''The Driver'' is a 1978 American
neo-noir
Neo-noir is a revival of film noir, a genre that had originally flourished during the post-World War II era in the United Statesroughly from 1940 to 1960. The French term, ''film noir'', translates literally to English as "black film", indicating ...
crime
In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a State (polity), state or other authority. The term ''crime'' does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition,Farmer, Lindsay: "Crime, definit ...
thriller film
Thriller film, also known as suspense film or suspense thriller, is a broad film genre that evokes excitement and suspense in the audience. The suspense element found in most films' plots is particularly exploited by the filmmaker in this genre ...
written and directed by
Walter Hill
Walter may refer to:
People
* Walter (name), both a surname and a given name
* Little Walter, American blues harmonica player Marion Walter Jacobs (1930–1968)
* Gunther (wrestler), Austrian professional wrestler and trainer Walter Hahn (born 19 ...
. It stars
Ryan O'Neal
Ryan O'Neal (born April 20, 1941) is an American actor and former boxer. He trained as an amateur boxer before beginning his career in acting in 1960. In 1964, he landed the role of Rodney Harrington on the ABC nighttime soap opera '' Peyton Place ...
,
Bruce Dern
Bruce MacLeish Dern (born June 4, 1936) is an American actor. He has often played supporting villainous characters of unstable natures. He has received several accolades, including the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor and the Silver B ...
, and
Isabelle Adjani
Isabelle Yasmina Adjani ; born 27 June 1955) is a French actress and singer of Algerian and German descent. She is the only performer in history to win five César Awards for acting; she won the Best Actress award for ''Possession'' (1981), ''O ...
. O'Neal is the getaway driver for robberies whose exceptional talent has prevented him being caught. The Detective (Dern) promises pardons to a gang if they help catch him in a set-up robbery. The Driver seeks help from The Player.
20th Century Fox released ''The Driver'' on 28 July 1978. The film was a box office disappointment in the United States but performed better overseas. Despite initial negative reviews it has become one of Hill's most popular films, and received more positive critical reception in later years.
Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Jerome Tarantino (; born March 27, 1963) is an American film director, writer, producer, and actor. His films are characterized by stylized violence, extended dialogue, profanity, Black comedy, dark humor, Nonlinear narrative, non-lin ...
,
Nicolas Winding Refn
Nicolas Winding Refn (; born 29 September 1970), also known as Jang, is a Danish film director, screenwriter, and producer. He is known for his collaborations with Mads Mikkelsen, Tom Hardy and Ryan Gosling.
He gained great success early in ...
, and
Edgar Wright
Edgar Howard Wright (born 18 April 1974) is an English filmmaker. He is known for his fast-paced and kinetic, satirical genre films, which feature extensive utilisation of expressive popular music, Steadicam tracking shots, dolly zooms and a ...
have cited ''The Driver'' as a major influence.
Plot
The Driver steals cars for use as getaway vehicles in robberies around Los Angeles. He is known among criminals for his high skill and his high price, and is notorious among the police, particularly for The Detective who is obsessed with capturing The Driver whom he calls "Cowboy".
The Driver pulls a job at a casino where his co-conspirators are late and he is seen by The Player. The Detective asks her to identify The Driver, but she denies seeing him. The Driver comes to The Player's apartment to pay her. They are interrupted by The Detective, who threatens The Player and alludes to her criminal history.
The Detective sets up an illegal
sting
Sting may refer to:
* Stinger or sting, a structure of an animal to inject venom, or the injury produced by a stinger
* Irritating hairs or prickles of a stinging plant, or the plant itself
Fictional characters and entities
* Sting (Middle-eart ...
. He offers three arrested criminals – Glasses, Teeth and their driver, Fingers – a deal: hire The Driver for a bank heist and deliver him to the police; in return, they will go free. They seek The Driver via The Connection, his middleman and
fence
A fence is a structure that encloses an area, typically outdoors, and is usually constructed from posts that are connected by boards, wire, rails or netting. A fence differs from a wall in not having a solid foundation along its whole length.
...
