New in at Cinema Books: Mission Impossible My Life in Music by Lalo Schifrin, $35.00 cloth.  Invaluable insights into jazz, classical musical styles and their interactions in his film and television work.  We all remember the music of Mission Impossible but he also was nominated for The Competition, Cool Hand Look. How about Bullitt and television shows such as Dr Kildare, The Equalizer, Mannix?  Book includes cd.

Let’s just say it: the crossed muskets front and center really make me think the name of this county is Bullet, but the flag designer misspelled it because he or she is from Kentucky.  It’s not very nice of me to revert to a yokel stereotype, but I’m sure 90% of readers would agree. First impressions are a bitch.

Once we get past that, the symbolism is kinda janky. The white background represents salt, which was an important natural resource in Bullitt County 200 years ago. The green in the text represents the fertile land and prolific game from 200 years ago. The muskets represent the fact that 200 years ago, people shot other people a bunch to get their land. The 20 stars refer to Bullitt being the 20th county in Kentucky (in 1796, naturally.)

Bullet, she said,

and I ran to
the computer faster than one
of those speeding things to prove

once and for all

that I was right and
she was wrong,
marking this day forever on
my calendar of critical events –

births and deaths,
marriages and divorces,
hook ups and break ups,
really good steaks –

and I shouted from
the far side
of the house,

where geese think they are World War I
flying aces rather than
a scrumptious meal
for eight over holiday
dressing: It’s Bullitt, you stupid cow!

Steve McQueen would never let me
down, not in 1968 and not now…
You said Bullet!

I could not contain
my sheer joy and
I rubbed it in her face
like a nice seasoning on a
roast. She simply

shrugged,
flipped the page in her catalog,
and sighed: That’s what I said.

I couldn’t argue.

The Porsche dominated our first eBay Motors Showdown. I guess that shouldn’t come as a huge surprise, though of course, as many people pointed out, the Bullitt will be much cheaper to own and mod over the year. Still, used 911s are pretty tempting these days, and the 993 is many people’s favorite air-cooled Porsche.

Anyway, I think we’re gonna have some fun with these eBay Motors Showdowns. Again, anything goes as long as the prices are fairly close and it seems like a fair fight. If you come across any cool auctions or have any suggestions for future match-ups, shoot me an e-mail or leave a comment below.

I’ve had a lot of people asking me about the Showroom Showdown, which stalled out over the summer. Why the lapse? Well, it seems like we ran through just about every new car combo out there, and it was getting harder and harder to pick compelling match-ups. A bunch of members also suggested that I start doing used car showdowns, since most of us car enthusiasts go used anyway. So today I’m kicking off our eBay Motors Showdown. Each week I will feature two cars plucked off eBay Motors. They’ll both be priced about the same, and they’ll both be enthusiast cars. Other than that, pretty much anything goes, as long as I think we’ll have a good battle.

This week I’m starting out with two cars I love. In fact, I waste a lot of time looking at Bullitts and 993s on eBay. 993s tend to command a bit more money than Bullitts, so for this showdown I picked out a nicely modified HPDE ready 993, which in some ways is a lot cooler than a stock car, but will probably command less money. The Bullitt in question looks to be a low mile, clean car. Both cars are fast, fun and should hold their value pretty well. So, which would you choose?

This is a list of probably the most important Mustang movies. I will also link You to the other Mustang movies list websites in the end of this post. Every video I mentioned are linked to their trailers or Mustang scenes on YouTube. Enjoy!

Le gendarme de Saint-Tropez (1964) The first movie in which a Mustang appeared. A French comedy. Not a Hollywood film!

Goldfinger (1964) Bond. James Bond.

Bullitt (1968) Famous car chase

Diamonds Are Forever (1971) Car chase. James Bond again.

Gone in Sixty Seconds (1974) 1973 Mustang

Charlie’s Angels (1976) The 1976 Cobra II

Later on Mustang gets more and more popular in the movies. For more lists visit here or right here for the bigger one!

And by the way, I really like music videos. With Mustangs too.

El disco debut de los catalanes Bullitt no podía tener un mejor título:  Squared Wheels. Y es que el cuarteto es una auténtica máquina de hacer rock con melodías pero avanzan a paso lento, lento pero seguro. Estas ruedas cuadradas que llevan de serie les impiden apretar el acelerador, sí, pero la banda lo tiene muy asumido:  “Si nos pudiésemos dedicar únicamente a tocar no iríamos tan lentos. El problema está en compaginar la vida privada de cada uno con el grupo. Además, estamos en una edad en que no tenemos demasiadas prisas y sí muchas obligaciones. (…) Principalmente queremos que lo que salga del local nos convenza a todos y eso a veces también nos lleva su tiempo.”

Formados en el verano de 2006, Ferran (bajo), Carlus (guitarra), Enric (batería) y Xavi (guitarra y voces) tampoco esconden las dificultades para encontrar una discográfica que apostara por ellos. Por todos es sabido que son malos tiempos para la lírica, y haciendo un rock con pulsión guitarrera y músculo hardcore, que a nivel nacional los relaciona directamente con No More Lies o Aina, estos Bullitt lo tenían doblemente complicado.

“Estuvimos bastante tiempo pensando seriamente en la autoedición porqué no hubo respuesta por parte de los sellos a los que hicimos llegar el disco, o si la hubo fue negativa. Hasta que llegó Èric (Fuentes) y nos convenció para fichar por su sello Hang the Dj! Records. (…) Nos ha ayudado a darnos a conocer y sobretodo a despertar el interés de la prensa, algo que siempre es muy complicado, sobre todo des del extra-radio, con un primer disco y sin que mucha gente sepa de dónde salimos.”  Seguro que se ganaron al líder de los Unfinished Sympathy en uno de sus conciertos. Y es que en este sentido, las ruedas de la banda están sobradamente rodadas, valga la redundancia.

“Los grupos de estudio no nos apasionan demasiado. Cuando escuchamos un disco y nos gusta esperamos que el directo de la banda sea tan bueno como la grabación, y en eso estamos. Creemos que para hacer buenos directos sólo hay una fórmula: hacer cuantos más conciertos mejor.” Teniendo en cuenta el background hardcoreta de esta banda -con exmiembros de Airmail, Without, Tailbone- y que dos de sus componentes son vecinos de Sant Feliu de Guíxols, grabar su debut en los estudios Ultramarinos con Santi García estaba cantado. “Si además le sumas que somos amigos desde el instituto… Es nuestro faro y por muchos años!”, nos explica su cantante, Xavi. Vamos, que no les debió ser muy complicado coger fecha y hora con el solicitadísimo productor. Y por lo que cuentan, seguro que repetirían la experiencia. “Poder contar con el consejo y las aportaciones de unos tipos cómo Santi y su hermano Víctor es un lujo. Son gente que ama lo que hace y que siempre saca lo mejor de ti.”  (…)

FORMACIÓN: Xavi (voz, guitarra), Ferran (bajo), Carlus (guitarra) y Enric (batería).

