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\u201cI think if I wasn\u2019t acting, I\u2019d be a street hood.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Everyone has their Steve McQueen. It\u2019s a prevailing theme throughout the world of movie fandom, be you a man or woman, that everyone has their action icon upon which they find comfort in. It\u2019s a common fact that there\u2019s someone for every movie fan, and it gets weird on many occasions (Van Damne, Vin Diesel, Ben Affleck, Casper Van Dien).<\/p>\n My uncle loves Clint Eastwood, my brother loves Jet Li, and my dad loves Sonny Chiba. Oddly enough, everyone has their story upon which they remember first being obsessed or intrigued by said action star.<\/p>\n For me, there\u2019s Steve McQueen, and I\u2019m not overstepping my bounds in declaring that there\u2019s never been anyone cooler than Steve McQueen. Hey, Eastwood is great, Bronson is nice, and I\u2019m sure Chiba is incredible, and sure, you can debate that Eastwood and Bronson were better actors, and even more important to the film world, but there\u2019s never been anyone cooler.<\/p>\n It\u2019s just fact. Case closed. And you\u2019d better not tell me otherwise.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n But what draws movie fans to a particular action star, is that this person possesses this unexplainable mystique, this hidden coolness upon which we can watch and revel anxiously as they kick ass and beat down some lowlife criminal who deserves to be whacked. And when we\u2019re asked why we love this person, it\u2019s tough for us to explain. We just do, and we\u2019re faithful even through the bad films. McQueen is that cool guy you wanted to be, your brother\u2019s cool best friend who gave you your first beer, he\u2019s the one being hit on by the utterly vivacious Ann Margaret who refuses to stop seducing him.<\/p>\n My obsession with Steve McQueen began with \u201cThe Getaway\u201d, my favorite action film of all time. Before that, my favorite was \u201cThe Rock\u201d, and then I saw \u201cThe Getaway\u201d, and that was it. Before that masterpiece though, I\u2019d seen McQueen in \u201cThe Magnificent Seven\u201d one of the best westerns ever made. \u201cThe Magnificent Seven\u201d stands as one of the best remakes of all time, and it\u2019s a timeless classic.<\/p>\n But it took me three years later, when I finally sat down to watch \u201cThe Getaway\u201d and realized how utterly great McQueen is and that obsession has continued on and on. One of my favorite scenes, which I can\u2019t get as a still, is the climax in which McCoy has to fight off a group of officers with his 12 gauge pump action shotgun, while he and his girlfriend have to escape. But then there\u2019s also many funny moments involving the meeting with Slim Pickens who haggles with them the price of his truck even though he\u2019s being held hostage, and when Doc begins slapping McGraw\u2019s character angrily.<\/p>\n Little known fact, McQueen really was slapping McGraw, and her screams were real. What\u2019s funny about that scene is you can see McQueen blocking himself just in case she fights back. I never bothered to watch the remake of either of McQueen\u2019s films, because I don\u2019t eat dirt when I want chocolate.<\/p>\n Currently on my film collection is the McQueen box set which contains many of his most famous films. The night I bought it, I sat down to watch \u201cThe Getaway\u201d, \u201cBullitt\u201d, \u201cCincinnati Kid\u201d, and \u201cTom Horn\u201d. All were very good movies, but basically on their own terms. McQueen was known to be petty and competed with everyone.<\/p>\n With Paul Newman he matched him for every film, and tried to surpass him in terms of popularity and star power. It\u2019s said that McQueen demanded top billing in \u201cTowering Inferno\u201d, and had the screenwriter rewrite the script so that he and Newman had the exact number of lines. Ironically enough, McQueen was considered in the duel role of \u201cButch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.\u201d<\/p>\n He was a rival of Yul Brenner\u2019s. He was always trying to outdo him on the set, campaigned for a bigger more prominent role, but Brenner countered by relegating McQueen to his supporting role, would always make sure in promotional pictures that McQueen was lower, and even gave McQueen a shotgun to shoot in their famous trek to the cemetery in the film.<\/p>\n McQueen, who was a lightning fast draw, wanted to show the director how much faster he was than Brenner, but Brenner wouldn\u2019t have it. McQueen was inevitably given a shotgun which was slow and clumsy.<\/p>\n These days in the age of Adobe, publicists, MTV, and plastic surgery, we have too many actors whose charisma and attitudes are manufactured. People like Colin Farrell, Russell Crowe, Tyrese all really have that manufactured sense of danger. But McQueen didn\u2019t need it. McQueen had his own presence, a presence upon which led to his self-destruction with his friends and family, but when you watch him on-screen, you can tell he\u2019s not even trying to do what he does, and even though he\u2019s not known for his ability to change on every role, each character has their own entity, their own individuality.<\/p>\n As Papa Thorton he was this grizzled old man trying to keep up with a young world, as Tom Horn he was this relic of a cowboy, as Doc McCoy he was a bitter criminal, as Frank Bullitt he was a determined officer, and the list goes on. While the characters varied, they all had the consistent themes of being individuals whom were closed off to the world, and rather bitter.<\/p>\n For further examples of that, watch \u201cHell is for Heroes,\u201d and \u201cPapillion\u201d. One rare exception being \u201cThe Honeymoon Machine\u201d, McQueen\u2019s attempt at slapstick comedy. McQueen looked down on others, didn\u2019t trust many, fought for bigger roles in \u201cMagnificent Seven\u201d, \u201cThe Towering Inferno\u201d, and \u201cHell is For Heroes\u201d, and even attempted to forget his role in \u201cThe Blob\u201d even years after it became a cult classic and moneymaker, but McQueen was always a different kind of actor.<\/p>\n Yet he has remained a consistent foundation for future actors in action films, and there\u2019s yet to be anyone who can live up to his persona and sheer charisma on-screen. Right now I\u2019m in the midst of seeking out as many McQueen films as I can find, and I\u2019m making progress. McQueen\u2019s filmography is a series of ups and downs, even though the actor\u2019s charms never fade. Stuff like \u201cJunior Bonner\u201d, and \u201cThe Honeymoon Machine\u201d are not some of his best, but with your McQueen\u2019s you take the good with the bad. Currently, I\u2019m working on \u201cWanted: Dead or Alive\u201d.<\/p>\n He may not have been the best man to know, or be around, as was explained in his documentary \u201cThe King of Cool\u201d, but with films like \u201cThe Great Escape\u201d, \u201cHell is for Heroes\u201d, and \u201cThe Cincinnati Kid\u201d, he\u2019s the guy you want to keep watching, because whether he wanted it or not, he became a household name, and the essence of cool. You can have your Russell Crowe\u2019s, George Clooney\u2019s, and Colin Farrell\u2019s, the wannabe tough guys. I\u2019ll stick with Steve. Because if his films are any indicator, me and McQueen have a long way to go together.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cI think if I wasn\u2019t acting, I\u2019d be a street hood.\u201d Everyone has their Steve McQueen. It\u2019s a prevailing theme throughout the world of movie fandom, be you a man or woman, that everyone has their action icon upon which they find comfort in. It\u2019s a common fact that there\u2019s someone for every movie fan, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,13],"tags":[58,240,984,1087],"class_list":["post-304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-action-packed-april","category-pcthugs","tag-action","tag-crime","tag-steve-mcqueen","tag-thriller"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}