Speed
Hey, Do You Remember...?
Christopher Schrader
4.8 • 676 Ratings
🗓️ 11 August 2017
⏱️ 107 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Pop quiz, hot shot - it's the summer of 1994 and there have already been dozens of Die Hard knock-offs in the wake of that franchise's success. How do you get your film to stand out from the rest of that pack? In the case of Speed, the first step was hiring director Jan de Bont and trusting in some of his more unconventional decisions. The next was to bring Joss Whedon aboard for a rewrite of the script that removed some of its more overt Die Hard-isms.
There was a lot about Speed that probably made 20th Century Fox very nervous. de Bont was a first time director, no one knew who Sandra Bullock was, and Keanu Reeves had no track record for opening this type of film. Their faith in the project was of course handsomely rewarded, but the story behind this production is still a fascinating one.
All three of us remembered absolutely loving this movie... but it had been a good 15-20 years since we'd seen it. Does it work as well now as it did back then?
Topics include: the original choices for Jack, Annie, and Howard, Whedon's contributions to the script, the poor bus passenger who's consistently saddled with the worst dialogue, Sam's slow and painful off-screen death, why this composer was worth fighting for, the incredible opening set piece, some issues with the final showdown, a few of the more baffling aspects of Speed 2, and much much more!
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, do you remember Speed? |
| 0:07.0 | Hello and welcome to Hey Do You Remember, a show where we reminisce about a movie or TV series we grew up with, then take off the rose-tinted glasses to see how it holds up. |
| 0:32.0 | I'm Chris. |
| 0:32.7 | I'm Donna. |
| 0:33.4 | And I'm Carlos. |
| 0:34.3 | And today we're revisiting Speed. |
| 0:52.9 | Yeah. And I'm Carlos. And today we're revisiting Speed. Pop quiz, Hot Shot. |
| 0:54.8 | You've got a screenplay with a ridiculous premise written by a sitcom staff writer, |
| 0:59.2 | a first-time director with a lot of off-center ideas about how to execute it, |
| 1:03.5 | a lead actor with no track record for opening this type of big summer movie, |
| 1:07.3 | and a supporting cast filled with mostly unrecognizable faces. What do you do? What do you do? |
| 1:15.5 | Well, if your 20th century Fox, you greenlight the project with a $30 million budget, cross your |
| 1:20.7 | fingers, and hope for the best. The fact that speed is as good as it is is sort of shocking, but what's |
| 1:26.7 | even more surprising is the number |
| 1:28.2 | of times a major studio relented to the whims of a relatively untested filmmaker and left |
| 1:33.8 | him alone to make the film he wanted to make. It didn't start out that way. The film was originally |
| 1:38.5 | set up at Paramount Pictures and they offered it to diehard director John McTiernan. After all, |
| 1:43.8 | when you're dealing with a script that was commonly referred to as |
| 1:46.5 | Die Hard on a bus, it's an obvious choice. |
| 1:49.5 | Too obvious, it turns out. |
| 1:51.6 | McTiernan understandably felt like he had already made that movie. |
| 1:54.8 | Instead, he suggested his cinematographer from Diehard and The Hunt for Red October, |
... |
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