PROCENDENCIA: Sant Feliu de Guíxols y Girona

AFINES: Jawbreaker, No More Lies, Samiam, Foo Fighters

ÚLTIMA REFERENCIA: Squared Wheels (álbum, Hang the Dj! Records)

PÁGINA WEB: www.myspace.com/bullitrules

(FRAGMENTO DEL ARTÍCULO APARECIDO EN LA REVISTA ROCKZONE)

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To say that Bullitt had a car chase scene is like saying Steve McQueen was a good actor.  Both are arguably gross understatements.  The history-making car chase from Bullitt is still considered the gold standard for which all such scenes are held to today.

McQueen hadn’t planned on a driving double– in fact, he firmly insisted on doing all the Mustang stunt driving himself.  But that all quickly changed– while shooting an early scene (that can be seen in the film), he missed a turn pretty hard and nearly lost it.  The studio exec’s immediately pulled the plug on McQueen’s plans and tapped professional stunt drivers with a little more practical experience and skill. As fate would have it, main driving duties were handed over to none other than McQueen’s good buddy (and auto and motorcycle racing legend) Bud Ekins.

The story behind the filming of this ground-breaking scene (I hate to say it) is more fascinating to me than the whole of the film itself.  Read on for great behind the scenes details on how history was made in pulling-off this incredible piece of work– the likes of which had never been attempted before.

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THE GREATEST CHASE OF ALL–

An inside look at how they filmed BULLITT, the granddaddy of car pursuit movies.

BY: Susan Encinas (Muscle Car Review, March, 1987)

Where were you in 1968? You might have opened up the movie section of the newspaper and read a review about the newly released movie BULLITT. One such review, by the National Observer, said, ” Whatever you have heard about the auto chase scene in BULLITT is probably true…a terrifying, deafening shocker.” Life magazine wrote, “… a crime flick with a taste of genius…an action sequence that must be compared to the best in film history.”

With reviews like that, and sharing double billing with the hit BONNIE AND CLYDE, BULLITT devastated audiences with incredible scenes of leaping, screaming automobiles that seemed to fly off the screen. Among all of Hollywood’s road movies, BULLITT unquestionably made film history with its original car chase sequences. There may have been chase scenes before, but nothing before or since has equalled the intensity and impact of BULLITT. The scenes, which were novelty then but classic now, were brilliantly executed. Over the years, fans have asked questions about the two cars used in the movie, a 1968 Dodge Charger and a 1968 Mustang GT. Of all the musclecars offered in the late sixties, why were these two cars chosen, and how were they modified to survive the torturous driving?

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It’s been 19 years since BULLITT was filmed, however the magic of this special movie has not diminished. We questioned some of the crew who participated in the filming, and asked them how the chase was coordinated and shot, who was involved in the chase scenes and what happened during the filming. Steve McQueen and director Peter Yates brought in some of the best names in the business in preparation for the filming of BULLITT’s chase scenes, and we were able to track some of them down. We interviewed Carey Loftin, stunt coordinator for BULLITT and occasional driver of the BULLITT Mustang; Bud Ekins, the main stunt driver of the Mustang, aside from McQueen; and Loren Janes, who had doubled for McQueen for nearly 20 years and stunted for McQueen during the airport sequence at the end of the film. We also interviewed Max Balchowsky, the man responsible for maintaining the Mustang GT and the Charger throughout the filming. Finally, we spoke with Ron Riner, who acted as transportation coordinator for Warner Brothers on the BULLITT set.

We set out to learn what the recipe is for such a successful chase sequence. What we found out was that there is none; it was pretty much a hit and miss thing and, as Ron Riner put it, “other people have tried to put the same combination together to get the same results and haven’t really done it. Before we’d shoot a scene, everyone, the location people, the police department, the stuntmen, the director and Steve, would get into discussions. We realized we didn’t know what to do because no one had ever done this before.” What hadn’t been done before was a chase scene, done “at speed”(up to 110 miles per hour) through the city streets and not on a movie studio back lot. Bud Elkins said, “I think it was the first time they did a complete car chase at normal camera speed. What you saw is what really happened. It was real!”

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McQueen was determined to have “the best car chase ever done,” recalls Carey Loftin. “I told Steve I knew a lot about camera angles and speeds to make it look fast. You can undercrank the camera so you can control everything in the scene. Then when it’s run, it’ll look like high speed and the car will appear to be handling real well.” McQueen refused to hear of it, and advised Loftin that money was no object. “Fine,” Loftin replied. “Until you run out of money, you’ve got to stop me!”

In an interview with Motor Trend magazine, Steve McQueen related his desire to bring a high speed chase to the screen. “I always felt a motor racing sequence in the street, a chase in the street, could be very exciting because you have the reality objects to work with, like bouncing off a parked car. An audience digs sitting there watching somebody do something that I’m sure almost all of them would like to do.”

BULLITT was also the first picture done with live sound (some of which was added later as needed). For example, additional sound was needed because on occasion a tire squeal was not picked up by the microphones. Bud Elkins remembers blowing the rear end of the Mustang at Willow Springs winding the gears for engine noise to be added to the soundtrack.

To prepare himself, his crew and the cars for the movie sequence, McQueen and company went to the Cotati race course near San Francisco. “Steve handled the Mustang real well,” recalled Riner. “He flowed well with the car.” Also on hand was the late Bill Hickman, the fantastic stunt driver who would handle the menacing Dodge Charger in BULLITT. “Bill came in with the Charger,” Riner said. “And he flipped it around and he slid in backwards. He was excellent.”

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The BULLITT chase scenes were shot around Easter of 1968. When city officials were first approached about shooting in the streets of San Francisco, they balked at the proposed high speeds and the idea of filming part of the chase on the Golden Gate Bridge. Eventually, it was agreed to keep the chase within only a few city blocks. McQueen was the prime motivator behind the chase sequence, and then director Peter Yates and Carey Loftin worked out logistics behind the scenes.

