Take One (Jul-Aug 1971)

ANATOMY OFA CHAS E BY WILLIAM FRIEDKIN About two and a half years ago, Phil D’Antoni told me the story of The French Connection. |t was then a book he had just optioned, based on the true story of an important narcotics investigation that took place in New York City between 1960-1962. | thought it was a terrific story filled with fascinating characters. The narrative as set forth by Robin Moore contained all the raw material for an exciting screenplay, except for a chase sequence. It was on this point that D'Antoni and | were in full agreement: what we needed most of all was a powerful chase. In fact, our thinking frankly followed formula lines: a guy gets killed in the first few minutes; checkerboard the stories of the cop and the smuggler for approximately 20 minutes; bring the two antagonists together and tighten the screws for another ten minutes or so, then come in with a fantastic ten minute chase. After this, it was a question of keeping the pressure on for another 20 minutes or so, followed by a slam-bang finish with a surprise twist. D'Antoni, of course, had been the producer of Bullitt, which offered what was probably the best car chase of the sound film era. It was because of this that | felt challenged to do another kind of chase, one which, while it might remind people of Bullitt, would not be essentially similar. | felt that we shouldn’t have one car chasing another car. We had to come up with something different; something that not only fulfilled the needs of the story, but that also defined the character of the man who was going to be doing the chasing — Popeye Doyle, an obsessive, selfrighteous, driving, driven man. At this point, | should say that the chase sequence in Bullitt is perhaps the best I’ve ever seen. When someone creates a sequence of such power, | don’t feel it’s diminished if someone else comes along and is challenged by it to do better. The chase in Bullitt works perfectly well in its own framework, and so, | feel, does the one in French Connection. When a director puts a scene like that on film, it really stands forever as a kind of yardstick to shoot at, one that will never really be topped. That will always provide a challenge for other film makers. CONCEPT After | had agreed to direct the film, D’Antoni and | spent the better part of a year working on what turned out to be two unimaginative, unsuccessful screenplays. The project was eventually dropped by National General Pictures, and lay dormant for about 10 months. During that time, D'Antoni and | continued to work on it. | had been involved in production and post-production work on Boys in The Band, so my own involvement then was a kind of sideline. Every studio in the business turned the picture down, some twice. Occasionally, we would get a glimmer of hope, and during one such glimmer, we contacted Ernest Tidyman, who had been a criminal reporter for the New York Times, and had written a novel called Shaft, the galleys of which D’Antoni had read and passed on to me. Tidyman had not written a screenplay before. But we felt, because of what we read of Shaft, that he had a good ear for the kind of New York street dialogue we wanted for The French Connection. Tidyman agreed to work with us on an entirely new script. Up to this point, we had a storyline that was pretty solid, but we had nothing in the script that indicated the kind of chase we eventually wound up with. We had spent a year and gone through two screenplays without indicating what the chase scene would be — because we didn't really have one. One day D’Antoni and | decided to force ourselves to spend an afternoon talking, with the hope that we could crack this whole idea of the chase wide open. We took a walk up Lexington Avenue in New York City. The walk lasted for about 50 blocks. Somewhere during the course of it, the inspiration began to strike us both, magically, at the same time. It’s impossible for either one of us to recall who first sparked it, but the sparks were fast and unrelenting. “What about a chase where a guy is in a car, running after a subway train —”’ “Fantastic. Who’s in the car?” ‘Well, it would have to be Doyle.”’ “Who's he chasing?” “Well, that would have to be Nicoli, Frog Number One’s heavy duty man.”’ “How does the thing start?” “Listen, what would happen if Doyle is coming home after having been taken off the case and Nicoli is on top of Doyle's building and he tries to kill him?” “... and in running away, Nicoli can’t get to his car.” “Doyle can’t get to his.”’ ‘“Nicoli jumps on board an elevated train and the only way Doyle can follow is by commandeering a Car.”’ “Terrific.” And so on. During that walk, D’Antoni and | ad-libbed the entire concept of the chase to one another, each building upon the other’s thoughts and suggestions. The next afternoon, we met with Tidyman and dictated to him our mutual concept. Tidyman took notes, then went off and put the thing in screenplay form. At this point, the chase was all we needed to complete a new draft of the script. The original draft of the chase ran about five or six pages of screenplay. It was very rough and hadn't the benefit Copyright Directors Guild of America, reprinted from the official Guild magazine, Action. 25