"He didn’t want to be cast in it, but I said, 'Jimmy, you’re this guy. "He had the look, but he didn’t have the acting skills," the director recalled. Speaking with Yahoo Entertainment in 2018, Friedkin said that he originally cast famous New York journalist Jimmy Breslin as Popeye Doyle opposite Roy Scheider as Doyle's partner, Buddy Russo. "As for the car chase, there was a better one filmed a few years earlier with Steve McQueen," the actor tells the Post, referring to the Peter Yates's 1968 film Bullitt, which features McQueen speeding through the streets of San Francisco. Although Hackman feels there's another film that tops his own. "I wouldn't do anything like this today," he added, saying that they were "very lucky" nobody was seriously injured.Īt the same time, that behind-the-scenes danger is palpably felt onscreen, and the main reason why the sequence is consistently ranked as one of the greatest car chases every committed to film. "The only thing we had permits for was to shoot on the elevated train," Friedkin revealed during a 45th anniversary screening of the film in 2016.
Friedkin famously shot that scene under harrowing circumstances, with little to no traffic control or choreographed stunt work. (Photo: 20th Century Fox Film Corp./courtesy Everett Collection)Ĭertainly, it's impossible to talk about The French Connection without bringing up its best-remembered sequence: a pulse-pounding car chase through the mean streets of Brooklyn as Doyle pursues an assassin (Marcel Bozzuffi) with ties to a major heroin-smuggling syndicate. Hackman and Marcel Bozzuffi in an iconic scene from The French Connection. " haven’t seen the film since the first screening in a dark, tiny viewing room in a post-production company’s facility 50 years ago," he said.
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He later added: "The film certainly helped me in my career, and I am grateful for that."Īt the same time, Hackman admits that he hasn't revisited his Oscar-winning star turn as fleet-footed New York detective, Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle since filming the movie five decades ago. "Filmmaking has always been risky - both physically and emotionally - but I do choose to consider that film a moment in a checkered career of hits and misses," Hackman told Post reporter Hannah Frishberg in a short e-mail interview. The legendary actor - who has become a full-time novelist since stepping away from Hollywood following 2004's Welcome to Mooseport - gave his first public interview in years to the New York Post in a piece about William Friedkin's classic police thriller, which opened in theaters on Oct. Gene Hackman has been happily retired from the film business for nearly two decades, but he couldn't pass up the opportunity to mark the 50th anniversary of The French Connection. (Photo: 20th Century Fox Film Corp./courtesy Everett Collection) Gene Hackman stars in William Friedkin's 1971 classic, The French Connection, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year.
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