Lately, I've been Netflixing Steve McQueen films. Bullitt is awesome. It was new to me last month, had never seen it before. I'm way too young to remember when McQueen's films were in the theaters, and years later the networks didn't play his films much on television, at least not that I remember as a kid. Saw a few other films recently, as well, that starred McQueen. I actually didn't really like The Great Escape very much. Fast forwarded through a lot of the camp scenes. It was a lot like Hogan's Heroes, which I know was probably a knock-off of the Great Escape. I was amazed by how big and unwieldy that Triumph was out in the cow pasture. McQueen really had control of it, but Jeez, it was so big and clumsy. That was "off roading" back in the WWII days, I suppose. We've come a long way baby. If you wanna talk about exploitation watch Tom Horn. Steve looks half dead while it was filmed. Poor guy. I felt sorry for him, but he was working class all the way, even as a big star. As long as he drew breath, he was workin. I mean, Cripes, he died like two or three months after it was filmed!!!! And then it wasn't released for twenty more years.
As for exploiting McQueen's name on that new bike, have you ever thought that McQueen's family probably gets some royalties from it? Don't you think he'd be pleased about that? I like the motorcycle and I don't think it's shameless to put his name on it. The satin green paint job is interesting, ditto on the gators and the period pea shooters. The scrambler seat is satisfying visually, but it won't hold much weight at all. Take my word for it, I had one, and it's not made with real life in mind. Why would any self respecting engineer situate a nice chrome rack atop a cheap plastic support that is not even fit for a child's bicycle in terms of strength? Bad design flaw and the seat, if bought for real use, cannot be categorized as anything but s#*te, even though they do look the part. Anyhow, I like the McQueen bike and I don't see what all the fuss is about, even though I would not pay a wood nickel extra for a "signature" on my paint job if I happened to be lucky enough to have that cool bike. In fact, I might be tempted to touch up paint over the signature, but then in the end, I probably would leave it. After all, some people bought that Ewen McGreggor bike. Bully for them. That's awesome if they like it. I like the tank on that beaut, but I would also be embarrassed to have a celebrity sig from that fine actor, who is also a very fine motorcyclist, or so it appears from his forays around the planet on two wheels. I think the tank didn't match the chrome on the McGreggor design, however. To my eye, copper clashes with chrome a tad. I really tend to favor silver colored alloy tanks, such as aluminum or steel. I've never seen a chromium tank, but that could prove interesting, albeit distracting when riding on sunny days, which could also deflect some uncomfortable heat. McGreggor also favored some cool gators, peashooter pipes, and a black powder coated engine. However, considering how much extra his bike costs, I think powder coated side covers would have matched the design better. I repainted my bike (satin black with Thruxton style lacquer stripes down everything centered on it) to match the powder coating (see my post on that, and you can see my design).
Anyhow, McQueen was a regular guy like you and me and he made it big. That's rare in Hollywood these days with mind controlled Disney robots acting, such as Ryan Gosling, whom I think is a highly proficient in the method sense and in the craft sense of the word, etc., but there's something a little off about Mouseketeers turned singers/actors, such as Gosling and Justin Timberlake. Have you seen Drive? Here's one of my favorite scenes from the film
The film gradually becomes freaky weird, and part of it was Gosling's screen presence. Part of it was the director, who is from Denmark. Valhalla Rising was even weirder, but masterfully shot and nuanced (with perhaps a few too many filters for my taste).
Anyway, here is the trailer from Drive. Start it at the same time as the scene from Bullitt (below). You will see a remarkable similarity, at least superficially:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uqs1A4INAU&feature=related
Compare this chase seen to the one in Bullitt, which, as we all know, set the industry standard.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ohq5xIOrNFQ&feature=related
These two chase scenes are symbolic of how much cinema has changed in forty years, and certainly not all for the better. I find myself really enjoying 1970's films like Bullitt, with luxuriously long shots that sometimes last over a minute before cutting to the next shot, and lush direction, instead of fast-paced brain frying cuts that look more like video games than story telling, at least to me. As much as I did like Drive, I like Bullitt more. And part of the reason is because Steve McQueen, with all of his flaws, is more human than actors like Gosling, that are robotically superior in many respects, but less human.
McQueen might have been half deaf, dyslexic, with a lower IQ, but he's got more staying power on screen than many of today's super stars. To me, Ryan Gosling seems like a mind control experiment success story from the annals of Disney corporate manipulation. Today, the major film studios are so "hands on" with their "talent" that they make the US military look tame by comparison (for considering its recruits to be government property instead of citizens). Disney seems worst of all, especially the way that corporation "grows" talent from such a young age. It is the proto-typical example of sick luciferian kabbahlistic top-down lizard-like management. Yuck!!!! And make no mistake: stars like Gosling, who are managed by corporate entertainment executives, in situations that are ripe for abuse and even all-out mind control experiments, are becoming more and more commonplace, even as consumers in our society are being trained to venerate them. Gosling, himself, was raised by one working parent in a Disney trailer park next to Disney World. He had no childhood to speak of, once he had been inducted into the Mousekateer circus tent of cult-like strangeness--the same mind control dynasty that has produced so many messed up icons for audiences to emulate, and insodoing assume the role of robotic consumers. Gosling became a corporate commodity once his naive mom signed him up as a Mousekateer, and he is far more of a commodity today, despite the fact that he appears to have an enviable life of his own.
McQueen resisted the pressure to become a corporate commodity. He had guts and did pretty much whatever he wanted to do. He was a real man and I respect that, not some robotic excuse for a "male lead," that drives a car like the Terminator or a Cylon, kills with machine-like precision, along with extra helpings of bursting blood bags inside every fold of the bad guy's and bad gal's wardrobes, and then mugs for the camera with lip gloss, like some unisex tart. And what about the bright pink credits for Drive? What was the director trying to say with cursive pink fonts and a story line that exploited just about every possible human foible? The juxtaposition seemed eerily calculated, to the point of being creepy, and that is why I chose to compare the two films. Each one seems to stand for the times in which it was filmed: Post-9/11 vs. Post-Vietnam. An internalization of stress and violence on the one hand in the dreamlike nightscape of Drive . . . and on the other, Bullitt's confrontation of stress and violence externally, in broad daylight and in a way that can be solved, or at least confronted head-on. McQueen's film delivers the goods, despite the corny sound track and the same forest green Volkswagen bug, that can be seen ambling along the curb at least eight times in the famous chase scene.
On some level, Gosling's film seems like an exercise in trauma-based mind control, whereas Bullitt, despite focusing on similar types of violence and action, comes away clean, and seems wholesome by comparison, like a modern day example of Greek catharsis that encourages a collective sign of relief from the audience, rather than infecting viewers with psychological tension that clings to them as they leave the theater, refusing to let go. I will take the old Steve McQueen flicks any day, especially on any given sunday. He was a true American and a great motorcyclist to boot! Great race car driver, as well.
Paying homage to McQueen is cool--at least in my book. Go for it Triumph!! But you'd better pay his family some royalties! Some might call the McQueen model a posthumous commodity of the man, the legend, etc., but I wouldn't go that far. If Triumph ever wanted to name a bike after me, I would be honored. The Brainbucket Bonneville. Hey, I kind of like the ring of that. Well, there is one of them on the road, after all. Mine.