McQueen hadn’t planned on having a stunt driver. Relates Carey Loftin:”The first thing Steve said was, he was going to do his own driving. Well, I wasn’t going to argue, so I said, ‘okay, fine’.” McQueen’s stint as a stunt driver didn’t last long, however. “He overshot a turn, smoked the tires and everything. It’s in the film,” said Bud Elkins. “When Steve did that, it wasn’t on purpose. He goofed up, and they said, ‘that’s it, get him out of the car’. The next morning they were spraying my hair down and cutting it. Consequently, it was Elkins who drove the car down hilly Chestnut Avenue. Also, according to the book entitled The Films of Steve McQueen by Casey St. Charnaz, the other reason for McQueen’s removal from the Mustang was that McQueen’s wife at the time found out that he wanted to do all his own driving and apparently SHE had some input into the decision not to have him do all the driving.

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As director Peter Yates prepared to begin filming the chase scenes, there were four drivers, McQueen, Bud Ekins, Bill Hickman, and in a few scenes, Carey Loftin. Loren Janes tells up, “Carey Loftin was easily the best car man in the business. He brought in Bill Hickman to play a part and drive the other car.” Loftin recalls: “I asked (the studio) what kind of guy were they looking for? And they described Bill Hickman, who was working on the LOVE BUG at the same time. Well, I said, he’s sitting right here. They really described Bill Hickman.”

The screenplay of the movie was written by Alan Trustman, based on the novel, Mute Witness by Robert L. Pike. But the story, according to Ron Riner was not the key element to the success of the movie. Riner says, “I think basically the story was long and confusing, so when the chase came along it was so good it gave more substance to the movie. I think it really saved the film, because most people don’t remember the story, they remember the chase. You couldn’t really remember the complete story, if somebody asked you, unless you read the script, because the script was much better and made more sense.”

As filming of the chase progressed, Loftin wanted to see the daily work (rushes). He was told that Mr. McQueen wouldn’t like that. Loftin insisted, and threatened to quit unless he could view the daily work. “It worked out really good,” Loftin said with a smile. “Because as we watched the rushes, you could hear a pin drop. I was sitting 3 or 4 rows in front of him (McQueen) and when it was over, he came down, stuck out his hand, and said, ‘Mr. Loftin, when you need me for a closeup you WILL let me know, won’t you?”

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As for the cars, Max Balchowsky tells us, “I suggested they get a 390 GT. I had suggested using a Mustang, and a Dodge Charger, or else there would be too may Fords in the picture. I thought we’d mix up the cars.” The two 1968, four-speed Mustang GT fastbacks were purchased primarily because, promotionally, they were the best deal at the time. As far as Bud Ekins can recall, he feels the reason they used the Mustang was because “they wanted it to look like a cop car. This was his personal car and he wasn’t a rich guy, he didn’t have a real nice car. And it was Steve’s idea to put the big dent in the fender, to show that it got banged up and he didn’t have enough money or the time to fix it.”

Warner Brothers purchased two four-speed Dodge Chargers… “at a Chrysler dealership in Glendale California,” recalls Ron Riner. He also said the Dodge Chargers had to be purchased without promotional consideration, but after the success of the movie and the increase in Charger sales, Chrysler was more than willing to be generous with their vehicles to Warner Brothers for future projects. Mr. Riner posed an interesting premise: “did you realize that there wouldn’t be an 01 car (the General Lee in Dukes of Hazzard) if we hadn’t done BULLITT and Dodge hadn’t sold so many Chargers?”

Before the filming could be done, the Charger and the Mustang required preparation. One of the best wrenchmen in the movie business, Max Balchowsky, recalls the Mustang in particular needed considerable modifications so it could hold up during the relentless beatings it would take during the filming. “Carey said they were gonna do a lot of jumping with it, and he said it had to be strong. So I was a little hesitant. I didn’t know if they wanted to go over 50 foot cliffs. I had no idea what they wanted to do until I got there.” To beef up the Mustang, Balchowsky started with the suspension, reinforcing the shock towers, adding crossmembers and reinforcements, exchanging the springs for replacements with higher deflection rates and replacing the stock shocks with Konis. All suspension parts were magnafluxed and replaced where nescessary. The engine also came in for some modifications, including milling the heads, adding an aftermarket high performance ignition system and reworking the the carburetor and adding headers.

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On the Mustang, Mr. Balchowsky recalls, “everybody suggested I put a Holley on the Mustang, it was better than the Ford carburetor. I’ve always had good luck with Fords, and didn’t want to spend money if i didn’t have to putting a Holley on. It ran good, needed just a few little adjustments. I changed the distributor and all, but basically never had the engine apart on the Ford.” Ron Riner remembers “the stock Mustang had undercarriage modifications, not only for the movie, but for Steve McQueen. Steve liked the sound of the car and he wanted mags. We hopped it up because Steve wanted the car hopped up. He was still a kid.”

Balchowsky remembers “I hardly had to anything to the Dodge’s engine, but what I was worried about was the strength of the front end.” To shore up the front, Balchowsky revised the torsion bars, beefed up the control arms and added heavy duty shocks. As with the Mustang, all parts were ‘fluxed. For the rear end, Balchowsky told us, “I got some special rear springs, what you call a high spring rate, a flat without any arch in it, and using that spring the car would stay low. It’s similar to the same springs they use in police cars, which makes a good combination. When the police specify a package, they have more spring here, a little bigger brake there, a little bit more happening in the shocks, and it makes a good car. But the director of BULLITT wanted a brand new car instead of an ex-police car, so I got the springs from a friend at Chrysler. We had to weld reinforcements under the arms and stuff on the Dodge. We did lose a lot of hubcaps on the Charger. We’d put the hubcaps back on, but I suppose it probably would have been better if we had lest them off.”

“I’ll tell you this,” said Max Balchowsky, “I was really impressed with the Mustang after I got done with it. I didn’t think it’d make that much difference beefing it up. Later, we took both cars out and went playing around with them over by Griffith Park (near Los Angeles). The Dodge, which was practically stock, just left the Mustang like you wouldn’t believe.” Ron Riner has similar recollections. “The Charger ran rings around the Mustang. We trimmed the tires down (on the Charger), we practically made them down to bicycle tires to try and handicap Hickman, and Bill just run them.” Carey Loftin also recalls,” we test ran the car at Griffith Park near the Observatory, up a long hill. and if you can run a car real hard up and down that hill it’s working pretty good.”

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“The day before the chase scenes were to be filmed, we went up to Santa Rosa and rented the track,”said Balchowsky. “Steve wanted to test the car. A production manager would have cut your throat if you wanted to do something like that. An accident would have ruined the cars, and we were slated for Monday morning, 6:00 a.m. to start shooting. Hickman and Steve were buzzing around the tracks, and it was pretty even. McQueen and Hickman were both tickled with the cars. So, fortunately everything worked out.”