. The Driver initially refuses to work with the men due to his dislike of guns, but agrees to meet with them. When his driving skill is questioned, he systematically wrecks the criminals' car in a display of his prowess, and tells the gang he will not work with them. Later, Teeth visits The Driver to ask him again to join them, eventually threatening him with a gun. The Driver challenges Teeth to shoot, before beating him down. The Detective taunts The Driver at his rented room and challenges him to a 'game'. Despite being aware it is a set up, The Driver agrees to take part in the job on the conditions that his fee is doubled and Teeth is not involved.
During the heist Glasses kills Fingers and escapes with The Driver. He does not deliver The Driver to The Detective however, instead planning to kill him and make off with the money. The Driver surprises him with a gun, kills him, and stashes the money in a locker at
Union Station
A union station (also known as a union terminal, a joint station in Europe, and a joint-use station in Japan) is a railway station at which the tracks and facilities are shared by two or more separate railway companies, allowing passengers to ...
. He has The Connection
launder the dirty money and enlists The Player to retrieve it once clean. Meanwhile Teeth has discovered Glasses dead and interrogates The Connection at gunpoint, killing her once she has revealed The Driver's plans.
At the train station the Exchange Man stashes the clean money in a locker, then boards a train with the dirty money. He is followed on board by The Detective, who kills him in a shootout. Teeth robs The Player of her purse containing the key to the clean money locker. Teeth and his driver are pursued by The Driver and The Player in a car chase culminating in a warehouse, where The Driver
drives directly at Teeth's car, causing them to swerve and flip the car. The Driver kills Teeth when he refuses to surrender. Teeth's driver returns the purse and is allowed to leave.
The Driver and The Player return to the train station. When The Driver retrieves the bag from the locker The Detective and several police officers appear, but the bag is empty, the money having been ripped off by the Exchange Man. The Player leaves. The Driver leaves The Detective literally
'holding the bag' as each person departs.
Cast
*
Ryan O'Neal
Ryan O'Neal (born April 20, 1941) is an American actor and former boxer. He trained as an amateur boxer before beginning his career in acting in 1960. In 1964, he landed the role of Rodney Harrington on the ABC nighttime soap opera '' Peyton Place ...
as The Driver
*
Bruce Dern
Bruce MacLeish Dern (born June 4, 1936) is an American actor. He has often played supporting villainous characters of unstable natures. He has received several accolades, including the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor and the Silver B ...
as The Detective
*
Isabelle Adjani
Isabelle Yasmina Adjani ; born 27 June 1955) is a French actress and singer of Algerian and German descent. She is the only performer in history to win five César Awards for acting; she won the Best Actress award for ''Possession'' (1981), ''O ...
as The Player
*
Ronee Blakley
Ronee Sue Blakley (born August 24, 1945) is an American actress, singer-songwriter, composer, producer and director.
She is perhaps best known for her role as the fictional country superstar Barbara Jean in Robert Altman's 1975 film '' Nashvil ...
as The Connection
*
Matt Clark as Red Plainclothesman
*
Felice Orlandi
Felice Orlandi (18 September 1925 – 21 May 2003) was an Italian-born American actor, known for roles in films such as ''The Pusher (film), The Pusher'' (1960), ''Bullitt'' (1968), ''Catch-22 (film), Catch-22'' (1970) and ''The Driver'' (1978). ...
as Gold Plainclothesman
* Joseph Walsh as Glasses
*
Rudy Ramos
Rudy Ramos (born September 19, 1950) is an American actor and musician, born and raised in Lawton, Oklahoma. His acting career has covered six decades. It started with an appearance on the television show ''Ironside (1967 TV series), Ironside'' i ...
as Teeth
* Denny Macko as Exchange Man
* Frank Bruno as The Kid
* Will Walker as Fingers
* Sandy Brown Wyeth as Split
* Tara King as Frizzy
* Richard Carey as Floorman
* Fidel Corona as Card Player
* Victor Gilmour as Boardman
*
Nick Dimitri
Nick Dimitri (December 27, 1932 – October 20, 2021) was an American stuntman and actor best known as Charles Bronson's character's opponent in the climax of '' Hard Times'' (1975).
