TFATF Director's Commentary

Scene 2: Enter the Eclipse

Here's an introduction - four more beautiful cars. Obviously, this film would revolve greatly around the most idealized, off-the-hook, dope-ass rice rockets that could be achieved in all of the world of illegal street racing.

And here, talking about dope-ass, is the introduction of Michelle Rodriguez, one of the most interesting actresses to come along in a very very long time, and someone who made quite a mark for herself in this film.

Here, along with the beautiful cars, is the co-starring cast: Chad Lindberg as Jesse, Matt Schulze as Vince, Johnny Strong as Leon. Three very interesting, colorful textures that the film needed to balance out the male cast, and of course the three guys are hardly the equal of one Michelle Rodriguez. [guess that's all a matter of perspective!]

Scene 6: Right to Party

Matt Schulze is a guitarist - he's really playing this riff. He has a band, he and Johnny Strong both have bands and come from music before they went into acting, so we wanted to let him show off what he could do.

Scene 8: A Ten-Second Car

[picnic]

This scene was almost all improvised, and covered with many cameras - went through ten or twenty different cuts. Originally, Paul Walker tried to make peace with Vince in this scene. We felt it wasn't good for his character; it was Peter Honess, the editor's, instinct that we should keep Brian a tougher character. So right here, he actually handed Vince that beer, and was sort of trying to make peace, but it failed. So it didn't make our hero look good, so we took that out and luckily, you don't realize who gave the beer to Vince. I put a line in from Johnny Strong, so you psychologically believe that Leon handed it to him.

Here, I was stealing from Edward Hopper, the great American painter, who liked to look through windows and paint scenes which had a mysterious objectivity. I'm very fond of using this real location up in Echo Park in a way like this, a very unconventional framing, not really seeing the two people clearly, kind of obscured, but looking through
the window on a life, an ordinary life, in a city on a summer night, then jumping back in for one of my favorite moments.

This scene is actually a Biblical story. The Bible, I remember, said something about what should the king do for the man he most wants to reward, and the villain says give him this and give him that, and he winds up giving the Jewish hero the reward and punishing Haman, the persecutor, being hoisted in his own petard. So I took that structure and David Ayer wrote this beautiful scene where Jordana basically asks Vince what he wants - he wants to take her to this restaurant, to Cha-cha-cha, a real restaurant in Los Angeles, a very good Brazilian kind of restaurant, and she gives the reward of her date to Paul Walker. A very good, audience-pleasing moment, a wonderful moment for the comeuppance of Vince, who has been a real dick to Paul, to our hero, but who is the one character who knows the truth, who knows that he's not what he seems, and is convinced that he's a cop, and has always been right.

Scene 9: Undercover Blues

[Hector's garage]

We are in this place now where the police procedural starts to kick in in a big way. Brian has to figure out who to believe is the hijacking team that's been preying on these eighteen-wheelers for some months. He's very intent to go from patrolman to detective; one of the ways in the police department to make this move quickly, to be promoted quickly to plainclothes, to get your gold shield as a detective, is to go undercover, and that's why so many young cops do go undercover, which is a very tricky business, because in going undercover, as we know from Miami Vice and Donnie Brasco, sometimes you get more in love with the world that you're supposed to be breaking up than the job you originally had of being a policeman, because you have to act so convincingly, that you are what you're supposed to be in a false world, as opposed to the truth of you, and the truth and the falseness get confused.

That was very important in this scene, because Vince, who hates him, who hates Paul Walker's character for the girl, for being a cop, who would just as soon blow him away and leave him in a Dumpster there, has got Vin Diesel somewhat convinced that he is in fact a narc. It's at this moment that Brian must reach into himself and pull out a
convincing truth, a truth that will overlay all the facts of this situation and make Vin believe that he's still just a racer - that he's down here breaking into garages, not as a cop for evidence, but as a street racer. And Paul did a very convincing job of convincing Vin, and you can watch as Vince realizes that his friend Dominic is buying the entire story, and he's none too happy about it.

