“I’m in an off-Broadway play, The Balcony, by Jean Genet.”
“What do you play?”
“I play a cigar-smoking nun.”
“Seriously?” He nodded. “Great,” I said. “You’re hired.”
He thought I was putting him on.
“I said you’re hired. You’re gonna play Sonny Grosso.”
“Don’t you want me to read?”
I saw no point in reading actors. If I wasn’t already familiar with their work, I went by looks, demeanor, intelligence, and my gut feeling. In the past, I’d read actors and found they could often “read” but couldn’t play the character, or the other way around. Some actors don’t come alive until the cameras start rolling and are terrible at table readings or auditions. I’ve always felt the audition process puts too much pressure on an actor, and I’ve learned to trust my instincts.
That’s what a director has to do on every aspect of a film—the script, the cast, the crew, the locations; you have to listen to that inner voice that says “go” or “no.” We hired Scheider, and I immediately put him together with Grosso to get some street cred.
I met Jimmy Breslin at Gallagher’s Steak House on the West Side near the theater district. The large wood-paneled room was smoky and crowded, with a circular bar and drawings of celebrities on the walls. Gallagher’s was one of Jimmy’s many watering holes. He was a quintessential New York character and a terrific writer. We had a lot to drink that night, and we were joined by one of Jimmy’s closest friends from Queens, Fat Thomas, who was soon to become an important part of the French Connection team. Fat had been arrested for bookmaking fifty-two times, with only one conviction. He was also the agent for New York’s premier arsonist, who Jimmy used to call “Marvin the Torch” in his column. Jimmy wrote about the exploits of Fat (real name Thomas Rand) and “Marvin” (real name still a secret) in his thrice-weekly column in the old New York Herald Tribune. Fat and I became good friends. He was a jovial street guy, 425 pounds, about six-three, prematurely gray, and nearsighted. Nobody knew New York better than Fat, and he had connections in every corner of the city. It took a lot of Jack Daniel’s for me to convince Jimmy to test for the lead in the movie. “Whaddaya crazy?” he said. “I ain’t no actor, and I don’t like cops. You put me in that movie as a cop, they’ll kill both of us.”
“Jimmy, I think you can do this.”
His ego was always near the surface. “I ain’t gonna give up my day job,” he insisted.
“You won’t have to,” I said. “You can write your columns from the set and on your days off.”
“You’re nuts! Can’t you find some actor?”
Fat Thomas chimed in, possibly because he sensed something in it for himself. “Go ahead, Bres, whaddaya got to lose?”
Breslin slapped him on the back. “Ya fat fuck, yuz.” We laughed. I didn’t know if Breslin could pull it off, but he had the look, the personality, and an innate understanding of the cop mentality. He also had the Irish gift of gab. Given that, and our friendship, I thought I could get it out of him even though he had no technique. I worked with him for a week, improvising scenes between him, Scheider, and Alan Weeks. On Monday Jimmy was brilliant, inventing the dialogue of a cop harassing a suspect, some of which made it into the final film. On Tuesday he was confused and frustrated, forgetting what he had done the day before. On Wednesday he showed up late, having had a few drinks. During a lunch break at a diner in East Harlem, Egan and Grosso stopped by to check out what was to them a disturbing rumor: that we were rehearsing Breslin, the “cop hater,” to play Egan. On Thursday Breslin didn’t show up and didn’t call. I heard many years later that he’d been at a dinner party the night before, seated next to the legendary agent Sue Mengers. Sue wanted the part for one of her clients and condemned Jimmy for taking a job that should have gone to a real actor. When Jimmy arrived on Friday, I knew I had to cut him loose, but he began the conversation, asking me, “Is there a car chase in this film?” I nodded.
“I gotta tell ya,” Breslin continued, “I promised my mother on her deathbed I would never drive a car. I don’t know how to drive.” With relief, I told him he was fired. We called Zanuck to tell him that Breslin was out. He said we’d better find somebody fast; we had to start the picture in three weeks: “It’s getting bad out here for me. I’ll be gone before you guys finish the picture.”
Sue Mengers suggested Gene Hackman. Neither Phil nor I was excited, but she lobbied hard, and Zanuck suggested we meet with him. We were running out of options. I didn’t remember anything Gene had done on film except Bonnie and Clyde, in which he played Clyde Barrow’s brother. More recently he had been in a tearjerker called I Never Sang for My Father with Melvyn Douglas. Phil and I met him for lunch in the Oak Room at the Plaza Hotel on a Friday. He seemed humorless. I almost fell asleep at the lunch. When it was mercifully over, I told Phil there was no way this guy could play Popeye. Phil didn’t disagree, but he said, “What the hell are we gonna do?” We had to give Zanuck a yes or no by Monday. On the plus side, Hackman was available, and his fee was only $25,000.
