Since filming the Cannes film festival first prize winner The Conversation, last year, Hackman has made Zandy’s Bride, playing the husband of mail order bride Liv Ullmann; The Dark Tower, a private eye picture directed by Arthur (Bonnie and Clyde) Penn; Bite The Bullet, a western; and now French Connection II.
Hackman desired director approval and he ended up approving John Frankenheimer, formerly well known as an egomaniac, even now has trouble keeping his tongue in check except with Hackman, who is consulted on every camera set-up.
Melancholic, serious, weary, Hackman is taking five at three o’clock in the morning in the courtyard of a deserted factory in Marseille, where he’s on location shooting a sequel to The French Connection.
Three years went by before Beatty cast Hackman in Bonnie and Clyde, a movie that made a star out of everybody connected with it.
Three years ago, after the original French Connection was completed, I talked to Billy Friedkin, the director, about what kind of film we’d made.
