“The only thing we had permits for was shooting on the elevated train,” explained William Friedkin, director of “The French Connection.” He and his producer met with the Head of Public Relations for the New York Transit Authority. They explained what they wanted to do and asked permission to do so. “You guys are crazy,” the official admonished, “I could never let you do something like what you just described. First of all: there has never been an elevated train that has been hijacked, there has never been a train crash on the elevated system of New York, and we’ve never had a car chasing a train. It would be really HARD.” The director and the production manager got up to leave. Fortunately, the producer was perceptive enough to expect the conditions the New York transit official alluded to. “How HARD?” asked the producer knowingly. The officer’s response was the first step toward creating what is arguably the greatest car chase ever filmed in movie history; a sequence that was so audacious in its execution that it could never be legally performed again. “$40,000 and a one-way trip to Jamaica,” he replied. He was serious and that’s what the production supposedly paid him for. However, according to Friedkin, the film did not originally have $40,000 earmarked for payouts. The budget for the entire film was approximately $1.5 million and the film would exceed that by $300,000; due in part to pay cuts like the one just described. Friedkin convinced the studio that this was the way to do it. He asked the man why he specifically needed a “one-way ticket.” “Because,” the traffic officer confirmed, “if I let you do what you just told me to do on that train, I’ll be fired. I want to live the rest of my life in Jamaica.” And he so he did; Happy forever.

“The French Connection” is based on a real drug case in New York City. Real-life detectives Sonny Grosso and his partner Eddie Egan (the inspiration for Gene Hackman’s character Popeye Doyle) broke up an organized crime ring in 1961 and seized 112 pounds of heroin, a record amount at the time. The investigation was the subject of a Robin Moore book and an Academy Award-winning film. For legal reasons, Egan and Grosso’s names were changed to Doyle and Russo. However, despite the name changes, Sonny Grosso has been quoted as saying that the film is a 95 percent accurate depiction of the events of the 10-month investigation. The only event that didn’t actually happen in the case was, in fact, the car chase scene in “THE FRENCH CONNECTION.”

William Friedkin felt that he needed the car chase or else he would have nothing more than “a police surveillance picture”. Friedkin goes on to say that “policing is like watching paint dry. It’s so boring.” He knew the movie needed the scene, but he didn’t know until a couple of weeks before principal photography began what the car chase scene in “THE FRENCH CONNECTION” would entail. One day, he and his producer decided to take a walk starting at 86th Street on the east side of Manhattan. They walked 55 blocks south. “We’re not going to stop, we’re not going to back down until we can think of a chase scene,” Friedkin recalled the two deciding. They heard the subway rumble under their feet, they saw the smoke rising from the streets. They saw the traffic and the crowds of people that make up New York. “We started improvising the chase.” This became the genesis for the scene that would obviously become the film’s signature sequence.

Gene Hackman’s stunt driver was named Bill Hickman. He was also the host of “Bullitt” starring Steve McQueen. Steve McQueen is said to have been one of the original choices for the role in “The French Connection” that Gene Hackman would inevitably play. Both “Bullitt” and “The French Connection” were produced by Philip D’Antoni. It was the car chase in “Bullitt” (which had only preceded “French Connection” by 3 years and was still very much in the memory) that set the standard for how exciting the car chase scene in ” The French Connection”. . It would eventually be decided that they would overtake the car chasing a Steve McQueen car with the car chasing a Gene Hackman elevated train.

According to the director, he did not storyboard the chase. “I didn’t write it,” insists Friedkin. “It wasn’t in any script. But we went to a number of places. There’s a guy named Fat Thomas who gets credit as a location manager. Fat Thomas was a £425 bookie in New York who had been arrested 52 times for gambling. with a conviction. But he knew New York like the back of his hand. He took me and showed me the area where I got permission to film the chase.” This neighborhood was the Stillwell Avenue line at Bay 50th Street near Coney Island. Friedkin would take the crew to all of these locations about a week before principal photography began and they discussed what could potentially happen while taking some notes. “We didn’t have any permits to film the chase. None. We didn’t have any permits from the city to be on the streets. But I had these off-duty cops with me, and if anything went wrong, they’d just show a badge.” and the problems would go away.

When they finished shooting everything they had planned, the director looked at the rushes and decided that he was not satisfied with the final results. “I thought it was pretty silly,” Friedkin admitted. One day, when they were supposed to be done, Bill Hickman, the stunt driver, accompanied the director to a downtown bar for a drink. The stunt driver turned to Friedkin and asked, “Well, boss, what do you think of the chase we filmed?” The director was forced to admit that he felt that he was not very good and that it was not as exciting as he would have hoped. Hickman blushed slightly and responded with a challenge. He asked that the car be placed under the elevated tracks the next morning at 8 am. “Get in the car with me,” he promised Friedkin, “and I’ll show you how to drive.”

They planned to shoot elsewhere that day, but the director went to the production manager and arranged for the car to be mounted with a camera in the bumper. He decided that he would operate the other camera over Bill Hickman’s shoulder because “he was young and single, and both cameramen had families.” Bill Hickman then drove 26 blocks through city traffic at 90 miles per hour with no paid extras and no permit. As a warning to pedestrians, they installed a police siren on top of the car that was never photographed. The only thing staged was the shot of the woman with the baby stroller.

Actor Randy Jurgensen describes what it was like: “The car was totally disassembled…and I sat in the passenger side. I was wrapped in a mattress and Billy Friedkin was in the back and he was on camera.” Jurgensen goes on to describe the conversation that took place just before the cameras started rolling: “Before getting in the car, Billy [Friedkin] spoke to Bill Hickman as follows: ‘We can only do this once, we’re not protected, we’re lucky if we get out of this without getting arrested, we’re going to steal this opportunity, so you have to give it to me. You REALLY have to give it to me. He weaved, we went to the curb once, we faced oncoming traffic once.” The car even lightly hit a city bus in such a way that it prevented the stunt car doors from being able to open.

The stunt driver kept his foot on the gas until he had to brake and the director kept encouraging him to do more. During the second drive, they needed to shoot some footage of Gene Hackman driving the vehicle. What they hadn’t anticipated was that someone would come out of his house, get in their car and drive to the shoot. “All of a sudden I see this blur,” Hackman recounted years later, “and this guy stops right in front of me.” Hackman hits the other driver, and the collision sent Hackman straight into a pillar. The cameraman was thrown to the floor of the trunk by the force of the impact. Fortunately, Hackman and the cameraman were not seriously injured.

Gerald Greenberg, the film’s editor, recalled, “Billy always wanted more of that stuff in there and they certainly played against Gene Hackman’s face and all the frustration Hackman could evoke. Many years after he shot the car chase scene in “THE FRENCH CONNECTION,” William Friedkin admitted: “It was a terrible thing to do, it was very dangerous and life-threatening. I have to tell you, I would never do anything like that again.”