Oh, I love you baby, I love you night and day. When I leave you baby, don't cry the night away When I die, don't you write no words upon my tomb I don't believe, I want to leave no epitaph for two.
McGuinness Flint - "When I'm Dead and Gone"
For narration, I will use the past tense.
It was a perfect summer day in 1989 in Buffalo, New York. A gust of wind billowed the long flowing locks of a man wearing a white shirt and barking instructions to a walkie-talkie. The man could have been easily mistaken for a retired rock band's frontman with his Aerosmith "dude looks like a lady" - doing his coming back after years of hiatus. But this 40-ish-and-something was none other than the director, writer, and producer H.B. "Toby" Halicki, best known to his friend as the Car Crash King.
But on August 20, 1989, Halicki and his film crew were preparing a crucial scene for his upcoming sequel "Gone in 60 Seconds II" or "Gone in 60 Seconds 1990" or International: Gone in 60 Seconds (depending on whom you talk) - and slated for a 1990 release window.
But right now, there was something that had been bothering Halicki
He could not bring down that goddamn 150-foot water tower.
For the past fifteen years, this Bonafide hitmaker has made a name in the industry when he released Gone in 60 Seconds, an independent action movie that focuses on a gang of car thieves who are tasked with stealing 50 exotic cars within a short period. It gained notoriety for wrecking and demolishing 93 cars during a 40-minute car chase, making it one of the lengthiest in cinematic history.
Directed on a meager budget of $150.000, it earned 40 million at the box office.
The movie was an overnight success. The secret: No big studio. Just a desire of a man to shoot the moon. Halicki opted to cast family and friends instead of professional actors in his film to reduce costs. The individuals portraying emergency service members were real police officers, firefighters, or paramedics. Additionally, the then-mayor of Carson, California, Sak Yamamoto, made an appearance as himself. No formal script was provided, except for a few pages that detailed the primary dialogue sequences. The cast and crew largely improvised and ad-libbed the action and dialogue as they progressed.
In 1982, Halicki returned for more action and success with Junkman. Another action comedy in which Halicki portrayed a business mogul and movie director, targeted for assassination. Two years in the making, Junkman holds the Guinness World Record for wrecking over 150 cars, trucks, motorcycles, and planes in one movie.
After the release of The Junkman, Halicki started dating Denice Shakarian, an Armenian-American film executive. Toby convinced Denice to come in and help run his companies. Denice would handle the accounting and billing, including the licensing contracts of Halicki’s movies.
In 1987, Halicki embarked on his most ambitious project ever. The follow-up to Gone in 60 Seconds. According to his then-new bride, "Gone in 60 Seconds 2" is more of a retooled version of the original than a sequel with new characters and a robust storyline. Denice would star alongside her husband as Alaska Wells (Denice) Computer Guru/Thief. While enjoyed Halicki as a humorous Mandrian Pace, the follow-up would feature a much darker version of him as an international thief named Colt. The movie would feature a Slicer; a wedge-shaped prototype aimed at plowing every obstacle in its way.
Denice agreed as long as Toby wasn’t going to do any dangerous stunts. She insisted that he hire more stuntmen and take the load off of him.
The duo decided to tie the knot in May of 1989 and toured Europe for their honeymoon.
Toby Halicki envisioned Gone in 60 Seconds as a media franchise akin to James Bond or Halloween that would last throughout time and would mark history as the greatest chase/ car wreck ever. Gone in 60 Seconds 2 promised that. Â If the first movie wreaked 93 cars, Junkman 150, then the sequel was slated to destroy 400+ cars.
But still, something was bothering him.
That four-legged 150-foot water tower can't be pulled down. Even with the help of a cutting crew, attempting to "amputate"- so to speak -- one of the tower's legs - replacing it with fake support and cables attached at the back of two heavy-duty Caterpillar Bulldozers. The structure failed to budge an inch. After all, it has been built to last.
Frustrated, Halicki asked his torch-welding crew to cut above another section of the tower's leg and set up a pin that would be yanked again at a given moment.
After completing filming, the "Slicer" scene (which was shot in June of 1989) making an escape getaway while being pursued by the horde of law enforcement on wheels, a particular stunt was scheduled for August 1989, would call Halicki starring as an international thief named Colt - jumping off a bridge onto the roof of a moving tractor-trailer. Not long after, possibly tipped by an informant about Colt's actions (Remember Eugene, Pace's collaborator in the first movie who tipped the police as retaliation for burning that heroine trunk-filled Cadillac Eldorado, which resulted in the biggest police chase ever recorded), Colt would soon be chased by a horde of the police department on wheels as the truck would wreak havoc around town, in a scene reminiscent to the opening police chase of Beverly Hills Cop with Eddie Murphy slinging at the back of the cargo full of packs of cigarettes.
Carnage would ensue. Colt realized that he was heading toward a cul-de-sac, he bailed out the moving truck and gripped onto the skid of a swooping News helicopter. The big semi with no driver behind the wheel blasted its way through packed cars like a juggernaut and rammed into a stationary four-legged 150-foot-tall water tower beckoning at the derelict junkyard like a medieval castle. Owing to the concussion, the structure would collapse on the ground and the truck would blow up in a fireball.
Colt finally escaped the dragnet, hanging on the skid of a helicopter, and landed safely on the roof of a warehouse.
That's what we were supposed to watch if the movie hit the theaters.
But something terrible happened that day.
Halicki never made it past the warehouse. Since the scenes were filmed in unchronological order. Sadly, Halicki perished on August 20th, 1989, when the aforementioned water tower collapsed prematurely (pictured below) and yanked a cable from a nearby telephone pole that came down on Toby's head like a Mighty Fist of God, knocking him unconscious.
The ambulance rushed to the scene and the paramedics along with Ron Halicki, the director's brother applied CPR to revive the moribund Toby. But he would not make it past the revolving doors of the hospital. Halicki was pronounced DOA while en route to the clinic.
That's the tragic end.
developing story...