10. The French Connection Car Chase Was Totally Illegal
William Friedkin's seventies crime drama is famed for its cinema verite film style, with Gene Hackman's attempts to foil an international drug smuggling ring filmed like it was a documentary (possibly because the film was, albeit loosely, based off a true story). That level of realism that Friedkin was going for stretched to the celebrate car chase that, when you ask your dad about The French Connection, is probably the first thing he'll remember about it. It's a pretty sweet car chase. Not the same technical flair of, say, Bullit or Ronin, but where it has them beat is the frenetic energy and genuine tension you'd feel if you actually watched such a thing happen. An effect they produced by literally staging a car chase in real traffic. Friedkin has something of a reputation for, ahem, interesting directorial decisions, such as slapping a priest in the face to get him to cry at the end of The Exorcist. His most reckless call, however, was when he decided to film The French Connection's car chase on the streets of New York. Without closing any of them off. The stunt drivers just had to deal with the real-life traffic clogging up the shots. There's even a part when Hackman sends a car spinning off the road, and that was an actual person who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. They did make on concession to safety: they put a police siren on the roof of Hackman's car, to alert drivers to move out of the way of the 90 mile per hour car with the crazy director in the back seat.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