In addition to fisticuffs, his specialty was dying violently ...
as Blue Mask
*
Bob Minor as Green Mask
Production
Development
''The Driver'' is the second film
Walter Hill
Walter may refer to:
People
* Walter (name), both a surname and a given name
* Little Walter, American blues harmonica player Marion Walter Jacobs (1930–1968)
* Gunther (wrestler), Austrian professional wrestler and trainer Walter Hahn (born 19 ...
wrote and directed after ''
Hard Times'' (1975), which starred
Charles Bronson
Charles Bronson (born Charles Dennis Buchinsky; November 3, 1921 – August 30, 2003) was an American actor. Known for his "granite features and brawny physique," he gained international fame for his starring roles in action, Western, and war ...
. Hill and producer
Larry Gordon
Larry Gordon (July 8, 1954 – June 25, 1983) was an American football linebacker who played seven seasons in the National Football League for the Miami Dolphins. A member of the Dolphins' Silver Anniversary team, he was in the starting lineup ...
had just finished ''Hard Times'' when Gordon suggested to Hill that they make a film about a
getaway driver
A crime scene getaway is the act of :wikt:flee, fleeing the location where one has broken the law. It is an act that the offender(s) may or may not have planned in detail, resulting in a variety of outcomes. A :crime scene is the "location of ...
, to which Hill agreed.
Hill then wrote an original screenplay over the summer of 1975, in between the period when ''Hard Times'' was made and when it was released (there was a delay because the studio was waiting for other Bronson films to come out).
Hill says he was interested to see how "pure" a film he could make: a
genre film Genre film may refer to:
* A film conforming to a well-defined film genre
* Genre Films, aka Kinberg Genre, a television and film production company
* ''Genre'' (1996 film), a live-action/animated short by Don Hertzfeldt
See also
* Genre, the ge ...
that did not conform itself in conventional, Hollywood ways. He said he wrote it as a "very tight script."
"I knew when I was getting ready to do the movie that I was taking a chance", said Hill. "This was not meant to be an everyday action movie. I was trying to do something a little more, or a little less, but I was trying to do something else."
The script was written in a sparse, minimalist style, which Hill had first employed on ''Hard Times'': "I thought that approach made people read with greater intention. It's spare in detail but written to dramatic effect. You could maybe capture the mind of the reader a little better."
Hill sent a copy of the original draft of the script to
Raoul Walsh
Raoul Walsh (born Albert Edward Walsh; March 11, 1887December 31, 1980) was an American film director, actor, founding member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), and the brother of silent screen actor George Walsh. He w ...
, who gave it his approval.
Pre-production
In the late 1970s, Britain's
EMI Films
EMI Films was a British film studio and distributor. A subsidiary of the EMI conglomerate, the corporate name was not used throughout the entire period of EMI's involvement in the film industry, from 1969 to 1986, but the company's brief conne ...
came under the stewardship of
Michael Deeley
Michael Deeley (born 6 August 1932) is an Academy Award-winning British film producer known for such motion pictures as ''The Italian Job'' (1969), ''The Deer Hunter'' (1978), and ''Blade Runner'' (1982). He is also a founding member and Honora ...
and
Barry Spikings
Barry Spikings (born 23 November 1939) is a British film producer who worked in Hollywood. Spikings is best known as a producer of the film, ''The Deer Hunter'' (1978), which won five Academy Awards.
Biography
Spikings was born in Boston, Lincoln ...
. They began co-financing movies shot in Hollywood in association with major US studios that were aimed at the international market, such as ''
Convoy
A convoy is a group of vehicles, typically motor vehicles or ships, traveling together for mutual support and protection. Often, a convoy is organized with armed defensive support and can help maintain cohesion within a unit. It may also be used ...
'', ''
The Deer Hunter
''The Deer Hunter'' is a 1978 war drama film co-written and directed by Michael Cimino about a trio of Slavic-American steelworkers whose lives were upended after fighting in the Vietnam War. The three soldiers are played by Robert De Niro, Chr ...
'' and ''The Driver''. They were interested in financing ''The Driver'' provided a suitable star could be found for the lead.
According to Hill, the script was unable to bring in talents for "about a year and a half."