Generally everyone seemed to agree that the chase went smoothly, although filming went a “little bit slow,” Bud Ekins recalls. “Yates and Steve were particular. You would rehearse it once- it’s got to be choreographed- then you would rehearse it again, and if it looked good, they shot it. You rehearsed at about 1/4 speed or 1/2 speed, then you went in to film it at full speed.”

For the in-car scenes, two camers were mounted in the cars and painted black. The jarring landings after the cars were airborne are the result of the cameras being tightly secured and not cushion mounted. The effect was more than McQueen had bargained for. “It’s a funny thing,” he told Motor Trend. “That was what shocked me and I didn’t expect it, because we were using a 185 frame which is a very small frame. We weren’t even using a big super Panavision or anything. Even on the 185, they (the audience) jumped out of their seats. I didn’t do the shots going down the hill, they pulled me out of the car. Bud Ekins did that.”

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In the Motor Trend interview, McQueen recalled there were some close calls and incidents that looked good on film but weren’t exactly planned to happen, some of which occured in the memorable downhill sequences. “Remember that banging going down? That was about 100 mph. I was bangin’ into Bill. My car was disintegrating. Like, the door handles came off, both the shocks in the front broke, the steering armature on the right front side broke and my slack was about a foot and a half. The Mustang was really just starting to fall apart.”

There was an incident which alerted the crew to take extra precautions while doing the car chase. “A child,” Riner told us, “maybe five years old, came out of a building and stepped out on to the street. We stopped and brought in more stunt people and more cars and I think the theory was if anybody had a problem, they’d make a barricade out of the vehicles. The problem never came up again, or I never saw a problem.” Incredible, considering there were only two policemen on the scene as compared to the 40 policemen utilized for the chase in MAD MAD WORLD. Carey Loftin says, “the extras were a big help. If there was an alley or any place that wasn’t covered, they’d come and tell me. They were real good.”

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Because some of the stunts were so well orchestrated, they did not look like stunts at all. Recalls Carey Loftin: “Several years after BULLITT, an extra (on another set) was talking about BULLITT, and he was saying how it was amazing how accidents get into films and he said that the best one he ever saw was the scene where Bud Elkins did the spill off the motorcycle. I let him go ahead and tell it. He said ‘the cops were watching the action and weren’t watching the traffic and this motorcycle guy slipped through, and got into the scene and ended up in the picture.’ I said, ‘you really think that’s what happened?’ The extra said, ‘ I know, I saw it, I was there.’ And I said that’s the way it’s supposed to look, because it wasn’t supposed to look like a stunt.” Ron Riner comments on the scene, “I didn’t know about the stunt and I was supposed to get the information!”

There were THREE cars racing wildly through the streets of San Francisco, making car chase history, although only two are seen in the movie. The third vehicle, a camera car, was driven by Pat Houstis, while cinematographer Bill Fraker manned the camera. Said Ron Riner, “Pat Houstis was excellent and he was in his prime at the time.” Carey Loftin has nothing but praise for Mr. Houstis and an amusing recollection. “Pat Houstis, a terrific driver, had just built the camera car, and he showed it to me. He did a real good job on it. It was a Corvette chassis, and he had stripped all the stuff off and built a good suspension, good engine and everything. But it looked like hell.”

His confidence in Mr. Houstis is evident as he relates another incident. ” We had one scene where Pat was following Steve on Guadalupe Canyon Highway, a beautiful road. We wanted some shots of the Mustang really burning the corners. We did it several times. The operator of the first camera said, ‘Steve’s not getting his foot into it, he’s a better driver than that.’ I went to Steve and said, ‘you know Pat Houstis is a terrific driver.’ Steve said ‘yeah, yeah he is.’ I said, ‘he knows responsibility too. You know what that man would do if I was driving the car in front of him and anything would happen? He’d run into a parked car or hit a tree just to miss me. Now think what he’d do for the star? Now get into that car and get your foot into it!’ We got the shot on the next take.”

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One particular scene that impressed Max Balchowsky was the gunman in the Dodge firing a shotgun blast at the pursuing Mustang that shatters the right front of the windshield. “The guy who did special effects devised the chain balls that bust the Mustang windshield. I thought it was terrific when the guy whips the shotgun out and the way the special effects fellow devised how those pebbles cracked the windshield and it made it so realistic like he really shot the windshield. It sure made Ford glass look good.”

The gentleman in the car, playing Bill Hickman’s partner in crime, was actor Paul Genge. According to Ron Riner, Mr. Genge, who played a very realistic tough guy, “seemed like he had hardly ever seen a gun before. They scared the hell out of him. In the scenes in the Charger with Hickman, he was scared to death. After two or three time we almost had to bodily put tranqiulizers in him, and put him in the car. Mr. Hickman was one of the coolest drivers I’ve ever met.” Max Balchowsky tells us, “there was a scene where the Charger passed a truck, and they only wanted to leave so much room on one side, and Hickman did it perfectly when he came by and took the bumper off the truck. That was a super shot. Throughout the chase sequences, some of them were accidents but, they looked fantastic- Hickman was terrific.”

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To achieve the stunning conclusion to the chase in which the Charger loses control, leaps an Armco fence and plows into a gasoline station, Loftin rigged up a tow and release set up hidden from the camera’s view between the Mustang and the Charger. Dressed to double McQueen, Loftin laterally towed the Charger at 90 mph with its two dummy passengers and at the right moment released the Charger into the nitro-loaded gas station. Unfortunately, the Charger missed the station, but the charges were set off and the explosion, thanks to some deft film editing, had the desired effect and was added to the movie.

There seemed to be a general atmosphere of professionalism and mutual admiration on the set. Loren Janes tells us, ” I loved to see a lot of the little things in Steve’s films. The best teeny things came up in it, the best stuff was Steve’s ideas. Like when they’re (Hickman and Genge) going up the hill and they’re after Steve and all of a sudden he disappears and they can’t see him and the guy (Hickman) looks up and Steve appears in his rear view mirror. In other words, he changed it, now he’s chasing them. Well that was a great turn of events. It was fantastic. It was WILD reckless driving, but it was planned and coordinated. There was class to the BULLITT chase, there was a reason for it, and that’s one of the key things people forget: the greatest stunt in the world is worthless if there isn’t a reason or story to it and BULLITT had a story point all the way through and a reason.

The enduring scenes of the forboding Charger and the powerful Mustang have etched themselves in film making history. The sequences were the brain child of Steve McQueen; He knew what he wanted and how he wanted it to appear on film. No one has duplicated the electricity or the savage ferocity that manifested itself in BULLITT chase scenes, and it’s doubtful any one ever will.

