Hal Lipset

As mentioned in a previous post, an article written about Hal Lipset was brought to Coppola’s attention which in turn, along with Blow-Up gave him inspiration for The Conversation.

Who is Hal Lipset? What was it about him that gave Coppola the idea for his film?

Hal Lipset was the most respected private detective in America during the 19040’s and was a chief investigator to Sam Dash on the Senate Watergate Committee in the 70’s. In 1947 he and his wife Lynn opened a detective agency in San Francisco with no money or contacts. In one early incident, a woman attempted to frame Lipset for rape but was foiled when his wife walked in holding a tape recorder.

As Hal chases jewel thieves across Europe, solves a family’s murder by accusing one of its own, and uncovers his own “Deep Throat” during Watergate (none other than reporter Bob Woodward), Holt draws more uncanny parallels between fact and fiction. Hal, she finds, is the kind of private eye we have seen before – a cynic who is really an idealist; a deductive reasoner; a former copy who is wary of the system; a longer who works outside the law.

Yet he’s also a rare breed of detective – a family man who hates guns; a salesman from the old school; a protester who testifies in Washington; an emotional, vulnerable, tough, angry entrepreneur who says he’s “in it for the money” but stands for just the opposite, the concept of free will in an increasingly conforming society.

– The Bug in the Martini Olive and Other True Cases from the Files of Hal Lipset, written by Patricia Holt, published in 1991 by Little Brown & Co.

It is interesting to see how alike Hal Lipset and the character of Harry Caul really are, not in personality but in their history and methods. In The Conversation Harry and his technician Stan work in what seems to be a warehouse, somewhere isolated where nobody would think of going so they could process recordings and develop new technologies for eavesdropping. So, it seemed, that Lipset and his own technician Ralph Bertsche did the same thing years before.

“To advance the art,” Time [magazine] wrote, “Hal Lipset, a seasoned San Francisco private eye, maintains a laboratory behind a false warehouse from where his eavesdropping ‘genius,’ Ralph Bertsche, works out new gimmicks such as a high-powered bug that fits into a pack of filter-tip cigarettes. It is padded to feel soft and shows the ends of real cigarettes to reassure a suspicious businessman or divorce-prone spouse…”

– The Bug in the Martini Olive and Other True Cases from the Files of Hal Lipset, written by Patricia Holt, published in 1991 by Little Brown & Co.

Lipset also served as a technical consultant on The Conversation, and did so with the proviso that they used only the most state-of-the-art technology available and be as realistic as possible “…with only one fib,” he says, “the pocket tape recorder does not have a playback function – and one exaggeration – the parabolic mic is too large to use secretly. I tried it once, looked through the telescopic lens, and saw my subject thumbing his nose at me.” [1] So is it possible, then, that without his advice on what equipment to use Coppola might not have known about the parabolic mic and consequentially wouldn’t have made the opening shot the way he did? It is very likely that Coppola would have found out about the mic and other technologies even without Lipset on hand, but it is interesting to note the extent of Lipset’s involvement and influence on the film.

[1]: http://www.spybusters.com/History_1965_Hal_Lipset.html – [accessed on the 17th/11/2010]