Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry
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| Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry | |
|---|---|
 Poster |
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| Directed by | John Hough |
| Produced by | Norman T. Herman |
| Written by | Leigh Chapman Antonio Santean Richard Unekis (Novel) |
| Starring | Peter Fonda Susan George Vic Morrow |
| Cinematography | Michael D. Margulies |
| Editing by | Christopher Holmes |
| Distributed by | 20th Century Fox |
| Release date(s) | May 17, 1974 |
| Running time | 93 min. |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $2,000,000 USD |
| IMDb profile | |
Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry is a cult 1974 car chase film starring Peter Fonda, Susan George, Adam Roarke, and Vic Morrow. The film was directed by John Hough. The music score contains no incidental music, apart from the theme song over the opening and closing titles, and a small amount of music heard over the radio. The story deals with two would-be NASCAR hopefuls; the driver, Larry (Peter Fonda), and his mechanic, Deke (Adam Roarke), who successfully execute a supermarket heist to finance their jump into the big-time auto racing world, extorting $150,000 in cash from the supermarket manager (Roddy McDowall in an uncredited role) by holding his wife and daughter hostage.
In making their escape, they are confronted by Larry's one-night stand, Mary (Susan George), who convinces them to take her along for the ride (under the threat of her blowing the whistle on them both). After the heist is reported to the Sheriff, Captain Franklin (Vic Morrow) obsessively sets out to capture the trio in a dragnet, only to find his patrol cars woefully inadequate to catch Larry, Mary and Deke in a high-performance 1969 Dodge Charger.
The trio evades several patrol cars, a high-performance police interceptor, and even Captain Franklin himself in a Bell JetRanger helicopter, but finally colliding with a small freight train, in one of the most shocking (and now legendary) movie endings of all time.
[edit] Trivia
Filmed in and around Stockton, California, mostly in the walnut groves near the small town of Linden, California. The supermarket scenes were filmed in Sonora, California, the drawbridge jump was filmed in Tracy, California, the swap meet scene in Clements, California and the climactic train crash was filmed on the Stockton Terminal and Eastern Railroad in Linden, California, near the intersection of Ketcham Lane and Archerdale Road (38 01'22.01" N 121 06'18.14" W). The track spur is no longer in use, although the tracks are still in place. The locomotive used in the film to collide with the car is now in the collection of the Western Pacific Railroad Museum in Portola, California. Two 1969 and one 1968 model year Dodge Chargers were used in the film. One was destroyed in the train crash, the 1968 model was scrapped, and the remaining 1969 model was sold to a crew member from the film, but was subsequently totalled in a traffic collision in the late-1970s.
The final train crash scene was used during the opening credits of the 1980's TV show "The Fall Guy" starring Lee Majors. The line "I've gotten burned over Cheryl Tiegs, blown up for Raquel Welch" can be heard during the crash
Several chase scenes from near the end of the movie can be seen on a drive in movie screen during an episode of the 2007 Fox TV series "Drive"
The film is referenced several times in "Death Proof," the segment of the feature film Grindhouse which was directed by Quentin Tarantino. A clip of Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry is also visible in Tarantino's feature Jackie Brown. The film is also referenced in the Beastie Boys song "High Plains Drifter" in the line "Dirty Mary Crazy Larry on the run from Dirty Harry, Stash the cash in the dash but my gun I did carry."
The Bell JetRanger 206B helicopter used in the climatic chase was piloted by veteran film pilot James W. Gavin (who played the character of the pilot as well), and was actually flown between rows of trees and under powerlines as seen in the film. The specific helicopter (FAA Registration Number N20DB) was often leased to film production companies, and has appeared onscreen in many different movies (and in many different paint schemes), including The Towering Inferno (as a corporate helicopter in the beginning of the film) and on the TV series, "The Rockford Files" (as yet another sheriff's helicopter). It was also used as an aerial camera platform for many more films in the 1970's, among these Earthquake (1974) and Midway (1976). The JetRanger was involved in a double fatality crash in 1984 when it collided with power lines during a flight (not while filming), but is still flying today. [[1]]
[edit] Background Of Novel and Film
"Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry" is based on the novel originally titled "The Chase" (later renamed "Pursuit") by Richard Unekis, and published in 1963. The story incorporated a phenomenon that was relatively new in 1963: major auto manufacturers were putting powerful V-8 engines into mid-sized cars (the dawn of the "muscle car" era), and young thieves behind the wheel of these cars were now able to out run the economy 6-cylinder sedans driven by police in many jurisdictions. The protagonists of "The Chase" used such a vehicle, a Chevrolet, and made use of the checkerboard of roads in the farm country of Illinois to outrun the police.