Jacqueline Bisset

 

 

 

Jacqueline Bisset (born 13 September 1944) is a British actress. She has been nominated for four Golden Globe Awards and an Emmy Award. Her popular films include Bullitt (1968), Airport (1970), The Deep (1977), and Class (1983). In more recent years, she has appeared in several television productions, most notably the FX series Nip/Tuck in 2006.

In 1967, Bisset was cast in the movie Two for the Road with Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney. Next, she participated in the James Bond satire, Casino Royale (1967), as Miss Goodthighs. In 1968, Mia Farrow dropped out of the movie The Detective (1968) opposite Frank Sinatra, and the role went to Bisset. That same year, she was cast in her breakout role as Steve McQueen’s girlfriend in the hit action film Bullitt. She was one of the many stars in the blockbuster disaster film Airport (1970), which co-starred Dean Martin, Burt Lancaster, Jean Seberg, and Helen Hayes among others and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture.

Bisset often appeared with her leading men in more than one film, such as Albert Finney, Paul Newman and Anthony Perkins. She co-starred with Newman and Perkins in The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean, with Newman in When Time Ran Out, with Finney in Two for the Road, Under the Volcano and the ensemble mystery Murder on the Orient Express, also starring Perkins and Sean Connery.

She is the main character in Luigi Comencini’s La donna della domenica in 1975. In 1977, Bisset made strides towards becoming a better-known entertainer in America with her movie The Deep, co-starring Robert Shaw and Nick Nolte, where swimming underwater wearing nothing under her T-shirt helped make the film a box office success, leading the producer Peter Guber to say, “That T-shirt made me a rich man,”. At the time, Newsweek declared her “the most beautiful film actress of all time.” About that time, a small film Bisset had made some years earlier was re-released in the United States under the title Secrets. That movie featured the only extensive nude scenes of Bisset’s career and the producers cashed in on her fame.

By 1978, she was a household name. She earned her first Golden Globe nomination for the comedy Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe? Soon thereafter, she played in the movies Rich and Famous (1981) with Candice Bergen, Class (1983) with Rob Lowe and Under the Volcano (1984) with Albert Finney, for which she earned her a second Golden Globe nomination. In 1996, she was nominated for a César Award, for her role in La Cérémonie. Bisset has worked with such directors as François Truffaut, John Huston, George Cukor, and Roman Polanski. Several of her movies are French or Italian productions.

Bisset has appeared in made-for-TV movies, especially during the last decade. She received an Emmy Award nomination for the 1999 miniseries Joan of Arc. Other notable projects include the Emmy-nominated epics Jesus (1999) and In the Beginning (2001) with Martin Landau. She has also made guest appearances on Ally McBeal and Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. One of her later TV movies, in 2003, was America’s Prince: The John F. Kennedy Jr. Story, in which she portrayed Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis. In 2005, she appeared in Domino with Keira Knightly. Bisset’s most recent television work was a recurring role as the mysterious James, during the fourth season of the FX series Nip/Tuck. She starred in the lead role of Boaz Yakin’s Death in Love which premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and is about “a Jewish concentration-camp survivor whose willing romance with the camp’s Nazi doctor—a man who tortured her fellow prisoners—destroys the lives of her American husband and their two sons 50 years later”.

 Trivia:

Her first job was a waitress in a Chinese restaurant.

Favorite films: Brief Encounter (1945), Splendor in the Grass (1961).

Favorite actresses: Jeanne Moreau, Jessica Lange

Favorite actors: Marlon Brando, Anthony Hopkins, Montgomery Clift

Her most fulfilling role: “Julie” in François Truffaut’s “Day for Night” (La nuit américaine (1973).

Her favorite scene: fighting with Anthony Quinn in The Greek Tycoon (1978).

Godmother of actress Angelina Jolie.

Measurements: 36C-24-36 1/2 (as starlet 1973), 37C/D-25-36 (filming The Deep (1977) (Source: Celebrity Sleuth magazine).

Member of the jury at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2001

No relation to Josie Bissett.

She said her last name is pronounced “Bissit” and rhymes with “Kiss it”.

Had long-term relationships with Michael Sarrazin (1968-1974), Victor Drai (1975-1980), Alexander Godunov (1981-1988), Vincent Perez (1988-1993) and Emin Boztepe (1995-2005).

Reignited her romance with Emin Boztepe [August 27, 2009].

Hollywood gossip has linked her with Frank Sinatra and Ryan O’Neal.

Reportedly had an affair with co-star Steve McQueen while they were filming Bullitt (1968). They remained friends until his death, and Jacqueline narrated a documentary about his life titled “Steve McQueen: the Essence of Cool.”

As a dedicated cultural archivist, I’m always fascinated by major studio films that slip from the reels of time without a trace on video or the collective consciousness. I can’t think of a more sterling example than JOHN AND MARY, a 20th Century Fox production directed by Peter Yates, hot off BULLITT (1968), and starring Dustin Hoffman in his first role since his star-making performance in THE GRADUATE along with Mia Farrow, fresh her own huge success in ROSEMARY’S BABY (1968). Pretty heady pedigree for an intimate portrait of a day in the life of a one-night stand, based on the novel by Mervyn Jones, with adapted screenplay by Sir John Mortimer.

That the film’s plot about two young people hooking up for a night of casual sex was considered “controversial” and garnered the film an “R” rating (also due to nudity) shows the different tenor of the era. JOHN AND MARY is very much a product of its year, the tail end of the groundbreaking 60’s, and its mod, “now” style replete with nouvelle vague flashbacks and fantasies. The film presses these cine-references to act as instant connector to youth, though as Roger Ebert noted, they don’t define, they over-simplify. But you have to love a Hollywood film that opens with characters debating Jean Luc Godard’s WEEKEND (1967) in a Greenwich Village bar. The movie is almost the equivalent mash-up of LOOK or LIFE magazine, with a focus on contemporary morals. The movie’s chic production of pads and happenings reflects this stylistic ambition, the cool European minimalism of Hoffman’s designer loft with wide windows, perfect for framing alienated people like the stars. Peter Yates might have been attracted to the story solely because it was the opposite of San Francisco police action. Forced to confined spaces, Yates perhaps over-directs the compositions, but in a way I always find appealing; I’m a sucker for Antonioni white space.

