Deja Vu All Over Again In Brooklyn
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Artist:
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Track:Pursuit Of the Pimpmobile-st
This post is not really about the song posted, but I figgered I'd carry on the car theme laid down in one of the most music laden posts of all time: Deadman's Rock N Roll Automobiles
As I said in the post, I'm not really into cars in the aesthetic sense. I don't get misty about a '71 Pontiac LeMans (as seen in French Connection) or a "Highland Green" 1968 Ford Mustang 390 CID Fastback (as seen in Bullitt) or the non-descript Pontiac Ventura Sprint coupe Roy Scheider drove in The Seven Ups. I do however like driving around in a car, any car really. I like the way the world looks through a windshield.
So the other day I was driving around Brooklyn on a bright sunny day looking for some lawn chairs for my father in law. While I was headed north on New Utrecht Avenue (a diagonal street that runs through Bourough Park and Bensonhurst out to Coney Island), the sun hit my windshield in such a way that I turned down the music (It was Dead Skunk In The Middle Of The Road by Loudon Wainwright III, my son's current fave tune) and hollered back to my kid, " Peja, look out the front window and up at the subway tracks, see how the light makes a reflection on the window, remember that visual, and when we get home I wanna show you something." My son said, "Oh yeah, that's pretty cool dad, can you put the music back on." My wife kinda chuckled and I told her I had just had a deja vu about the chase scene in French Connection (which was filmed under this very same elevated train). She said, "and this is what you are teaching your boy..car chases?" I said, "YUP."
So, I don't exactly like cars, but I don't hate 'em either. A couple of days later, I sat down with my son and watched 3 car chases. I like the 70's style car chases (it figures for me, right?) where they were filmed in a gritty real time way..no green screen or CGI, just speed and skill.
Here's my top 3:
The French Connection chase was filmed less than a mile from my house..2 and half minutes of fun
I used to live in SF..a long,long scene with a great slow build
My fave ending in a car chase that goes from the upper West Side of Manhattan to New Jersey..also 10 minutes
Comments (17)
Awesome, I love a good car chase. And those are some of the best ever. That black Charger is so bada$$. I used to live on Bernal Hill.
I just watched the Bullit chase again, so dope. I used to work in Brisbane, and did that San Bruno Mountain run all the time. My buddy Bob trashed his Porsche on that road, trying to be slick.
I''ll admit it, I still want to be Steve McQueen after all these years. I love how he did all his own driving, and insisted there be no music during the chase itself, just tires, motors, crashes, and gunshots.
Any serious gearheads out there? Is that a white split-grill Pontiac Firebird getting out of the way in the Marina sequence at 5:48? Got to love that Detriot muscle!
Ha..I should've known. Forgot to mention that the Ike tune is from Truck Turner and that I borrowed my title from Yogi Berra and that the same cat was a driver in all these films,Bill Hickman.
I'm sure all this counts as child abuse..
Those were the days C, muscle cars when gas was cheap. My 70 Mustang fastback was deceptively stock, but had a 351 Cleveland and a 4 speed Hurst trany that you rarely needed to use the clutch with...super-smooth! It could (and did, frequently) could out-run anything.
Had a '70 Nova that appeared just like that one in the 7-Up clip, except it had a in-line 4 cylinder motor with a 2 speed automatic trany. No speed, but a very on-cue backfiring machine.
Great clips, made the lunch hour! Here's the beginning of the series that occupied me through the latter half of the 70's:
Ugh. Can you believe I can't find a video of the Mini chase scene from The Bourne Identity? That's just criminal!
Oh my gosh, Mel looks young..nice one. I believe I've seen that Bourne Identity one..very cool. Some of these end up being better in your memory than seeing 'em again. The Blues Brothers one was like that.
hey, almost posted that one too!!
there can be only ONE
honorable mention
just for fun :)
That's like only 1/2 of that car chase..the stamina of the driver from gone in 60 is pimplike! Dope.
fun stuffs
Ah yes, car chases make movies memorable, are important enough to break into TV programs, and are sooo 2D. A TV movie filmed in Salt Lake City featured a Hughes 500 helicopter chasing a car full of bank robbers through (and under) highway overpasses and up a multilevel parking garage. "It's all over now," said the helicopter pilot, as the police cars closed in st the top level. Then up pops an Alouette helicopter and the Hughes 500 is the only game in town for chasing the bank robbers and keeping an eye out for the pretty female hostage. This is/was the pre-”Blue Thunder” action adventure "Birds of Prey" (1973), with David Janssen as ex-Flying Tiger pilot “Harry Walker,” who broke out of a humdrum, workaday world into adventure. Plus, he shook his old Flying Tiger colleague out of his high tech rut and back into the cockpit, chasing the bad guy into the sunset. The “Fast and the Furious” aren’t fast enough, since the TV movie’s action was as real as today’s DFX is fake.
Wouldn't you love to have been the cardboard box supplier for those movies? That guy must have been very happy.
If this is a typical example of your parenting, you are a beacon of Dadness.
I would be rich..A chase needs a box. Dadness..who'd a thunk it.
Dadness sneaks upon us in the night when we're not looking.
awesome. i am all for real time car chases. kickin' it old skool, yeah! i just caught the Wachowski Bros.' Speed Racer on HBO ... ugh, it left me cold.