"The only thing we had permits for was to shoot on the elevated train", explained William Friedkin, the director of "The French Connection". He and his producer met with the Head of Public Relations for the New York Transit Authority. They explained to him what they wanted to do and asked for permission to do it. "You guys are crazy", admonished the official, "I could never let you do anything like what you've just described. First of all: there has never been an elevated train that was hijacked, there has never been a train crash on the elevated system in New York, and we've never had a car chasing a train. It would just be really DIFFICULT." The director and the production manager were getting up to leave. Luckily, the producer teen mom kailyn was prescient enough to expect the conditions to which the New York transit official was alluding. "How DIFFICULT?", asked the producer knowingly. The official's response was the first step towards creating what is arguably the greatest car chase ever filmed in the history of motion pictures; a sequence that was so audacious in its execution that it could never again be done legally. "$40,000 and a one-way trip to Jamaica", he responded. He was serious and that's what he was allegedly paid by the production. However, according to Friedkin, the film did not originally have $40,000 allocated for pay-offs. The budget of the entire film was about $1.5 million and the film would go over that by $300,000; due in part to paying bribes like the one just described. Friedkin convinced the studio that this was the way that it had to be done. He asked the man why he specifically needed a "one-way ticket". "Because", the transit official confirmed, "if I let you do what you just told me on that train, I will be fired. I want to live the rest of my life in Jamaica." And so he did; happily ever after.
