I punched up Facebook this morning and saw a post by my friend Rob that the ’68 Mustang 390 GT Fastback used by Steve McQueen in the chase scene from the movie “Bullitt” has been found in a Mexican junkyard. Thanks for the post, Rob, because this week’s edition of Car Talk happens to be about car movies! The Mustang was found by car collector Hugo Sanchez, who wanted to restore a Mustang into “Eleanor” from the movie “Gone In Sixty Seconds” starring Nicholas Cage. Paint removal revealed the original dark green paint. The VIN numbers were checked against the order numbers from Warner Bros. and found to be a match. McQueen himself had searched extensively to find and purchase the car, which disappeared shortly after filming, before his death in 1980. Sanchez plans to restore the car to its original state, and experts are hesitant to guess the Mustang’s potential worth. Let’s just point out that one of the Dodge Chargers used in the movie went on sale for a cool mil in 2013.
I have to admit I really don’t remember much about the movie other than the chase scene, which is arguably the best of all time. I do know it was not a car movie but a detective movie. McQueen’s name was Bullitt, and he was protecting a Mafia witness, I think.
Speaking of the movie “Gone In Sixty Seconds,” I really didn’t care much for the remake. Maybe because I’m not really a Nicholas Cage fan, but to me the 1974 original was much better. First of all, they changed the name, spelling out “Sixty” as opposed to the number “60”. Not that that makes a lick of difference, but if you’re going to copy something, copy it right. Second, the original had a budget of $150,000. Granted, this was ’73 when the film was made, but it was still low-budget. The film grossed $40,000,000 in 1974 dollars. The 2000 remake had a $90,000,000 budget and grossed $101,000,000. Even I can figure out the profit margins there. Third, the original was just a lot more fun to watch. The second half of the movie is one long car chase that has to be seen to be believed. The funniest part of the entire movie was a group of black teenagers riding around smoking weed and drinking Coors beer in a beat up old Cadillac, which eventually catches fire while they are riding in it.
And, speaking of Coors beer, no car movie discussion would be complete without mentioning 1977’s “Smokey and the Bandit.” Filmed in and around Atlanta, it starred Burt Reynolds as The Bandit, Jerry Reed as Cledus and Jackie Gleason as Sheriff Buford T. Justice. SATB was a huge box office hit in ’77, second only to “Star Wars.” The movie had a budget of $4,000,000 and grossed almost $127,000,000. (Thanks to IMDB for these figures.) Not a bad profit margin. Remember, these were the days before video, Netflix and Hulu. If you liked a movie, you would see it in the theatre more than once. I saw SATB five times.
A friend of mine owned Fred, the basset hound in the movie. His real name was Happy. John’s mom saw a classified ad (remember those?) for a casting call held at Stone Mountain. They were trying to find the ugliest dog they could. She took Happy to the audition, and he was supposedly picked by Burt Reynolds himself. The story is that Reynolds wanted to mess with Jerry Reed and picked Happy because of his refusal to obey commands. After the movie came out, I was visiting John and petted Happy. He is the first and only movie star I have ever petted.
John made it into the film as an extra. When Cledus gets beat up by the bikers in the bar, he is one of the members of the motorcycle gang and is clearly visible in several shots. My buddy Jimmy and his cousin Redus are in the movie as well, by nothing but chance. They were leaving for a job from their overhead door business one morning, heading up Stone Mountain-Lithonia Road. Filming was going on at the cemetery at Phillips Road. Their truck wound up right behind Sheriff Buford T. Justice’s car in the funeral procession scene. Theirs is the white Ford truck behind the patrol car, and you can clearly see Redus looking out the driver’s window into the camera. Only the outline of Jimmy’s head is visible due to the shadows.
For me, the whole car movie thing started with Robert Mitchum’s 1958 moonshining epic, “Thunder Road.” I first saw it at the Madison Theatre sometime in the Sixties, and my cousin Dennis and I would see it every time it played there. It is the story of Lucas Doonin, a Korean War vet now running the family moonshining business. Mitchum wrote the story as well as the theme song. The chase scenes are remarkably well done for the time, and I can only imagine driving a souped up 1950 Ford with no power steering through the twisting Appalachian roads at night. Ol’ Luke would have left the Fast and Furious guys in his dust. The role of Robin, Luke’s younger brother, was offered to Elvis Presley, but Colonel Tom demanded more money than the producers were willing to spend.