The role of the Driver was originally intended for
Steve McQueen
Terrence Stephen McQueen (March 24, 1930November 7, 1980) was an American actor. His antihero persona, emphasized during the height of the counterculture of the 1960s, made him a top box-office draw for his films of the late 1950s, 1960s, and 1 ...
, who had starred in the Hill-scripted ''
The Getaway'' (1972). McQueen turned down the role because, as Hill stated, he refused to star in another film that revolved substantially around cars.
The studio then went to Bronson, but he was unhappy with Hill. "He thought I had edited ''Hard Times'' in a way that had not favoured
ronson's wife and co-starJill Ireland
Jill Dorothy Ireland (24 April 1936 – 18 May 1990) was an English actress and singer. She appeared in 16 films with her second husband, Charles Bronson, and was additionally involved in two other of Bronson's films as a producer.
Life and ca ...
", said Hill, who added he "never thought" casting Bronson "was a good idea. And I never thought he'd do it."
Hill was contacted by
Ryan O'Neal
Ryan O'Neal (born April 20, 1941) is an American actor and former boxer. He trained as an amateur boxer before beginning his career in acting in 1960. In 1964, he landed the role of Rodney Harrington on the ABC nighttime soap opera '' Peyton Place ...
's agent and agreed to meet the star. "We talked about the role and talked about the minimalist approach I wanted to try", said Hill. "He felt he could do it and we just got comfortable with each other." Although considered primarily a comedy and romantic star at the time, O'Neal's casting enabled the filmmakers to secure financing.
O'Neal complimented the filmmaker as "a force to be reckoned with", as well as "a first rate writer and an even better director. And he's fast. Most young directors today think they are
David Lean
Sir David Lean (25 March 190816 April 1991) was an English film director, producer, screenwriter and editor. Widely considered one of the most important figures in British cinema, Lean directed the large-scale epics ''The Bridge on the River ...
; they spend over a year on a film and we get robots that talk."
Several actors were considered for the female lead, including
Julie Christie
Julie Frances Christie (born 14 April 1940) is a British actress. An icon of the Swinging Sixties, Christie is the recipient of numerous accolades including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. S ...
and
Charlotte Rampling
Tessa Charlotte Rampling (born 5 February 1946) is an English actress, known for her work in European arthouse films in English, French, and Italian. An icon of the Swinging Sixties, she began her career as a model.
She was cast in the role ...
. Eventually, it went to
Isabelle Adjani
Isabelle Yasmina Adjani ; born 27 June 1955) is a French actress and singer of Algerian and German descent. She is the only performer in history to win five César Awards for acting; she won the Best Actress award for ''Possession'' (1981), ''O ...
, who had gained an international reputation with ''
The Story of Adele H
''The Story of Adèle H.'' (french: L'Histoire d'Adèle H., link=no) is a 1975 French historical drama film directed by François Truffaut, and starring Isabelle Adjani, Bruce Robinson, and Sylvia Marriott. Written by Truffaut, Jean Gruault, and S ...
'' (1975). This was Adjani's first Hollywood role; she had previously turned down the chance to star in ''
The Other Side of Midnight
''The Other Side of Midnight'' is a novel by American writer Sidney Sheldon published in 1973. The book reached No. 1 on the ''New York Times'' Best Seller list.
It was made into a 1977 film, and followed by a sequel written by Sheldon tit ...
'' (1977), but agreed to make ''The Driver'' because she was an admirer of ''Hard Times''. Of Hill, Adjani commented:
I think he is wonderful, very much in the tradition of Howard Hawks
Howard Winchester Hawks (May 30, 1896December 26, 1977) was an American film director, producer and screenwriter of the classic Hollywood era. Critic Leonard Maltin called him "the greatest American director who is not a household name."
A v ...
, lean and spare. The story is contemporary but also very stylized, and the roles that Ryan and I play are like Bogart
Humphrey DeForest Bogart (; December 25, 1899 – January 14, 1957), nicknamed Bogie, was an American film and stage actor. His performances in Classical Hollywood cinema films made him an American cultural icon. In 1999, the American Film Ins ...
and Bacall. We are both gamblers in our souls and we do not show our emotions or say a lot. For us, talk is cheap. I am really quite a mysterious girl in this film, with no name and no background. And I must say that it is restful not to have a life behind me; this way, I don't have to dig deep to play the part. All I know is that life for me is gambling and I am a loser. I have what people call a poker face.
