BBC_Poughkeepsie Shuffle
Film critic Mark Kermode examines the making of classic thriller The French Connection, beginning with the history behind the 1960s drug bust that inspired the film.
Transcript
00:00At the 1972 Academy Awards, the Best Picture nominations included Stanley Kubrick's A
00:05Clockwork Orange, Peter Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show and the offbeat crime thriller
00:09The French Connection, which lent a European edge to a classic American narrative and whose
00:14Best Picture victory was seen as confirming the arrival of the so-called New Hollywood.
00:19William Friedkin was hailed as a wunderkind and inaccurately but appropriately declared
00:23to be the youngest filmmaker ever to win the Best Director Oscar.
00:28But Friedkin's glamorous triumph had its roots in a more down-to-earth victory, achieved
00:32ten years earlier by two New York policemen, Eddie Egan and Sonny Grosso, who would laughingly
00:37imagine themselves to be movie stars as they pulled off one of the biggest drug busts in
00:42American history.
00:58Sonny and Eddie, nicknamed Cloudy and Popeye, were working out of this, the first precinct,
01:20when in January 1962 they arrested Pasquale, Patsy, Fuqua and five others on drug trafficking
01:26charges.
01:27That case began the previous October when the two off-duty detectives who'd spotted
01:31Patsy at the Copacabana nightclub formed the basis of The French Connection, with events
01:35and characters being fictionalized in Friedkin's film.
01:44We had made a bunch of arrests that day and spent the whole day in court and then went
01:49back up to the office to do paperwork and then Eddie wanted to stop in the Copacabana.
01:56So we went up there and we're sitting around looking at a bunch of people at a table spending
02:02a lot of money and I recognized a lot of those people being dope pushers up in Harlem and
02:10Patsy Fuqua was the individual in this dope empire who had taken over the responsible
02:17duties and so we followed him to a luncheonette where we parked his car.
02:24We watched that place for a while and we saw some of these guys that were in the Copacabana
02:29coming with attache cases into this luncheonette in Brooklyn and what that was was people coming
02:37with money for the next shipment of drugs and then we requested permission to do a wiretap
02:44and at first they didn't want to give it to us and then instead of giving it to us for
02:4860 days they finally gave it to us for 30 days and before the 30 day period was over
02:55a call came in from Europe with a French accent looking to meet Patsy.
03:02Will I expect you?
03:04Yeah, what time?
03:05Twelve o'clock.
03:06Yes.
03:07Yeah.
03:08Yes.
03:09Yeah.
03:10A very famous French television personality whose real name was Jacques Angelvan was put
03:15up by a man called Jean Jehan who was a Corsican with big drug connections in France and elsewhere.
03:24Jehan persuaded Angelvan who was coming to America to do some kind of documentary for
03:32his television show to bring over this car that had loaded in the rocker panels of the
03:37car several million, 15 million dollars worth of street value heroin.
03:45We followed them down to Pier 46, didn't know what they were doing.
03:49We stood in 19 degree weather while the ship was unloaded.
03:53What they were really watching is the car with the drugs in it coming off the ship but
03:58we had no idea what they were watching and that's the first time we saw that car and
04:02little by little from following these people all over the place we started piecing this
04:07together and ultimately wound up making what they call now the largest seizure of heroin
04:14ever in the history of any municipal police department.
04:17A few of the lesser players got very little jail time.
04:22The major players all got off and went back to France and lived happily ever after.
04:28Jean Jehan disappeared and we kept the outstanding warrants for him and we had different tips
04:36that he was spotted all over Europe but we never found him.
04:41There were at one time over 50 law enforcement officers watching Jean Jehan and he got out.
04:49Obviously it really was a wake up call as to just how much drugs was coming into the
04:56United States and how much money, you know, was involved.
05:01We found out that this operation had been smuggling 50 kilos every 6 weeks for 25 years.
05:09It turned out to be the largest drug seizure that had ever been made.
05:15It had international ramifications.
05:18It weighed about 64 pounds.
05:20It could have been stepped on 7 or 8 times and street tolerance that means that by the
05:25time it was sold nickel and dime bags it probably was worth about 220 million dollars all in
05:33one seizure.
05:35Eddie and Sonny broke that case, put it together, they made that case.
05:38It was inevitable that if that case was going to be made it would be made by these two.
05:48I thought they were hilarious and I thought that their approach to law enforcement was
05:53just the absolute right touch for the time.
05:59It was like a game to them.
06:01Sonny and Eddie really understood the streets.
06:03They understood the drug world.
06:05They worked together very, very well.
06:07There was no such thing as ever going home with those two guys.
06:11They lived and breathed the case.
06:13Eddie was, you know, this very loquacious, extroverted Irishman who had a lot to say
06:20about everything.
06:21At one time he supposedly had the most arrest, felony arrest, in the New York Police Department.
06:28So he was in many ways a very good cop but he was difficult to get along with.
06:34I don't know who Egan was.
06:36I don't know anything about him and I didn't hang out with him and I didn't like him.
06:39He wasn't the kind of man that one got close with, I don't think.
06:46He was obsessive with being a detective.
06:51There was a time, I'll give you an example, there was a time when we were doing the cat
06:54and mouse chase down the subway with the Frenchman and Hackman jumping back and forth on and
06:59off the subway train.
