The ‘Car Crash King’ who risked his life to make Gone in 60 Seconds

In a behind-the-scenes video of the filming of his 1982 carsploitation movie The Junkman, filmmaker, actor and stuntman H. B. “Toby” Halicki is surrounded by shrapnel from an audacious set piece – involving an aircraft flying into a Cadillac – that has gone perilously wrong. Bloodied and bruised, he explains: “This piece here is part of a biplane. I pulled it out of the top of my head…Just pulling the glass out of your fingers and out of your ears and teeth is unbelievable.” Two hours in surgery and 89 stitches later, he’s onto the next take.

Not for nothing did Halicki award himself the sobriquet “the car crash king”. With a chaotic hot-rod B-movie aesthetic, his cult 1974 movie, Gone in 60 Seconds, which turned 50 this summer, saw him gleefully destroying 127 vehicles during production – 93 of which were wrecked during a 40-minute car chase sequence. It’s regularly applauded as one of the longest, and most hair-raising chases in cinema history.

It’s a scrappy underdog film that feels like it’s teetering on the edge of losing all control, yet punched above to compete with the Hollywood heavyweights. When Gone in 60 Seconds was first released in the US on July 28, 1974, Halicki distributed it independently to private theatres, making a box office return of $40 million on a meagre $150,000 budget.

Halicki could be described as a have-a-go film-making hero – who wrote, directed, starred in and performed the wild daredevil stunts in Gone in 60 Seconds – without any prior experience, and prized spectacle over storytelling. “Toby’s style was independent film-making at its finest,” says Denice Shakarian Halicki, who was married to him until his untimely death aged only 48 during an on-set accident in 1989. “When he was told it could not be done, he figured out how to get the job done and better than you could imagine.”

The plot of Gone in 60 Seconds – a ring of car thieves led by Maindrian Pace (Halicki) attempt to steal 48 vehicles – was sketched out in a threadbare script which some on set have claimed was merely around 10 pages long, with much of the dialogue improvised by an untested cast of Halicki’s friends.

Arguably the more compelling drama is in the against-the-odds making of the franchise. Born in Dunkirk, New York, as one of 13 children, Halicki’s passion for cars was forged through his family’s tow-truck business. “He lived the American dream,” says Denice. “He started driving before he could barely reach the pedal. Then tragedy struck Toby’s life at a young age when two of Toby’s brothers passed at an early age.

It impacted Toby so heavily that at 15, he left his home in New York to come to California to passionately make his dreams come true.” He owned his own automobile business and junk yard, buying used cars, stripping them down and building them up as new. Among his various business forays that included real estate, he invested in a film. Watching it being created, he thought he could do better. “Lightning struck and his journey had begun,” says Denice.

It speaks volumes about Halicki’s petrolhead priorities that the only title credit in Gone in 60 Seconds is “starring Eleanor” – not an actor, but the codename of a yellow 1971 Fastback Mustang (playing a 1973 model in the film), highly customised and equipped with a NASCAR roll cage to withstand the nerve-shredding action. “Toby spent 250 man hours stripping the Eleanor car character to her frame and building her back, fully equipping her to withstand all the brutal car chases and the famous jump which launched Eleanor and Toby 30 foot in the air and 129 foot in length,” recalls Denice.

“All without special effects – instead using Toby’s love and knowledge of cars and how far he could push them. He never did anything half-way.” When Denice first met her future husband in 1983, she was aware from the start that she’d have to share him with his leading lady. “I met Eleanor on the same day I met Toby, of course,” she says. “They were inseparable.”

'Car crash king': HB 'Tony' Halicki wanted to film the most exciting on-screen car chase ever seen Credit: Shutterstock

Halicki’s other nickname is “the shoestring showman”, owing to his cost-cutting. Ronald D. Moore, who briefly worked on the script for a Gone in 60 Seconds sequel prior to finding fame in the Star Trek universe, admired Halicki’s guerilla approach to filming. “He would literally do things like take a bunch of cones down to Long Beach [in California] and block off a road and do a stunt then pick up all the cones before the police showed up,” Moore has said. When a town official once referred to Halicki’s projects as “flying by the seat of his pants”, he sent the official a gift: a pair of trousers with a propeller attached.

To circumvent the need for expensive filming permission, Halicki shot on Sundays — he knew the sole officer in charge of enforcing permits in LA County didn’t work that day. Friends and acquaintances were enlisted as actors. With only a handful of extras, the majority of the bystanders in the film were members of the blithely-unaware general public, leading to surreal incidents where people assumed a real pursuit was in progress and attempted to intervene. “Toby even talked five cities of police departments to all work with him on his creation,” with the officers playing themselves, notes Denice. “If he knew you at the time, you were probably in his film!”

Sometimes Halicki’s buccaneering shoot-and-run spirit struck gold. When he heard about a real-life train derailment, he filmed the wreckage and included it as Gone in 60 Seconds’ opening scene – an eye-catching moment he would have never been able to afford to stage.

Gone in 60 Seconds made $40 million at the box office, on a meagre $150,000 budget Credit: Alamy

For Halicki, Gone in 60 Seconds was centered around his teenage-boy fantasy of demolition and stunts. All of the vehicles damaged in the film, including a garbage truck and three fire engines, were purchased by Halicki at a city auction for an average cost of $200 each. As befits “the car crash king”, the production was plagued by injuries. When he hit a light pole at 100 mph, his first remark upon regaining consciousness was reportedly “Did we get coverage?”.

During the 30 ft-high Eleanor jump, Halicki, the director of photography Jack Vacek claiming that he “compressed about 35 vertebrae…He came out of it limping and hopping and he always walked a little bit different after that.” Not that it ultimately slowed him down.