The studio recommended
Robert Mitchum
Robert Charles Durman Mitchum (August 6, 1917 – July 1, 1997) was an American actor. He rose to prominence with an Academy Award nomination for the Best Supporting Actor for ''The Story of G.I. Joe'' (1945), followed by his starring in ...
for the role of the Detective. Hill liked the idea and met with Mitchum to discuss the part but the actor turned it down. Hill ended up casting
Bruce Dern
Bruce MacLeish Dern (born June 4, 1936) is an American actor. He has often played supporting villainous characters of unstable natures. He has received several accolades, including the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor and the Silver B ...
. "I wanted Bruce's personality", he said. "Audiences get nervous about movies that don't have a lot of dialogue.
..They like a balance. I wanted Bruce to very much offset the distance of The Driver."
Filming
The film featured several car chase sequences. Hill says he felt the first chase was "kind of a failure" because it "was meant to lead up to a much more spectacular finish" but he was unable to film it properly: it was done on the last night of shooting and an electrician fell off the roof and was badly injured; Hill could not get all the shots he wanted and had to "cobble together" the end result. However, he felt the sequence with the
Mercedes 250 S in the garage and the final chase were "as fully realised as I could get them to be."
Hill wanted to film chase scenes at night, which he felt had not been done many times in films before.
In order to expedite this, Hill shot the dramatic scenes first during the day, then the chase scenes at night. Hill said the night shooting was draining: "It's like you're swimming underwater or hypnotised. And I'm a person that stays up late and wakes up early. But staying up night after night after night really threw me out. You make decisions you cannot explain. You just intuit."
Hill says the major visual influence on the film was the works of artist
Edward Hopper
Edward Hopper (July 22, 1882 – May 15, 1967) was an American realist painter and printmaker. While he is widely known for his oil paintings, he was equally proficient as a watercolorist and printmaker in etching.
Hopper created subdued drama ...
.
He was also influenced by his work as a second assistant director on ''
Bullitt
''Bullitt'' is a 1968 American neo-noir action thriller film directed by Peter Yates and produced by Philip D'Antoni. The picture stars Steve McQueen, Robert Vaughn, and Jacqueline Bisset. The screenplay by Alan R. Trustman and Harry Kleiner ...
'' (1968), which featured a famous car chase. What fascinated Hill on ''Bullitt'' was the abundance of shots captured from inside the cars, which compelled him to film the same amount on ''The Driver''.
Production
wrapped on the film April 1978.
Reception
Critical
Contemporary reviews were extremely poor. Hill later said, "I remember the studio had this huge sheaf of Xeroxed reviews they’d handed me — you could stop a fucking .45 slug with this stack, it was so thick. And of all the reviews in this six-inch thick pile, there was only one good one."
Kevin Thomas of the ''Los Angeles Times'' called the film "ultraviolent trash that wipes out Ryan O'Neal, Bruce Dern and Isabella Adjani... plays like a bad imitation of a French gangster picture which in turn is a bad imitation of an American gangster picture." Vincent Canby of the ''New York Times'' wrote "It is Awful Movie. It is Pretentious Movie. It is Silly Movie. It talks just like this."
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...
gave ''The Driver'' 2.5 stars out of 4, writing: "It's a movie about people who are not real because they are symbols, and it's a damned good thing there are great chase scenes or the movie would sink altogether."
Saying it's "probably advisable for ''
film noir
Film noir (; ) is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and motivations. The 1940s and 1950s are generally regarded as the "classic period" of American ' ...
'' aficionados only", film critic
Duncan Shepherd of the ''
San Diego Reader
The ''San Diego Reader'' is an alternative press newspaper in the county of San Diego
San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a ...
'' gave it five out of five stars. "The whole show, in fact, is something like a coded message passed from the moviemaker to the devotees of the genre, in full view of, but beyond the full understanding of, the rest of the audience", according to Shepherd.