07:01And I was standing with Eddie and a guy came walking along dressed just like the Frenchman.
07:07And Eddie looked and he's looking at this guy and I said, what's going on?
07:11He says, that guy's dirty.
07:14Just like that.
07:15And he said, I'm going to find out.
07:16And he took off and he followed him.
07:18He got on his train, he left, he came back a few hours later.
07:21And he said, yep, he was dirty.
07:23He says, I was right.
07:24So he just, he never stopped being a cop.
07:27He was the bravest guy I ever met in my life.
07:29He had no concerns going out and making arrests.
07:32Outgoing, loud, gregarious.
07:36A great partner, somewhat egocentric, obviously the boss of that squad.
07:45But you always knew there was, you know, a couple of things that weren't all there.
07:50And Sonny was a solid guy.
07:52So they probably counted one another beautifully.
07:54I think Sonny was the safety valve, who always said to Eddie, you know, Eddie, that's enough.
08:01Can't go that far.
08:03And I think they both had a sort of an understanding between each other.
08:09Yeah, well, when you work with Eddie, who always thought everything was half full, you
08:13had to look the other way.
08:15So I was the guy who always had to worry about things.
08:18Sonny always saw the glass half empty.
08:22Sonny always, it was never, it was never partly sunny.
08:25It was always partly cloudy.
08:27My name was Sonny.
08:29So Eddie used to break my chops and call me the opposite of Sonny, which was Cloudy.
08:34That's where that came from.
08:35Popeye!
08:36What?
08:37It's me, Cloudy, open the door.
08:41Eddie got the name of Popeye because when he wasn't working, we were Popeye-ing around
08:47to this bar, this watering hole, that particular place, constantly.
08:53We said we'd Popeye down the shade for a half hour, so I'll have a couple of drinks.
08:55Wait a second.
08:56I'm beat, I'm going to go.
08:57All right, all right.
08:58One drink.
08:59It was a way we used to tease him about his running around in different places where he
09:06thought young girls would congregate, you know?
09:09Well, you want to play hide and salami with his old lady?
09:15Here.
09:17Of all the people I met in this world, he was there for you, he was on your side, he
09:23was undaunted by anything.
09:27Fear did not come into the picture with him.
09:30Egan and Grosso's exploits were first written up by Robin Moore, whose book was optioned
09:34by producer Phil D'Antoni.
09:35But when D'Antoni brought Moore's book to Friedkin, he gave it no more than a cursory
09:39glance before deciding that if he was going to take this project on, he needed to get
09:43back to the primary source material, to go out on patrol with Egan and Grosso.
09:53I wasn't aware of it until Phil D'Antoni, who was a friend of mine in California, came
10:01to me in the steam room at Paramount and said, I got this project and I think you'd be great
10:06for it with your documentary background and stuff.
10:11And he told me a little bit about the story and the picture was not set up at any studio,
10:18but he invited me to come to New York with him to meet Egan and Grosso.
10:24And then they told me about the case and I thought, yeah, this would make a great movie.
10:28The basic story was the book.
10:32Two guys who followed this case to its end and pulled off almost a miracle, that they
10:41actually survived and still came through in the end.
10:46I think what really interested Billy, it was the two characters who were kind of opposites
10:53to each other.
10:55And I think he found something in those two characters that he could transpose to a screen
11:01and have people interested in seeing them.
11:03I couldn't read the book.
11:05I only knew from the dust jacket what it was about, but I had no idea what the hell it
11:10was about.
11:11It was, you know, very thick.
11:15I don't mean thick like this, I mean rather thick headed.
11:19I find it almost injurious to my health to say that Billy was not telling the truth,
11:26but I find it incredible that he didn't read the book.
11:30I've never read Robin Moore's book.
11:31I tried to.
11:32I don't know how many pages I got through.
11:36Not many.
11:37I couldn't read it.
11:38I couldn't follow it.
11:39He may call skimming, not reading, you know, but I think the interest that was derived
11:46from that book is what sparked Billy.
11:49And I think Billy has a great habit of finding a property he loves and then going about changing
11:55it.
11:56The case is pretty well stated in the book, but it's not dramatically stated.
12:02So in the change from the novel to the drama, you need a dialogue to tell the story, an
12:10action to tell the story.
12:11Well, I was very interested in how cops worked, and the only way to really know that is to
12:17be with them and to step into their shoes.
12:21That's the way Billy is.
12:22He's a stickler for that credibility and the specifics and what he finds interesting.
12:29He'll inject it right into a script.
12:31He had a knowledge of the street that, you know, you don't find with many people outside
12:39of people from the street or, you know, cops.
12:43I remember the first time we took Billy to a shooting gallery, you know, the shooting
12:46gallery is, we call that where people who use drugs go to shoot up.
12:53And Billy lived in the 90s on 5th Avenue.
12:56We took him to a shooting gallery on 110th Street and 5th Avenue.
13:00Eddie or Sonny would pick me up on the street.
13:03We'd go out an eight minute drive up to 135th Street, and suddenly we were plunged into
13:12a world of darkness.
