A few days into shooting he was invited to view rushes of the footage that had been shot so far, and it was immediately apparent to him that his character, the insolent, fiercely independent Capt Virgil Hilts, veteran of 17 escape attempts, seemed to be spending much of his screen time in the isolation cell, the 'cooler’. By contrast, his acting rival James Garner, playing Hendley the ingenious 'Scrounger’ who could procure everything from chocolates to cameras, was getting rather meatier material. McQueen – according to many of his co-stars and crew members – furiously declined to film any more of his scenes until the script was reworked to give him more to do; hence the brilliant, though wholly fictional, motorbike chase, which had not figured in the original script.