According to Unekis' son, the rights to the obscure book were originally bought for very little money by director Howard Hawks who had Steve McQueen in mind for the title role of a future film project. Hawks commissioned three scripts, all of which followed the book very closely (and consequently were out of date with the automobile technology of the 1970's), but Hawks elected to opt out of the project when he was offered $50,000 USD for the film rights by two wealthy English industrialist partners, Sir James Hanson and Sir Gordon White. White and Hanson (who, at the time, owned Eveready Batteries and Ballpark Franks), had purchased the book to read on their plane while flying to the U.S. They both felt "The Chase" would make an entertaining film, and presented the idea to personal friend Michael Pearson, who had produced an earlier successful car chase cult movie "Vanishing Point."
After pitching their project to their movie mogul friends, who not only included Pearson but Cubbi Broccoli, Harold Robbins and Sam Spiegel, they soon discovered the movie business was not as easy as they had suspected. In addition, they were saddled with an out of date book with little literary value except for a car chase - and no screenplay - for which they grossly overpaid. With no interest from anyone in picking up the project, Sir Hanson and Sir White soon lost interest in making movies.
Over dinner one evening at Hanson's estate in Palm Springs, California they told their plight to friend and neighbor Jimmy Boyd. Boyd read the book and agreed with Hanson and White that it would make a great car chase. Boyd, a race car enthusiast, had successfully built and raced cars along with his friend Lance Reventlow, and had come very close to pursuing race car driving as a career. He guaranteed Hanson and White their fifty thousand dollars in return for the rights to the book. Boyd wrote the screenplay himself, including what passed for "modern" dialogue and humor in the early 1970s, along the lines of "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" genre. He also changed the two main characters from the escaped convicts in the book, into a slightly larcenous - but likable - NASCAR wannabe/dreamer and his Mechanic, nicknamed Fast Floyd and Dirty Deke. Boyd then incorporated the one night stand female stowaway, and the added dimension of a NASCAR-engined getaway car capable of 165 mph. Except for the tires and wheels, a stock in appearance Ford race car to be built by the famous race car builders Traco Engineering. Although 440 Magnum Dodge Chargers with stock bodywork were used in the movie after Boyd's departure.
It was also Boyd's script that added the critical plot twist of the Police Captain in the helicopter making up units that didn't exist on the scanner to trap the thieves, and the version of the wreck at the end of the movie (from a semi-truck on the highway to the surprise collision with a freight train).
On the strength of his script, Boyd had raised two million dollars for the budget (a big budget at the time). Boyd had two young, then unknown actors David Soul and Sam Elliott in mind for the lead roles, when he got a phone call from James Nicholson president and partner of Sam Arkoff at American International Pictures, a major producer of "B Movies". Nicholson was leaving AIP to form his own company, Academy Pictures, in partnership with Twentieth Century Fox: Fox would finance and distribute his films and give him complete control. Nicholson told Boyd he had read his script for "Pursuit," and wanted it to be his first film for Academy Pictures. It was very risky making an "Indie" film in the 1970's without a distribution deal. Important film festivals like Sundance Film Festival did not exist. Boyd decided to enter into a partnership with Nicholson's Academy Pictures
Fox got Peter Fonda interested in the project, and Nicholson hired English director John Hough. Hough had directed a horror film for Nicholson at AIP, and could bring English actress Susan George into the mix. Providing one of the male leads would be rewritten for her. It became quickly apparent that Nicholson and Boyd had two completely different philosophies of how the film should be made. Boyd wanted to make a realistic, exciting, humorous, helicopter, car chase. Something rarely seen in the early 1970's. Nicholson wasn't so much interested in the content of the movie, as he was attaching recognizable names and catchy titles to market it. After a long series of legal battles over control and Nicholson's rewrites of the film, Boyd accepted a settlement offer and left the project.
Cameras rolled in the fall of 1973. The film was released, mainly to drive-in theaters, in May of the following year.
