Bullitt - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[discussimdb]

Fan of Bullitt or just want to share your movie knowledge? This topic is dedicated to all trivia and questions related to Bullitt

[darrell]

Upset from seeing Bullitt unmoved by a murder, Bissett's character leaves the car on Bayshore Freeway. Moving toward the Bay from traffic, she picks a flower, seen to be a protected California Poppy. Since she's on the State right-of-way, she's committed a misdemeanor in front of her boyfriend police detective. Penalties are a $1000 and 6 months in jail these days. Hope he didn't notice.

[edgar]

There were two cars used in the movie, one which was used in the majority of the heroic jump shots and ultimately ended up crashing into a ravine, and another which wasn't wrecked during filming. The crashed car turned up in a junk yard in Mexico but is literally a pile of rust. The other one was repaired after filming and sold, passing through two owners before it was purchased by a Robert Kiernan in 1974 for $6000. Mustangs were cheap and plentiful back then so it was used as a daily driver until it was parked up with mechanical issues in 1980. Robert and son Sean began putting it back together in early 2000s, before life took over and the restoration stalled. Robert passed away in 2014 and left the car to Sean. He contacted Ford around that time and the mystery of the original movie car was solved.

[cameron]

The film proved to be highly influential on many cop dramas for year to come. It's templates for scene set-ups, visual style and characterization influenced the look of future films such as Dirty Harry (1971), The French Connection (1971), and many others. It's influence can even be seen well into the 1990s with some key scenes being paid homage in The Fugitive (1993) and Heat (1995).

[oscar]

The chase sequence takes place over several non-contiguous streets in and south of San Francisco. The sequence starts under Highway 101 in the Mission District. When the Charger does a U-turn on Precita Avenue to follow the Mustang, a storage tank on Potrero Hill, in the southeast part of San Francisco, is visible in the distance. The next few scenes are in the Bernal and Potrero areas; you can see green hills to the southwest on the horizon in one shot, and a quick view of downtown San Francisco to the northwest in another. Twenty-one seconds later, and five miles away, Coit Tower appears in the Mustang's front window to the east (as can be ascertained by the buildings' shadows). They then come to a stop for two cable cars at Hyde and Filbert Streets. The twin towers of Sts. Peter and Paul Church are visible just to the right of Coit Tower. They turn hard left onto Columbus Avenue, a four-lane street with a concrete median. A F-type street car is seen coming the opposite direction. They top a rise and Alcatraz Island comes into view slightly on the left, placing them at about Stockton and Chestnut. They turn north, then west, then south, headed uphill. In the next cut, they are suddenly going downhill, north towards the Bay. The next few scenes are different camera angles that capture the same sequence as the two cars head downhill and turn west off the same street. This is obvious, due to the repeated presence of the same Cadillac, and a green Volkswagen Beetle that is seen three times. They complete this sequence by turning west in front of the same Caddy towards the bay, a few blocks north of Van Ness. They turn left or south, going uphill, and then the scene cuts to the cars headed downhill or north on Larkin Street, before they turn west onto Francisco Street. In the next clip, the Dodge has leapt six blocks across Van Ness, and is headed north on Laguna Street. They turn from Laguna Street, in front of Ft. Mason, onto Marina Boulevard, in front of a Safeway store. (The bottom of the store's name can be seen as the Dodge veers onto Marina.) They accelerate down Marina Boulevard with the Marina Green and the Golden Gate Bridge briefly visible in the background. In the next cut, Ft. Mason is again visible in the background as they turn once more onto Marina Boulevard. In the next clip, they pass in front of the Safeway again. The next cut puts them eight miles away, back in the Vistacion Valley district, turning right from University Street on to Mansell Street. From there, they leap three miles to the entrance of the Guadelupe Canyon Parkway on San Bruno Mountain in Daly City, heading east. To extend the length of the chase, the cars are shown driving east then west and back and forth, while supposedly heading only one way, before the Charger crashes at the Parkway's eastern exit in Brisbane.

[morris]

The real John Ross (Felice Orlandi) never says a word. The credits list Pat Renella as the real John Ross.

[toni]

Several years later, Robert Vaughn actively considered going into politics. To his dismay, he discovered that people couldn't take him seriously, or found him untrustworthy, as they remembered his oily performance in this film.

[cassandra]

About 50% of the film was shot silent, with background noise, sound effects and spoken dialogue looped in post production.

[edgar]

Carl Reindel, who plays the young detective with Steve McQueen and Don Gordon, has the first name Carl as spoken by McQueen's Bullitt. In the credits it's only 'Stanton'.

[ronnie]

Robert Vaughn said in an interview that this movie set the tone for dramatic car chases. He said that many people came to the movie just to see the chase scenes.

[richard]

In 2008, Motor Trend Magazine did an article promoting the 40th anniversary edition Bullitt Mustang. Because Dodge had also brought back the Charger, the article featured a promotional gimmick of photographing the 2008 Mustang and 2008 Charger simulating the famous chase scene with the writers breaking down the chase, moment by moment, to explain each car's strengths and weaknesses.

[marc]

This film is edited entirely by cuts except in two instances. The first occurs when the jazz club scene dissolves to a shot of Steve McQueen lying in bed. The second occurs after the Dodge crashes into the gas station and burns, when the shot of the two dead villains dissolves to a scene at the police station.

[sophie]

Much was made at the time, and over the years since, of Lieutenant Bullitt's stylish "casual" attire of a turtleneck worn with a sport coat, slacks, and suede-like shoes. Since the major portion of the story in the film takes place over a Saturday and Sunday, this was actually in keeping with some police departments' traditions of a more relaxed dress code on weekends for plainclothes officers. Bullitt is first seen at work when meeting Chalmers on a Friday morning, wearing a traditionally conservative navy suit under his trench coat, with a white shirt, dark tie and dress shoes. These clothes were actually supplied by a menswear shoppe in London, England, Dougie Heywood's, Peter Yates' tailors.

[alyssa]

The famous car chase lasts ten minutes and fifty-three seconds.

[clayton]

After Lieutenant Frank Bullitt breaks the glass door of the hospital basement to try to catch the killer, across from the parked ambulance, the black 1968 Dodge Charger can be seen parked on the left where presumably (unknown to Bullitt) the killer, and Phil the driver, are hiding.

[janice]

"BULLITT" was rated M/PG, making it one of the earliest movies to be rated by the MPAA.

[jessica]

The chase lasts ten minutes and fifty-three seconds. 45 seconds of the chase were filmed on Taylor Street, from 4 different cameras, giving the impression of 4 different parts of the chase. Notice the green Volkswagen Beetle in all of these shots.

[willard]

During the famous car chase scene, the Dodge and Mustang pass the same dark-colored Volkswagen Beetle at least three times, and a white Pontiac Firebird is seen at least twice.

[ray]

This was Peter Yates' first American film.

[nicholas]

As of January 2018, the original green Mustang GT from the film was brought out into the spotlight (after being in hiding for decades by the NJ owners) on stage at the Detroit Motor Show with Ford to introduce the new 2018 'Bullitt' Mustang. The original typed letter on Steve McQueen's Solar Production Company's letter head asking to buy back 'his' car in 1977 was also on hand.