'Bullitt': Steve McQueen's Commitment to Reality

This 1968 documentary short nicely explores the making of Steve McQueen's greatest film, using interview dialogue from McQueen with behind-the-scenes footage of filming and preparation. Particularly intriguing are some alternate takes of several scenes, notably the different take of Bullitt and Walter Chalmers' discussion of Johnny Ross at the hospital; Robert Vaughn is much better in this alternate take than in the released scene.

The alternate angle of the car-chase scene where Bill Hickman runs into a camera nicely displays how McQueen did his own stunt driving in the famed chase.

In all this short adds a nice extra touch to McQueen's superb police drama.

This quick documentary gives some pretty interesting insights into the making of Bullitt, which I found to be especially interesting because so much of the film was shot not only on location, but on very difficult locations. Steve McQueen is something of a stuntman in real life, given his extensive interests in motorcycle and car racing, so naturally he wanted to do as many of his own stunts as possible, and I think that kind of dedication really comes across in the film. When stuntmen are used in movies there are so many times when you can just tell, even if you can't really see their faces, and I think it takes away from the movies as a whole.

There is also a lot of interesting footage of the cast and crew working on location, behind the scenes, and this DVD includes some pretty interesting information about the research that some actors did in preparation for their roles, such as riding along with SFPD officers to learn how they worked, as well as using real doctors and nurses in the hospital scenes. Overall an interesting documentary, and definitely worth the ten minutes it will take to watch it!

This is the shortest of the three documentaries on the Special Edition 2-Disc DVD of Bullitt, and the only of them that isn't feature-length, with a running time of ten minutes. It consists of narration and interviews(with McQueen and Yates, among others) run over behind the scenes footage and clips of the movie. They talk about staying as close to the truth as they could; shooting exclusively on location(as opposed to using sets), using actual professionals(not actors) for some of the cast(those are nurses and doctors, and their performances are nearly simply them responding to what occurs... obviously, the operation is staged), and the driving is carefully planned, but not done as a series of minor gags, the way it had been until then. There aren't particularly any spoilers here, nothing you don't learn in the first half hour or so. It would have been nice to hear about other aspects; I suppose they didn't focus as much on the technical approach or the writing in these back then, and yes, this is arguably mainly promotional. That is not to say that it isn't interesting, and it is put together well. It keeps to a nice pace, not staying on any one subject for too excessive an amount of time. There is nothing offensive in this. I recommend it to anyone who wants to know more about the picture itself. 7/10