Daily Dialogue — November 28, 2014

Captain Bennett: What the hell is going on here? A high speed pursuit, two men are killed, an officer in the hospital, a witness almost murdered. Now I want to know what’s happening and I want to know now. Let’s hear it straight.
Bullitt: Here’s the report.
Baker: Now a man like Chalmers could be a great help to the department. He could speak for us where it counts. He could fight for us in the legislature. Now you have got to turn over his witness. Where’s Ross?
Captain Bennett: Tell him. That’s an order.
Bullitt: He’s dead.
Captain Bennett: Dead?
Bullitt: He died last night.
Captain Bennett: After you moved in?
Bullit: Before. I’ve got him downstairs under a John Doe.
Baker: You are sick. Smuggling a dead man out of a hospital, and now two men killed who may have had nothing to do with it.
Bullitt: The man I was chasing killed Ross.
Captain Bennett: How do you know? Did you see him?
Bullitt: Yes. He tried to nail me with a shotgun, a Winchester pump.
Baker: The radio report said the two men were burned beyond recognition. Now all he’s got are two dead men. It would never hold up in court.
Bullitt: I’ve got one lead. I want to move on it. (Hands a paper to Bennett.)
Captain Bennett: Miss Dorothy Simmons, Thunderbird Hotel, San Mateo.
Delgetti: Ross called her person-to-person from a phone booth in Union Square approximately nine hours before he was killed.
Baker: So he called his girlfriend. What does that prove?
Captain Bennett: This is Sunday. I’m going to hold that writ until we come to work Monday morning.
(Baker leaves.)
Captain Bennett: Frank–go on, get out.

— Bullitt (1968), screenplay by Alan Trustman and Harry Kleiner, based on the novel by Robert L. Fish

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Proposal, suggested by Aamir Mirza. Today’s suggestion by Will King.

Trivia: The chase sequence takes place over a number of non-contiguous streets in and south of San Francisco. The sequence apparently starts under Highway 101 in the Mission District. When the Charger does a U-turn on what is Precita Avenue to follow the Mustang, a storage tank on Potrero Hill, in the southeast part of SF, is visible in the distance. The next few scenes are in the Bernal and Potrero areas; you can see green hills to the southwest on the horizon in one shot. Twenty-one seconds later, Coit Tower appears in the Mustang’s front window to the east (as can be ascertained by the buildings’ shadows). They then come to a stop for a Cable Car on Hyde Street and Filbert. The twin towers of Sts. Peter and Paul Church are visible just to the right of Coit Tower. They turn hard left next onto a four-lane street with a concrete median, what might be Columbus. A F-type street car is seen coming the opposite direction. They top a rise and Angel Island comes into view slightly on the left, placing them on about Stockton and Chestnut. They turn north, then west, then south uphill. In the next cut, they are coming downhill, north towards the Bay. They turn west and the next few scenes are inter-cut, reused footage of the same street sequence, as shown by repeated presence of the same Cadillac and a Green Volkswagen Beetle. They drive downhill or north, towards the Bay, and turn west in front of the same Caddy, several blocks north of Van Ness. They turn left or south, going uphill. They then are headed north and turn from Larkin St. onto Francisco St. headed west. In the next scene the Dodge is going north, rounding Laguna onto Marina, having leaped six blocks. They turn from Laguna St., in front of Ft. Mason, onto Marina and in front of the Safeway. (The bottom of the store’s name can be seen as the Dodge veers onto Marina.) They accelerate down Marina with the Marina Green and the Bay visible in the background. In the next cut, Ft. Mason is again visible in the background as they once again round the turn on Marina onto the Marina green. With the next cut they turn in front of the Safeway again. The next cut puts them eight miles away, back in the Vistacion Valley district, turning right from University St. on to Mansell St. From there they cut to Western entrance to Guadelupe Canyon Parkway on San Bruno Mountain in Daly City three miles away, heading East. To extend the length of the chase the cars are shown driving East then West and back and forth with each cut while supposedly heading only one way before the Charger crashes at the Parkway’s Eastern exit in Brisbane.

Dialogue On Dialogue: Commentary by Will: “What’s interesting about this scene is the silence that punctuates the proposal. There’s no debate, no pleading for another chance. Frank Bullitt makes his case very economically and leaves the rest to Captain Bennett.”