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We could talk about fast cars all day long. But let's hear what some of the cast and crew of Need for Speed have to say about all things fast.
Q: Did you watch some of the classic car movies from the '60s and '70s to prep for this role?
A: Oh, yeah. What's so great about this film is it's not just a car movie, but it's a throwback to the classic car culture films. When I met with Scott Waugh, our director, he gave me this amazing pitch. He said it would be like a Steve McQueen–era film. That got me really excited. That's what first intrigued me about this story. And then he delved deeper into how he was going to tell the story. It's great because I think car movie buffs deserve something like this.
Q: We understand that you did a lot of training for this role.
A: Yeah, before we started shooting they wanted me to go through this crash course — so to speak — just to learn how to do drifts, and slides, and reverse 180s, and even 360s. And I learned all this in the first three days, and it's incredible. It's hard not to do it in your day-to-day life. Once you know how to really use the emergency brake properly, you just don't want to ever stop doing it. Nowadays, the emergency brake doesn't really grip as well as it should on a lot of cars. So it doesn't allow you to kind of drift and slide the way you want to. But they have these cars all rigged up for us. They’re just giant toys.
Q: What attracted you to this project?
A: After directing Act of Valor, having been a stuntman I wanted to do a car movie. I just felt like the time's right. I personally wanted to lend my expertise from all the car commercials that I've done into a movie, and the stars all aligned. And then I got a call from DreamWorks asking if I wanted to direct Need for Speed.
When DreamWorks approached me about making the film, I read the screenplay and just said to them, "If you're interested in making a real authentic car movie like Bullitt or those old-school, in-camera films, with great characters, then I'm hopefully your guy."
Q: Why did you choose to construct some of the cars for the movie?
A: When we talked about the greatness and problems with supercars — there's only a few of them in the world and they're not really camera friendly. You're not going to drill into a side of a two-and-a-half-million-dollar car. And you're not gonna wreck it. They're art pieces. That's what everyone forgets. These cars are art pieces. You're not gonna wreck the Mona Lisa, you know what I mean? You're gonna replicate it to wreck it so the real one is still there.
Q: What techniques did you learn?
A: There were techniques that I learned like hand-braking around the corner, onto a street. You're locking all four brakes and then turning into the skid, and how far and how much pressure to put on the wheel as you spin it around and how to accelerate out of that safely. How to go through narrow margins, and hitting exact points so the timing is perfect and to get an idea of how to be precise with where to stop a car. We're travelling at speeds of a hundred and something miles per hour, where there are three cars in a row, and inches from the car in front and inches from the car that's behind.
Q: When you're in the pod car and the stunt driver is going extremely fast and you have no control over the situation, what does that feel like?
A: It's really terrifying. I spent the first time around the track with my foot slammed against the middle pedal hoping that it would work as a brake although obviously it did nothing, and you're steering and it's doing nothing. You're completely at the mercy of someone else. And then of course your actor's vanity kicks in. And as soon as the camera is actually put there and is rolling, you suddenly just go into a sort of racing driver mode. So you get used to it very quickly, and you also see that those guys are a billion times better than you at driving so that you really trust what they're doing.
SEE FAST FIRSTHAND.
Watch these quick clips for a behind-the-scenes look at the filming,
special effects, and training sessions of Need for Speed.
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Driving School
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Supercar Showcase
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Camera Cars
