July 1, 2008
Bullitt: the greatest car chase ever (from space!)
Just plain cool, San Francisco history blog » [9] commentsIt’s the archetypal car chase, often cited as the most thrilling in movie history. And though legions of movie analysts will tell you that the car is the star, we all know perfectly well that San Francisco’s voluptuous topography is what turned this notorious scene into legend.
What we also know perfectly well is how the filmmakers played cut-and-paste with the city’s map — apparently borrowing a trick or two from Star Trek, as the two vehicles teleport from one neighborhood to another via the editing console. From Potrero Hill, to Russian Hill, back to Potrero Hill, back to Russian hill and the Marina, zapping over to Visitaçion Valley, and finishing up on the Bayshore roaring towards Brisbane — hello, movie magic!
A God’s-eye view
But this video takes things about ten steps further. It’s a side-by-side display that — through the techno-wizardry of geocoding — shows the schase scene’s logic-defying route from space. Now you can track Steve’s ’68 Mustang GT turn by screeching turn through every neighborhood in the city — just like a James Bond super-villain:
Not to give the filmmakers too much credit, but perhaps there’s a meta-narrative of San Francisco’s inherent instability at work here too: Intersecting layers of history, invention and reinvention, kinetic faultlines at edge of the world … it’s easy to see the echos of San Francisco’s many earthquakes in Bullitt’s physics-defying leaps.
Charlie Chaplin was probably the first to take movie liberties with San Francisco, a half-century before Bullitt editor Frank Keller pulled out the scissors — and now, almost a century later, the list is anything but short.
Afterthought: At one of the early Lollapalooza music festivals, this clip played on the Shoreline’s in-house monitors as a warmup for the headliner. What a mistake! The gut-shaking roar of that Mustang’s engine swamped the amphitheatre, and after nine hair-raising minutes of adrenaline-fueled, high-speed action, the audience was completely wrung out. Finished!
The headlining act (the Smashing Pumpkins) sounded weak, tinny, and insignificant in comparison — nothing but an afterthought.
props to the creator: Steve McQueen @ SEERO
thanks for the tip: RICK! @ Laughing Squid
9 responses to “Bullitt: the greatest car chase ever (from space!)”
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July 1, 2008 at 6:30 am
Doesn’t matter how many times you see it. It’s still utterly captivating. I love being able to follow along! Awesome.
July 1, 2008 at 7:16 am
Exactly! Despite the thrills, Bullitt was always a source of mild annoyance at the random geography jumping, but this somehow makes it all good. And man, the patience to do even the street-spotting required, much less the GPS stuff…
July 18, 2008 at 10:55 am
This is amazing, and that chase is indeed a classic. Just curious, have you ever seen the Alan Arkin/James Caan film “Freebie and the Bean” from the mid-1970s? The movie is nothing special, but it’s got an incredible S.F. car chase of its own that’s worth checking out.
July 18, 2008 at 2:13 pm
Nope, never saw it, probably because I was still in the single digits when it hit the theaters. With your recommendation, though, I’ll pop it into the Netflix queue.
I have to admit, I am curious about the name. Freebie and the Bean … somehow reminds me of the free-burritos-for-life gimmick the Taco Loco taqueria ran a few years back. Not the subject of this film, I suspect!
July 18, 2008 at 8:50 pm
Actually, the names play into very un-PC stereotypes (as opposed to PC stereotypes, right?). From what I recall, Freebie is supposed to be cheap (and Jewish), while The Bean is, well, Mexican.
Don’t let that stop you from checking the movie out, though. I seem to remember Arkin and Caan having good chemistry.
November 8, 2008 at 8:59 am
The headlining act (the Smashing Pumpkins) sounded weak, tinny, and insignificant in comparison — nothing but an afterthought.
Exactly! It sounded pretty bad for sure.
December 7, 2009 at 7:14 am
The real stars of that chase scene were the two cars, both classic muscle cars. McQueen is driving a 1968 Ford Mustang 390 GT, while the bad guys are driving a 1968 Dodge Charger R/T 440 Magnum.
March 18, 2011 at 1:34 pm
I stumbled in to this story, “Bullitt: the greatest car chase ever (from space!)” almost 3 years after it was first posted at this link:
http://www.sparkletack.com/2008/07/01/bullitt-the-greatest-car-chase-ever-from-space/
But the link for the video at- http://www.seero.com/video/Steve_McQueen_3# -is no longer a live webpage… in fact, I think “seero.com” is gone altogether.
Do you know of a place where this video is posted currently?… I can’t find it on YouTube.
Thanks.