And it looks like a real jump in a car from the original film
However, much later, I found out the details of the history of the creation of the original film, based on which the aforementioned was shot. This year marks the 30th anniversary of the death of Toby Galicki - an actor, director, producer, stuntman, collector and just a passionate car enthusiast who was an ideological inspirer and creator of the story of the theft of the elusive Ford Mustang.
Henry Blythe Galicki, to whom his childhood nickname Toby became attached for a lifetime, was born in 1940 in Dunkirk (a friend who is in the state of New York). As the thirteenth child in a family of immigrants from Poland, he grew up and from a young age became involved in the family business - evacuating cars and disassembling them for parts and scrap metal, which Galitski has been doing since 1919. In addition, his father was a used car dealer. As a result, Toby was able to drive from an early age, and by the age of 10 he even knew quite a bit about the design of cars.
At the age of 15, Galitsky moved to Los Angeles with an illiterate uncle and began to earn a living than he knew how - by car repair. Having succeeded in this, by the age of 17 he already owned his own business. “HB Halicki Junkyard and Mercantile Company” on Vermont Avenue, which he founded with the son of Joshua Agadzhanyan, a well-known American racer at that time, largely repeated his usual family business, left at the opposite end of the country. In addition, Galitsky was fond of collecting, collecting an impressive collection of retro cars, weapons and rare toys. In addition to his business, he began real estate business, but after 30 years he tried himself in a completely new role.
Coming to the cinema
In the literal sense of the role. In the first film in his piggy bank, "Love me deadly", he acted as a producer, and additionally played the role of a racer. This low-budget horror story about the Satanists, released in 1972, raised a good cash register - $ 18 million with less than $ 50 thousand of the budget. It seems that despite the dubious genre, it was the successful investments in this film that prompted Galitsky to continue his film business, combining it with his usual business - turning cars into scrap metal.
Without delaying affairs in a long box, in 1973, Toby Galicki began filming his first own film - “Gone in 60 Seconds”. Moreover, as a true self-taught enthusiast, he becomes both a director, and a producer, and a leading actor. The plot of the film is extremely simple. A group of hijackers receives an order for 48 cars, which are given women's code names, "so that no one guessed." But the insidious accomplice is handing over the main character of the police, and he needs to break away from dozens of police cars at all costs in order to deliver to his destination a bright yellow 1973 Ford Mustang codenamed "Eleanor".
"Eleanor" from the movie - 1971 Ford Mustang Sportsroof, with a radiator grill converted to a 1973 model and painted with yellow paint for school buses, in order to save
In addition to the long chase, the film also contains urban scenes for comic relief - falling young ladies with unimaginable hairstyles of the 60s, policemen rescuing old women from under the wheels, shocked by the main character brashly wrecked their car and disappeared. The finale is generally just a cathedral organ in the bushes:
spoiler
the protagonist, who has completely wrecked the car, suddenly notices the SAME ABSOLUTELY at the car wash on the highway, quickly turns the numbers on it and rinses into the sunset under the nose of the police.
Galitsky approached the filming thoroughly and irresponsibly at the same time. A year before the start of work on “60 Seconds”, machines for filming were already gradually accumulating in a special parking lot: cars, a garbage truck, three firefighters and, of course, many police cars. Galicki bought them in dozens at auction, buying on average for $ 200. However, the same "Mustang" for the main role he had only one. Lacking a budget for major movie studios, Toby saved a lot. Almost all the cars that drive or park in the frame belong to him. When changing scenes, they were transported and re-arranged in a new location; the damaged ones were set as parked, turning the whole side to the camera. But the crowd and the complete overlap of the streets for his filming were too expensive, so in the frame you can see random passers-by and onlookers who witnessed a brutal chase, and their genuine reaction to what is happening. It even got to the point that Galitski inserted shots of the consequences of the actual derailment of the train at the beginning of the film, considering it to be a good turn-around. Why disappear a good accident, even if it was not in the script?
Anyway, in the film there was no official script as such. The synopsis a couple of paragraphs above is about what Galitsky and the other filmmakers kept in mind. Actors eagerly improvised on the go, having only a general idea of dialogs and plot. The story from the filming of the film's editor, Warner Leighton, is often mentioned. He absolutely could not understand in what order he would glue together dozens of monotonous chase scenes, to which he received an answer from Galitsky: "We have a sandy wasteland through which we pass twice."
