The French Connection (W. Friedkin, 1971) - Gene Hackman Interview

The film was totally different than anything I'd ever done. I'd never shot that much outside, and especially in the wintertime, and especially in those conditions where we were just at it all the time. At least that's my recollection of it. And I don't think I've ever been pushed as much by a director either, which was really good for me. I was intrigued that Billy had such a command of what he wanted to do with the film. And Billy's the kind of guy, a perfectionist, that if he doesn't see it, it's not there. And so you just have to keep at it until it becomes there. We were doing a scene with a drug pusher. It might have been the second day, I don't know. It was in the first week, I know that. And Billy wanted me to push him around pretty heavily. I couldn't do it. I just, I didn't feel like I had never done that kind of action, tough guy role. I was looking at three or four months of this constant kind of beating on people, so I thought. And so I did. I went to him, I said, I don't think I can do this. And to his credit, or maybe because he was in a bind, he decided not to let me go. And I will be eternally grateful that he didn't, because it was certainly the start of my career. You need a little help there? You dumb guinea. How the hell did I know he had a knife? Never trust a nigger. He could have been white. Never trust anyone. The character was a bigot and an anti-Semitic and whatever else you want to call him. That's who he was. It was difficult for me to say the N-word. I protested somewhat, but there was a part of me that also said, that's who the guy is. I mean, you like him or not, that's who he was. You couldn't really whitewash it. Eddie Egan was on the set a great deal every day, as I recall. The first thing you know, you'll wind up in an entrapment. And so I pulled a great deal of I did from his attitude. I mean, he had cop written on his forehead. You saw him on the street and you knew he was a police officer. He was just this big, tough guy. He wanted Rod Taylor for the part that I did. He thought he looked like Rod Taylor. He and I didn't get along great. I appreciated him because he was the basis of the movie, but we had our differences. He went into a bar one night and he did the scene that's in the film now, where Popeye comes in and yells out, Popeye's here. Get your hands on the bar. He did that. All right, Popeye's here. Get off the bar and get on the wall. But he did it for real. I mean, there were real bad dudes in there. And so I could see that that was possible. If a guy was tough enough, strong enough, a real police officer could get away with that. When we went to do that actual scene in the film, I walked into this bar and there was, oh, I'd say 50 of the toughest, raddiest looking people I'd ever seen in my life. I thought, there is just no way in the world I'm ever going to get through this scene alive. We rehearsed it just kind of briefly. And Sonny, I think it was, said, I want you to meet a couple of guys. He started introducing me to these people, these extras, I thought, and they were all police officers. Everybody in that scene in the bar were police officers, which was a great relief to me. Get that hair done before Saturday. We're going now. Goodbye. I was never aware of having to compromise in the picture at all, which is a great credit to Friedkin, because a lot of times non-actors stick out like a sore thumb. But I don't think they did in French Connection. I think people blended pretty well. As an actor, I never adjusted to anybody in terms of how much experience they had. I would do what I felt was the right thing for the scene. And it was up to Billy to see if the other actors, street people or non-actors, would come up to that or be at that level or however you want to describe it. It was a great break for both of us. I don't think Roy had done a lot of work. I always felt very comfortable with him. He was always rock solid, always right there. He was a terrific actor, kind of underrated in a lot of ways. I think the fact that we had gone out with the police for a couple of weeks off and on prior to shooting the film helped us a great deal, because we got to know each other as people and as actors, and it helped that we were pretty comfortable with each other. We had a great sense of safety. Eddie was always there. Sonny was there most of the time also. Randy was there. And then they would have just the normal compliment of police officers when you're shooting in the streets in New York. We always felt pretty good. And we didn't get a lot of trouble from people in the street either, which you normally do in New York. You usually have problems shooting in the street. People don't want to know about movie companies, you know, keeping them from their work or wherever they're going. I've always had bad knees. I have a steel knee joint and all that. So the running was difficult. I had been somewhat of an athlete, you know, in the Marine Corps and one thing or another, but running in leather-soled shoes in New York, and a lot of running, especially early on in the film. I think that was only two days when we shot in the subway. Strangely enough, Egan actually did that scene with the real perpetrator of the French Connection. And when he waved at the end of that scene, that little kind of wave, evidently that was some acknowledgement that he knew he was being followed. And they actually could indict him because of that. That was quite a notorious scene. The chase sequence was, you know, you read something like that in the script and it's not really that detailed. That's all direction. That's all somebody's real idea of the way to make a film really move. You can't put that down on paper. The car sequence was interesting because we worked on it a long time, two weeks or something like that. And it all cut back and forth between the elevated train up above and what was going on down below on the street. And I tore up a couple of cars. They had the street closed off. They had, you know, police all over the place closing all the streets coming in and for about four or five blocks so we could really get a run. And we were going, I don't know, 70, 75 mile an hour probably, maybe more. But what they hadn't figured is that the cars that were parked along the street belonged to people in the houses and they were going off to work. So in the midst of one of these long, really hell for leather runs, suddenly out of the corner of my eye, I see a guy pulling in front of me. And bam, we hit like that. It drove me into the steel upright of the elevated trains and washed the car out. I had no idea if it would be successful or not. None. And I've never had any idea in any of the films that I've ever done. I don't think of them that way. I think of them as the work, you know. I try to keep it on that level rather than think in terms of results. The result of the film, of course, it was well received. It made money. Everybody did well from it. My career just started there. You know, I was really a second banana at the most. You know, Bonnie and Clyde, you know, I have a great role and everything, but it certainly wasn't a starring role. So it was a great boost for me. And Billy's determination and my, you know, reluctance, notwithstanding, got through it. And 30 years later, we're still talking about it.