WHY STEVE MCQUEEN?

Michael Manning, Creator

4th Annual Steve McQueen Film Festival

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Good Morning. One of the questions I am inevitably asked about this annual project is "Why Steve McQueen?" The question alone is significant enough to warrant a doctoral thesis. But maybe a brief explanation would be helpful.

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When I was 9 years-old I recall one of my neighbors on the street I grew up on in Southeastern Ohio excitedly asking me "Are you going to watch 'The Great Escape' tonight on television?" At the time, television was relegated to three basic networks and it became a common practice to feature a film two years after it's first run release nationwide in movie theaters. "The Great Escape" was featured over two successive nights on television. It became the break-out role for actor Steve McQueen. It was the first McQueen film I ever watched, and I have been a loyal fan ever since.

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Before making my new home in Scottsdale, Arizona I was on a magazine assignment to interview an airline CEO in Indiana. On my car trip back to Ohio, I exited the freeway system and drove along the streets of Steve's boyhood town of Beech Grove, Indiana. It was a poor neighborhood where dusk seemed to bring along a certain element of danger, at least as far as I was concerned. But I had captured in my own mind the beginnings of a very troubled youth in Steve.

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The tiny theater where my parents would drop off a neighborhood buddy and myself as teenagers, curiously enough, was built next door to a motorcycle and car dealership. McQueen loved both motorcycles and cars. I was lucky. I attended first run releases of such films as "Bullitt", the motorcycle documentary "On Any Sunday", "Thomas Crown Affair", "The Getaway", "The Towering Inferno" and my favorite film (and Steve McQueen's) "Junior Bonner". Never in a million years would I have ever expected to become close friends with Marshall Terrill (author of the seminal biography: "Steve McQueen, "Portrait of An American Rebel"). Nor could I have known years later that I would be in attendance December 6 & 7, 2008 at a fundraiser event for the Aviation Museum of Santa Paula in California called "Remembering Steve McQueen". At that event, many friendships were born. And while Marshall is too modest to admit it, God was surely using him to bring together Steve's widow Barbara, his karate instructor and close friend of 22 years Pat Johnson, Steve's private Lear Jet pilot Mike Jugan, Actress and Producer Adrienne McQueen, photographer Veronica Valdez and myself.

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A short time later, fate would again lend a hand when actress and model Barbara Leigh, Steve's co-star in "Junior Bonner" became my Special Guest on my website feature, "THE INTERVIEW". How ironic that at the tender age of 14, I first saw Barbara on the big screen. This beautiful girl captivated our imaginations very much in the same way the nation responded to Bo Derek's debut in Blake Edwards' movie "10". Barbara had left us with an indelible impression of what the "it girl" represented, and her beauty today remains as unforgettable as her personality. But I digress.

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Why McQueen? For starters, he was a fellow Mid-Westerner who recognized the values that came along with growing up in middle-America. He had it rough. Here was a guy who was abandoned unconscionably by a good-for-nothing father and his alcoholic mother--a trauma that would leave Steve with a self image that he wasn't good enough. In spite of these odds and the lack of a high school education, he rose to meteoric heights in terms of his fame. Actor Martin Landau (who along with Steve became only two of 2,000 applicants accepted into Lee Strasberg's prestigious Actor's Studio) said it best: "He was complicated. But that complication makes for an interesting person, if you can manage to bring at least some of it to your acting". Steve's troubled life landed him in the Chino Hills, California Boys Republic--a reform school for boys. After a stint in the service, a trail of turbulent personal relationships followed with women he was promiscuous with and film directors he clashed with professionally. The deep pain of Steve's life as a throw-away kid was tempered, however, by his role as a father with his two children, daughter Terry (1959-1998) and son Chad. A fascination with motorcycles and automobile racing provided an outlet for what actress Candace Bergen (Steve's co-star in the 1966 Academy-Award nominated film, "The Sand Pebbles") once described in Steve as a "caged animal". And we guys, of course generally related to his love of all things mechanical--at least I did--and still do today!

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Steve's razor-sharp instincts led friend and fellow actor Robert Culp to describe him as "visceral and transcendent" on both the stage and screen. Similarly, Levar Burton, whose break-out role in Alex Hailey's epic television series, "Roots" led to a role in Steve's last fated film, "The Hunter" observed: "That man had a fierce humanity about him. And when he focused those baby blues on you, you knew, 'I'm in the club!"

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By 1974, Steve became the world's highest paid actor at $14 million a percentage of the gross profits for appearing with fellow actor and friend Paul Newman as the Fire Chief in "The Towering Inferno". But it was neither Steve's riches, his sexual conquests of an endless parade of attractive women or his considerable worldwide fame as the anti hero that fascinates me to this day. He was a tortured soul who could be at once brutally unforgiving and tremendously charitable. Ultimately, this loner who trusted few people and suffered quietly beneath a veil of personal anguish and self doubt, nevertheless, personified to millions of adoring fans an image of a maverick who took risks and believed in accountability. He was relentless. By the time he met Cosmopolitan fashion model Barbara Minty, he changed his life.

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Steve had a new focus married to Barbara: "to begin living again". The McQueen's bought a simple ranch house 70 miles north of Los Angeles. While the 6-month renovation of the house took shape, The McQueen's settled into an airplane hangar on the Santa Paula Airport grounds where residents grew to love Steve and mercifully protected his privacy. It was while Steve was earning his private pilots license with Sammy Mason--a born-again Christian--that Steve grew to embrace Christianity. At long last, he had found the peace that had eluded him and one by one he began reparation to many friendships laid to waste during his days of booze, recreational drugs and womanizing; all of that meaninglessness was gone now. With the love of a devoted wife who knew Steve less as an actor than for his personality Barbara was definitely a catalyst who encouraged Steve to seek a fuller and richer life of love, trust and forgiveness. Sadly, he did not have the benefit of time.

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In 1979, Steve was diagnosed with Mesothelioma-a terminal cancer that ultimately took his life on November 7, 1980 when a blood clot stopped his heart after major surgery was undertaken to remove a massive tumor. A piece of the world seemed torn away from so many. Today, Steve McQueen is still mourned as a great actor whose performances transcended the silver screen and lent what co-star and friend Sir Richard Attenborough refers to as "a wonderful authenticity" that reaches us and makes us care about others. He was a fascinating person, a great actor and a philanthropist who reached for--and achieved--the highest honors only to embrace life's simpler pleasures so many of us take for granted. And that, my friends, is why I continue this annual labor of love each and every year. It is also my formal answer to the question: "Why Steve McQueen?" In a world lacking true legends, Steve became truly legendary in his brief life. He died at age 50 and left behind 30 motion pictures. You will read much more about Steve in the days ahead. I have carefully selected a handful of films to convey the depth of his range as an actor. We'll have film, commentary and two amazing Guests whose interviews you won't want to miss.

Welcome to The 4th Annual

Steve McQueen Film Festival!