On Saturday night Egan and Grosso invited Phil and me to the Policeman’s Ball, a fund-raiser at the midtown Sheraton Hotel. There was an underlying tension between us when I told Phil I couldn’t see doing the film with Hackman.
He said, “If we don’t, we’re dead, Billy. There’s nobody else.” As the speeches wore on, I kept glancing at Phil, the man who defended me when the executives said no way. It was the lady or the tiger: no picture, or go with an actor we didn’t believe in.
On impulse I took him to a quiet hallway outside the ballroom, and I hugged him; we were both in tears. “Phil, I love you. I won’t let you down. You stood up for me for two years. If you want to go with Hackman, let’s go.” He hugged me, and his look said, Thanks.
While this was going on, a reunion was taking place at the Polo Lounge in the Beverly Hills Hotel. Robin Moore, author of The French Connection, was having a drink with his old friend G. David Schine. Schine asked Moore if he had any books he could option, as he wanted to become a producer. Moore told him that D’Antoni’s option on The French Connection had just run out and hadn’t been renewed. Schine made an agreement on the spot to option it, and they signed a napkin at the Polo Lounge. Now we had a “go picture” at Fox, but Phil no longer owned the rights!
Larry Auerbach gave us the news that Monday. Phil was furious; he called Zanuck and said he would sue Schine, Moore, and everybody involved. Zanuck was calm. “Look, Phil,” he said. “If you sue them, you may or may not win the case. In five years! Meanwhile, you won’t have a picture.”
“What should I do?” Phil asked him.
“Make a deal with Schine,” Zanuck said.
G. David Schine seemed a gentleman. He admitted he knew nothing about the film business. He cut a deal with Phil for $10,000, and 5 percent of the net receipts, plus executive producer credit. He agreed never to come on the set without Phil’s permission and never to try and contact me. I met Schine and his wife only once. Ultimately he made about $2 million for his napkin.
We gave Egan and Grosso roles in the film, Egan playing his old boss Ed Carey, chief of the Narcotics Bureau. Grosso played another of the detectives. The police garage mechanic, Irv Abrahams, who took apart and put back the Buick containing the smuggled heroin, was cast as himself, and we shot the scene at the Police Department garage. We cast off-duty cops to play cops and bad guys. But we still had to cast “Charnier,” the Corsican (Jean Jehan) who masterminded the scheme, and his henchman (François Scaglia), whom we called Nicoli. Weiner and I developed a kind of shorthand. We both had an encyclopedic knowledge of foreign films. I would refer to a recent movie: “Bob, remember the guy in Z who kills the Yves Montand character?” Weiner identified him immediately. “His name is Marcel Bozzuffi. He’s a French character actor.” We cast him without a meeting.
For the role of Charnier, I said, “Bob, let’s get that guy who played the gangster in Buñuel’s B
elle de Jour, the dark guy with the five o’clock shadow.”
“You mean Pierre Clémenti?” Weiner asked.
“No, he’s the weird-looking guy who played his partner. He’s great, but not right for this.”
A short time later Weiner came back to me: “The guy you want is Fernando Rey.”
“See if he’s available.” He was, and we hired him. I drove to JFK Airport to pick him up and take him to his hotel. When I got to JFK, I didn’t see the guy I was looking for. I went to the TWA desk, and there was a man I recognized, but he was not the actor I had in mind. He introduced himself as Fernando Rey. I was shocked. This wasn’t the guy from Belle de Jour! He was of medium height, with salt-and-pepper hair and a neatly trimmed goatee. He looked like an aristocrat and spoke in a Spanish accent. We got his bags and went to my car. I tried to think of something to say as he looked out the window at the Queens skyline and we headed into Manhattan. “You worked for Buñuel . . .,” I said.
“Oh, many times. I tell you how he discovered me—he was looking for a certain type, and he saw a film with an actor who was recommended to him. Afterward, his producer asked if he liked the actor, and Buñuel said, ‘No, but I like the guy who played the corpse.’ That was me. I was in two scenes where I was dead in a coffin, but Buñuel liked how I looked, so he hired me.
