A Car Chase From My Bed
Day 22 of Writing
I wanted to have a car chase set in San Francisco as an homage to the 1968 film Bullitt. That movie featured one of the most famous car chases ever. It influenced all car chases after it.
I love car chases, when they are well done. The series The Rockford Files did a great job with them on a budget, and, of course, the second Matrix movie had the most amazing and perhaps most expensive car chase I have ever seen. They built an entire freeway for it.
What could I do differently? My story is set a little over a decade into the future, a time when cars in cities are all autonomous. Traffic is smoothly controlled, with cars interweaving at intersections rather than having to stop at lights. My car chase disrupts this perfectly controlled world of traffic.
There was an autonomous car chase in the better than expected I, Robot with Will Smith, but it was in a long tunnel with just robots. I wanted my chase to be outdoors with traffic and pedestrians and lots of potential obstacles, including cable cars.
Car from the 1968 film Bullitt sells for $3.4 million at auction
Movie car chases tend to jump around impossibly all over the city, and Bullitt is no exception. I did not want to do that. Having done travel writing, I know the key is to hop on a plane and go to wherever you want to write about. I can’t do that now, and San Francisco is more locked down than Los Angeles.
Fortunately, having been there many times, I know the city fairly well. We also live in an age with amazing tools that are game changers for writers. These tools are transformative, completely changing the way we do research.
I often have to write from bed when my pain levels get too high. I write on my trusty laptop. I have Alexa by the bed and I can ask her for basic information or to do conversions like kilometers to miles. This allows me to continue writing without missing a beat. I also have my smartphone for more complex questions with Google Assistant. I can do all this by voice while continuing to write.
For my car chase, I turned to Google Maps. I worked out the route, which is not an easy thing to do in San Francisco with their seemingly randomly arranged and randomly changing one way streets. The measurement tool lets you trace out the route and see exactly how far they are traveling for each segment and for the entire route. Then using Street View I was able to travel the entire route and see what it looked like from the driver’s perspective. These are amazing capabilities I could not have even imagined in my early days of writing.
The car chase was fun to write as we see it from three different perspectives- My main characters in the chase car, traffic control, and the two people in the ambulance being chased (three people, actually, but since the patient is unconscious he really doesn’t have any perspective). Google maps was invaluable in figuring out which hospital they would try to get to, and exactly where they are at each moment in the chase.
What’s Up with Us
I don’t know exactly when the grocery store shortages began, but early in the month sometime. We have been to grocery stores several times this month, and have yet to see one with toilet paper in stock. On our last trip we were able to buy a single roll of paper towels.
We accidentally stocked up on toilet paper in February when we both bought jumbo packs on separate trips. Belle was working at Cedars-Sinai beginning in late January and we knew by then that a bad storm was coming. Toilet paper shortages had not occurred to us, though.
I have never before approached grocery shopping with such a mix of fear, excitement and dread. I do find it upsetting to see so many empty shelves. The rows with paper goods are stripped bare. You can tell what people choose as comfort foods, as those are mostly gone. There were plenty of Kale and Cauliflower based items on the shelves, though.
A few days ago Covid-19 was officially declared a pandemic. Disneyland is closed. A national emergency was declared four days ago. Shelter in place orders have gone out in the Bay area but not here yet. Belle and I are all ready essentially sheltering in place, and I suspect it will be officially mandated here soon. Yesterday the governor told restaurants to switch to take out only. I am really going to miss going to restaurants.