Best Car chase scenes??

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Re: Best Car chase scenes??

Postby DrakeS » Sat Sep 10, 2011 9:44 am

Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry is based on the novel originally titled The Chase (later renamed Pursuit) by Richard Unekis, and published in 1963. The story incorporated a phenomenon that was relatively new in 1963: major auto manufacturers were putting powerful V-8 engines into mid-sized cars (the dawn of the "muscle car" era), and young thieves behind the wheel of these cars were now able to outrun the economy 6-cylinder sedans driven by police in many jurisdictions. The protagonists of The Chase used such a vehicle, a Chevrolet, and made use of the checkerboard of roads in the farm country of Illinois to outrun the police.

According to Unekis' son, the rights to the obscure book were originally bought for very little money by director Howard Hawks, who had Steve McQueen in mind for the title role of a future film project. Hawks commissioned three scripts, all of which followed the book very closely (and consequently were out of date with the automobile technology of the 1970s), but Hawks elected to opt out of the project when he was offered US$50,000 for the film rights by two wealthy English industrialist partners, Sir James Hanson and Sir Gordon White. White and Hanson (who, at the time, owned Eveready Batteries and Ballpark Franks), had purchased the book to read on their plane while flying to the U.S. They both felt The Chase would make an entertaining film, and presented the idea to personal friend Michael Pearson, who had produced an earlier successful car chase cult movie Vanishing Point.

After pitching their project to their movie mogul friends, who not only included Pearson but Albert R. Broccoli, Harold Robbins and Sam Spiegel, they soon discovered the movie business was not as easy as they had suspected. In addition, they were saddled with an out of date book with little literary value except for a car chase - and no screenplay - for which they grossly overpaid. With no interest from anyone in picking up the project, Sir James and Sir Gordon soon lost interest in making movies.

Over dinner one evening at Hanson's estate in Palm Springs, California they told their plight to friend and neighbor Jimmy Boyd. Boyd read the book and agreed with Hanson and White that it would make a great car chase. Boyd, a race car enthusiast, had successfully built and raced cars along with his friend Lance Reventlow, and had come very close to pursuing race car driving as a career. He guaranteed Hanson and White their fifty thousand dollars in return for the rights to the book. Boyd wrote the screenplay himself, including what passed for "modern" dialogue and humor in the early 1970s, along the lines of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. He also changed the two main characters from the escaped convicts in the book, into a slightly larcenous - but likable - NASCAR dreamer and his Mechanic, nicknamed Fast Floyd and Dirty Deke. Boyd then incorporated the one-night stand female stowaway, and the added dimension of a NASCAR-engined getaway car capable of 165 miles per hour (266 km/h). Except for the tires and wheels, it was a stock-appearing Ford built by the famous race car builders Traco Engineering. However, 440 Magnum Dodge Chargers with stock bodywork were used in the movie after Boyd's departure.

Boyd's script also added the critical plot twist of the police captain in the helicopter making up units that didn't exist on the scanner to trap the thieves, and the version of the wreck at the end of the movie (from a semi-truck on the highway to the surprise collision with a freight train).

On the strength of his script, Boyd had raised two million dollars for the budget (a big budget at the time). Boyd had two young, then-unknown actors, David Soul and Sam Elliott, in mind for the lead roles, when he got a phone call from James Nicholson, president and partner of Sam Arkoff at American International Pictures, a major producer of "B Movies." Nicholson was leaving AIP to form his own company, Academy Pictures, in partnership with Twentieth Century Fox: Fox would finance and distribute his films and give him complete control. Nicholson told Boyd he had read his script for Pursuit, and wanted it to be his first film for Academy Pictures. It was very risky making an "Indie" film in the 1970s without a distribution deal. Important film festivals like Sundance Film Festival did not exist. Boyd decided to enter into a partnership with Nicholson's Academy Pictures

Fox got Peter Fonda interested in the project, and Nicholson hired English director John Hough. Hough had directed a horror film for Nicholson at AIP, and could bring English actress Susan George into the mix, providing one of the male leads would be rewritten for her. It became quickly apparent that Nicholson and Boyd had two completely different philosophies of how the film should be made. Boyd wanted to make a realistic, exciting, humorous, helicopter-versus-car chase, something rarely seen in the early 1970s. Nicholson wasn't so much interested in the content of the movie, as he was in attaching recognizable names and catchy titles to market it. After a long series of legal battles over control and Nicholson's rewrites of the film, Boyd accepted a settlement offer and left the project.