“Strange, no?”
Strange, yes.
“By the way,” he said, “you know I’m Spanish, not French. You have two or three scenes where I must speak French, so if I’m not completely accurate I can dub them later.” I tried to smile as I asked him how he liked making Belle de Jour. He turned to me in surprise. “I was not in Belle de Jour.” Of course not. I tried to concentrate on the highway while seething inside.
“This character Charnier,” I said. “He’s Corsican, he was a longshoreman, so I think you have to look . . . rougher. I mean, your goatee . . .”
“Oh, I could never shave my goatee.” He was adamant as he stroked it gently. “You wouldn’t want to see my chin, it’s red with sores. When do rehearsals begin?”
I dropped him at the Doral, made sure he got to his room, then went to a pay phone in the lobby. D’Antoni and Weiner came on the line. “Bob, you idiot!” I screamed.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“He’s the wrong guy! This is not the guy from Belle de Jour!”
“What?” Bob screamed back. “He’s Fernando Rey, isn’t he?”
“Yeah, and he’s been in a few Buñuel films, but he’s not the guy we talked about.”
“What do you want me to do?” Bob asked nervously.
“I want you to kill yourself, but first find the guy we want and try to get him.”
“What do we do with Fernando?” Phil asked.
“Fire him! He hardly speaks French, he’s Spanish, and he has this stupid goatee . . . Weiner, what’s the name of our movie?”
“French Connection,” Weiner answered.
“Right, you shmuck! Not The Spanish Connection!”
When I got to the office, they had figured out that the guy we wanted was Francisco Rabal. “Fine,” I shouted. “Fire Fernando Rey and get him!”
“That’s a problem,” Weiner groaned. “Francisco Rabal is also Spanish. He doesn’t speak a word of English, and he’s not available.” I stared at Weiner in disbelief—I wanted to strangle him. I was convinced the film would be a disaster. Hackman was all wrong for Popeye, and now, God help us, Fernando-fucking-Rey, who looked like a character out of an El Greco painting. I thought the rest of the cast was fine, but the guys who had to carry the film were Popeye and Frog One. Roy Scheider was going to be terrific, as were Bozzuffi and Tony Lo Bianco as Patsy Fuca, but the two leads were not our first, second, third, or fourth choices.
The most important hire a director makes, aside from the cast, is the Director of Photography.
Dick Mingalone was considered one of the best camera operators in New York, but he had never lit a film. It was a tough seniority system for operators who wanted to become DPs. You started as a film loader, then general assistant, focus puller, then operator, and finally, if a director hires you, you can become a Director of Photography, whose responsibility is to light the set, determine lens exposure and film speed, and be responsible for the overall “look” of the film, in collaboration with the director. If you’re too good a focus puller or operator, it’s hard to move up to DP because everyone wants to keep you in those jobs. I asked Mingalone, who was the operator on Minsky’s and Boys in the Band, if he was ready to light a picture. He jumped at the chance and said, “Let me shoot some tests, Billy, and make sure we’re on the same page.” I told him I didn’t need to see tests. I liked him and thought he was ready.
Kenny Utt, our veteran line producer, smiled: “You better look at those tests.”
The following week, Mingalone brought in his “test.” He, Phil, Bob Weiner, and I watched it in the Fox screening room on West Fifty-Sixth Street. Weiner left before it was over, muttering under his breath. Mingalone had set up a scene with two friends in which one played a cop, the other a suspect who was being shaken down. He shot it at night under a streetlamp with a handheld camera, lighting it with what was called a “sun gun.” The sun gun is a handheld quartz halogen light powered by a battery that lasts about twenty minutes. It illuminates anything close to the camera, but the light is flat and uninteresting when pointed directly at a person or an object. You could see it waving around, and though it produced a decent exposure at night without other artificial lighting, it was mostly used to shoot newsreels. This was not what I wanted for The French Connection.
Dick DiBona owned General Camera. He rented equipment to most of the productions filming in New York. Dick had a no-bullshit manner; he took problems in stride and always copped to a mistake if it was his fault. I trusted him and sought his advice. He had a small kitchen at General Camera and liked to cook pasta for his friends and clients.
“I hear you didn’t like Mingalone’s stuff,” he said.
“Who do you suggest, Dick? You know every cameraman in New York.”