13:14So when we kicked this door in, in this abandoned building, and found about 15, 20 people in
13:21all kinds of disarray and with needles in their arms and tubing around and belts around
13:27their arms, and Billy was like amazed.
13:33There were apartment buildings just rife with them, and I guess they wanted to show me what
13:38the world was like.
13:39And he kept saying, I only live five blocks away.
13:42I only live a few blocks away from here.
13:45And I think that realization is that all we know and how smart we are, it's seeing those
13:49things that you hear about is always a revelation.
13:54Billy stayed day and night, made the arrest, saw the process, saw the drugs, helped in
14:00the seizure, went through the doors.
14:03We spoke to informants.
14:05Billy was with us.
14:06We went to court.
14:07Billy was with us.
14:08So that by the time Billy Freakin was ready to make the French connection about New York
14:13City detectives, Billy Freakin was a New York City detective.
14:23There were several scripts that Phil and I commissioned.
14:27The first script was written by a mutual friend of Phil's and mine named Alex Jacobs, who
14:35wrote Point Blank.
14:37And we didn't like it.
14:39Alex did a couple of drafts and we moved on.
14:42We then went to a writer named Rob Thompson.
14:47And Rob had written They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
14:50And we got a draft of the script from Rob, which we also didn't like.
14:54We were back in New York now, Phil and I, and I was doing more research with Eddie and
15:00Sonny.
15:01And Phil came in one day and said he had just read the galleys of a novel called Shaft
15:09by a crime reporter for the New York Times named Ernest Tiedemann, who had never written
15:13a screenplay.
15:15Billy and I literally acted out scene by scene for Tiedemann.
15:23And then Tiedemann would leave at one o'clock and go off and write the pages we had all
15:27dictated.
15:29The next morning we would show up at nine again, read the pages, make some corrections
15:33in it, and continue to the next scene.
15:36That went on for about three or four weeks.
15:40And then we ended up with the script.
15:41I spent a lot of time with Tiedemann, you know.
15:43And I believe that there were a lot of changes made.
15:48But I believe the basis, the structure, and the skeleton, the bones to put the meat on
15:56came from Tiedemann.
15:59He gave us a draft of the script, again, based on just what Phil and I imparted to him about
16:05the story.
16:06And that script was not any good either, but it was very lean.
16:12I feel like we shot what was in that script, and I thought that script was great.
16:15And the only name I ever saw on it was Ernest Tiedemann.
16:18I don't think there's a line in it or a word that Tiedemann wrote.
16:23Certainly none of the dialogue.
16:24All of the dialogue came about from two areas.
16:29One from Eddie and Sonny saying, this is what we would say, this is what we did say.
16:38And my kind of transformation of that into something that was usable as dialogue.
16:45I think there was considerable work, as I recall it, done on that script.
16:51But the basic core of the idea was there.
16:54And it just seemed to be a very tight, keenly worked out thriller with its roots in reality,
17:05and very exciting.
17:08All of the scripts went around to every studio in Hollywood that passed on the film.
17:15Most of them passed twice.
17:16Dick Zanuck and I instantly wanted to make this movie based on Ernest Tiedemann's script,
17:24Billy Friedkin.
17:25And my recollection is we were both in New York at that time, Zanuck and I.
17:30Billy has often referred to it kind of jokingly, saying that I pulled open the drawer in my
17:36desk and said, here's a million and a half.
17:39Well, I didn't carry it.
17:40I keep a million and a half in my drawer.
17:43Bill and I were sitting in front of his desk, and he said, I got a million and a half dollars
17:48hidden away in a drawer over here.
17:51And if you guys can make this film for that, go ahead.
17:55He said, I don't really know what the hell it is.
17:57I just have a hunch.
17:59I had a feeling about Billy.
18:02Billy had a great understanding of this subject.
18:06He had a vision when he came into that office that day.
18:10And I felt it.
18:11And I felt that he could get performances out of practically unknowns.
18:17They thought we were going to say, we want superstars.
18:21And Dick Zanuck said, you know, this is a picture based in reality.
18:26It's based on an actual case.
18:28And I said, I don't think we should make it with anyone.
18:33I think it should be very realistic.
18:37And I could see them give a sigh of relief when they heard that.
18:42This was music to my ears.
18:44Because we were primed that we had to go in and convince Zanuck that we could go out and
18:48get name actors to be in this thing.
18:52And that he would only do it with stars.
18:54And the opposite was true.
18:56We were thinking about Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider playing the leads.
19:02And Zanuck said, great.
19:04And they were flabbergasted.
19:06When Gene's name came up, I had just seen one of his films.
19:11And I thought, this guy could really do it.
19:13I instantly thought it was a bad idea.
19:18But Zanuck said, look, you ought to meet with this guy.
19:20And we met.
19:21Phil and I had lunch with him at the Plaza Hotel at the Oak Room in New York.
19:27So I went in and I had lunch with him.
19:28And it was a great lunch.
19:30And Billy is a very funny, wonderful, socially adept gentleman.
19:36And I almost fell asleep at the lunch.
19:39I really found it boring.
19:42I had seen Gene Hackman on Never Sang for My Father.
19:46Handlebar, mustache, and like a twang in his voice.
19:50And a few times, again, I said to Billy, you're kidding me.
