could’ve . . . should’ve . . .

The late Michael Crichton relates an anecdote from his years in Hollywood:

A friend of mine who was a director was doing a movie with Steve McQueen. And McQueen could be very forceful; he didn’t like this director.

So one day the director came to visit him in his trailer, where he was doing another movie. And in order to set the tone for the discussion, Steve McQueen took out his six gun and emptied it into one of the chairs in his trailer. Then he turned and looked at the director.

And the director said, “Don’t worry, Steve, if anybody asks me I’ll say the chair shot first.”

He [the director, presumably] was fired.

With such credentials, McQueen’s premature death in 1980 represented an inestimable loss to conservative politics in the US. He’d surely have been an ideal Republican candidate for Vice President, at the very least.