The Blu-ray edition of The French Connection is due next month, so director William Friedkin is making the rounds, talking up the film and reminding people he’s still employable. The Independent helps him make his case by crediting Connection with influencing everything from The Wire to Grand Theft Auto IV. “Roughly a third of the way through, gamers are faced with a mission, the Puerto Rican Connection, which emulates the famous chase scene at the heart of Friedkin's thriller,” writes James Mottram. “Commandeering a car, just as Gene Hackman's rogue cop "Popeye" Doyle does, you are asked to trail a target, who boards an elevated train, through the streets of Liberty City (the GTA version of New York)…Unsurprisingly, the 73-year-old Friedkin hasn't played the game, let alone completed the mission, but he doesn't seem concerned that the film that launched his career has been ripped off.”

“Joel Surnow, who created 24, told me he was most influenced by The French Connection,” Friedkin notes, and indeed, until now I had forgotten about the amnesiac cougar subplot in the 1971 Best Picture winner. It isn’t known whether the creators of CSI are similarly indebted to the director, but they did hire him to direct an episode – his most recent screen credit to date. “"It was fun and successful, so they've asked me to do another one in January.”

As for The French Connection, Friedkin plays it modest en route to patting himself on the back. “We thought we were making a little B picture, a little cops-and-robbers movie. So the fact that it became so celebrated, so memorable, and a standard for the genre – which I realize has been copied over and over again, including its attitudes – was a huge surprise.” He discounts the Oscar-winning script by Ernest Tidyman, claiming that hardly a word ended up in the mostly ad-libbed movie. And he takes a shot at Bullitt, Connection’s most oft-cited competition for the title of greatest car chase on film. “I don't think the chase is that great," claims Friedkin. "What they did basically was clear out the streets of San Francisco and drive these cars over the hills. There were no people on the streets. I decided I had to put the public in jeopardy.” Good to know.

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