19:54No way.
19:55I'll never forget meeting Hackman and seeing a little excerpt from Never Sang for My Father.
20:02And I said, this guy's going to play Egan?
20:04My god.
20:05Yeah, I think Eddie actually had wanted Rod Taylor in the film to play him.
20:12He thought he looked like Rod Taylor.
20:16If we didn't go with Hackman, we really had nobody in the bullpen.
20:20We had nobody to say, well, if it's not Hackman, it's this person.
20:24Hackman was the guy.
20:26And we just had to go with him.
20:29And I felt it was right.
20:30He's a sensational actor.
20:33This calls for a character actor, which is what Gene is, essentially.
20:37I was not going to approve Gene Hackman.
20:40And Phil said, we have to or we're going to lose the movie.
20:44I said, Phil, you want to do this with Hackman?
20:47I don't believe in it, but I'll do it with you.
20:49We'll give it our best shot.
20:51I was lucky if I fell into a kind of a category where I was somewhat unknown to an audience,
20:59but I was known in the business, in the industry.
21:03So I was kind of satisfied, a kind of a happy medium for the studio.
21:11Phil introduced me to this guy that he knew who was a character around New York named
21:15Bob Wiener.
21:17And I agreed to let Bob Wiener be the casting director.
21:21And one of the first things he did was he brought to my office up at Fox in New York
21:28a guy named Roy Scheider.
21:30He had just finished an appearance in an off-Broadway production of, I believe, Gene's The Balcony,
21:37where he was playing a cigar-smoking nun.
21:40After we were introduced and sat down at the table, we began to talk about the case itself.
21:45How long it took, how much was involved, the money, and especially about the inter-police
21:52politics.
21:53I said, you're the guy.
21:55He didn't read for it.
21:57He didn't audition.
21:58I said, yeah, that's the guy.
22:00Get him.
22:01And when it came to casting Jehan, I remember saying to Wiener, hey, did you see that movie
22:08Belle du Jour?
22:09Yeah.
22:10I said, let's get that French guy that was in Belle du Jour.
22:13What the hell's his name?
22:14And he said, I'll find out.
22:16And he then went out, and he called me a day or so later, and he said, the guy's name is
22:20Fernando Ray.
22:22And he's available.
22:24I said, hire him.
22:25Sign him.
22:27And I went down to the airport to pick up Fernando Ray, who was just arriving.
22:34And I didn't see anyone I recognized, and I got paged.
22:39And I went over to the paging desk, and there's this guy standing there who I did, in fact,
22:44recognize, but he was clearly not the guy I was thinking of.
22:48He had this little goatee, and he had an aristocratic manner about him.
22:53And I remember thinking, what is this?
22:56Oh, he says, hello, I am Fernando Ray.
22:58He says, you know, I'm not French, I'm Spanish.
23:01I didn't know that.
23:02And he said, you know, my French is not very good either.
23:05I didn't know that.
23:08And I realized that he was not the guy in Belle du Jour either.
23:14I got him to his hotel and got him checked in, and I went to the phone in the lobby,
23:20and I called D'Antoni and Weiner, who were at our production office at Fox on the west
23:25side of Manhattan.
23:26And I said, you assholes, you fucking morons.
23:31I said, this is the wrong guy.
23:33They said, what?
23:34I said, this isn't the guy.
23:35They said, what do you mean?
23:37I said, that's not the guy in Belle du Jour.
23:40So against my better judgment, I now had as the two leads of this picture two people that
23:46I wasn't crazy about, that I thought were wrong for the part, both of them.
24:10Friedkin's vision of New York was to be the dark street-level underbelly of that skyscraping
24:16fun city so often romanticized in the movies.
24:19Along with location manager Fat Thomas Rand, he plotted a course through what Life magazine
24:24called the jungle of the city to its grungy heart of darkness, from the streets of Manhattan
24:29and Brooklyn to the desolate wastelands of Wards and Randalls Island.
24:41I think it's New York as New York is.
24:45It's those locations that they don't advertise.
24:49And I think you get down and you see the underground of New York.
24:52You see the reality of what is there.
24:57It's the dark side.
25:01It's the side that the cops see.
25:03It's the side that the gangsters see.
25:06It's the side that Billy is most familiar with.
25:12It was exactly what I wanted.
25:13It was tough.
25:14It was gritty.
25:15It was grainy.
25:16It was realistic.
25:17It was New York.
25:19We were there.
25:21And it was fabulous.
25:22And the other pictures looked like movies.
25:26This looked like the real thing.
25:28It's a movie about a garbage truck at dawn.
25:32It's a movie about seagulls in the distance.
25:34It's a movie about endless squealing tires and people yelling and screaming to get out
25:38of the way, banging on the sides of their cars.
25:43We're all familiar with the glamorous Fifth Avenue, New York.
25:49We're not at all familiar with the underbelly, the base of the Brooklyn Bridge, the Cropsey
25:55Avenue L tracks in Brooklyn, the Randall's Island Bakery.
26:00This was very definitely a conscious effort on Billy's part to bring the audience into
26:06parts of New York that they were totally unfamiliar with.
26:10We went to some bars on the lower, lower west side of Manhattan, dingy places that
26:18stay open all night.
