Look, you work your side of the street, and I'll work mine.

June 30, 2008 12:14 PM

The Bullitt chaseentirely geocoded. (Previously.)
posted by miss lynnster (38 comments total)

I love you, miss lynnster.
posted by Astro Zombie at 12:26 PM on June 30, 2008

Error!: SQLSTATE[00000] [1040] Too many connections.
posted by ericb at 12:30 PM on June 30, 2008

Yup. Won't load.

And I desperately needed to know the exact location of all six of those hubcaps.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 12:31 PM on June 30, 2008 [4 favorites has favorites]

Damn, that was great!
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 12:34 PM on June 30, 2008

Whaat? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
It was loading very speedily just a few moments ago. You guys broke it!
posted by miss lynnster at 12:36 PM on June 30, 2008

Rendezvous "makes Bullitt look like a cartoon" Jeremy Clarkson
posted by unpoppy at 12:37 PM on June 30, 2008

Excellent! The Filbert Street and Marina Blvd. sequences are my favorite.
And now I am a total Geek.
I love you (!!!infinity!!!), miss lynnster.
posted by Dizzy at 12:39 PM on June 30, 2008

Good lord that was cool. Finally someone is using this technology for good. Hopefully someone is currently geocoding the chase scenes in "Run, Run, Sweet Road Runner".
posted by Slack-a-gogo at 12:42 PM on June 30, 2008

I'm with unpoppy's comment regarding Rendevous (which we've discussed in the past, and someone posted a link to an annotated google map of the route,) it makes Bullit seem lame by comparison. I think ones affection for Bullit has to do with if you saw it before or after Rendezvous. I saw it after, and was flabbergasted that it was considered by many to be the greatest driving scene ever, when The Rendezvous was clearly superior using any metric one choses.
posted by Keith Talent at 12:51 PM on June 30, 2008

It took a few refreshes, but eventually loaded really quickly. Yeah, this is really great.

With the geocache going, though, it's a real tease the way they keep dangling the fun part of Lombard, only to jump some other place.
posted by Sys Rq at 12:52 PM on June 30, 2008

Fucking awesome. Thanks.
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 12:55 PM on June 30, 2008

I believe the audio track from this video alone is a sufficient argument against the electric car.
posted by Mach5 at 12:55 PM on June 30, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

"geocache"? Geocode, Sys Rq.
posted by Sys Rq at 1:03 PM on June 30, 2008

Damn, that woke me right up. Even on the small screen, here, my stomach goes BUMP when they do those hill intersections. WOW!
posted by Guy_Inamonkeysuit at 1:07 PM on June 30, 2008

The Rendevous sequence is pretty cool, but the Bullit scene is an entirely different animal. The Bullit scene has a lot going on top of the driving, which puts it over the top. The Rendevous sequence is more subtle (and realistic), and damn impressive, but it doesn't pump up the adrenalin the way that Bullit scene does. I sort of wish I saw Rendevous first, since it would have seemed more impressive without Bullit to compare it to. Or Ronin. Or the French Connection. Or Borne Identity. Or even the Blues Brothers.
posted by Slack-a-gogo at 1:08 PM on June 30, 2008

I just did a whole comment about Rendez Vous and realized there was a great previous post about it here. And someone did a similar geocode thing with it which doesn't seem to work.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 1:13 PM on June 30, 2008

That was nicely done. Thanks, miss lynnster!

"Rendezvous makes Bullitt look like a cartoon"

No, Boxitt makes Bullitt look like a cartoon.
posted by Herodios at 1:15 PM on June 30, 2008

The Rendezvous chase is shot entirely from the bumper cam, right? It's a great video (and so is Senna's lap around Monaco), but I really prefer the out-of-car shots in the Bullitt chase. Seeing the cars roll on their suspension and oversteer around the corners is half the fun.
posted by mullacc at 1:22 PM on June 30, 2008

I remember waiting to see rendez vous for years, and then finally getting a copy of a copy of a copy on vhs and was underwhelmed. I always thought it was so revered just because barely anyone had actually seen it. but now with youtube....
posted by imaswinger at 1:50 PM on June 30, 2008

That was so awesome.

I've always loved the movie, but before I moved to San Francisco I had no idea how they'd...rearranged the geography. I love watching them go from Bernal Heights...turn a corner and you're on Portrero HIll...turn another corner and you're on Nob Hill...Marina...turn a corner and you're MILES AWAY in the Southern part of the city. Fantastic. Having grown up in Hawaii, I also used to get a kick out of watching the chase scenes in Hawaii 5-0 - on the North shore, make the turn in the road and you're in...Diamond Head!