With such stage-bound material, the success of the film would have to rest on Dustin Hoffman and Mia Farrow, at the arch of their celebrity. Hoffman is always a magnetic, fascinating actor, and his character, a mod furniture maker, could almost be Benjamin Braddock a few years wiser with less neuroses. What’s his hang-up you ask? Thanks to a leftist organizer mom (Olympia Dukakis in a funny bit) who fought for Biafra but left the ice-box empty, John is an anal-obssessive control freak afeared of women who care too much about others. His flashbacks reveal a pop-art model who moved in and shattered his Zen pad with pink slacks, teddy bears and barking dogs. We get to see John among the New York “underground” represented by a party replete with Keystone Kop films projected on a nude woman’s body and backed by the sounds of Quincy Jones subtle score. Hoffman’s next ‘69 film, MIDNIGHT COWBOY, would feature a more gritty and verite Warhol plastic happening. Hoffman is good though limited by the script, and while some critics don’t like the external monologues between the characters, I think them an effective way of showing the difference between behavior and thought.

Mia Farrow is keyed naturalistic here, with a slight habit of repeating words, a method tic that would serve her well in her career in Woody Allen films. Her flashbacks to an affair with a liberal Senator are interesting inasmuch as the cuckold husband is presented as a decent man who Mary won’t let leave his wife. Tyne Daly and Cleavon Little pop up briefly as her wacky roomie and neighbor to show her carefree spirit life as gallery manager. Mary is a more obtuse character, but she’s good when she lets John know she’s not a pushover and it’s ironic that she finds his taste in organic foods weird. They have a good bantering chemistry, but some of the issues raised seem silly, like Hoffman getting upset that Farrow calls her roommate before they make love. The pairing does seem like Hollywood’s attempt at the slick romantic espirit de corps of A MAN AND A WOMAN (1966), but Yates holds off on the archetypal 60’s musical montage. The long silent opening scene is quite masterful, with Hoffman and Farrow feeling out the awkward intimacy of their morning after. This moment is probably the most true thing in the film. And as such makes it worthy of your viewing time.

Although heavily publicized, JOHN AND MARY didn’t set any box-office records and might have been too slight and elliptical for even 1969. Hoffman was savvy enough to resist being cast as the next symbol of confused youth by taking on Ratzo Rizzo. Farrow never regained her movie footing until Woody Allen began writing specifically for her against type. And Peter Yates never found his niche, likely due to a desire to not repeat himself, but there was still BREAKING AWAY (1976) in his future. I’ve been wanting to see this film for years, but its unavailability prevented that. Fortunately, Fox snuck the DVD out last year, utilizing the nifty original poster art on the cover and though there are no extras outside the trailer and gallery, the print looks gorgeous in 2:35:1 Panavision, with crisp wide shots you could frame. It’s great the studios are finally releasing these vital, overlooked movies that can be seen as evolutionary steps or misfires. Like other forgotten films of the era, JOHN AND MARY is required viewing for anybody interested in the secret history of the Golden Age of New Cinema.

“The Italian Job” (2003)

A gang of robbers, lead by Charlie Croker, create the largest traffic jam in Los Angeles history, giving them time to pull off a theft of gold bullion. They get away in their Mini Coopers, which are small enough to drive on sidewalks so they can make a clean get away before the traffic jam clears.

Mini Cooper S.
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“Ghostbusters” (1984)

Three odd-ball scientists get kicked out of their cushy positions at a university in New York City where they studied the occult. They decide to set up shop in an old firehouse and become Ghostbusters, trapping pesky ghosts, spirits, haunts, and poltergeists for money. The Ghostbusters are called on to save the Big Apple.

1959 Cadillac.

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“American Graffiti” (1973)

When four teenagers on their last summer night before college. Rediscover drag racing, Insipiration Point and drive-ins all over again in this nostalgic looks at the 60’s. The incredible soundtrack brings you the most memorable rock ‘n’ roll hits of the era.

1932 Ford coupe.

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“Wayne’s World” (1992)

Wayne is still living at home. He has a world class collection of name tags from jobs he’s tried, but he does have his own public access TV show. A local station decides to hire him and his sidekick, Garth, to do their show professionally and Wayne & Garth find that it is no longer the same. Wayne falls for a bass guitarist and uses his and Garth’s Video contacts to help her career along, knowing that Ben Oliver, the sleazy advertising guy who is ruining their show will probably take her away from him if they fail.

1976 AMC Pacer.

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“Bullitt” (1968)

A no glitter, all guts cop named Frank Bullitt – with two other cops – is assigned to what seems like a normal case: to watch a witness for 48 hours before he goes to trial on Monday. When the officers and the witness are killed, Chalmers gets angry at Bullitt. After he chases the hitman that killed them, he vows to catch him, and the mafia boss that hired him.

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1968 Ford Mustang GT 390.
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“Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” (1986)

Ferris is a street-wise kid who knows all the tricks. Today he decides to take the day off school. When Ferris takes the day off, so must his best friends, Cameron and Sloane. Cameron is reluctantly persuaded to borrow his father’s Ferrari, and together they hatch a plan to get Sloane out of class. Suspicious dean of students Ed Rooney knows all about Ferris, but can never catch him. Ferris’ sister Jeanie is also frustrated that Ferris always gets away with his tricks and she doesn’t. Furthermore, Ferris is an ‘angel’ in his parents eyes. It’s Ferris’ day off, he’s out to enjoy himself, and he does!

1961 Ferrari 250 GT.

“Back to the Future” (1985)

Marty McFly, a typical American teenager of the Eighties, is accidentally sent back to 1955 in a plutonium-powered DeLorean “time machine” invented by slightly mad scientist. During his often hysterical, always amazing trip back in time, Marty must make certain his teenage parents-to-be meet and fall in love – so he can get back to the future.

1981 DeLorean DMC-12.

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Mustangs, we all love ‘em, especially the earlier years with their distinctive looks and outright road presence. So when my folks herd… I mean heard there was a Mustang Concours event just north of home, they couldn’t pass up the event! Mustangs from all years were on show, and even though the location was a bit of a dust bowl, owners still turned up ready to showoff their polished ponies. The concours, held by the Queensland branch of the Mustang Owners Club, was in conjunction with the Castrol Edge Muscle Car Spectacular, so there were plenty of other American muscle fighting for the attention.

Oh and I bet you didn’t know the new Challenger came in right hand drive spec! Just kidding… it was specially converted to suit Aussie roads and rules.  What do you think about that, pretty cool huh? Loads of pics after the jump!

Any action director worth his salt knows that the key to any good action-packed flick is a good car chase scene.

No one realized  that more than Peter Yates, the director of the 1968 Steve McQueen-helmed film Bullitt, which features one of the most epic car chases ever caught on film.