“Ever hear of Owen Roizman?” I hadn’t. “He’s a young guy, his father was a cameraman, and he’s paid his dues. He’s shot lots of commercials, and he just did a little independent feature in Puerto Rico that looks good.” I wanted a new guy, but I didn’t think he’d come from commercials. “I think you should meet him,” Dick persisted. “Let me run his feature for you, and I’ll make lunch for us here.” The pasta was great as usual. The film was lame, but well photographed.
Roizman was thirty-one years old. He could see I wasn’t knocked out by the film he showed me, which I don’t think was ever released. But I liked him, his youth and enthusiasm.
“Let me tell you how I see The French Connection,” I said. “Handheld natural light, push the exposures, no big lights at night, no lights at all on the streets during the day, bounce lights off the ceiling on interiors. We’re going to shoot practical locations, no sets—police stations, bars, hotel rooms—and the shots have to look like they were ‘stolen.’”
“I love it,” he said.
“There’s going to be a chase scene. I don’t have it worked out yet, but it will be through New York traffic. Ever shot a chase before?”
“No,” he answered.
“Neither have I.”
With the exception of the chase, I knew instinctively how I wanted to shoot the film. I had a sense of the thin line between the policeman and the criminal and how to dramatize it as “induced documentary.” Good Times and Minsky’s were painful learning experiences. I was emotionally attached to The Birthday Party and The Boys in the Band and loved making them, but they’re thought of as “plays on film.” The French Connection was going to be a movie over which I had control, with a strong producer who had my back. We decided to set the story in the present, 1971, instead of ten years before, when the events took place. This was for budget reasons. We didn’t want to change the cars in the street, the signage
, the clothing, or the hairstyles to reflect 1961.
Every day, Fat Thomas would drive me around lower Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, Bedford-Stuyvesant, and Spanish Harlem. I wanted to create my own New York City. In the editing process I would cut from a shot in Queens, let’s say, to another in the same sequence in Brooklyn. We went to Welfare Island near the Hellgate Bridge, where we found an abandoned bakery, part of a nineteenth-century mental institution. The building was in such bad shape the city designated it unsafe for filming, but I thought it would be a great location for our final scene. Eventually we got permission, and assumed legal liability for injury. We chose a junkyard on the most dangerous street in Bedford-Stuyvesant for the foot chase that opens the film. In the very next cut the interrogation of the dealer continues in an empty lot between two old apartment buildings in Spanish Harlem.
Eddie and Sonny took me to Roy’s Bar in Brooklyn, where they would regularly shake patrons down for drugs. We also got permission to film in the old First Precinct in lower Manhattan, which was closed but had originally been the Narcotics Bureau headquarters. Fat and I drove around Coney Island, where I found a housing project on Stillwell Avenue that resembled a prison. I chose it for Popeye’s apartment building.
I had recently seen the French film Z, directed by Costa-Gavras. Set in Greece, it was about the assassination of a much-loved liberal candidate for the presidency, Grigoris Lambrakis, played by Yves Montand. The story focused on the efforts of a young judge, played by Jean-Louis Trintignant, to bring the killers to justice. On the walls and streets of cities across Greece, Lambrakis’s partisans had scrawled “Z,” which meant “He lives.” Costa-Gavras’s style was “induced documentary.” The handheld cameras could go anywhere; the “fourth wall” was shattered. It was as though you were watching the story unfold rather than seeing something that happened in the past. I had never seen this style applied so effectively.
Owen hired as camera operator a heavyset Cuban refugee named Enrique (Ricky) Bravo whose fun-loving nature belied his seriousness and extraordinary skills. Ricky’s thick Spanish accent was hard to understand, but he had photographed the Cuban Revolution at Castro’s side, from the Sierra Maestra to the capture of Havana. He became disillusioned with the Castro government and moved to New York, where he quickly became one of the most sought-after camera operators. The documentary style suited him perfectly. We didn’t need to set up dolly tracks to move the camera. The grips would simply push Ricky, holding a handheld camera, in a wheelchair. I would talk to Owen about the lighting of a location—say, the First Precinct offices. I would work out the staging, Owen would set his lights, but I didn’t let Ricky watch rehearsals. I told him to shoot the scene as though it was happening in real time. Owen lit the interiors with small units set on bars high in the walls, bouncing light onto the ceiling, which would reflect softly on the actors below. Since there were seldom lights on the floor, the camera could go anywhere. Ricky asked me if I was sure I wanted to work this way rather than set up well-framed compositions. I said, “Ricky, did Castro tell you what he was going to do before he did it?”
The Friedkin Connection: A Memoir Page 15