26:19They look like a bad set for the Iceman Cometh.
26:23All right, Popeye's here.
26:29I think we shot a hundred locations in 86 days of shooting or something like that.
26:35And it was in the winter.
26:36And it was very cold.
26:38That whole winter was brutally cold.
26:40I mean, brutally.
26:41There were days where we would go out to shoot certain sequences that required some special
26:46effects and we couldn't shoot them because the effects wouldn't work.
26:48It was too cold.
26:50Every day on that film was cold.
26:51It was one day colder than the next.
26:53I mean, you can imagine that shooting that film in January in New York and Brooklyn and
26:58lower Manhattan was murder.
27:00It was so cold sometimes that no matter what you did, you just couldn't stop the cameras
27:05from freezing up.
27:06And the crew had to literally go inside to a store between shots.
27:11They could not stand outside and reload or reset for the next shot.
27:15They had to take a break between shots.
27:28My concept for the French Connection was induced documentary.
27:34That means make it look like the camera just happened on the scene, not like anything was
27:39set up.
27:40And in order to do that, from time to time, I would not rehearse the actors and the camera
27:46crew together.
27:47I rehearsed them separately.
27:52Much of what we were doing was improvised.
27:55And it was improvised right on the floor.
27:57I mean, it came out of situations that required improvisation.
28:08Billy encouraged Gene and I to improvise and to do as much possible to develop our characters.
28:14And a lot of the dialogue in the film is just Gene and I sitting around, you know, having
28:19a good time talking about these bent noses we're following around here.
28:23You've got a friend here, buddy.
28:25You've got a friend.
28:26You're going to tell us who your man is?
28:27When's the last time you picked your feet, Willie?
28:29I asked Eddie what the genesis of picking your feet in Poughkeepsie was.
28:35You ever been to Poughkeepsie?
28:36Huh?
28:37He says, well, I'll show you.
28:39So we run around the block, oh, three or four times.
28:41We finally find a kid on this on the walking along the street.
28:45And he says, hey, you, get over here.
28:48And Sonny Grasso would ask the guy some legitimate question about who's your connection?
28:55Where is he?
28:56He gets the kid in there.
28:57He says, you're the guy.
28:59And he'd say your name, your address, how old are you?
29:02You're married.
29:03Give me a date of birth.
29:04And he'd say, do you pick your feet?
29:06And the kid said, what?
29:07You were sitting on the edge of the bed and you were picking your feet in Poughkeepsie,
29:10right?
29:11You pick your feet in Poughkeepsie?
29:12Did you ever pick your feet in Poughkeepsie?
29:14And the guy would say, huh?
29:15What?
29:16Poughkeepsie.
29:17Did you ever sit down on the edge of the bed, take off your shoes and socks and put your
29:21fingers between your toes?
29:23And they'd say, well, I don't remember.
29:27And he said, because I know there was a guy who raped a girl in Poughkeepsie, and after
29:34he raped her, he sat on the edge of the bed and he picked his feet.
29:37You sat on the edge of the bed, didn't you?
29:39You took off your shoes, put your finger between your toes and picked your feet, didn't you?
29:42That's it!
29:43Yeah, that was the thing Eddie used to do that used to drive me crazy.
29:47And when Billy wanted to do it in the movie, I prayed to God, tried to talk him out of
29:50it.
29:51I'm going to bust your ass for those three bags, and I'm going to nail you for picking
29:54your feet in Poughkeepsie.
29:56These two cops instinctively knew how to break a guy down with interrogation methods that
30:03just played with his mind.
30:05And so that's where pick your feet in Poughkeepsie comes from.
30:08It's a total non sequitur, because the town of Poughkeepsie, New York, lends itself to
30:14the alliteration of pick your feet in Poughkeepsie.
30:17It means nothing.
30:18Actors Egan and Grosso had experienced the grinding tension of life on the streets.
30:23So Friedkin wanted to get his cast as ragged and rattled as the characters they portrayed.
30:27And it was in pursuit of that raw edginess that he employed sometimes confrontational
30:32techniques to turn a mild-mattered mid-westerner like Gene Hackman into a tough, streetwise
30:37New Yorker.
30:44Billy is a multifaceted director.
30:51He's a very complex human being.
30:55He's great.
30:56He's brilliant.
30:59His intellect shines.
31:02And he's, in the best sense of the word, difficult.
31:06He's honest.
31:07He's dishonest.
31:09He tells you what you want to hear.
31:11He's very clever psychologically, very instinctive about who you are and who he might be at that
31:18moment or what he has to be at that moment.
31:21Billy gets volatile, and that's fine, as long as it's creative and productive for the movie.
31:27He would get actors to be angry at each other and do all kinds of tormenting things to actors
31:35to get a response.
31:37There's a very dark side to Billy.
31:39As you say, it's very nihilistic.
31:41It's cold.
31:42It allows no sentiment.
31:45And sometimes, my feeling is that that's not necessarily an asset in his work.
31:53In other words, his work sometimes gets unbalanced, and we get the dark side of the dark side
31:57of the dark side of the dark side.
32:00You better come up with a scratch.
32:01I got a man waiting downstairs.
32:23You stupid faggot!
