“Well, Jesus, if you wanted a kiss-ass, why did you get me?
Why didn’t you get f------ Pat Boone?"
“I don’t know where he’s coming from. Every meeting he’d be late or he’d freak out. Where does he get off treating people like that?
But you know the greatest tragedy for me? That s---’s a great actor.” – Don Siegel.
"Two or three times a day, he’d say 'I think I can get this across better without a line, with just an expression.' I kept thinking, he’s not giving me anything.
Then when I saw the rushes, I was knocked out." – Robert Wise.
This one, I don't think, has been mentioned anywhere on this thread.
I LOVE this film. Love the way it was shot, love the score, love McQueen's solid-as-a-rock performance, and best of all, the battle of wills and skills between McQueen and one of the great men of the screen...
A remarkable, fascinating film, and Ann-Margret is such a world-class beotch in this; the way she treats Karl Malden is just horrendous!
He said to me on one or two occasions, ‘Don’t give me too much dialogue.’ But, of course, he dealt very well with dialogue. His reactions, his eye movements, are just extraordinary.
Just watch his eyes." – Peter Yates.
"It’s too hot. I don’t want to chase you, and I don’t want to shoot anybody. So we understand each other, right?"
The jump into screen immortality (and WATCHMcQueen's intuitively-inspired, marvelously metaphoric and utterly spontaneously gesture once his mechanical steed is felled - wunnerbar!!!!!!!) ...
(with the collaborative consummate daredevil artistry of pal Bud Ekins)
to say nothing and everything about
They Had REAL (not unreel iron pyrite) Stars Then Department:
I have always found the account of Steve McQueen's final year in which he found spiritual renewal in his life, and stuck to that even after being stricken with the cancer that killed him, to have been very inspiring. It helped give me the impetus to discover more of his work and ultimately appreciate it.
It's hard to believe he's been gone TWENTY NINE YEARS.
McQueen might even still be with us today were it not for the cancer that took his life so tragically young. It's a shame that most kids these days probably have never even heard of McQueen.
It's hard to believe he's been gone TWENTY NINE YEARS.
McQueen might even still be with us today were it not for the cancer that took his life so tragically young. It's a shame that most kids these days probably have never even heard of McQueen.
Or William Holden. Or Cary Grant. Or Robert Mitchum.... well, let 'em eat cake!
It's a shame that most kids these days probably have never even heard of McQueen.
Hell, there are people my age (late 30s) who never heard of him. As I mentioned in one of the Bullitt threads, I was watching the movie one day when a neighbor stopped by--he's a year older than me--and the "Shifting Gears" scene was playing in the background and my neighbor asked, "What is that?" and he'd never heard of the film or Steve McQueen.
A little trivia I did not know about his final film:
Producers of "The Hunter" were not satisfied with Michel Legrand's musical score which was too baroque for a thriller, they said. Finally,they came to an agreement with the French composer. Legrand's music was kept on US copies but a new musical score composed by Charles Bernstein was mixed with the soundtrack for copies released in Europe.
Lord, when McQueen died, I had just turned 24. Grown up watching him.
I was only nine, but my best friend and I worshipped the man's movies. He really could do no wrong. Most kids in our age group were crazy about Harrison Ford and Chuck Norris, whereas we were enthralled with everyone in The Great Escape and The Dirty Dozen.
And everyone's dad loved Steve McQueen. Those were movies we could watch with the old man; same with Sean Connery's Bond and Clint Eastwood.
His monumental dysfunctions, epic irresponsibility, spectacularly selfish persona and prodigious pain-in-the-ass he was aside, there's no denying - on screen - he was a Magnificent winner.
And there'll ne'er be another species like him ...
I loved "The Great Escape" and "Le Mans"! (the last one in which McQueen did his own driving).
It’s Remains the Winner and STILL Champion Car Chase of All Department:
With one of the most dynamic musical prologues evah, courtesy of ultra-cool
…
During the course of the chase scene, did you catch the error in which McQueen in the Ford Mustang chases the Dodge Charger, in which a hubcap falls off the Charger's right front tire, then mysteriously is back on the tire in the following scene?
It's a shame that most kids these days probably have never even heard of McQueen. 
