgetti (Don Gordon), waking him from a dead sleep (in some of the most awful brown paisley pajamas you ever saw) to drag him to the Friday-morning meeting with Chalmers.
Later, after Bullitt leaves Delgetti — and, subsequently, young Sgt. Carl Stanton (Carl Reindel) — at the Hotel Daniels to guard Ross, there’s some typical ’60s hipster nonsense set in some tony restaurant with a jazz combo playing, solely for the purpose of making Bullitt appear to have a life of his own. I will forgive this sequence only because it establishes Jacqueline Bisset as Bullitt’s love interest, Cathy, and if a story that already makes no sense must grind to a complete screeching halt, it might as well do so for Jacqueline Bisset, who is 24 years old here, achingly beautiful to begin with but even more stunning in high definition.3
What these scenes achieve, however, is to make Bullitt appear to have taken his eye off the ball after he was personally assigned by Chalmers to guard Ross. Bullitt’s delegation of authority translates in Chalmers’ mind to dereliction of duty when the shit hits the fan.
And hit the fan it does. Two gunmen appear at the Hotel Daniels at 1 a.m. After they claim at the night desk to be “Mr. Chalmers and a friend,” Stanton phones Bullitt, but before Bullitt can get there, the gunmen burst into the room with a Winchester pump-action shotgun, seriously wounding Stanton in the leg and blasting Ross against the wall, gravely wounding him in the chest and neck.
As Bennet tells Bullitt, “Now [Chalmers] can’t produce the big surprise he promised everyone. He may try to make up some mileage by layin’ it on us.” Well, that’s exactly what he’s going to do, because the dialogue in this script, as in the book, is so on-the-nose that it could be melanoma.
Chalmers is a typical politician, instantly seeking to assign blame and blustering past the one direct (and perfectly legitimate) question Bullitt asks him — “Who else knew where he was? … They knew where to look for him, and they used your name to get in” — to skirt any accountability of his own. It’s only the force of Vaughn’s will as an actor that allows him to appear formidable even as he threatens Bullitt with such overwrought, melodramatic ultimatums as this one:
“Lieutenant, I shall personally officiate at your public crucifixion if Ross doesn’t recover during the course of the hearing so I can at least present his deposition. And I assure you I shall not suffer the consequence of your incompetence. And even if there wasn’t any, I’m rather certain I can prove negligence on your part. … There may be another attempt on his life. I’ll be back in the morning … with my people.”
Next Chalmers pointedly insists that the young African-American surgeon, Dr. Willard (Georg Stanford Brown), be removed from the case because he’s “too young and inexperienced.” Never mind that Willard has already operated on Ross and so far kept him alive, nor that Chalmers instructs a supervising nurse to have the surgeon replaced — when Walter Chalmers speaks, apparently all of San Francisco shudders and obeys.4
We now enter a sequence that deserves its own chapter in Screenwriting for Simpletons:
Having predicted that there may be another attempt on Ross’ life, Chalmers and his men exit the hospital at the exact same time and via the same street entrance by which the gray-haired shooter from the Hotel Daniels (Paul Genge) — who is indeed coming to make another attempt on Ross’ life — arrives.
The shooter stands scanning a hospital directory. Bereft of anything resembling nonchalance, he asks as passing doctor where they might be keeping “his relative” who was admitted with “a gunshot wound.” The doctor helpfully directs him to the second-floor ICU but has the presence of mind to call upstairs and warn Bullitt that a suspicious man is in the hospital and that he instructed him how to find Ross.
A nurse screams when she stumbles upon the shooter in a stairwell as he removes a cork-capped icepick that he’s taped under his pant leg. He runs; Bullitt chases him through the basement of the hospital; and sometime during all the excitement, throughout which he is unconscious and undisturbed, Ross goes into cardiac arrest.
There are so many missed narrative opportunities in that sequence that I need an abacus to count them.
Having lost the shooter, Bullitt gets back upstairs just in time to see Ross flatline. It’s a great excuse for a close-up of McQueen making his best “That’s my career hooked up to that heart monitor” face, although we still haven’t been persuaded that Chalmers has enough actual authority get a dog catcher fired.
In a daring bit of subterfuge and collusion, Bullitt persuades Dr. Willard to misplace Ross’ chart as Bullitt has Ross’ body admitted to the morgue as a John Doe. This may be the first smart, logical thing the movie allows any of its characters to do, not least because it solidifies the chess match between Bullitt (and his captain, Bennet) and Chalmers (assisted by his own oddly deferential police captain, Baker, played by the terrific Norman Fell) that has become, by default, this movie’s ‘A’ storyline.
