The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 56: Something Unforgettable and Real

Episode Date: May 16, 2017

Bill was known for creating unforgettable car chases - but there was one chase he wished he could forget.  

This is the way I heard it. A high-performance convertible flies down a two-lane highway not too far from Hollywood, at speeds well in excess of the posted limits. In hot pursuit, a Ford station wagon pulling an empty trailer, driven by a stuntman looking to make a name for himself. The scene couldn't have been simpler, no special effects, no CGI, just a good old-fashioned Hollywood car chase. On his deathbed, 31 years later, Bill Hickman recalled that chase,

in vivid detail. In his mind's eye, he could still see the convertible, rounding the corner and disappearing from view. He could still feel his frustration at not being able to catch up. Had he been directing, that's the moment he would have yelled, cut. The two cars should have been much closer together, but a Ford station wagon is no match for a sports car. And despite all his skill behind the wheel, Bill just couldn't keep pace. Maybe had he been driving his Dodge, charger, the muscle car he drove in Bullets, things would have ended differently. Bill couldn't help but smile at the recollection. Now that was a car chase.

As the stunt coordinator on Bullitt, Bill was asked to create the most realistic car chase ever filmed. And so he did. With Steve McQueen in hot pursuit, driving a Ford Mustang 390, the two men turned the hills of San Francisco into their personal racetrack, complete with hairpin turn. and asphalt launching pads. The muscle cars literally flew through the air. Hubcaps exploded from their wheels and rolled crazily down the streets and the fiery explosion at the end when Bill's car crashes into the gas pumps at the filling station, that set a new standard on the big screen for

vehicular verisimilitude. It was the mistakes, though, not just the stunts that brought a new sense of realism to every Hickman sequence. In one shot, Bill sideswipes a parked car with a camera affixed to it, knocking it sideways. Normally, footage like that would wind up on the cutting room floor, but Bill argued that the mistake made the chase feel more real, and the director agreed. So the shot stayed in, and bullets went on to win an Oscar. After that, every director in Hollywood wanted a car chase with the Hickman touch, more reality, more danger, more authenticity. In the seven-ups, Bill drove his Pontiac de Ville so aggressively that the actor in the passenger seat next to him vomited and screamed in terror. That was not in the script, but the director

kept it in because it was real. During the French connection, the door of a parked car opens seconds before Bill speeds by it 60 miles an hour and rips it off its hinges. It too looks shockingly real, because it was. So too was the severed door that went spiraling through the air like a giant ninja star, nearly decapitating the camera crew and sending passers by diving for cover. In that same sequence, Bill Hickman, doubling Gene Hackman, chases down a bad guy who commandeers the L train in Brooklyn. The stunt takes place 50 feet below the speeding train as Hickman's 1971,

Pontiac Lamonts tries to keep pace on a busy New York street. It was a difficult scene to shoot, and after the first take, the director was disappointed. William Friedkin, the man who would go on to direct The Exorcist, told Bill he wanted a car chase that would literally scare the hell out of the audience. Something unforgettable and real, he said. Bill smiled at the memory, ruefully, as he recalled his conversation with the famous director. You want unforgettable and real, he said. Meet me tomorrow morning at the corner of 86th and still well, and bring your camera, if you have the balls for it.

I'll show you something real. The next morning, William Friedkin strapped himself and his camera into the backseat of Bill's Lamont's and captured the most harrowing footage to ever make it on to the big screen. screen. Why? Because Bill Hickman exceeds speeds of 90 miles an hour in actual New York City traffic. No special effects, no CGI, and no permit. The result? Six Oscars for the French Connection and a performance that William Friedkin called the scariest thing I've ever seen. It occurred to Bill that his entire life had been one long car chase, and now, as he lay dying, he thought about how far Hollywood had come from those early scenes where actors sat behind fake windshields and fake steering wheels and pretended to drive as fake footage rolled by unconvincingly in the rear window.

He also thought about how lucky he'd been over the years. After a lifetime of pushing the envelope, it was a marriage. no one had ever been seriously hurt in any of his scenes. Unless, of course, you count that very first chase back in 1955 when he was a young stuntman and a station wagon, trying to keep up with that damn Porsche on that highway, not too far from Hollywood. In his mind's eye, he could still see the convertible rounding the corner and disappearing from view.

He could still feel the frustration at not being able to catch up, and he could still recall what awaited him when he finally did, something unforgettable and real. Slumped behind the wheel of the mangled sports car was the young driver who should have been sitting in the station wagon next to Bill. The driver who should have listened to the cop who ticketed them both two hours earlier and told them to slow the hell down. The driver whose Porsche should have been secured in the empty trailer behind Bill's station wagon as they made their way to the Salinas racetrack. Alas, the kid had insisted upon driving his race car to the track himself,

to warm up the engine for the race he was scheduled to run later that afternoon. It was a scene, all right, but this was no movie, and with no director on hand to say, cut. The action played out in slow motion, as real life often does. Bill ran to the wreck and pulled his young protege from the smoldering pile of twisted steel. There were no last words, no final close-up, just the sound of one ultimate exhale seconds before the kid died in Bill's arms and everything faded to black. Thus began the career of Bill Hickman, a stuntman and a station wagon whose quest for reality was unmatched and whose impact

on action movies was unforgettable and real. And thus began the legend of a 24-year-old actor whose need for speed was matched only by his impact on American cinema and whose fleeting work on the big screen is still remembered as real and unforgettable. A rebel without a cause. James Dean. Anyway, that's the way I heard it.