“Nothing was impossible in his eyes,” says Denice. “In Gone in 60 Seconds, he would wear wigs and hats playing different characters, which enabled him to drive the vehicles in the most dangerous car crashes and stunts in his films. He was always striving to break records.”

Upon release, Halicki employed circus-barker publicity stunts to get the film noticed. “Toby was a pioneer, maverick and ahead of his time when marketing Gone in 60 Seconds,” says Denice. “He took Eleanor around the country with special appearances, racing events, and car stunts performed at the openings of the movie. Fans could ‘win a date’ with Eleanor.”

When theatres proved reluctant to pay Halicki for showing the film, he allegedly resorted to hiring a man named Big Tiny – “310 lbs of not-too-jovial flesh” (according to Vacek) – to retrieve the cash.

Guerilla filming: Halicki had to get creative when filming his stunts by blocking off roads before police arrived Credit: Alamy

In the slipstream of Gone…’s success, Halicki upped the carnage count with The Junkman – which holds the Guiness World Record for destroying over 150 vehicles. One of the reasons for the enduring raw thrills of Gone in 60 Seconds is because of today’s ubiquity of computer-generated-imagery, which has led to a renewed connoisseurship of humans doing spectacular stunts for real – with all the jeopardy that entails. With each film, Halicki outrunned his own mortality, but eventually it caught up with him.

After a six year romance travelling the globe and building his extensive toy and automobile collection (the size of a football field, housing over 100,000 collectable toys), Halicki and Denice married in 1989. Three weeks later, they were on the set of what is commonly referred to as Gone in 60 Seconds 2, but was, according to Denice, never envisaged as a sequel, but rather a new version of the film featuring an international car-chase, and co-starring her as computer guru/thief Alaska Wells. “His goal was to top his own record,” says Denice. “There was so much excitement.” Surviving footage ^[1] of the uncompleted movie shows the scale (and high wire act risk factor) is significantly ramped up. “Toby hanging outside a helicopter while filming 1989 Gone in 60 Seconds was just one example of how he committed to achieving his dream, but in a fashion that seemed he was invincible,” she says.

Despite narrowly avoiding death multiple times, he wasn’t indestructible. Portents for the tragedy ahead first came when Ronald D. Moore and Halicki were scouting locations in New York for the film’s penultimate stunt – where a truck would slam into a 160 ft water tower, causing it to topple to the ground. Moore voiced concerns over the logistics of such a feat, and was eventually fired – though the two remained friends.

Tragically, Denice Halicki was a bride and a widow within the same summer

Similarly concerned were officials in Tonawanda, New York who, to the chagrin of Halicki, demanded that the production company of his brother, Ronald Halicki and Project Films Inc, pick up a $8 million insurance policy, sign a liability waiver with the town, and pay a $10,000 cash bond. On August 20 1989, while filming the set-piece, a cable attached to the tower snapped unexpectedly, hitting a telephone pole, which fell on Halicki, killing him instantly. He was 48.

Harrowingly, Denice was a bride and a widow in the same summer, facing the trauma of picking out wedding and funeral flowers within scant months of each other. “There are no words of how tragic it is to lose Toby while filming the 1989 Gone in 60 Seconds,” she reflects. “Even with this horrific loss of a great man, I have learned, still do not ever quit for your dreams may be around the corner.”

Determined to continue her late husband’s legacy, Denice executive produced the 2000 Hollywood remake of Gone in 60 Seconds, starring Nicolas Cage and Angelina Jolie, which was directed by Dominic Sena – whose first job was as a cameraman on Halicki’s The Junkman. ““Nic Cage loves driving fast and at one point the insurance carriers were calling to tell him to slow down!”, remembers Denice, a marked contrast to Halicki’s freewheeling action-at-any-cost style.

When Halicki set out to make Gone in 60 Seconds, his overriding ambition was to film the most exciting car chase of all-time; in his own idiosyncratic way, he achieved that, beating everything else in its lane. Eleanor is an iconic character in her own right, with “Officially Licensed” versions commanding prices of between $275,000 to $533,500 at auctions, while there have been ongoing lawsuits against reproductions of the car’s likeness, which has proved controversial among the car community – and a dispute over who owns the Eleanor name. Denice claims to own the copyright and became embroiled in legal wrangles preventing unlicensed copies from emerging – including a high-profile 2008 suit against the racing driver Caroll Shelby, which she won – although the latest ruling is that the car is not entitled to standalone copyright protection.

“In the 2000 Gone in 60 Seconds, Eleanor is a few times erroneously referred to as a Shelby or GT500, which accurately, she is not,” says Denice. “As an example, if you call a painting in a movie a Picasso, but it is not, calling a painting Picasso a couple times in a movie, does not make it true. Eleanor in the remake is not a stock mustang, Shelby, or GT500 and never has been. Carroll Shelby was never involved in Gone in 60 Seconds or the creation of Eleanor,” she further argues.

“After Toby’s tragic and sudden passing to heaven, I made it my goal to keep Toby’s dreams, and life’s work alive. I took the helm to preserve, maintain, and expand upon Toby’s legacy, the Gone in 60 Seconds franchise, and beloved star car character Eleanor,” she adds, noting that there is an “Eleanor License” scheme for owners of unauthorised replica cars to obtain an Official Eleanor Tribute Edition Certificate.

Today, the juggernaut success of The Fast and Furious ^[2] series shows that the desire and lucrative market for full-throttle excess remains timeless. “Even today we have those that push the boundaries to dream what is impossible,” says Denice. “That was second nature to Toby. Celebrating the 50-year anniversary is a testament to Toby’s achievements and his pushing boundaries that they said could not be achieved.”

References

^{^} footage (www.youtube.com)
^{^} Fast and Furious (www.telegraph.co.uk)
^{^} The 20 best action films of all time – ranked (www.telegraph.co.uk)
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