A number of unplanned accidents were also left in the film: a coup of a police car on a slope of a sand pit; Galitsky’s crooked collision with a patrol car that flew off and nearly knocked his friend Joshua Aghajanyan Jr. the mistake of another driver who poked at speed and typed the Mustang into a real lamppost in a scene on the highway; a collision with the brand-new Cadillacs at a car dealership (in addition to his own, put under attack, Galitski also broke real exhibition designs, later they ordered him to buy these cars).
Of course, one Mustang could not withstand so many clashes, so the car was prepared for the role as a full-fledged actor. In total, about 250 man-hours were spent on work. First of all, the creators did not have a 1973 model, so the original 1971 Mustang was made a kind of restyling. Inside, a frame from NASCAR race cars was welded in and racing belts and a sports steering wheel were installed. According to some reports, the engine was moved and modified by Toby himself. The transmission, cardan and chassis were reinforced and protected from below by a 3 mm steel plate, and the rear brakes were made independent. Thanks to these fortifications, among other things, the car was able to complete the Epic Jump - and not at all a computer-assisted vortex, as in the remake, but a real, 38-meter one with a hard landing on the asphalt, while remaining on the go.
Jump scene at 1:27:00. It is filmed on a slope in front of the intersection of 190th and the Pacific Coast highway, here .
The film became a direct hit in the viewer. With almost the sole control over the entire filming process, Galitsky hit $ 150,000 and raised $ 40 million at the box office. Translating into today's money is more than $ 200 million.
Toby, having received a huge amount almost single-handedly - because he did not need to share with the studio or the producers - behaved like a real geek. He bought a tremendous hangar on his Vermont Avenue and substantially expanded his collection, which has been assembled since the founding of the Junkyard and Mercantile Company. It now had cars and cars, signs and badges, posters, models, weapons, a toy railway, the keys to all the hotel rooms visited - more than 100,000 different items in total! For this, Toby even jokingly was nicknamed "Junkman" - the Junkman. But besides this, he continued both his business and his work.
Collection of Toby Galicki. More photos here .
Exploitation
How is it possible that an independent, non-studio film with unknown actors gathered the same box office as the “Bullitt” that came out five years before with the great Steve McQueen and the recognized canonical scene of a car chase ? Toby Galitsky did not claim to be anything more than a film of category "B", but the success of the rental, obviously, determined the movie mode of that time.
In 1971, the film "Vanishing point" was released (known here after localization as "Vanishing Point" ). The film is about a car driver delivering a white Dodge Challenger to San Francisco. However, gradually we observe how the hero begins to give a damn about what is happening - his mission, traffic rules and the police of four different states in the rearview mirror. He provokes accidents, drives forward, he lives as he wants, while sitting behind the wheel of this car.
Dodge Challenger at Vanishing point
The film, which received negative reviews from critics, was not even going to roll further than small cinemas in the United States, and it would finally disappear in two weeks if it were not for the sudden success in Europe (which Galitsky's “60 seconds” will also find there). This prompted the studio to release a double-ticket movie with the movie "The French Connection ", also a famous scene of the car chasing a subway train in Brooklyn. After that, the “Vanishing point” was noticed and appreciated by the audience, and by the mid-1970s he already had a cult status. In the same year, Steven Spielberg's debut film “ Duel ” was released, about the frightening road confrontation of a simple clerk in a passenger car with a 30-ton fuel truck. The “Duel” was also planned as a television movie, but after success with the audience it was dubbed and released to the box office.
All these films were released almost simultaneously, attracted more attention from the audience than the creators expected, and most importantly - they are very similar. In “Point” and “Duel” the same idea is to chase through the entire film, and in the first the classic muscle car, as well as 60 seconds, plays the main role. Films were shot in the desert surroundings of the western states, among dust and roads sticking into the horizon, diluted with small episodes with media attention, meetings with random cars and almost identical characters like owners of roadside cafes or snake catchers. In general - an alloy of the classic "road movie" with the drama of the chase.