Thank you, miss lynnster!
posted by rtha at 2:07 PM on June 30, 2008

No, Ronin and To Live And Die In L.A. make Bullitt look like a cartoon.
posted by optovox at 2:11 PM on June 30, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Damn, this takes the fun out of guessing when watching with friends. Still, very cool!
posted by MiltonRandKalman at 2:12 PM on June 30, 2008

No, Bullitt makes Wile E Coyote look like a cartoon.
posted by DU at 2:50 PM on June 30, 2008

BitterOldPunk: "Yup. Won't load.

And I desperately needed to know the exact location of all six of those hubcaps."

And all those green VW Bugs.
posted by octothorpe at 2:58 PM on June 30, 2008

rtha - Don't forget Dustin Hoffman driving the wrong way on the bridge in The Graduate.
posted by Nick Verstayne at 3:00 PM on June 30, 2008

Speaking of those VW bugs, in octothorpe's link, did I miss the part where we all decided "red" was the new word for the colour green?
posted by chrominance at 3:17 PM on June 30, 2008

All this talk about cartoons and car chases reminds me of when Matrix:Reloaded was released, the car chase scene was hyped up to be the best movie car chase ever...In my opinion it wasn't even the best car chase scene of that year (language nsfw)

Of course most people tend to see my love of Bad Boys 2 as some sort of major aesthetic failure. They're probably right, but c'mon...they're throwing cars!

As to Bullitt, It definitely needs to be seen on the biggest screen you can muster with the sound turned up. It still rocks after all these years.
posted by billyfleetwood at 4:25 PM on June 30, 2008

While I honor and respect Bullitt's service to the genre, nothing does it for me like The French Connection, followed closely by Vanishing Point (plus pretty cool remix) and the formal purity of the last few minutes of Two Lane Blacktop (yeah, I know. JT and Dennis Wilson, whatever, STFU...).
posted by Kinbote at 4:41 PM on June 30, 2008

Here's a page with lots of details on the locations from Bullitt, including a detailed play-by-play of the car chase. Includes movie stills and shots from the same locations circa 2002.
posted by letourneau at 4:44 PM on June 30, 2008

Pah. The jury's out till 3 fast, 3 furious finally gets a release.
posted by davemee at 5:02 PM on June 30, 2008

BTW, regarding the green vw... you'll find that in most car chases or location shots if you look closely. They'll have a handful of cars with drivers just turning around to pretend there's all sorts of traffic. Sometimes it's really kind of a joke.
posted by miss lynnster at 5:12 PM on June 30, 2008

I never cared one way or the other about this chase but this is fantastic. Now if they ever watch ME tooling around the back cul de sacs of Long Island...
posted by etaoin at 6:39 PM on June 30, 2008

I love the sequence partly because you can see, twice, the house on Kansas St I lived in for years.
posted by lathrop at 7:31 AM on July 1, 2008

The only chase scene which can go eye-to-eye with Bullitt, IMO, is in the second half of The Seven Ups.

In fact, the Seven Ups chaser (with Roy Scheider behind the wheel) is a remake of Bullit's pursuit, switching the West Coast local to New York in the east. The chase starts in the city, then moves to semi-rural territory, ending in a crash.

Gritty cars, dangerous intersections, and the throaty growl of gear changes. The only missing element is Lalo Schifrin's score.

Rent The Seven Ups at your nearest Netflix.
posted by Gordion Knott at 9:45 AM on July 1, 2008

From the IMDB trivia section for To Live And Die In L.A.:

The freeway car chase was filmed with the traffic flowing backwards. While Chance and Vukovich appear to be driving against traffic, they are in fact going in the proper direction for the U.S.; it is the rest of traffic that's moving on the wrong side of the road (Chance drives on the right side of the road, but the traffic is driving on the left). This was done to increase tension for the audience.

I don't get it. Why do it that way and how does that increase tension compared to the reverse?
posted by Armitage Shanks at 10:40 AM on July 1, 2008

Derail of sorts, but does any Flash/JS guru out there want to explain how this is done? Is Flash video able to fire off specific Javascript function calls at any timecode you set?
posted by AmbroseChapel at 11:30 PM on July 1, 2008

I don't get it. Why do it that way and how does that increase tension compared to the reverse?

Well, you can watch the scene and they clearly reverse the traffic flow, but I assume it was for logistical reasons such as managing the flow of stunt traffic. I can't see how it increases tension for the audience, who are probably not supposed to notice it in the brief minute or so of screen time it gets.

Me, I love the Bullitt chase and I don't see how Rendez-vous is even in the same category. One is a drama and one is, well, almost a documentary. The pleasure of Bullitt isn't in the mechanics, although there's some of that, it's in the chase as a dramatic interlude. The bit where the Mustang appears in the rear view mirror? Lighting in a bottle.
posted by dhartung at 11:43 PM on July 1, 2008

Top Ten Movie Police Car Chases
posted by miss lynnster at 10:41 AM on July 2, 2008