Scene 16: Hijacker's Hell

Now, if you'll look, you'll see that Vin Diesel is driving the car, and Vince is on the front of the truck. The camera is moving back and forth between these actors, really moving at these speeds. There's the truck in the background, there's Michelle coming around. It's a great combination of first and second unit work, but whenever you see these actors, they are being driven. They are not driving.

Part of the choreography here that I'm proud of is that it's seamless. If the truck is behind Michelle Rodriguez in one place, it's in the right place when we cut to the second unit team. It's a wonderful coordination between Mic Rodgers and myself.

Here, Matt Schulze is really on the front of that truck, and it really is going 60 miles an hour. Now, he's wired - bang, that is a very dangerous stunt pulled off by, I believe, Mike Justus, I think his name is, wonderful stuntman, and intercut with pieces of Matt Schulze - but he is 18 inches off that highway going 60 miles an hour, and there is
Vin being towed by Mic Rodgers in the Mic Rig. So there we get stuff like this [shot of Vin and Matt reaching for each other] which would have been almost impossible to do any other way.

[Dominic's tire blows] Here, karma taking the revenge, ratcheting up the tension as Dominic's situation goes from bad to worse.

I don't know how many hundreds of cuts are in this sequence; I've never counted them. Maybe some of you cinema buffs will someday go on your DVD and count them. But I know how many hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of setups and how many hundreds of times we had to drive up and down that highway to create this scene. I am again very happy with the result and where all the characters are and how each actor is staying completely committed to the scene - whether they are acting, here like Johnny Strong, or whether they are asked to do something as dangerous as Matt Schulze, who, after the scene was done, was given an honorary membership in Stunts Unlimited by the stuntmen for his courage to hang on that truck day after day after day after day. Wired, completely safetied, but nonetheless, it's not something everyone would do.

That Supra just blasting by - that was CG. We needed to add that later to tie Letty and Leon into the scene.

Again, there's Matt Schulze truly on the truck, Vin Diesel truly looking like he's driving, and here comes Paul Walker to the rescue, with Jordana Brewster - again, wanting to keep the women involved in the action scenes: Letty turns out to be the one who goes under the truck and Jordana has to drive the Supra. We proved that she can drive in the Cha-cha-cha scene, so it doesn't come out of nowhere.

Now, Paul Walker, again, looking like he's driving, but being towed at 70-80 miles an hour, and actually climbing out of the truck. Again, wired through his pants to the car, a stuntman in a box below the car, which has been removed digitally, in case, God forbid, the wire should break or anything unforeseen should happen, there was someone there and a place for him to land.

Then into our stunt, Chris Tuck doing Paul Walker's doubling, and now Paul on the front of the speeding truck, Jordana driving, Vince - Matt Schulze - on the step, and you see all three actors in high-speed movement, hanging on for dear life, and yet everybody was completely safe.

[skip to confession scene]

Like I said before, in a story content way, Vince, who has distrusted Paul Walker's character from the beginning, has known he's a cop from the beginning, has hated him from the beginning, has been willing to kill him at one point in the movie - now, his life is in the hands of this cop, and it's because of Vince that Brian has to confess who he is, because he has to call in the medivac to save the man that hates him, to do his duty. He has to take a chance and show Vin Diesel who he is.
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Special Features: The Making of The Fast and the Furious

Near the beginning there's a quick shot of Matt channeling Crease - he sticks his tongue out at the camera . . . very cute.

In the segment Cars: The Thrill of Speed, there's a shot of Matt sitting in a car - he says, "Hopefully we stay alive and in one piece."

Stunts: An Inside Look

[Mike] My name's Mike Justus and I'm the stunt double for Matt Schulze. We're gonna hijack this big rig. He's gonna transfer from a Honda car, climb up on top of it, jump from the back of the Honda onto the front of the truck. He gets kinda hung up - cars come up to try to rescue him off the truck and his character gets swung around. What we're doing now is tying in the actors.

[Matt] I'm Matt Schulze, and I play Vince. [winks]

[Mike] Now we've got him hanging onto the side of the truck, doing some actions at half-speed, at 55-65 miles an hour.

[Matt] Highly dangerous stunt, one that's normally performed by professionals, but I was called in to handle the job today, without any previous experience. [trying to be serious, but can't contain that little-boy grin]