In cinema there is a concept of “operational cinema”, when films are shot according to certain stereotypical canons for a narrow audience of fans. For example, these are blaxploitation - films with exclusively black actors, films in the style of girls with guns, films about zombies, etc. Starting with 60 Seconds, Galicki created his own field of operational cinema. Here is his recipe for success: you do not need to add a car chase to the film, but simply shoot a film consisting of one, as large as possible and insane car chase! As a result, in “Gone in 60 Seconds”, the longest car chase in the history of cinema (40 minutes) was shot, during which 93 cars were crashed.
In 1982, he released his next film work, "Junkman" ("The Elder"). This name is explained by the cinematic technique used by Galitsky: he made a film about ... the director who made the film “Gone in 60 Seconds”! The idea is in the best traditions of “8 1/2” Fellini or “Everything for Sale” by Andrzej Wajda, but the picture is still a long car chase. The main character Harlan B. Hollis (apparently to match the initials with HB Halicki, often visible on the numbers of his cars in the films) escapes from killers sent by the greedy PR manager after the success of his film. The hero is chased along the highway in cars and even from the air, throwing hand grenades out of a light-engine aircraft. “Junkman” also becomes a record holder, officially inscribed in the Guinness Book of Records: 250 cars, motorcycles, trucks and airplanes were broken on its set.
In 1983, Deadline auto theft, the last film from a kind of trilogy, was released. It represents a new car chase with the inclusion of material from the first two films. At the same time, the scenes from the films are remounted in such a way that the viewer understands: “Deadline auto theft” is just that film based on the scenes from “Gone in 60 Seconds”, which was produced by the main character in “Junkman”.
Razor
All three films of the aforementioned were made by Tobi Galitsky, being himself a director, screenwriter, producer and stunt actor. Of course, this first of all gave him the opportunity to realize his dream: to make a film exactly as he sees it, and not what the producers will give money for; to do such tricks that famous actors would not go to - in a word, complete creative freedom. And last but not least, it saved a lot of money, because he spent all the money on logistics and fees for actors and members of the filming process and post-production, without sharing with the studios. But if combining the first three professions was a completely safe occupation, then getting in and driving an accident yourself ...
In the biography of Toby Galicki, two facts from the filming of "Gone in 60 Seconds" are standardly mentioned. The collision with a lamppost at almost 150 km / h, when the Mustang tucked another car behind the rear wing, was very dangerous. Both the car and Toby himself were badly injured, the latter was unconscious for a while and then spent three weeks in the hospital. However, on the way there in the ambulance, he, with difficulty moving his swollen jaw, asked his friend, auto mechanic and stunt director George Barris: was this episode managed to be shot? The episode was not only photographed, but also included in the film. When the broken Mustang was taken away on a tow truck, they also took away the fallen lantern - after all, Galitsky had to be removed later as he leaves the scene of the accident.
The famous Epic Leap at 38 meters also did not add Galitsky's health - he got out of the car lame, due to compression-damaged vertebrae. He did not remain disabled, although relatives and friends later said that he had since changed his walk. But already in his next film there was a death.
On the set of “Junkman” in one of the scenes where a killer throws hand grenades onto a protagonist’s car, his pilot had to pass over the road at extremely low altitude, and ... he didn’t calculate. As a result, Galitsky in a car made a head-on collision with an airplane! The chassis wheel pierced the Cadillac windshield at a combined speed of both cars of about 300 km / h, the plane flew a few tens of meters and crashed. When George Barris rushed to the scene of the accident, Toby got out of the car to meet him with a bloodied, shattered glass fragment and said: “Ok, let's put in a new windshield in this Cadillac and hire another plane.” Saying this, he did not yet know that the pilot was dead. To the creator of the film, according to him, they put about 80 stitches.
After this incident, Galitsky became more cautious. In an interview, he said that he still enjoys driving while shooting chases, but he no longer does dangerous stunts himself, calling the incident with the plane an alarming bell. In addition, in 1989 he marries Denis Shakarian, whom he had known for 6 years.
But even a decrease in the number of independently performed dangerous tricks did not save him. In the same 1989, he begins shooting the film “Drive in 60 Seconds-2,” where the car chase is already unrealistic in terms of the scale of destruction: a 30-meter-high water tower falls from a truck’s collision. To shoot this moment, one of the tower supports was cut down, supporting the structure from premature collapse with metal cables pulled by bulldozers. Unfortunately, one of these cables burst and cut off a wooden telephone pole standing nearby. The pillar fell right on Galicki, who died in an ambulance from multiple injuries. He was 48 years old.