At about the 48-minute mark, we pause for more pointless filler (and a giant continuity error, because Bullitt is wearing clothes that we see him put on several minutes later after getting out of the shower): Outside the corner grocery near his apartment, Bullitt steals a newspaper from the machine because he doesn’t have any change on him. (Oh, that Bullitt — he bends the rules to suit his brand of justice!) Inside he grabs some produce, including a bunch of green onions (“Fresh today!” the grocer tells him) — the implication being that he might actually cook something back at his apartment — but then he goes to the freezer case and indiscriminately grabs the top half-dozen Swanson TV dinners.
If that scene is intended to cement Bullitt’s lone-wolf status, all that hard work is undercut around the 53-minute mark: Enter Jacqueline Bisset, parading around Bullitt’s apartment wearing only a blue pajama top. She offers Bullitt breakfast but he wants only coffee, which she brings to him as he’s pulling on a blue turtleneck and strapping on his low-slung shoulder holster. Mark it down: This quiet little scene of domestic bliss is the moment the modern era of cool was born.
It is now Sunday morning, and Bullitt and Delgetti re-examine the crime scene and lean on the night clerk at the Hotel Daniels, after which there’s an extended bit of business with Robert Duvall as Weissberg, the cab driver who chauffeured Ross around town before depositing him at the Hotel Daniels, retracing that day’s stops for Bullitt.5 Meanwhile, having discovered that his star witness is missing from the hospital and been stonewalled by Bullitt on the phone, Chalmers delivers a writ of habeas corpus to Bennet outside church.
Their fact-finding mission complete, Weissberg drops Bullitt off where they first met, reuniting him with the film’s other most vital co-star, ready now for its close-up: the highland green 1968 Ford Mustang 390 GT 2+2 Fastback.
As plots go, the first 65 minutes 30 seconds of the film amount to little more than a protracted setup for The Chase, like a hastily assembled Rube Goldberg device designed primarily to deliver Bullitt in his Mustang and the gunmen in their black 1968 Dodge Charger R/T 440 (piloted by stunt driver Bill Hickman) to their fateful intersection.
The chase sequence is by no means perfect. There are improbable insert shots of the white-haired gunman appearing in the rearview mirror, even though Genge is in the front passenger seat — literally riding shotgun — and the camera is shooting just over Hickman’s right shoulder. The chase cars pass the same dark-green VW Beetle and white Pontiac Firebird multiple times as they careen down the vertiginous streets of San Francisco.
But for all its minor flaws, it is the birth of the chase sequence as we know it today, spanning 10 full minutes of screen time, and it would seem to at least acknowledge a small debt to the crop duster sequence in Hitchcock’s North by Northwest in terms of its structure, its mounting suspense and its dramatic conclusion.
A game of cat-and-mouse ensues: Bullitt is followed. Bullitt disappears in a residential neighborhood. The gunmen see no sign of him, select as likely a street as any to turn down. Cresting a hill, Bullitt’s Mustang reappears in the Charger’s rearview mirror. The hunted becomes the hunter. The filmmakers could even have prolonged this part of the chase, adding a few more turns, a little more hesitation, another nervous glance or two — to heighten the tension, to tighten the vise around the audience, but mainly to show off a little more of Lalo Schifrin’s über-cool jazz score. (Who among us has never wished he had his own theme music? Who among us would not place Bullitt’s in his top five?)
And Schifrin himself is credited with one of the smartest decisions in the entire film: When Hickman clicks and cinches his seat belt, then peels out to begin the high-speed chase in earnest, the music abruptly stops, because as Schifrin rightly pointed out, the sounds of revving engines, rattling suspensions, squealing tires, car horns and assorted collisions is the only soundtrack you need.
Not only are Hickman, McQueen and stunt drivers Carey Loftin and Bud Ekins driving at speeds of 80 to 110 mph, but in most shots the camera car has to be going at least as fast, shooting through traffic to capture the action. A helmetless Ekins (“Paging Busey, party of one…”) also executes a spectacular motorcycle stunt by laying his bike down and sliding it headlong into oncoming traffic and between the two chase cars, precipitating a particularly excellent spinout in the dirt by the Mustang.
Next we have about 55 seconds of just McQueen and the Mustang, opening it up on the winding back roads, playing catch-up. There’s some business with Genge loading shells into his Winchester. There’s Hickman weaving through oncoming traffic, barely squeezing between a freight truck and a guardrail. Bullitt pulls alongside the Charger — paint gets traded; doors and quarter-panels get dented. Genge climbs into the back seat of the Charger to open fire on Bullitt. Bullitt backs off. Bullitt speeds up. Bullitt acts decisively to bring the battle to its inevitable conclusion.
The genius of what I’ve just described — the brainchild of Yates, McQueen, their drivers and stunt coordinators — is not merely the thrill of the chase itself, a pure invention of nerve and adrenaline and velocity inserted into the middle of a story otherwise devoid of real action. If you break it down as I just did, you see that those 10 minutes are a perfect three-act movie within the movie, told so well, so precisely, so much more effectively than the rest of the picture it’s in that it stands alone on its own merits. And in a movie that insists on making its hero a flat, mirthless automaton, a skeleton on which an archetype might be draped in a better-developed picture, the chase is perhaps more effective at revealing Bullitt’s character than the rest of the plot.
