Cinema Speculation

by Quentin Tarantino

Don Siegel did terrific location photography in his career, and he would do a good job shooting San Francisco three years later in Dirty Harry (even though half the movie would be shot on the Universal back lot). But nobody had ever shot San Francisco as great as Peter Yates did or ever will again. The way he utilizes location to such a dynamic degree suggests a master cinematic stylist. One of the reasons he did such a dynamite job was he went thirty days over schedule. Yates was shooting a movie, not a schedule. While Yates would do good work many times again—Breaking Away, The Hot Rock, The Friends of Eddie Coyle (overrated), The Deep, and Mother, Juggs & Speed (underrated)—he would never demonstrate the cinematic style and confidence he does in Bullitt. If he had? If he managed to do what he did in Bullitt four more times? He would have been the greatest action filmmaker (save for Steven Spielberg and Sam Peckinpah) of the seventies. I mentioned that to film critic Elvis Mitchell and he said, “If he did it even one more time he would have been a pantheon director.”