Unfortunately the remotely-aimed Charger glides slightly off course and can just be glimpsed passing behind the gas station instead of running into it: had Hickman been behind the wheel he would have struck it dead on).
The chase climaxes with his Charger careening off into a gas station and erupting in a massive fireball. In those pre-digital days, the dangers were real: in one shot Hickman accidentally loses control and clips the camera fixed to a parked car. However, it was the landmark car chase alongside Steve McQueen in the 1968 film Bullitt which he is usually remembered.īill was to do all his own driving portraying one of two hit men, he drove a 1968 Dodge Charger RT through the streets of San Francisco, using the hills as jumps.
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He sustained a couple of significant injuries during this time including breaking several ribs in a bad trick-fall in the film, How To Stuff A Wild Bikini. Stuntman work in Bullitt While Hickman had many small acting (mainly driving) parts throughout the 50s and 60s, he mostly paid his bills with his stuntwork. I pulled him out of the car, and he was in my arms when he died, his head fell over.ĭidnt sleep for five or six nights after that, just the sound of the air coming out of his lungs. In another interview with James Dean expert Warren Beath, Hickman is quoted as saying We were about two or three minutes behind him. We had a running joke, Id call him Little Bastard and hed call me Big Bastard. I had been teaching him things like how to put a car in a four-wheel drift, but he had plenty of skill of his own.
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Hickman played a major role in terms of development and execution of three of the greatest movie car chase sequences of all time.Įarly career and James Dean Bill Hickman spent most of his career as a stunt driver, and was involved in the now legendary car chase scenes from Bullitt, The French Connection and The Seven-Ups, all shot on actual city streets.īill spent some of his earlier days as driver and friend to James Dean, driving Deans Ford station wagon towing his famed 550 spyder nicknamed Little Bastard, and often helping and advising him with his driving technique, he was driving the Ford station wagon and trailer following Dean on the day of his fatal accident and was first on the scene. William Bill Hickman was a stunt driveractor from the 1950s through the late 1970s.
Hickmans third spectacle would be captured in The The Seven-Ups (1973) where, yet again, he virtually outdid himself doubling for Roy Scheider in another landmark car chase.
As with Bullitt, The French Connection (also produced by Bullitts producer, Philip DAntoni) is famed for its car chase sequence, what differs from the usual car chase is that Gene Hackmans character is chasing an elevated train from the street below (the scene was filmed in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, with most of the action taking place on 86th Street), this chase involved real traffic and at one point Bill hits a car driven by a fellow stunt driver who missed his point, this scene was kept in the film by Friedkin as it added reality to the whole sequence, however the scene where the woman steps out into the street with a baby carriage was staged even though years of debate thought it to be a real incident with the woman being unaware of the filming process, the fact she was captured from multiple angles including a close up of her facial reaction to seeing Bills car bearing down on her lends itself to being a staged event, although a very realistic one (This of course has as much to do with the Academy Award winning editing in that scene, done by Jerry Greenberg, as the driving by Hickman).His work in Bullitt (1968) is legendary where he drove the black Dodge Charger 440 Magnum that was pursued by Steve McQueen in his Ford Mustang 390 G.T.For his reputation earned on Bullitt, Hickman was hired by William Friedkin for The French Connection (1971).He staged a similar chase on the streets of Manhattan but with a greater presence of civilians, an element that had been missing in Bullitt.
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