The film’s chase sequence remains one that many street races and Fast & Furious fans wish they could replicated, especially since it involved McQueen’s 1968 Ford Mustang Bullitt barreling to and from a  1968 Dodge Charger R/T 440 Magnum.

The scenes were all too real, with cars racing at upwards of 100MPH through the hilly streets of San Francisco. Now, there’s a 10-minute featurette about the making of the film, which recounts how the scenes were mapped out and ultimately caught on film.

Check it out below.

Making of Bullitt

If there is one thing that will make me stop cold in my tracks and freak out worse than a 12 year old next to Joe Jonas, it’s a muscle car. You could be a 400lb. hairy man with a chronic case of the farts, and I would give you the time of day if you were stepping out of a sweet ‘69 Charger. (although “stepping out” gracefully might be kind of hard for a man that massive) Anytime I meet a cute boy at a party, I say over and over in my head “please tell me you have a muscle car, please tell me you have a muscle car…” It hasn’t happened yet. They usually have a beetle, or a moped, or a Prius. I guess cute boys in black rimmed glasses and Chucks don’t really do the whole muscle car thing. But the day it happens, consider me off the market- permanently!

I’ll most likely need to just get one myself, so my life dream is to buy a beat up muscle car and learn how to rebuild it and turn it in to the car of my dreams. I already have the soundtrack completely worked out…. it contains a lot of Pantera, Queens Of The Stoneage, Kyuss, Black Sabbath, old Rolling Stones and Red Fang. I also have some very specific “muscle car driving” outfits ready to go, and I have seriously perfected my step-in-step-out-of-the-car technique.

Here are two badass car chases featuring some pretty badass cars:

Fulla brevlådan idag när 3 st vadderade kuvert anlänt. Innehållet i de tre påsarna bestod av Das Boot och Den gode, den onde, den fule på DVD samt Bullitt, The Shining och The Getaway på BluRay. Min BD-samlig växer stadigt i hyllan och jag är nu uppe i 28 st. Blir kul att se den extremt långa Das Boot också. 4 timmar och 42 minuter är inget man plöjer igenom en kväll efter man har jobbat sen tidigt på morgonen. Kommer krävas lite planering för att få in den i schemat.

Nu alldeles strax sätter jag mig i Fiaten och drar ner mot staden där bland annat Nolia väntar. Ska förbi Jula en sväng och lämna tillbaka en stolphatt innan jag åker och förhoppningsvis hämtar upp Robert. Hänger på om han hunnit få ordning på alla siffror lr vad det nu är han pysslar med. Sen blir det Nolia. Måtte man ha lite flyt i Platespottingen nu när man kommer se så mycket bilar!? 061 var är du?

Borsta tänderna samt kladda till frillan lite sen är det bara att ge sig iväg.

Frågan är om det blir regn idag? Kanske är bäst att ta med sig ett paraply. Kommer troligen få ligga kvar i bilen, men det hänger iaf med så långt.

The French Connection? Forget it. Bullitt? Boring. Ronin? Tell the truth: did it look for one second like De Niro was driving? Here are the truly great movie car chases. Strap in and enjoy the ride.

5. The Driver

Not only do you feel like Ryan O’Neal is driving the car, you feel like you’re right there in the passenger seat with him, in this rollicking night pursuit from Walter Hill’s 1978 film, originally conceived, incidentally, for Bullitt boy Steve McQueen. This chase drips with sweaty authenticity – yes, it is undeniably cool, but there is nothing in it that’s unnecessarily flash. The Driver (none of the characters have real names) even turns back the way he came from at one point. If you really want to learn how to outrun cops, this is the one to study.

4. Condorman

This car chase, in contrast, is just pure nonsensical fun. Condorman (Michael Crawford) may not be as cool as James Bond, but anyone who can escape five Porsches in a vehicle shaped like a bird is a true superhero. The only chase in the list in which a car transforms into a hovercraft, it is even more exciting (if that is possible) if you can understand German. 

3. Freaky Friday

The remake of Freaky Friday with Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan was more than a match for its 1976 predecessor, but it didn’t have an end sequence as good as this. While Barbara Harris is waterskiiing, Jodie Foster drives us through one of the great comedy chases, complete with cop cars driving over a footbridge (1m15),  a cop car being squashed into a triangle (3m00) and a cop car being sawn in half (3m25). Freaky is putting it mildly. The stunts take place in that great chase location – the Sixth Street Viaduct in Los Angeles, the setting for the drag race in Grease and the truck/dirt bike battle in Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

2. Raising Arizona

When you think of the Coen brothers’ work, car chases don’t immediately spring to mind. Their lightness of touch throughout the brilliant Raising Arizona makes what could have been a routine hold-up an absolute delight. Great dialogue (‘Son, you got a panty on your head’), great visuals (Nathan Jr holding on to the hood of his baby suit) and a great finish make this a chase to follow again and again.

1. What’s Up, Doc?

And here you have it: the best car chase in movie history. It’s that man Ryan O’Neal again, in a rather less smooth guise than The Driver, hanging on for dear life as Barbra Streisand drags him on a rollercoaster pursuit up and down the hills of San Francisco – the Mecca for car chase devotees. There is so much here to enjoy – the obligatory workmen carrying a pane of glass (1m40), the use of a Volkswagen Beetle (way cooler than a Mini), the screwball banter between the two leads and the textbook water climax.

WHAT ARE YOUR FAVOURITE CAR CHASES?

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

So my favorite coffee shop, the Raven in Prescott, has Monday night movies and so I went down to see Bullitt. I had never seen a Steve McQueen movie before, so I was curious. Growing up as a kid in the 1970s and early 80s, I watched a fair amount of BBC television on PBS, and so the only thing I knew about Steve McQueen was that the British were totally crazy about him, making frequent Steve McQueen references, often in reverant tones.

A couple of years ago, I think Ford made a commercial with old McQueen footage for their revamped Mustang. Apparently, McQueen was associated with muscle cars. Still, Steve McQueen flew in my cultural blind spot for the first 41 years of my life.

But no more!

Bullitt is hardly a great movie, but I can’t wait to see more like it. Some of the acting seems George Lucas style stilted. Except of course for McQueen, who was the Platonic ideal of American stoic tough guy. This guy can almost kill a bad guy with a cold icy silent stare. If that doesn’t work, he’ll be happy to lay a beating on you, fill you full of lead, or chase you off the road in his muscle car until your produce a mini mushroom cloud as the gas in your tank (which should have been fairly empty after that hour long high speed chase) explodes in  a fiery inferno. McQueen uses his tough-guy powers to put the extra gas in your tank just to make sure you are a crispy critter for daring to think your death race skill begin to match his own.