, the film holds an approval rating of 77% on
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
based on twenty-six reviews. The site's consensus states: "A tough, highly stylized thriller with amazing sound design and car chases."
Box office
The movie was a commercial disappointment in the United States although it performed better overseas.
Hill says "I don't think you could say the film did commercially well anywhere except Japan, where I believe it did reasonable business."
The film opened in 642 theatres in the United States, grossing $2 million for the weekend.
The film grossed a total of 1,102,183 admissions in France.
It was the 33rd most popular film of the year.
Producer Larry Gordon later reflected on the film's poor critical and box office response in the US:
If we'd had Clint Eastwood
Clinton Eastwood Jr. (born May 31, 1930) is an American actor and film director. After achieving success in the Western TV series '' Rawhide'', he rose to international fame with his role as the "Man with No Name" in Sergio Leone's "''Doll ...
in the film, we'd have been forgiven everything and they'd have said, 'It's another Eastwood film about driving cars'." If we'd had Steve McQueen, we'd have been compared to ''Bullitt'' or ''The Getaway''. We were treated as an art film rather than an action film. We took a unique approach to standard material. We'd go the same way again, but with a different cast we might have attracted an audience. I believe in returning investors' money – and if I could make ''The Driver'' again I'd try to rectify it for a commercial market. When you're writing this kind of script... naturally you think of an action lead like Bronson or Eastwood... and certainly Fox wanted a name. But when we got Ryan, I suggested we make changes to suit his character. This is always the director's prerogative.
Isabelle Adjani later complained she felt the film hurt her career. "Afterwards the only American offers I got were bad ones", she said. "I did it, really because after ''
The Story of Adele H
''The Story of Adèle H.'' (french: L'Histoire d'Adèle H., link=no) is a 1975 French historical drama film directed by François Truffaut, and starring Isabelle Adjani, Bruce Robinson, and Sylvia Marriott. Written by Truffaut, Jean Gruault, and S ...
'' everyone urged me to make a Hollywood film. I turned down several, and felt I couldn't continue to do that. And I liked Walter Hill. Only later did I realize I'd made a terrible mistake."
Walter Hill recalled, "Had I not been shooting ''
The Warriors'' at the time, I don't think my career would have survived. They loved it overseas, but in those days, that didn't matter that much. It made exactly zero dollars in the United States.
"I think Ryan gave a very good performance", added Hill. "I was always very happy with what he did."
He said, "I was very disappointed that people didn't particularly give him any credit for what he did. To me, he's the best he's ever been. I cannot imagine another actor. When you don't get who you want, sometimes you really do get lucky."
EMI Films
EMI Films was a British film studio and distributor. A subsidiary of the EMI conglomerate, the corporate name was not used throughout the entire period of EMI's involvement in the film industry, from 1969 to 1986, but the company's brief conne ...
had announced plans to make another film with Hill, a Western called ''The Last Gun'', but this did not happen.
Legacy
The film has gone on to become more popular, and it is often the first film shown during retrospectives of Hill's work.
The
Reflections Interactive
Ubisoft Reflections Limited (formerly Reflections and later Reflections Interactive Limited) is a British video game developer and a studio of Ubisoft based in Newcastle upon Tyne. Founded in 1984 by Martin Edmondson and Nicholas Chamberlain, th ...
video game ''
Driver'' (1999) uses several thematic inspirations from this movie.
Both
Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Jerome Tarantino (; born March 27, 1963) is an American film director, writer, producer, and actor. His films are characterized by stylized violence, extended dialogue, profanity, Black comedy, dark humor, Nonlinear narrative, non-lin ...
's ''
Pulp Fiction
''Pulp Fiction'' is a 1994 American crime film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, who conceived it with Roger Avary.See, e.g., King (2002), pp. 185–7; ; Starring John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson, Bruce Willis, Tim Roth, Ving Rhame ...
'' (1994) and ''
Kill Bill: Volume 2'' (2004) refer to this film: a shot and setup of Vincent Vega skidding out into the road with an overdosed Mia Wallace in the passenger seat in ''Pulp Fiction'' is copied from the opening chase of ''The Driver;'' and Beatrix Kiddo being described as "the cowgirl
hoain't never been caught" in ''Kill Bill: Volume 2'' is copied from Ryan O'Neal's character description in ''The Driver'' as "the cowboy who could not be caught". According to Wensley Clarkson's book, ''Tarantino – The Man, the Myths and His Movies'', Tarantino lists ''The Driver'' as one of the "coolest movies of all time."
