The French Connection, the 1971 Best Picture Oscar winner, remains the best existential cop film ever made, contains arguably the best chase sequence ever committed to film, and turned Gene Hackman into a major star. The film is based on the real-life French connection heroin bust by NYPD narcotics division detectives Eddie "Popeye" Egan and Sonny "Cloudy" Grosso. That investigation lasted from the night of October 7, 1961 when off-duty detectives Egan and Grosso noticed Pasquale Fuca talking with some known drug dealers in the Copacabana nightclub to the day four months later when Fuca and five others were arrested for drug trafficking.

Producer Philip D'Antoni owned the rights to Robin Moore's book about the case, and when William Friedkin agreed to direct the film, a succession of writers was hired. Ernest Tidyman finally wrote a screenplay good enough to get the project green lighted by Twentieth...