Anatomy of a Scene: the hair-raising bridge crossing of William Friedkin’s ‘Sorcerer’
The late, great, utterly mad genius William Friedkin was always one of Hollywood’s biggest risk-takers. Sometimes, the maverick director’s willingness to throw caution to the wind resulted in genre-defining classic cinema like The French Connection, The Exorcist, and To Live and Die in LA. Sometimes, it resulted in on-set tactics that these days may charitably be described as problematic – but maybe more accurately classified as “borderline illegal”. One time, though, it resulted in him shooting a scene so dangerous and punishing for the cast and crew that insurance companies would never sign off on it in today’s climate.
In the mid-1970s, Friedkin had the world at his feet. His last two films had been incredible critical and commercial hits, with The French Connection winning ‘Best Picture’ at the Academy Awards and The Exorcist being the first horror film ever nominated for that prize. He also won ‘Best Director’ for the former and was nominated for the latter. In addition, The Exorcist was a genuine cultural phenomenon at the box office, which showed Hollywood that Friedkin was a bankable name that could turn controversy into cash.
By the time Friedkin found himself shooting a heavy military truck traversing its way across a hastily assembled bridge over the Papaloapan River in Veracruz, Mexico, though, he may have cursed what he’d chosen to do with his Exorcist clout. In later years, he would call this scene – the legendary suspension bridge crossing in his 1977 action thriller Sorcerer – the most arduous of his career. The ridiculously tense sequence cost a staggering $3million to put together. It also had the crew tearing their hair out for three months of shooting – all for only 12 minutes of screentime.
Sorcerer was a remake – of sorts – of the classic 1953 French film The Wages of Fear. It told the story of four criminals hiding out in a remote South American village who are roped into a dangerous mission to buy their way home. They are tasked with transporting dynamite in a truck to an oil rig 218 miles away over rugged, jagged terrain. As if that wasn’t dicey enough, they find out the dynamite is so unstable that it is “sweating” nitroglycerin, meaning it is likely to blow at the slightest provocation.
Just how dangerous was the sequence for William Friedkin, his cast, and his crew?
The answer is “very”. The first port of call was to identify a location where production designer John Box and his team could build something that was supposed to look like a rotten structure made of rope and wood but was actually reinforced with steel and hydraulics. Box spent three months building this monstrosity at the cost of $1million in the jungles of the Dominican Republic. To his astonishment, the area then experienced a period of unusually low rainfall. By the time the bridge was ready, no water was left in the river beneath it.
Universal and Paramount’s executives tried to convince Friedkin to re-think the scene, and we can only imagine he cursed them out in spectacular fashion. This was to be the big set-piece of his film, and it had to look incredible. So, Box was dispatched to find another location and settled on the Papaloapan. The bridge was painstakingly disassembled and then reassembled in a different country over a new river. Preposterously, it also became the victim of an untimely drought.
Once again, the increasingly frazzled Friedkin and his crew had to think on their feet. The production used sewage pumps to re-route water from the river and convert it into a sprinkler-esque system, continuously dousing the location with “rain”. Wind machines and enormous hoses then blew that “rain” with incredible force, making it appear like a monsoon was attacking the characters.
In addition, the bridge’s hydraulic system swayed from side to side while the “ropes”—which were actually steel cables—added extra support. The trucks were also secured to the bridge because no one wanted to deal with a two-ton truck toppling into a mostly drained river.
While this mammoth task was being undertaken, another spanner was thrown in the works. An undercover Mexican Federale caught more than 20 crew members partaking in certain illegal substances, and Friedkin was forced to fire this substantial portion of the crew. If he hadn’t, the police threatened to imprison everyone working on the film.
In spite of everything stacked against him, though, Friedkin later claimed in an interview with The Dissolve that he didn’t stress too much about the situation – and neither did the film’s financiers. He remembered, “I must say that while they were concerned, they had total faith in me. And I had a kind of sleepwalker’s certainty that I could pull it off.” With most directors, this quote would need to be taken with a pinch of salt – but there’s every chance Friedkin is telling the truth here. The man was a force of nature.
The trucks used in the film were GMC M211 military transports, and the actors drove them, not stuntman Bud Ekins. Friedkin assured Empire, “Every time you see one of the actors in the truck, they are driving. The fear they show and the caution that they show is real. It’s only in the long-shot sequences that there’s a stuntman.”
In the end, despite the crew’s best efforts, it really did seem like the sequence was cursed. Even though the trucks were theoretically tied to the bridge, they still fell into the water seven or eight times – with the actors still inside. According to Ekins, the iconic shot of the truck crossing the bridge, which was used on the movie’s poster, came mere seconds before it took one of its many dives.
Even the smaller vehicle Friedkin was in while he filmed handheld footage of the dangerous stunt wound up going in the drink. The mildly insane director wouldn’t let that frighten him, though, simply remarking, “You fell in the water…and you counted yourself lucky that the truck didn’t fall on you or anyone else.”
At the end of the day, though, Friedkin concocted a genuinely astounding sequence to watch. The viewer always feels a palpable sense of peril, which is difficult to manufacture in a studio environment. Indeed, every drop of blood, sweat, and tears is up there on-screen. It’s no wonder star Roy Scheider said the scene “made Jaws look like a picnic”.
We’ll leave the final word to Friedkin, though. Thinking about one of the crowning achievements of his storied career and a sequence which could have gone tragically wrong at any moment, he mused, “Today, it would be computer-generated, and it wouldn’t be life-threatening.”
