text: Henri Devereaux, who takes the fall for importing the film's drug-laden Lincoln into New York City, is based on Jacques Angelvin, a television actor arrested and sentenced to three to six years in a federal penitentiary for his role, serving about four before returning to France and turning to real estate. The Joel Weinstock character is, according to the director's commentary, a composite of several similar drug dealer financiers.
  Car chase
  The film is often cited as featuring one of the greatest car chase sequences in movie history. The chase involves Popeye commandeering a civilian's car (a 1971 Pontiac LeMans) and then frantically chasing an elevated train, on which a hitman is trying to escape. The action scene, coordinated by Bill Hickman, was filmed in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, roughly running under the BMT West End Line (currently the , then the B train) which runs on an elevated track above Stillwell Avenue, 86th Street and New Utrecht Avenue in Brooklyn, with the chase ending just north of the 62nd Street station.  At that point, the train hits a train stop, but is going too fast to stop in time and collides with the train ahead of it, which has just left the station.