Speaking of which, you can watch Bullitt’s famous car chase through San Fransico here. It really starts after about three minutes and thirty seconds.

Hello netflix! If you have any other Steve McQueen movies to suggest, zap me an email or leave them in the comment section.

“Our altered states are as real as our waking ones…”

I’m not too fussed about the impending cease and desist on autotune choruses, but I’m in mourning over the sudden death of opening credits on movies. Too often the film starts as it means to go on…not even a title screen, with the details left until the film’s close prior to the scrolling end credits. To me, the opening credits are an intrinsic part of the film experience. If I wanted to dive straight in, I’d stream a crappy iPhone cam-copy online, where the pirate is too shook to get things rolling ’till after the first minute or so.

I don’t even want a CGI tour of the human brain, flying letters or anything like that…a matter-of-fact white font on a black background will do, but they seem to be becoming an endangered species. It’s a shame, because more often than not, the title sequence has fired my imagination more than the two hours or so that follows – I’ve sat through some rubbish, but stopped short of feeling short-changed because I found the music, presentation and lettering that preceded it so agreeable. But this isn’t the time to be listing those alphabetical order red-herring cast listings.

One of my favourite movies (though I’ve long pondered as to how it would’ve fared in the hands of Arthur Penn instead of Ken Russell, I imagine it would’ve been a lesser film), is ‘Altered States’ – first introduced to me when I read the ‘Mad’ parody as a five-year old. To this day, I enjoy it as the kind of film that benefits from herbal accompaniment – to my shame, I’ve not read too far into the nods to Theatre Of Cruelty helmer, surrealist and writer Antonin Artuad – a man quite partial to opium, or checked the original novel by Paddy Chayefsky, screenwriter of classics like ‘Network’ too, who adapted the film then later disowned it after some rows with Ken (hence the ‘Sidney Aaron’ credit) over the manic mindfuck pace of the finished piece, sadly passing after its release.

But let’s steer from the madcap content, and instead concentrate on what is, in my opinion, the greatest opening title in film history – a moment of sobriety and solitude that’s the calm before the hallucinatory storm, with a pioneering 1980 motion graphic that precedes a less subtle but nonetheless effective copy to a Brad Fiedel score for ‘The Terminator’ four years later. Designed by Richard Greenberg, the font is terrific (love that ‘A’) and that gradual slide before the actual reveal is a stunner. Greenberg formed R/GA with his brother Robert in 1977, to change the game with their credits for ‘Superman’ in 1978 (bear in mind that the near-exact repeat of those titles 28 years later for Singer’s sequel snoozefest was the solitary goosebump moment)  with the company’s LA branch (RGA/LA) ultimately creating some killer title work (pun unintended) on ‘Se7en’ and plenty of fine work for Nike in recent years.

Actually, while we’re talking favourite credits, talk of Saul Bass is a given. He’s been covered to death, but this ‘05 site entry http://www.notcoming.com/saulbass/index2.php is by far the most intelligent presentation of his handiwork. I’m a ‘Seconds’ (1966) man, and the use of reflective mylar, that score and stark lettering remains unsurpassed.

Don Record’s work on ‘Prime Cut’ (1972) is strong too, accompanied by a sequence that’s not for the vegetarians. It’s a perfect start to this oddball thriller.

A staggeringly obvious inclusion, (and like ‘Prime Cuts’ a film scored by Lalo Schifrin) Pablo Ferro’s work on ‘Bullitt’ (1968) is way ahead of its time as well. This showreel of his graphic title work demonstrates just how prolific and versatile he is.

The new Banksy exhibition has been unveiled after months of secrecy at Bristol Museum. The exhibition is open for three months and admission is free to the public.  Check out Modern Canvas Art for a fantastic collection of Banksy canvas prints.

Banksy "Close Shave" Canvas Art Print

One of my heroes is Steve McQueen.  My childhood is full of ‘68 Mustang GTs, leaping Triumphs, a Porsche 911 slipping quietly through the town of Arnage, and the coolest picture in the world: Steve, cigarette, squinting into the distance as he clambers into his XKSS.

Re-reading Christopher Sandford’s biography of the man reignited this, but living out those fantasies of tear-arsing round the back roads or across the desert is quite hard when you drive a 206 and can’t afford a bike.

I have another out though:  my mountain bike.  OK, it’s pretty far removed from a Triumph TR6 or Indian Scout, but bombing around an old quarry, chucking water from a fast-flowing stream down your neck, with scant regard to the horrors of gravel-rash hold a certain appeal.

The problem comes with my bicycle.  It’s a bit budget, especially compared to my brother’s Specialized.  After a bit of patience I’ve got the gears indexed beautifully (though have noticed the gearing doesn’t range as widely as the Spesh’s), but the brakes are proving awkward.  The front disc, a cable type, is generally good.  The problem here has arisen with a drip of cycle oil, I can only assume, which found its way onto the disc.  This was discovered all too late, by the thin film of fluid that covered its entire surface, whilst checking tyre pressures.  So, obviously, the pad’s contaminated too.  Great.

Problem number two has arisen at the back vee brake.  Here, rather than being upright, the calipers lean over to one side, and slack in the cable isn’t taken up when the leaver is released.  The hair-springs aren’t doing their jobs properly.  The adjuster screws (used to equalise the brake block to rim gap) are also useless, I expect through a stripped thread in the soft-plastic of the arm.  The same has happened tothe span-adjustment screws on the lever, which you can feel give as you apply pressure to it.  The brake is still effective, but with the block rubbing slight against the rim at all times,  rolling resistance is quite high.

My suspension fork is made up a piece of rubber in a tube.  It’s… firm.  And there’s no damping.

But do I have as much fun as my brother on his bike?  Except for a lack of stoppies… yes.  Rolling down drop-offs, wheelies over crests, taking impacts through the knees, and above all leaping of jumps like I’m trying to cross the barbed-wire border, I can’t help but feel so much more free of the aches of the world.  Taking care of the thing, flawed as it is, and with little money for repairs, is still a joy.

Charlotte, my girlfriend, asks why I spend so much time on it.  This when I decided to take the tyres off the wheels to make sure the valves where exactly ninety degrees to the rim.  I said it’s in absence of a motorbike, and that’s true to an extent.  But looking through magazines, reading Steve McQueen biographies and browsing the small ads are all just ways of living in the map, and not the territory.  I want blisters on my hands, bruises on my shins and oil under my nails.  Not paper-cuts and mouse-clicker’s-knuckle syndrome.