32:25I think Billy gets performances out of actors with a technique that maybe other directors
32:30would not use, but he feels he goes right to the nitty-gritty, whatever is needed to
32:37get a performance out of that actor, and not all of them appreciate it.
32:40Sonny and Eddie thought that Hackman just wasn't getting it right, that he didn't really
32:46have a cop's heart.
32:48Eddie Egan was distracting to me sometimes because him not being an actor, he didn't
32:56understand that sometimes you can't play everything 100% mean.
33:03Hackman became disenchanted with Egan, not because of what he is as a policeman, but
33:09what he was as a human being.
33:11Gene did not want to go there.
33:13He wanted the part.
33:14He wanted to do it, but I have to say honestly that he was never prepared to commit 100%
33:22to the kind of racist, you'd have to say, it wouldn't be my word, but Eddie would be
33:28characterized today as a racist cop.
33:31You dumb guinea, how the hell did I know he had a knife?
33:35I had talked to him about some of the racist dialogue, and he wouldn't hear of it.
33:40He said, that's the way it is, and that's what we have to do.
33:44So I just had to kind of suck it up and do the dialogue.
33:49Never trust a nigger.
33:50He could have been white.
33:51Never trust anyone.
33:53After a while, Hackman became, I think, a little concerned about Eddie's demeanor and
34:00started to wonder how much of this is going to rub off on me, you know what I mean?
34:04Who's the best guy you ever seen, Doyle?
34:07Willie Mays.
34:08Willie Mays!
34:09Willie Mays!
34:10What's a baseball bat?
34:11One swing and you take your fucking head off.
34:14Gene kept trying to find a way to make the guy human, to give the guy three dimensions
34:18that an actor of Gene's ability can play, can fill out, and Billy kept saying, no, he's
34:25a son of a bitch.
34:27He's no good.
34:28He's a prick.
34:29He's all these things, and Gene, you know, thought, my God.
34:35Billy and Gene really were at each other's throats throughout the whole course of the
34:40picture.
34:41I was aware of it because it was often difficult for me to get Gene to come out of the trailer.
34:46You know, he'd have some problem with a line or some problem with Billy.
34:52There was one particular shot where we were standing outside of a restaurant where they're
34:57supposedly on surveillance while the French guy is inside, and they're outside eating
35:03frozen pizza and cold coffee, and the day we shot this, it was literally below zero
35:09weather in New York.
35:11Billy wanted to do a close-up of Gene's hands showing the cold, and he showed him what he
35:17wanted to do.
35:18He said, I want to, you know, do the shot and, you know, make your hands look like it's
35:23really cold and everything.
35:25And we did six, seven takes, and I used to antagonize him, and finally I said, what in
35:30the fuck are you doing?
35:32We could see that Gene was offended by that, and so he started to put Billy on a little
35:36bit, and he said, show me that again, would you, because I didn't quite get that.
35:42He was saying, you know, come on, more, more, I want to see more.
35:46It's fucking cold out here, all you have to do is show me how cold you are.
35:51Don't act, just show me how cold you are.
35:53So we did it again.
35:54Billy didn't know at this time what Gene was up to, and I started to see it, and then,
35:59so we did a take, and Billy's cut, no, no, no, no, that's not what I want.
36:03And he said to me, in that tone of voice, why don't you step in front of the camera
36:08and show me exactly what you want me to do?
36:11I mean, exactly.
36:12And he was trying to say, in no uncertain terms, don't show me what to do, just tell
36:16me what you want.
36:17You want me to be cold?
36:18I'll be cold.
36:20And I stood in front of the camera, and I did this for him, and I said, this is exactly
36:25what I want you to do.
36:27And Billy finally got it.
36:28Great.
36:29Cut.
36:30And he walked off the set for the rest of the day.
36:32We're all its downbeat air of gritty realism.
36:34The French Connection first earned audience popularity as much for its white-knuckle chase
36:38sequence, which was promptly hailed as the best on screen.
36:41Producer Phil D'Antoni had previously set the benchmark with Bullet, and he was keen
36:44to repeat that success, but there was no chase in the French Connection script, and Freakin'
36:48didn't want to do anything that had been done before, and so the two of them cooked up the
36:52idea of topping Steve McQueen's car chasing a car by having Gene Hackman's car chasing
36:57an L train.
36:58Nothing has been as real as that chase, or as exciting.
37:03I think that put them all away, as far as I'm concerned.
37:07Police!
37:08Emergency!
37:09I need your car!
37:12The very first production meeting we had, Phil got up and made a speech, and he said,
37:17I just finished a picture that had probably the greatest chase ever done.
37:21He said, my mandate to all of you is that this film has a better chase than Bullet.
37:28I didn't even have the idea.
37:31And we used to put it off, D'Antoni and I.
37:37And one day we said, as we were approaching production, we said, let's take a walk in
37:43New York, and let's just talk and see if we can spitball a chase scene.
37:49And I remember we walked for about 55 blocks, and meanwhile, the subways were rumbling underneath
37:56us, and we're seeing all these people filling the streets.
38:00We finally got to Third Avenue, and I was starting to talk about the Third Avenue L.
38:05Having been in New York all my life, I remember the L. We reminisced about the L. And it was
38:10at that point that the idea crossed my mind that we might possibly use the L.
