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© DR - SPEED de Jan de Bont (1994) p7
05/01/2012 11:27
Trivia (part1)
Showing all 71 items
Sandra Bullock actually learned to drive a bus for the film, passing her test on her first attempt.
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A Fox producer realized they might have a movie hit in their hands when he noticed that, during test screenings, audience members would walk backwards when they needed to go to the bathroom so they would miss as little as possible.
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Script doctor Joss Whedon rewrote the script uncredited. According to Graham Yost, the credited writer of Speed, Whedon wrote most of its dialogue. *
Jan de Bont insisted that Keanu Reeves get a sensible haircut as would befit a hard-working cop. 20th Century Fox were horrified when they saw the buzzcut that he adopted for the film, threatening to postpone the film to allow his hair to grow back.
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There was an instance where a schoolboy saved the lives of a schoolbus full of kids, when the driver had a heart attack, by climbing on to the driver's lap, jumping on the brake pedal and pulling the bus to the side of the road. When asked later why he did it, he told them that he had seen "that bus movie". At half time during an NFL game, there was a ceremony hailing the boy as a hero.
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For the bus jump sequence, a ramp was built. The bus was started from about 1 mile back and accelerated towards the ramp. When it hit the ramp it had reached a speed of 61 mph. The bus traveled 109 feet and its front wheels reached an altitude of 20 feet from the ground, which was higher than anyone had anticipated. Because of this, the cameras were not placed correctly and the top front part of the bus goes out of the frame when the bus reaches the maximum point of the jump.
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Keanu Reeves breaking the glass on the bus door in the beginning of the movie was an accident, however it was left in the final cut.
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The scene in which Annie ( Sandra Bullock) takes the chewing gum out of her mouth and pretends to put it on her seat in order to have an excuse to change seats and move away from the obnoxious Stephens was improvised by Bullock. *
The film literally ran out of money before it was completed. When the film was first previewed for an audience, the subway scenes were animated story boards. The audience loved them so much, the studio came up with the funds to shoot the scenes properly.
The subway train that comes crashing up onto Hollywood Blvd at the ending was actually a bus, decked out to look like a subway train.
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Renny Harlin and Quentin Tarantino were offered the chance to direct, but turned it down. Tarantino later named the film as one of his 20 favorite films since 1992.
The 105 freeway in California had recently been completed, but not opened at the time of production. The filmmakers were given all the time they needed to complete the freeway scenes without the hassle of closing down an operating major freeway.
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The bus jump scene was done twice, as the bus landed too smoothly the first time. The bridge was actually there, but erased digitally.
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Director Jan de Bont came up with the idea for the opening elevator sequence while working as a cinematographer on Piège de cristal (1988). While riding in an elevator in the building used as the skyscraper in that film, the elevator got stuck on the 40th floor, and de Bont had to climb out the escape hatch and jump onto another elevator to get out. *
The bus jump scene was not in the original script, director Jan de Bont came up with the idea one day when he was driving around Los Angeles and noticed one section of the I-105 freeway was missing.
Glenn Plummer's driver's license was taken away two days before his scene was scheduled to be filmed.
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The watch Jack was wearing, the Casio G-Shock DW-5600C, had been discontinued when filming commenced. Due to the film's success, the watch was in popular demand and the company started making them again.
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A special bus was used for the bus jump scene. This bus was modified so that it could reach a speed of 70 mph and it was equipped with powerful shock absorbers. The driver seat was moved back 15 feet so that if something went wrong the driver wasn't ejected from the bus. The seat itself was a suspension mechanism between the ceiling and the bus floor to avoid the driver from suffering spinal compression on impact.
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Voted one of AFI's Top 100 Heart-Pounding Movies of all time: number 99.
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The film was originally written with the intention that Jeff Bridges would play Jack and Ellen DeGeneres would play Annie. DeGeneres was initially chosen because the role of Annie was going to be a comedic role opposite the serious role of Jack. *
For the bus jump sequence, the city of Los Angeles gave permission to shoot on the I-105 freeway during the last month of its construction. This required the filming crew to be constantly on the move, depending on the location of the workers. It also created continuity problems because the appearance of the set kept changing as the construction crews would erect or tear down structures.
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Jack Nicholson and Robert De Niro were considered for the role of Howard Payne.
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Jack's registration plate is '646 TEZ'. 'Tez' means speed in Hindi.
The shot when the bus enters LAX and a plane is seen taking off right behind it, took more than 50 takes.
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When the police were looking at police mugshots, the first photograph was of David MacMillan, who is a sound mixer on the film. *
The script was pitched to Paramount Studios, which placed the movie on turnaround and suggested to writer Graham Yost that his script, which called for the movie to end after everyone gets off the bus, had "too much bus" in it, implying audiences would not go for a movie in which a bus is driving around for two hours. Yost then added the subway scenes, and the modified script was presented to Fox Studios, which agreed to film the movie. *
20th Century Fox were not convinced to begin with that Keanu Reeves had enough star clout to front the film and insisted on a big name actress to star alongside him. Jan de Bont refused. Fox relented to his casting of Sandra Bullock with Reeves only two weeks before shooting began. *
Glenn Close, Barbara Hershey, Jessica Lange, Meryl Streep, Sigourney Weaver, Jane Seymour, Anjelica Huston, Kay Lenz, Kim Basinger, Halle Berry, Kathleen Turner, Debra Winger, Geena Davis, Carrie Fisher, Melanie Griffith, Michelle Pfeiffer, Emma Thompson, Rosanna Arquette, Meg Tilly, Daryl Hannah, Meg Ryan, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Ally Sheedy, Demi Moore, Jodie Foster, Tatum O'Neal, Bridget Fonda, Marisa Tomei, Diane Lane, Sarah Jessica Parker, Brooke Shields, Julia Roberts, Winona Ryder, Cameron Diaz and Alyssa Milano all turned down the role of Annie.
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