10 Things You Didn’t Know About Breakout (1975)

While admiring my Charles Bronson Blu-ray collection over the weekend, I could not help but notice that my copy of 1975’s Breakout (from the fine folks over at Kino Lorber) was still sealed and itching to be broken out of its plastic prison.

It had been quite a few years since I watched Breakout, but then I thought why just rewatch the movie when I can turn the commentary track with the always informative Paul Talbot (author of the Bronson’s Loose! books). So that is what exactly what I did and now thanks to Paul’s trivia filled commentary track, I know more about Breakout than ever before and I am going to share some of that knowledge with these 10 Things You Didn’t Know About Breakout…

1. Breakout was based on the book The 10 Second Jailbreak, which told the true story of Joel David Kaplan’s escape from a Mexican prison. Kaplan was arrested for the murder of one of his business partners and during his incarceration made several attempts to escape Robert Duvall’s character in Breakout, Jay Wagner, was based on Kaplan.

2. The filmmakers were denied access to shoot the film in Mexico since the Mexican government did not want to be a part of any movie that would glorify the Joel David Kaplan escape. The prison scenes were instead shot at the Fort de Bellegarde in Southern France. The Fort de Bellegarde was built in the 17th-century and during World War II was used as a maximum security prison by the Nazis. It is now a tourist attraction.

3. Kris Kristofferson was originally considered for the Nick Colton role that ultimately went to Charles Bronson.

4. All of John Huston’s scenes were shot in a single day at the Bank of America building in Burbank, California. Huston provided his own wardrobe and was able to enjoy two of his favorites while shooting, scotch and cigars.

5. Charles Bronson did not like to drink beer. Since Nick Colton spends a lot of his free time guzzling down Coors, the prop master had to find a bottling company that would fill the Coors cans with sparkling water.

6. Bronson also demanded a script change that would see his character fall in love with Jay Wagner’s wife Ann, who hires Nick Colton to get her husband out of prison. Not surprisingly Bronson also demanded that his wife, Jill Ireland, play the role of Ann Wagner in Breakout. Producers Robert Chartoff and Irwin Winkler knew not to challenge Bronson on the matter as they had a similar situation come up years earlier when they produced The Mechanic and Bronson threatened to walk off the movie if they did not hire Ireland.

7. The budget for Breakout was 2.5 million dollars, with 1 million of that being Charles Bronson’s fee. The movie began shooting in California in July 1974 and would wrap up in France in October 1974.

8. There was a fireman on set while they were shooting at the airport hangar in Southern California. The fireman was there to make sure that they didn’t start a brush fire with all the cigarettes that were being thrown around. The fireman and his shovel came in handy when a rattlesnake interrupted shooting. After the fireman decapitated the snake, Bronson removed the rattle and gave it to his then three year old daughter.

9. Another Bronson script change was the removal of the love scene between Nick Colton and Myrna (played by Sheree North). Bronson felt it would take away from the developing romance between Nick and Ann, plus he was not a fan of doing love scenes. Bronson would later use his star power to have the love scenes from St. Ives, The White Buffalo and Cabo Blanco removed as well.

10. Columbia Pictures wanted to release Breakout during 1974’s holiday season to capitalize on the success of Death Wish, which was released just before the filming of Breakout began. However Joel David Kaplan would change those plans. Kaplan was not a fan of the book, The 10 Second Jail Break, and he was even less of a fan of being portrayed as a villain in a major Hollywood film . Kaplan threatened to sue Columbia. To avoid the lawsuit, the film was edited slightly and Columbia would deny that the movie was based on real life characters and no mention of the book was made in the credits or in any of the publicity for the film.