38:15I don't remember how, but gradually, in just talking, the idea started to hatch itself
38:21of a car chasing a train.
38:24In 1970, we didn't have any of the technology we have available today, so everything you
38:30see in that chase scene on film is stuff that we shot.
38:36They used no control at all.
38:38They just took a siren, slapped it on top of the car, and Hickman took off with the
38:42three cameras running.
38:43We ran free.
38:45In other words, nobody was blocking anything for us.
38:50Nobody planned anything.
38:53Blinking lights, narrowly missing people, cars, things like that.
38:58And that was all live.
38:59So that myth is not a myth.
39:01It's true.
39:02Along the way, it was all improvisation.
39:07It was stuff like, can we shoot on that street over there?
39:10Well, I don't think so.
39:12We got to talk to 500 store owners.
39:14Fuck it.
39:15Let's just shoot over there.
39:16Okay, let's go.
39:18I was upset.
39:19He knew I was upset.
39:20I said, you know, it's dangerous.
39:21It's absolutely wrong.
39:23I think it's terrible to do that.
39:25That may be.
39:26I mean, it was a terrible thing to do.
39:27It was very dangerous, and it was life-threatening.
39:35The car was totally stripped down, and Bill Hickman was the driver.
39:40I sat in the passenger side.
39:42I was wrapped in a mattress, and Billy Freakin was in the back, and he was on the camera.
39:49Hickman was one of those very, very tense, show-off-y, egotistical kind of guys.
39:53I can do anything, you know, and he would, and he would endanger anyone also.
39:57Bill took up the challenge.
39:58He said, you want to see some hairy driving?
40:01I said, yeah.
40:02He said, you got the balls to get in my car?
40:05I'll show you some fucking driving.
40:08Prior to getting into the car, Billy spoke to Bill Hickman in the following manner.
40:14We're only going to be able to do this once.
40:17You're not protected.
40:19We're lucky if we come out of this thing without being arrested.
40:23We're going to steal this shot, so you got to give it to me.
40:29You really got to give it to me.
40:30He drove through, my memory is, 26 blocks of traffic with no control, and he kept his
40:38foot on the gas, except when he had to brake, and he was going at speeds of 90 miles an
40:44hour.
40:45He weaved.
40:46We went on the sidewalk once.
40:48We faced the oncoming traffic once.
40:51During the ride, we careened or creased a city bus so that the doors would not open.
41:00Billy kept saying to Bill Hickman, give it to me.
41:03Give it to me.
41:04Only once.
41:05We're doing it.
41:06This is fucking great.
41:07Do it.
41:08And Bill Hickman responded.
41:12There were accidents that occurred during the chase that were not supposed to happen.
41:17There was one I remember vividly because it really was a scary accident.
41:24We thought that perhaps someone might have gotten hurt.
41:26They were shooting a second unit shot of Hackman driving the car underneath the L, and we had
41:33our second unit camera in the trunk of the other car, which Hickman was driving.
41:37They wanted a real high-speed sequence where these pillars were strobing past the car.
41:44What they hadn't counted on was somebody coming out of their house, getting in their car,
41:50and driving into our shot, and that actually happened.
41:54Suddenly I see this blur, and a guy pulls right in front of me, and he wants to turn
42:00left.
42:01I don't know how fast I was going, as fast as the car would go in the three-block period,
42:07and I hit him, and then it put me right into a pillar.
42:10Bam!
42:11The cameraman got thrown to the floor of the trunk from the force of the whole thing.
42:18And fortunately, Hackman wasn't hurt, or at least he wasn't hurt bad, and the cameraman
42:23wasn't hurt bad, and nobody was hurt, and it was just pure luck, because that could
42:27have been a very scary situation.
42:31I remember that Billy always wanted more of that stuff in there, and certainly played
42:35against Gene Hackman's face, and all of the frustration that Hackman was able to evoke.
42:43And you know, probably Billy was right, more is more.
42:52We are where the chase ends, where Gene finally catches the train.
42:56The car stops downstairs, and Gene stumbles around to the bottom of the stairs.
43:01There's a confrontation.
43:04Gene leans against the rail with his gun, and the Frenchman faces him, turns to leave,
43:10and Gene shoots him.
43:12Let's get out of here!
43:16Well during the rehearsal, which I saw, I was across the street.
43:20I come running over to Billy Freakin', and how presumptuous of me, I say, you can't do
43:25that.
43:26Can't do what?
43:27I said, you can't do that.
43:28You have a New York City detective, whom I know, and you have him shooting somebody in
43:33the back, and this somebody is unarmed.
43:36That's murder.
43:37You can't do this.
43:38Fast forward six, seven, eight months, we're in a theater in Manhattan.
43:41There must be a thousand people in the audience.
43:44And we come to that particular scene, and I'm saying to myself, watch.
43:49And just before Gene shoots him, there's that moment of silence of where you can hear everything.
43:54And then Gene shoots him.
43:57One thousand people in the audience stand up screaming, cheering.
44:01Billy runs up and he said, it works for them, so it's got to work for me, so it should work
44:06for you.
44:08Not only that, that turns out to be the poster shot of the French Connection.