Cameras rolled in the fall of 1973. The film was released, mainly to drive-in theaters, in May of the following year.
[edit] Trivia

It was filmed in and around Stockton, California, mostly in the walnut groves near the small town of Linden, California. The supermarket scenes were filmed in Sonora, California, the drawbridge jump was filmed in Tracy, California, the swap meet scene in Clements, California and the climactic train crash was filmed on the Stockton Terminal and Eastern Railroad in Linden, California, near the intersection of Ketcham Lane and Archerdale Road (38 01'22.01" N 121 06'18.14" W). The track spur is no longer in use, although the tracks are still in place. The locomotive used in the film to collide with the car is claimed to be in the collection of the Western Pacific Railroad Museum in Portola, California. However that is engine #506, formerly of the ST&E Railroad, and it was planned to be in the film and was on set for a day of shooting, but none of its footage made it into the film. The next day, #506 was needed elsewhere by the railroad, which supplied their #505 engine for the film crew's use instead. Close examination of the film proves #505 is the only locomotive shown. It remains in the possession of the ST&E and is still in regular service, moving cars around the ST&E yard in Stockton, California. It is an ALCo S-1 Switcher built in 1942. Three 1966 Chevrolet Impalas and three Dodge Chargers (a 1969 R/T, a 1969 base model and a 1968 R/T) were used in the film. The latter two Chargers were heavily damaged in the train crash sequence filming, and were later scrapped (the 1969 base model's footage is shown in the film's climax). The remaining 1969 R/T, which was used for most close-up "beauty shots", was sold to a crew member from the film, but was subsequently totalled in a traffic collision in the late 1970s. The fate of the three Impalas after they were sold upon completion of filming is unknown.

The Bell JetRanger used in the climactic chase was flown by veteran film pilot James W. Gavin (who played the character of the pilot as well), and was actually flown between rows of trees and under powerlines as seen in the film.

In the video I found here you will just have to suffer through Paul Oakenfeld I guess

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ux4Vg0SXTxg&NR=1
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Re: Best Car chase scenes??

Postby DrakeS » Sat Sep 10, 2011 10:04 am

http://youtu.be/nJRDOWOhoHA

kah buoy boots and F'1's...well alrighta
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Re: Best Car chase scenes??

Postby HockeyGuy » Sat Sep 10, 2011 2:51 pm

Both great sequences. I forgot about Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry. I like that history about the making of it too. Personally, the David Soul and Sam Elliot probably would've been a better choice-imo.

That was a great chase (On Driven). I found the current chases to be more intimate. Meaning, you'll have the tires spinning, clutch work, etc. to add to the dramatics.

Thanks for sharing.
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Re: Best Car chase scenes??

Postby vantard » Mon Sep 12, 2011 7:18 am

Two Lane Blacktop? Bit more of a road movie but great anyway.
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Re: Best Car chase scenes??

Postby Detroit_Pierogi » Fri Dec 30, 2011 5:04 am

It seemed like a good idea at the time.
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Re: Best Car chase scenes??

Postby Detroit_Pierogi » Fri Dec 30, 2011 5:08 am

It seemed like a good idea at the time.
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Re: Best Car chase scenes??

Postby Detroit_Pierogi » Fri Dec 30, 2011 5:24 am

Depending upon your ability to suspend disbelief:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLtbQLv9-NA

Admittedly, it's not a purists' car chase, but it is cool to watch.
It seemed like a good idea at the time.
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Re: Best Car chase scenes??

Postby Devlin » Sat Dec 31, 2011 3:51 am

To Live and Die in L.A.
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Re: Best Car chase scenes??

Postby tlcfj40 » Mon Feb 06, 2012 3:41 am

How about the car chase scene in "The Seven-Ups"? Same director as the French Connection.
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Re: Best Car chase scenes??

Postby ktrout » Mon Feb 06, 2012 7:00 am

Mad Max doesn't make sense to me, but I've crossed three continents on a bicycle. If civ collapsed like that I'd make for the closest marina, grab a nice sailboat, and head for the South Pacific. Yarr!
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Re: Best Car chase scenes??

Postby ktrout » Mon Feb 06, 2012 9:31 am

Detroit_Pierogi wrote:BMW Films: Ticker.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBdOaIiz60I

All of the BMW films are "highly recommended". I think I like Ambush.
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Re: Best Car chase scenes??

Postby HockeyGuy » Wed Feb 08, 2012 1:49 am

ktrout wrote:
Detroit_Pierogi wrote:BMW Films: Ticker.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBdOaIiz60I

All of the BMW films are "highly recommended". I think I like Ambush.

The Clive Owen/Gary Oldman was killer. Tony Scott directed it...
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Re: Best Car chase scenes??

Postby Gex » Mon Jul 23, 2012 9:23 pm

Death Proof has a great car chase (homage to Vanishing Point). White Lightning has a few great scenes. Drive has one of the best opening chase scenes ever!
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