Photo Associated Press, taken August 20, 1989, on the day of his death
All that remains
The film was still partially edited with shots from Deadline auto theft and released as a memory. After the ill-fated scene with a water tower, we no longer see Galitski behind the wheel - just a weird futuristic Slicer car with a closed cabin, throwing cars aside as a plow. Otherwise, “Gone in 60 Seconds-2" is a real pornography of American 80s police cars: angular shapes and square headlights, chrome bumpers and mirrors, lamp flashers, antennas and megaphones, and all this in dozens at the same time in one frame. Everything as you like:
In 1992, the wide door of the hangar on Vermont Avenue opened almost for the first time in 3 years. The world was presented with the workplace of Galicki, which could be accessed directly by car. A huge table and an armchair stood on a pedestal so that the guest of Galitsky had to look from the bottom up, talking with the “boss”. The reason why Toby's personal refuge, left by his widow as a memory, was disturbed, is trivial: money. Debts to investors and the sharing of the inheritance with relatives led to the fact that, according to a court decision, the entire huge collection of Toby Galitsky's belongings was taken under the hammer in the conference hall of Pasadena, which went to about 5 thousand new owners. It was the world's largest private collection of its kind. One of the exhibits was indicative of it - a T-shirt with a print saying: "Whoever accumulates the most toys before death - wins." Perhaps this was the whole point of the Galitsky collection, and Tobi remained at heart - a ten-year-old child working on automobile analysis. A few years later, in 1995, the buildings of HB Halicki Junkyard and Mercantile Company were demolished by the new owners of the land.
Galician workplace on Vermont Avenue. More photos here .
As for the widow, Denis Shakarian-Galitsky sued a lot and for a long time over the following years. For the inheritance that Toby bequeathed mainly to his wife and asked not to bring the case to court; for copyright to films. In the end, she managed to defend her rights with the help of the famous American lawyer Robert Kardashian, with whom Denis was later engaged to 1996, and helped him raise four children (including little Kim).
Later, Denis was contacted by the president of Hollywood Pictures, a former fan of Gone in 60 Seconds, and suggested making a remake of the film. Denis agreed, and in 1999, 10 years after the death of Galitsky, filming for the remake began. The producer was the famous action provider Jerry Bruckheimer, and the film was directed by Dominic Sena, who worked as a cameraman for Galitsky on the set of Junkman.
An interesting fact: after the success of the remake, Denis again sued, this time with the racing driver and tuning guru Carroll Shelby for the name "Eleanor", after he released a series of custom Ford Mustangs in his workshop, stylized as a car from the film, under this name. In 2008, she managed to defend the rights to this name for the car, and this legal precedent later allowed DC Comics to similarly register Batmobiles from the films of 1966 and 1989 as full-fledged characters protected by copyright.
And what about the Mustang from the original film? And here he is, safe and sound ... well, that is, on the go. The widow of Toby Denis even brought him to the shooting of the remake as a source of inspiration, to the delight of car fans Bruckheimer and Cage.
Eleanor and Denis
Afterword
So after all, what is the legacy of Henry Blythe Galicki? Is it possible to take these same-type films taken by an eccentric collector seriously? Rather, yes. First of all, Galitsky shot well for an independent self-taught person and did not become something like the “worst director of all time” Ed Wood or the master of the genre “so bad that even good” Tommy Vayso . His films are too given away by the era of the 70s, and the chase scenes are accelerated in places to seem more dramatic, but in general are no less watchable than all sorts of action movies from the 90s. The second, important moment: he himself set the chase and was a stuntman in these films, giving his best as a keen enthusiast. More risky stunts alone performed except Jackie Chan. In this regard, Galitsky’s films are sincere towards the viewer, even if he was shooting chases for chases and clashes for clashes.
Actually, one of the signs of cult films - not one of their creators sought to make a cult film, but rather shot something of their own, interesting to him. And suddenly, unexpectedly for himself, I found fans and like-minded people. If you managed to ignite the light of something new, to create a small one, but a phenomenon in cinema, fashion or culture in general is a valuable reward, because the recognition of the public lives separately from the creator, and often longer than he himself. A commercially successful film, an equally profitable remake, and two iconic machines for fans are not so small for a person who in his life just did what he wanted.