www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/movies/2011/08/28/2011-08-28_his_crowning_achievements_bullitt_thomas_crown_affair_screenwriter_alan_trustman.html
'Thomas Crown Affair' screenwriter Alan Trustman talks films, working with Steve McQueen
BY Mike Jaccarino
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Sunday, August 28th 2011, 4:00 AM
Forty-three years after Alan Trustman wrote the Steve McQueen hit "The Thomas Crown Affair," The News chatted with the Hollywood screenwriter about movies and actors — and which film had a better chase scene, "Bullitt" or "The French Connection."
Who's a better Thomas Crown? Steve McQueen or the 1999 remake's Pierce Brosnan?That's a complicated question. I wrote it for Sean Connery and you would think that Pierce Brosnan would be more suitable for the role. When they cast Steve McQueen, I objected violently and claimed that he could not deliver the dialogue. So I spent a week at United Artists in New York, 16 hours a day, screening every piece of film on McQueen and making lists what he liked, what he didn't like, and then I rewrote it for him with him in mind.
What would the movie have looked like if we had gotten the Sean Connery version.It's hard for me to tell because I rewrote the character for McQueen. They let me meet with him a few times so I could explain the character to Humphrey Bogart, hard-bitten, not loquacious. All the sentences had to be short, a character of internal integrity who's not afraid of a fight, but would of them.
And I asked him to say that to himself when he went on every single set and make sure that he stayed in that character.
And with Connery?It would have been very different, and I'm not sure it would have been better. Brosnan played it as if he were Sean Connery. The whole dialogue style was less pithy. Much fuller. He played it with a degree of which was very different from the way McQueen played the first one.
You know, 25 years after "The Thomas Crown" Connery finally admitted to producer Walter Mirisch that he should have taken the role.
He was staying at the Plaza and Mirisch and director Norman Jewison were staying across the street at the Sherry-Netherland when the movie was in the works. Every day, they would meet with Connery and he would say, "I'll think about it." After a week they went back to Los Angeles and cast Steve McQueen.
Was McQueen a good actor? He seemed to play himself in every movie. Same delivery. Same affect. Same shtick. What do you make of it? How do you explain our fascination with him?McQueen understood the camera and understood that the camera loved him, and that's an exceptional ability for an actor to have. Yes, he was consistent, but people loved that character. And it was very much like the real Steve McQueen. He used to say about me, "He's my writer. He knows me. I don't know how that son of a bitch knows me. But he knows me."
What was it? You and McQueen in a room and you taking notes?No. I spent very little time with him. I was with him when he was doing wardrobe, and he knew I was uncomfortable and bored, and he looked at me and grinned and said, "Well, at least it's better than stealing hubcaps." You had to love him for that. And I did. Because I was at Phillips Exeter when he was, indeed, stealing hubcaps.
Your "Thomas Crown" was about a bank robbery. What do you think of the 1999 version and the substitution of stolen artwork as the plot driver?Director John McTiernan hired 11 writers to rewrite me and they changed the bank robbery to an art robbery. (Laughs.) I liked the original plot better, but I thought the New York plot at the Met worked perfectly well and I enjoyed the second movie. I thought there were elements of the second movie that were at least as good as the first movie, and I liked the woman, Rene Russo, and Brosnan.
I've heard that Brosnan wants to do a second one. I have a plot, but I have no way of getting to him. ... I’m 80 years old. I don’t have an agent. I live in Florida. And the people who are making the decisions in the movie business have an average age of 27, and they don't want to deal with 80-years-olds. They think I died 40 years ago.
What are your top five movies of all time?I don't think that I can give you a top five. The reason is that mthey're not making my kind of movies anywhere. I like movie movies with a character the audience can spend two hours with at an emotional distance of 6 feet with relationships that mean something to the audience and with problems with which they can identify. Instead, let's face it, they're making animation, horror films. Instead of making action movies, they're making explosion movies.
I'm going to give you my top five and you tell me what you think of them. "Raiders of the Lost Ark," "The Empire Strikes Back," "The Sting," "The Hunt for Red October," "The Hustler."Well, I would probably do them in reverse order. I adored "The Hustler" and I loved Connery in "The Hunt for Red October."
How long did you live in Hollywood?I've tried twice, in 1984 and again in 1990, and I didn't like it out there. I didn't fit. I'm not tough enough for that community. I'm a nice Jewish boy from Boston. I'm probably not tough enough for New York City, although I lived there for 20 years.
What's the most you ever made for a movie?$1 million for "Bullitt." And I wrote that in one day."
Ever sleep with a starlet?I'd rather not answer that question. I am very happily married for three years and I don't want to make my wife mad and uncomfortable. That said, I wasn't just a screenwriter. They were treating me like a star. When I went out there, Walter Mirisch and United Artists gave me two bungalows at the Beverly Hills Hotel.
Do you have a favorite actor?Today, no. I'm looking for someone and I don't have a favorite today. There's no one consistently playing the sort of star roles that I love. I love Humphrey Bogart.
What about Harrison Ford?Different character. I prefer Humphrey Bogart.
What's a better chase scene — the one in "Bullitt" or the one in "The French Connection"?Who do you think wrote the chase scene in "The French Connection"? I made a contribution to that. The who also produced "Bullitt." In an early draft of "Bullitt," there was a subway chase scene, but it was taken out. "French Connection" and "Bullitt" are different chase scenes. One is an elevated train chase scene and the other is an automobile chase
scene. You take the el out of "Connection" and I don't know what you have left. It's brilliant, but the train is an integral element.
Do you have a favorite movie?No. But every time someone asks me that question, I come up with "L.A. Confidential." Because I knew the director, Curtis Hanson, when he was 19 years old and starving and I watched him come up the hard way until he's one of the superstars now.
What do you think of George Lucas?I tried at one point to produce a movie with George because Jeff Berg was representing me and George Lucas at the same time. And George — he flew up to the Bay Area one day and Berg offered him a movie that I had written. I don't remember which of my movies it was. But I remember that Lucas was starving at the time he had made one movie ["THX1138"] and the studio hated it. I loved it. Thought it was wonderful. He was working on "American Graffiti" when we pitched him. He's a terrific director. He's one of the best in the history of the business. But he turned down the movie I had for him even though he was starving.
What do you think about the planned Broadway production of "The Thomas Crown Affair?"They're talking about it. I met with Michael Feinstein, who is going to write the music, and I think they're trying to put it together at MGM. And I met with Feinstein and discussed the plot with him. There are a few scenes that didn't make the movie that I would like to see put back in.
Do you think movies made Broadway obsolete?
No. It's a different art form completely. Broadway is going through its own transition, just like movies are certainly going through a transition. Look at the book market. There's no bigger transition than what's going on there.
No kidding. I have a novel to sell that's been sitting in the bottom of my closet for five years. I'm waiting for things to turn around.Don't hold your breath, kid. It's tough out there.
They didn't even put the Director's Commentary on the Blu-Ray disc - you can only listen by playing the included old flipper DVD. 
But MGM owns the rights to TCA and Topkapi/Light Of day that the the TCA2 script was originally based on - so they have to sell or go into partnership to get the film out.
