Terrence Steven McQueen (1930-1980) nicknamed “King of Cool” projected the anti-hero persona on films so welcomed by Baby Boomers during the height of the Vietnam War, and embraced by the American “counterculture” that helped to vector his stardom that placed him among the top ten box-office draws during the 1960s. By the mid-1970s, McQueen had become the highest paid movie actor in the world.
Repeating the role of a rebel detached but orbiting society, mysterious with homegrown ethics and a personal sense of integrity, branded the actor as monomaniacal in his pursuit, disaffected in his romantic relationships, a winner who in some way loses.
Beginning with his breakout performance in The Magnificent Seven (1960) McQueen marked each film in which he appeared as his own.
THE HITS…
The characters he comfortably played in more than 25 films brought a kind of "cool" to the screen never before seen in an actor. His consistent portrayal of a taciturn leading man catapulted McQueen into the stratosphere of superstardom, though ironically he appeared in very few significant movies. The Great Escape (1963) established his box office clout followed by only a handful of commercial or critical hits:
The Cincinnati Kid (1965) The Sand Pebbles (1966) The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) Le Mans (1971) The Getaway (1972) Papillion (1973) The Towering Inferno (1974) Tom Horn (1980)
…AND MISSES
A better filmography is the collection of film roles offered McQueen but that the actor missed out on:
Ocean’s Eleven (1960) Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) Dirty Harry (1971) The French Connection (1971) Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) Apocalypse Now (1979) First Blood (1982) The Bodyguard (1992: proposed in 1976 to play opposite Diana Ross)
Ever since last year there have been rumors of a movie project in development adapted from the biography My Husband, My Friend: A Memoir by McQueen’s first wife, Neile Adams McQueen Toffel.
In March, a writer had been hired to pen a screenplay based on Steve McQueen: Portrait of an American Rebel, a biography written by Marshall Terrill. The project likely to land at Paramount Pictures chronicles McQueen’s Hollywood career with Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956).
This film biography follows McQueen off-screen, his proclivity for motorcycle racing, fast cars and drugs abuse, examines his three marriages including his stormy relationship with Ali McGraw, and his brave but futile battle against lung cancer that ultimately in 1980 took his life.
Steve McQueen: The Last Mile is a 250-page publication also by Terrill containing more than 150 photos of the actor taken by his third wife, Barbara McQueen Brunsvold, who co-authored the pictorial. She insists that Daniel Craig is the only actor who can portray her late husband in the proposed film biography. “I think Daniel would be the best one to play Steve,” she said. “He's kind of got that swagger, the good looks—if I wasn't married, I'd date him.”
Daniel Craig has more than a passing resemblance to Steve McQueen, owning the actor’s rugged good looks, sexy swagger and maverick attitude. And given the Brit’s considerable acting chops, Craig could pull it off. More often than not, the viewer of a film biography sits there thinking: “That actor’s not getting the voice right…besides, he looks nothing like McQueen.” However, Daniel Craig without question was born to play the actor. But an attempt to span McQueen’s entire life and career would be an unwanted epic and probably a flop.
These bio-pics usually (not always) get the person’s life wrong to some large extent. They’re clichéd stories, typically showing in Act I the protagonist’s prominent rise to fame; ACT II the trouble in dealing with this fame; and ACT III dying suddenly or slowly fading away. There are exceptions, of course, but the majority of these sorts of movies represent an easy formula and lazy narrative writing with scarcity of imagination.
More creative is to show Daniel Craig suitably appearing as the 38-year-old Steve McQueen busy filming a movie on the streets of San Francisco. An avid enthusiast of motorcycles and auto racing, McQueen performed many of his own stunts on film, especially the majority of the driving during the high-speed car chase in his most famous film.
By far Steve McQueen’s most famous film, if not his best, Bullitt (1968) featured a then-unprecedented auto chase in which the actor did much of his own driving.
Based on the novel Mute Witness published in 1963 by Robert L. Fish (Robert L. Pike) the movie won the Academy Award™ for Best Film Editing. The screenwriters, Alan Trustman and Harry Kleiner won the 1969 Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best Motion Picture Screenplay.
But what’s on screen is a pretty thin police procedural with some sloppy police work, as when Bullitt’s service revolver is used in an officer-involved shooting then taken home, rather than impounded as evidence until an investigation can prove the detective innocent of any wrongdoing with no resultant legal proceedings. Besides these technical missteps, the plot is full of holes.
Never mind all that, because the only reason to watch this flick is Steve McQueen as Frank Bullitt and, of course, that damn car chase—which at the time of the film's release generated a great deal of excitement. It’s that dramatic. In other words, the real story here is the filming of the movie itself. Best remembered for the car chase through the streets of San Francisco, that sequence had Detective-Lieutenant Frank Bullitt in a Dark Highland Green 1968 Ford Mustang 390 CID Fastback with a modified drive-train, pursuing two hit-men in a Tuxedo Black 1968 Dodge Charger R/T 440 Magnum.
