Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2007/08/20
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]At 05:10 PM 8/20/2007, Rob McClure wrote: > >The Bullitt chase scene is one of the greatest ever filmed IMHO. At about the same time, the French Connection >chase scene often competed with Bullitt for best. No comparison, in my >book. Rob The FRENCH CONNECTION appeared around five or six years after BULLITT and the two are quite distinct movies. I was not impressed with THE FRENCH CONNECTION in any regard though when it appeared I was living in a duplex in Wallingford, Connecticut, (appropriately, this was on Bull Avenue) and the woman occupying the other side happened to know Popeye Doyle so I heard a lot about him. This was shortly before Hank Aaron beat out Babe Ruth's record for career home runs. (Nixon resigned around the same time. It was an historic year!) I might well be wrong but I believe that the production crew deliberately copied the FRENCH CONNECTION chase scene from that in BULLITT and some of the same folks who choreographed the first were involved in the second. I am, like Jerry Lehrer, a snob for European autos and know little of American muscle machines. My Michigan-born farm-raised wife, however, does know such. She hates film noir anit-hero police procedurals and so sat down to sneer at BULLITT when we watched it last week. She snorted and jeered until we came to the chase. And while I am trying to point out the part which we saw being filmed, she is getting worked up, rattling on about, "THAT'S a Dodge Hemi!" and the like. Oy Vey! Admittedly, in an earlier incarnation she spent a lot of time at Michigan International Speedway at NASCAR races. For the most part, we watch MIDSOMER MURDERS episodes and the like, mind you. Nurses. Never marry a nurse. Especially, never marry a Masters level management nurse. As Zappa says in THINGFISH, "Uh-Oh. I smells trouble coming." <he grins> Now, my wife DID love McQueen in THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR. But who couldn't? A role unlike any other he ever did, to my fairly certain knowledge, and one he did to perfection. Some actors rise above themselves -- may I suggest Newman in COOL HAND LUKE? -- by doing the opposite of what they normally do, and so McQueen did in THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR. As I have pointed out before, I have never owned an American-made car. I currently drive a 1984 Audi 4000S. In my recent move, I found a LOT of oddball car parts, including the 36-hp engine from my first car, a 1960 VW ragtop with machts-nichts sticks, and a machine-shop reworked crankshaft for a Sunbeam Alpine V which I have no memory of acquiring. All sorts of cylinder heads and VW engine cases and the like. It is time for me to concentrate on picking up that 1958 VW Bus I want for camping or maybe I'll go for a 1958 Karmann Ghia. Who knows? I do know that 28 PCI Solex carb! Marc msmall@aya.yale.edu Cha robh b?s fir gun ghr?s fir!