The film also influenced ''
Drive
Drive or The Drive may refer to:
Motoring
* Driving, the act of controlling a vehicle
* Road trip, a journey on roads
Roadways
Roadways called "drives" may include:
* Driveway, a private road for local access to structures, abbreviated "drive"
...
'' (2011), directed by
Nicolas Winding Refn
Nicolas Winding Refn (; born 29 September 1970), also known as Jang, is a Danish film director, screenwriter, and producer. He is known for his collaborations with Mads Mikkelsen, Tom Hardy and Ryan Gosling.
He gained great success early in ...
. "It's a very different movie", said Hill of this. "It has certain things, as Nic has told me, that are homage and that's fine. It's very complimentary. I bear him no animosity or anything. I think he's a remarkably talented guy and quite like him."
''
Baby Driver
''Baby Driver'' is a 2017 action film written and directed by Edgar Wright. It stars Ansel Elgort as a getaway driver seeking freedom from a life of crime with his girlfriend Debora (Lily James). Kevin Spacey, Jon Hamm, Eiza González, Jamie ...
'' (2017), directed by
Edgar Wright
Edgar Howard Wright (born 18 April 1974) is an English filmmaker. He is known for his fast-paced and kinetic, satirical genre films, which feature extensive utilisation of expressive popular music, Steadicam tracking shots, dolly zooms and a ...
, was also influenced by ''The Driver''. Wright commented on Hill's film: "Its influence on video games is very clear and in movies its style has echoed throughout the work of
Michael Mann
Michael Kenneth Mann (born February 5, 1943) is an American director, screenwriter, and producer of film and television who is best known for his distinctive style of crime drama. His most acclaimed works include the films ''Thief'' (1981), ' ...
,
James Cameron
James Francis Cameron (born August 16, 1954) is a Canadian filmmaker. A major figure in the post-New Hollywood era, he is considered one of the industry's most innovative filmmakers, regularly pushing the boundaries of cinematic capability w ...
, Quentin Tarantino, Nicolas Refn and now me with my new film (ahem), ''Baby Driver''."
Unproduced remake
Around 1996, 20th Century Fox were developing a remake of the film, which was going to be directed by
Luc Besson
Luc Paul Maurice Besson (; born 18 March 1959) is a French film director, screenwriter and producer. He directed or produced the films '' Subway'' (1985), ''The Big Blue'' (1988), and '' La Femme Nikita'' (1990). Besson is associated with the ' ...
, who had already had huge success with films like ''
La Femme Nikita La Femme Nikita may refer to:
* ''La Femme Nikita'' (film), a 1990 French action film by Luc Besson, originally named "Nikita"
* ''La Femme Nikita'' (TV series), a 1997–2001 TV series based on the film, also called "Nikita"
* ''Nikita'' (TV se ...
'' and ''
Leon: The Professional'' and was working on ''
The Fifth Element
''The Fifth Element'' is a 1997 English-language French science fiction action film conceived and directed by Luc Besson, as well as co-written by Besson and Robert Mark Kamen. It stars Bruce Willis, Gary Oldman, Chris Tucker, and Milla Jov ...
''. He worked on the script with screenwriter
John Pogue
John Pogue is an American filmmaker. He is an alumnus of Yale University
Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of h ...
, but it was not made.
References
External links
*
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Copy of screenplay plus analysisat Cinephilia Beyond
{{DEFAULTSORT:Driver, The
1978 films
1970s action thriller films
1970s crime thriller films
20th Century Fox films
American action thriller films
American crime drama films
American crime thriller films
American heist films
American chase films
1970s English-language films
Films about automobiles
Films directed by Walter Hill
Films set in Los Angeles
Films shot in Los Angeles
American neo-noir films
American road movies
1970s road movies
Films scored by Michael Small
Films with screenplays by Walter Hill
EMI Films films
1970s American films