So, my idea for a bio-pic is in part a remake, a faux documentary, and quasi-biography.
Here’s the pitch:
CUT TO THE CHASE
Original Story Idea
By Frederick Louis Richardson
WE OPEN ON: Daniel Craig as Steve McQueen the actor spending his day shooting the car-chase sequences (taking three weeks to film) when acting before the camera as Detective-Lieutenant Frank Bullitt. WE SEE: the model for Bullitt is the real-life San Francisco police inspector David Toschi; McQueen dislikes cops but studies this man, copies Toschi's distinctive style, the way he carries the gun in his shoulder-holster upside down for quick draw.
WE SEE: the actor in his role as Frank Bullitt, emotionally buttoned up and incapable of expressing honest emotions like hate and love, fear and despair…only whatever emerges through his laser-gray eyes that beam with no inner light and emit not a single tear. His girlfriend, Cathy has trouble accepting both the nature of police work and Bullitt’s lack of emotion toward its horrors.
The guy is so intense that he barely sleeps. A hard-boiled detective holding the job as if holding on for dear life, all that matters to Frank Bullitt is getting the job done. Personal and physical jeopardy, conflict with his lover, and all the political heat coming from a sleazy politician are secondary to solving a murder.
At one point, getting into his dark green Ford Mustang 390 GT, Bullitt notices a black 1968 Dodge Charger 440 Magnum R/T; inside two hit-men he’s been tracking. The Mustang pulls away and the Charger follows. For the next three minutes, they play cat and mouse, slowly at first winding the sloping hills of San Francisco—when suddenly Bullitt finesses behind the Charger. The hunters threatened to be capture by the game.
At this moment the driver of the Charger, stuntman Bill Hickman as “Phil the hit-man” fastens his seatbelt and peels away until the scene ends seven minutes later; during this time, the greatest car chase in motion picture history.
WE SEE: stuntman and motorcycle racer Bud Ekins doing most of the risky "gags" in the Mustang. Bill Hickman, who drove the black Dodge Charger and also played one of the hit-men, helps in planning the choreography of the chase sequence.
WE SEE: The cast of characters would include Steve McQueen (Daniel Craig) director Peter Yates, cinematographer William A. Fraker, and stuntman Bill Hickman along with actors (played by other actors) featured in the original motion picture.
WE SEE: The chase itself shot in real time with Hickman and McQueen steering the Charger and Mustang respectively through twisting streets, no fishtailing around corners (as seen on screen nowadays in nearly every cinematic car chase). Hickman and McQueen instead slide smoothly around around corners; these two cars never out of control. Hickman and McQueen, their kind not likely to come around again. WE SEE: McQueen, an accomplished driver, not permitted to do as much stunt work as he would like in driving the Mustang.
WE SEE: two 1968 390 CID V8 Ford Mustangs (325 bhp) used in the chase sequence, owned by Ford Motor Company (part of a promotional loan agreement with Warner Bros). WE SEE: both Mustangs being modified by veteran auto racer Max Balchowsky for the chase: engines, brakes and suspensions. WE SEE two Ford Galaxy sedans intended for use in the scenes proving too heavy to put through those jumps over the hills of San Francisco without the suspensions being severely damaged. WE SEE: these sedans being replaced with two 1968 440 CID/375 bhp Dodge Chargers that are bought outright from a dealer, Glendale Dodge, the engines left unmodified but the suspensions upgraded to cope with demands of the stunts. WE SEE: the director calling for speeds between 75–80 mph (120–130 km/h) but the cars, including the ones containing the cameras, reaching speeds of over 110 mph (175 km/h) on surface streets. WE SEE: the driver's point-of-view, angles used to give the audience the feel of the ride as the cars perform "flying jumps". WE SEE: the two Mustangs used for the production; the first one badly damaged during filming, scrapped and substituted with the second vehicle—the legendary Ford Mustang GT 390 that suits McQueen’s personal driving style.
NOTE TO PRODUCERS: After more than 40 years that Mustang is still around and retains its original paint job. Additionally, in 2001 the Ford Motor Company manufactured 5,583 special-edition Mustangs called "the Bullitt".
CUT TO THE CHASE ...a movie about an iconic actor busy at work shooting what would become his most famous movie about a fictional character who's an emotional zombie that happens to be a cop, while off camera the story points out that to execute the Mustang pursuing the Charger requires insane, highly skilled drivers for what would become the most influential car chase in the history of motion pictures.
What is not present here are the standard screen-writing tropes of inciting incident, turning point, resolution and denouement because ...it's just an idea.
Frederick Louis Richardson
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