44:15This is the dog end of Ward's Island, where the French Connection's final shootout takes
44:19place, ending with that single enigmatic retort.
44:23In order to up the ante and leave the audience feeling that they genuinely witnessed something
44:27real, Friedkin decided to block the actors and then allow DP Owen Roizman and his operator
44:31to grab one camera apiece and shoot the action ad hoc, as if they were news reporters arriving
44:37at the scene of a crime.
44:44I decided to end the movie with a bang.
44:53The movie was clearly going to end with Hackman running away down this long corridor at this
45:01abandoned warehouse, having not been able to find Charnier.
45:08But by that time, he had, in my mind, gone over the edge.
45:12The son of a bitch is here, I saw him.
45:14I'm going to get him.
45:16We were running around in the slop, in the mud, and chasing the Frenchman through that
45:21labyrinthian place, and I can't explain the ending to the movie to you.
45:29And Billy doesn't even bother to try.
45:33You hear a gunshot, and people have asked me through the years what that meant.
45:38It doesn't mean anything, although it might.
45:41The gunshot is a marvelous, marvelous afterthought.
45:44And we don't see that too often in American movies, because American movies are always
45:48very uplifting, and they tell us how to feel, and that movie, that moment confuses us hopelessly.
45:53We don't know, what happened?
45:56What did he do?
45:57What does it mean?
45:58It might mean that this guy is so over the top at that point that he's shooting at shadows.
46:04The gunshot was very, very important, because it gave kind of a third dimension to the whole
46:10ending, to the whole film.
46:12It's just the enigma.
46:23I can't say that I knew certainly that it was going to be an Academy Award, five Academy
46:29Award film, but I must say that when I was working on it, and saw the dailies, I knew
46:37something was up here.
46:39I knew there was something very, very special about what I was seeing from day to day.
46:44I can remember one day going to dailies at the Fox studio in New York, 54th Street, and
46:51sitting in the back of the Fox screening room was Daryl Zanuck, who was running the studio
46:56at that time, and it was the dailies where Popeye Doyle is asking the guy if he picks
47:02his feet in Poughkeepsie, and I hear this coughing from the back of the room, and it's
47:06obviously Mr. Zanuck, I don't know what's going on with these dailies, and it occurred
47:13to me that Fox really just didn't know, they just didn't have a clue what they were getting
47:19out of this French Connection movie.
47:21We're very close to the final editing when their advertising promotion department sent
47:27me a memo saying, we've decided to change the title of French Connection to one of these
47:34four or five choices, I think one was Doyle, one was Popeye.
47:47The studio thought the title was abominable, what is the French Connection, is it a perfume
47:51store in Paris?
47:52I mean, that sounds, it almost sounds effete, the French Connection?
47:58We were having a very bad period, even though we had made some excellent pictures during
48:03this process, and there was a lot of friction between my father and myself during that
48:10period, and so the board decided to call it a day, on both of us.
48:17We left behind the French Connection, which I believe was in post-production, and as a
48:21matter of fact, we who caused the French Connection to be produced were denied the opportunity
48:28to see it except to pay our money at the box office.
48:32But I did get to see the picture, and Fox never knew that I saw it, and I didn't have
48:36to humble myself to ask them to see the picture that I felt I was extremely instrumental in
48:46initiating.
48:47I thought French Connection would be a hit, but I always had two sets of books.
48:53It's a hit, but what do I know?
48:54I remember going to the press screening, the last press screening, and the press, who,
49:02especially in those days, they were so sedate, they were so controlled, you know?
49:08And at the end of that film, they were up, they were applauding, they were yelling and
49:12screaming like adolescents.
49:14When I first saw the first presentation of the film, I called Gene Hackman, who was in
49:23California at the time, and he hadn't seen the film yet.
49:27I said to him, Gene, you are going to win an Academy Award for this performance.
49:32And I was that impressed with it.
49:34I knew right away that this was a great film.
49:37Just as the 1962 bust had made unlikely heroes of Egan and Grosso, so the success of the
49:42French Connection established William Friedkin as Hollywood's dark prince.
49:46From here, he would go on to court outrage and acclaim in pretty much equal measures.
49:50The films like The Exorcist, lensed by Owen Roizman, Sorcerer, a savage remake of Wages
49:56of Fear starring Roy Scheider, and of course Cruising, in which he re-teamed with Sonny
50:00Grosso and Randy Jurgensen to take his most controversial voyage into the dark netherworld
50:05of undercover police work.
50:07It was a film which again blurred the line between cops and criminals, heroes and villains,
50:12a theme which recurs throughout Friedkin's work, from documentaries like The Thin Blue
50:16line to glossy thrillers like To Live and Die in L.A., but which first burst onto the
50:20streets in The French Connection.
50:27It was a little classic.
50:28Oscar?
50:29Forget about it.
50:30No, it never entered into our minds, certainly not mine.
50:34When we wrapped the picture on the last day of shooting, Phil said to me, what do you
50:38think?
50:40And I said, Phil, I think we're going to be all right with this.
50:43I think I'll get away with it.
50:45But we're not going to win any Academy Awards, I'll tell you that.
51:15No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
51:43no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
51:49no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
51:53no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
51:55no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
51:57no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no