THURSDAY THEATRE

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Have you seen this movie!?
What catches your spying-eye radar!?

‘Bullitt’ is a dramatic thriller that hit theaters 10/17/1968 to critical acclaim, rave reviews & was a box office success. Co-produced by Steve McQueen’s Solar Productions & Warner Bros. 7 Arts, this film was directed by Peter Yates & starred McQueen, Robert Vaughn & Jacqueline Bisset. The screenplay was written by Alan R Trustman & Harry Kleiner, who based it on Robert L Fish’s 1963 novel ‘Mute Witness’. This movie is most-notable for its realism of using actual locations (instead of studio sets), attention to procedural detail &, of course, the car chase scene, which is regarded as 1 of the most-influential in cinema history & featured a Ford Mustang & a Dodge Charger (2 of each were used to film the scene). Filming of that 10 minute, 53 second scene (which started at San Francisco CA’s Fisherman’s Wharf & ended outside the city at the Guadalupe Canyon Parkway in Brisbane CA) took 3 weeks, resulting in many inconsistencies in locations (the route of the chase itself is geographically impossible if assumed to take place in real time) & scenes (the Charger, for instance, loses 5 hubcaps). The cast also includes Don Gordon, Simon Oakland, Norman Fell, Robert Duvall, Georg Stanford Brown, Carl Reindel, Felice Orlandi, Vic Tayback, Ed Peck, Pat Renella, Paul Genge, John Aprea, Bill Hickman, Justin Tarr, Robert Lipton, Al Checco & Marjorie Eaton. Finally, among other inspired legacy tie-ins, 47 years after the movie debuted, a 2015 episode of CBS’ “Blue Bloods” centered around the reported theft of the “Bullitt Mustang”.