[Shotimes] (OT) "Cool. Dumb. Daring. Love the Chase." - J. Seinfeld

[Ron Porter]

>From the NY Times, an excellent article by Jerry Seinfeld on car chases. You
need to register with the NYT to read the story at the link below, but
here's the text of it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/11/movies/11SEIN.html

Ron Porter 


Cool. Dumb. Daring. Love the Chase.
By JERRY SEINFELD

It's 106 miles to Chicago, we've got a full tank of gas, half a pack of
cigarettes, it's dark and we're wearing sunglasses."

"Hit it." - Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, "The Blues Brothers," 1980

IT must have been early on in the movie-making business that someone, after
an hour-and-whatever of watching boring actors and a boring story in a
boring movie, just burst out, "People, can we please just cut to the chase,
already?" And to the chase we've been happily cutting ever since.

Actors love the chase because they're usually not in it, the stunt drivers
are. Writers love the chase because you don't have to write anything except
the open-mouth scream as they go over the cliff, bridge, rooftop parking lot
or unfinished highway overpass. And audiences love the chase because if we
wanted to listen to dullards yapping nonstop for two straight hours we
would've gone to a play. The best chase scenes are car chases, because I
like cars and I like watching them being driven real fast and crazy.

What makes a good car chase scene? I believe it's some combination of cool
stuff, dumb stuff and dangerous stuff. Here are some of my favorites:

Gene Hackman (Hackman, good name for a stunt driver), in an early 70's brown
Pontiac, chases a subway train running on an elevated track in "The French
Connection" (1971). We can clearly see Mr. Hackman actually driving, which
is always exciting. Why are audiences so thrilled to see stars doing any
normal thing? I remember that whenever Johnny Carson would take off his
jacket to do something, the audience would burst into excited applause.
"Wow, he's taking off his jacket and he's going to do something. Stars are
just like us." Mr. Hackman has to drive through the series of metal pillars
supporting the elevated subway - a cool, scary obstacle. The disappointing
thing about the sequence is that midway through the chase, you realize the
poster for the movie is a picture of Hackman shooting this guy on a subway
platform, so you already know how the scene is going to end. By the way, is
Gene Hackman frozen? This is the first movie I ever saw him in, and he
seemed to be about 50. I recently saw him in "Heist" 30 years later, he's
still 50.

"The Blues Brothers," from 1980, contains a wonderfully ridiculous number of
late-70's Dodge police cruisers all banging into stuff and piling up on top
of one another, which is very cool and dumb. An upside-down police car
sliding on its roof through an intersection makes me smile like a fragrant
summer breeze. One cop car flies through the air and crashes onto the back
of a 16-wheel semi without falling off. That's three stars: cool, dumb and
dangerous. Henry Gibson's red Ford Pinto wagon (not the hatchback, so it's
just that much more pathetic) falls from at least 2,000 feet, clearly
dropped from some unseen aircraft with the Chicago skyline as a backdrop for
the fantastic finish.

There's also a brilliant scene of a mall being destroyed by the Bluesmobile.
Audiences are never displeased to see massive, wanton destruction of private
property. It's as if the moviemakers are saying, "Look, we are clearly
spending the money you gave us. As opposed to lining some lame movie stars'
pockets and financing their dysfunctional relationships out of your view."

Another great car chase scene, little-known but much loved among motorheads,
is in "The Italian Job" (1969) starring Michael Caine. It stars three
late-60's Minis, one white, one blue, one red. They go down stairs, through
hotel lobbies, on top of roofs, inside water-main tunnels and up two tire
ramps onto a moving truck. Finally, when the drivers are done with them,
they are pushed down a mountainside to an authentic, spectacular fiery
destruction. The scene is unbelievably long, unbelievably cute and very well
executed, but you'll never see it. I managed to dig up a copy at a
hole-in-the-wall East Village video store that you're not going to. There's
a remake of "The Italian Job" coming May 30, with Mark Wahlberg and Edward
Norton. I hear it has a Minis chase too. I'll see you at the theater for the
Friday showing of that.

"Ronin" (1998), a Robert De Niro Euro-caper film, has some good car stuff,
including another very nice police-car roof slide and a pretty cool-looking
pursuit through oncoming highway traffic. I love when the frightened
car-chase passenger puts his hand on the dashboard to protect himself in the
event of a 110-m.p.h collision. "Nothing can hurt me. I'm using the strength
of my arm to brace against any impact."

I also watched "The Fast and the Furious" (2001), in which a "slammed" black
Honda Civic takes advantage of its lowered suspension to change lanes by
going directly under a 16-wheel tractor-trailer. Fun to watch and definitely
something that needed to be done. The sequel, "2 Fast 2 Furious," which
opens June 6, is sure to be faster and even more furious.

Why do young people always like to see themselves portrayed as so angry?
James Dean was angry even though he had a movie career and a Porsche Spyder.
I remember being angry when I was young, but I grew up in Massapequa, on
Long Island, and commuted to Queens College without a parking pass. I've
watched some of the MTV "Spring Break" shows; these people have nothing to
be angry about. Maybe that's what makes them so angry.

For me, the winner and still king of cool movie car chases is Steve
McQueen's in "Bullitt," from 1968. McQueen had an innate understanding of
what was cool about cars, which cars were cool and what would make a cool
car chase. His dark green mag-wheeled Mustang, which Ford recently
reintroduced as a special model, and the high-spoilered black Dodge Charger
were both very cool cars of their time. In a number of shots we can clearly
see McQueen driving, against the orders of the movie studio; the narrow
streets and steep San Francisco hills leave very little room for error. At
one point a motorcycle is sideswiped and goes down. McQueen stops to see if
the rider is O.K., then he gets back in his car to continue the chase.
That's cool, and not angry.