Hollywood in San Francisco by Joshua Gleich

Author:Joshua Gleich [Gleich, Joshua]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: 2018-11-15T08:00:00+00:00

4.9. Producers helped secure a mansion on Russian Hill by giving the owner, Kate Morrissey, a cameo in Bullitt (Warner Bros.–Seven Arts, 1968).

Despite San Francisco’s hospitality, the complicated and expansive car chase put Bullitt three weeks behind schedule, and Warner Bros. tried to clamp down the way studios always had: wrapping the location shoot and finishing the car chase on the backlot. The filmmakers found this preposterous, and McQueen had to flex his industry muscle to preserve Bullitt’s location aesthetic.166 After a weekend meeting in Hollywood, he returned with a promise to finish the film in San Francisco. The cost was forfeiting a six-picture deal between Warner Bros. and McQueen’s Solar Productions after just the first picture. Bullitt’s immediate success was likely a bitter pill for the short-lived Seven Arts studio heads, who might have prevailed over a lesser star. Yates, who had insisted on shooting entirely on location, scrapping the originally scheduled studio days, credited McQueen for having both the power and conviction as an actor-producer to defend the look of the picture.167

Seven Arts’ predicament reveals how much uncertainty extensive location shooting introduced to production. McQueen estimated that television-trained directors like Yates and Lester averaged sixty to seventy setups per day, compared to the studio average of eight to twelve. At that pace, the major savings on set construction and studio rentals balanced higher transportation and living costs. But Yates suggested, “Studios don’t like shooting of this kind. They don’t have a close control. It’s the beginning of total independence. This is the first major film of this kind ever shot entirely on location with an all-American crew.”168 How could a studio predict whether this freedom was warranted? Lester had a far better track record on location than Yates, but the San Francisco locations provided far more box office value for Bullitt than Petulia. The daily value of shooting on location also varied tremendously. The car chase in Bullitt and the party scene in Petulia required far more days for fewer pages of script than any other sequences.

Both films’ reliance on editing heightened the uncertainty of location production. While Lester could shoot more setups per day, he also needed to overshoot the script, building the film in post-production from a variety of fragmented clips. Editor Frank Keller, who would win an Oscar for Bullitt, faced a similar task. Other editors credited Keller with figuring out an ingenious way to cover up a mistake during the car chase, when a stunt car filled with dummies triggered the climactic car explosion too early. A short montage hides the mistake and preserves the excitement.169 Nonetheless, the car chase stretches the limits of continuity editing, tracing an impossible path through the city that knocks five hubcaps off the villain’s car.170 Upon completion, the chase looked so remarkable that the producers arranged to show the whole scene on The Ed Sullivan Show to promote the film’s release,171 even though as unedited footage, it looked messy enough for the studio to kill a six-picture deal.

One of Bullitt’s editing innovations came even before shooting began.

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