Speaking of Elvis and The Madison Theatre, I then moved on to Elvis movies. At the Madison, I saw pretty much every Elvis movie ever made. A number of his movies were car and motorcycle themed. The best, in my opinion, was “Viva Las Vegas” featuring Ann-Margaret. As I have mentioned before, Elvis could ride down the road on a motorcycle or in a convertible, burst into song and be accompanied by a full band, without his hair ever getting messed up. The King was the coolest.
“Two Lane Blacktop” starring James Taylor, Dennis Wilson, Laurie Bird and Warren Oates was released in 1971. Taylor and Wilson, known only as The Driver and The Mechanic, are street racers that drift from town to town looking for action. They pick up Bird, known only as “The Girl”, in a diner in Flagstaff. They meet up with a middle aged braggart driving a 1970 GTO Judge in a gas station in New Mexico, and agree to race to Washington D.C., title for title. Rather than traveling the interstates they decide to stick to the backroads to attract less attention from police. Hence the name, “Two Lane Blacktop.” Apparently music rights have prevented this movie from being released into the video market, and it is rarely seen today.
The iconic “Easy Rider” was released in 1969 and became an instant classic. Written and produced by Peter Fonda and directed by Dennis Hopper, the film stars Fonda, Hopper and a young Jack Nicholson. Fonda and Hopper are two counterculture bikers who, after a big score, ride from California to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. Along the way they pick up Nicholson, a young, alcoholic lawyer. It is a landmark film and is still relevant today. I had a huge poster of Peter Fonda from the movie on the wall of our garage, which was odd because I was not allowed by my father to see the film. This was due to the fact that they “smoked mary-wanna in it.” It didn’t make any difference later on, but I did not see the movie until 1984. We had just gotten our first VCR, and a friend of mine taped it for me off of HBO.
1973’s “American Graffiti” was an important film in so many ways. At the time of its release, the only well known actor in the cast was Ron Howard. The movie launched the careers of such actors as Richard Dreyfuss, Harrison Ford, Cindy Williams, Suzanne Somers, Mackenzie Phillips, Paul LeMat, Charles Martin Smith and Candy Clark, to name quite a few. It was directed by a young upstart named George Lucas and produced by Francis Ford Coppola. The beautiful canary yellow 1932 Ford Coupe driven by John Milner (Paul LeMat) is my favorite hot rod of all time. The car is owned by Rick Figari of San Francisco and, along with Paul LeMat, regularly makes appearances on the car show circuit. Another interesting note is that the ’55 Chevy driven by Harrison Ford in the movie is the same car used in “Two Lane Blacktop.”
Finally, I must mention a personal favorite, 1980’s “The Hollywood Knights.” The movie is basically a cross between “Animal House” and “American Graffiti.” Set in 1965, it chronicles the high jinks of a Southern California car club on Halloween night. Their hangout, Tubby’s Drive-In, is being torn down the next day to make way for a new office complex. The film features a fantastic soundtrack and, like “American Graffiti,” was the first film for several young actors. Tony Danza was the only established star in the cast. The rest of the cast includes a very young Michelle Pfeiffer, Fran Drescher and Stuart Pankin, whose character Dudley Laywicker makes Flounder from “Animal House” look like The Fonz. The real star of the movie, however, is Robert Wuhl as Newbomb Turk. This was Wuhl’s first film, and his character Newbomb is loud, crass, funny and clueless in his relentless pursuit of girls. Newbomb is at constant odds with Officer Bimbeau (Gailard Sartain) for having his brother’s El Camino, whose care Newbomb has been entrusted with, impounded. Despite the sophomoric pranks, the film also deals with deeper issues of the looming Vietnam War, moving from adolescence into young adulthood, and inevitable change beyond one’s control. There are many beautiful cars featured, including “Project X,” a canary yellow 1957 Chevy driven by Danza’s character, Duke.
These are but a few, and there are way too many great car flicks to mention here. From the A-listers to the B-movie classics of the drive-ins, celluloid and gasoline seem to go hand in hand. And thanks to today’s technology, a lot of the movies are only a click away. Punch up “Duel” on YouTube. It is a 1971 made for TV movie starring Dennis Weaver. It was directed by a young unknown named Steven Spielberg and takes road rage to the ultimate level.
That’s it for this week. Car Talk is at its “Vanishing Point!” …Still Cruisin’! –J.
Speak Your Mind