I will spare you another 2,000 words or so and, in case you’ve never seen Bullitt, the inevitability of spoilers about the second half of the movie. Suffice it to say that inconsistencies continue to pile up and Chalmers continues to be imbued with the kind of power and influence usually accorded to the likes of Voldemort. Hell, he may actually be Voldemort, seeing how he keeps turning up wherever the action (or inaction) is, day or night.
Bullitt preceded the modern blockbuster era of motion pictures by seven years, and while it misses — and often resists — so many opportunities to be a tighter, leaner, faster, grittier police story, it nonetheless sets the bar for the coming generation of crime dramas.
Without Bullitt, there certainly would be no Dirty Harry Callahan, but the film might also have paved the way for the more thoughtfully crafted, fact-based police stories of Sidney Lumet, such as Serpico and Prince of the City. We wouldn’t have the exquisite oneupsmanship of William Friedkin, who directed two certifiably great car chases of his own in The French Connection and To Live and Die in L.A.6 We wouldn’t have Pacino and De Niro’s LAX showdown at the end of Michael Mann’s Heat. As cold and unemotional as McQueen’s performance is, without Frank Bullitt, there would be no colorful, loose-cannon franchise detectives like Martin Riggs or John McClane. And that’s just on the big screen — the knockoffs Bullitt inspired on television comprise a list as long as your arm.
Selected for preservation by the Library of Congress in 2007, cited as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant,” Bullitt probably holds the distinction of having the most tenuous, dubious qualification of any film on the National Film Registry. If less is indeed more7, it is a movie whose best 10 minutes left a greater impression on the public imagination than many films achieve with their entire two-hour running time and catapulted Steve McQueen from stardom into legend.
1 In the book Mute Witness, Chalmers is in fact an assistant district attorney, so it’s anybody’s guess why the filmmakers elected to make him an ambiguous figure with apparently unlimited influence and sway but with no specific office or title, as though he were a baron or feudal lord plunked down in the middle of modern-day San Francisco.
2 The film includes a prologue that could have been given ample screen time to explain the story better, but it’s buried behind slick camera moves, the floating titles of the opening credit sequence, and a very literal smokescreen that enables Johnny Ross’ flight from the Organization he is double-crossing. This group appears to include his brother and business partner, Pete Ross (Vic Tayback), who helps Johnny escape but whom Johnny apparently leaves holding the bag in Chicago. When Pete informs the capos that Johnny has gotten away, they inform Pete that he’ll be paying for the contract they’re putting out on his brother.
Even if you watch this sequence closely, it is deliberately devised to obfuscate the plot until you arrive at the dramatic third-act twist that clears up the whole story in a manner just this side of the most egregious dei ex machina. In the end, we’re told an awful lot of things that we are never given the benefit of seeing with our own eyes.
3 Beautiful as she is, though, Bisset does absolutely nothing to advance the plot. Her character, Cathy, is an architectural designer of some kind, working out the water-flow rate for a public fountain when we first see her at work. (If Bullitt were being produced today, she might at least happen to be a nurse or doctor in the hospital where so much of Act II takes place. And she would likely be threatened or endangered at some point.) She provides some relationship angst in Act III, wading with McQueen through some painfully ham-fisted dialogue, but their dynamic is never really developed in a way that elevates her importance to the story.
4 Incidentally, principal photography for Bullitt took place — and the story itself is approximately set — in April 1968, the same month that Dr. King was assassinated in Memphis. At that time, apparently, a Negro surgeon still counted as only three-fifths of a white nurse. In any event, making Chalmers appear also to be a racist is merely a bonus at this point.
5 It’s remarkable to see Duvall relegated to a bit part here, several years after Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird — during which time he had done a lot of guest-starring roles on television — and a year away from Lucky Ned Pepper in True Grit, then Maj. Frank Burns in M*A*S*H, then Tom Hagen in The Godfather, after which he was once and forever, indelibly, Robert freaking Duvall as we know him today.
6 Friedkin also deserves credit for filming a San Francisco car chase that might best be described as “the anti-Bullitt” and which is for me the lone highlight of the perfectly atrocious 1995 thriller Jade: A typically nail-biting chase sequence, involving star David Caruso behind the wheel of the chase car, becomes an almost tongue-in-cheek meta-chase, when the lead car drives into the midst of a crowded Chinatown parade route — complete with dragon — and the chase grinds to a 5 mph crawl. Having directed great chases in New York and L.A., it’s as though Friedkin was acknowledging that he couldn’t out-Yates Yates in San Francisco, so why bother.
7 And boy, don't you wish it had been for this post?
