Universal executive Kevin Misher happened to read it and showed it to Rob Cohen, the director recalled to Reach Further in 2018.
“As a guy with a degree in anthropology, any time I see a tribal, secret world, my ears perk up because that’s where some very interesting stuff can be illuminated for movies,” Cohen said.
Cohen had previously directed Walker in the Ivy League secret society thriller The Skulls, during which producer Neal Moritz had asked the actor what he wanted to do next.
He was ready to sign on before they even had a script, Walker said, though his team cautioned him that perhaps that wasn’t the best idea.
On Entertainment Weekly’s Binge series in April, Diesel recalled being instantly sold on the character—”tough guy, outlaw, with a heart and a code”—and the film when they described the now-iconic tracking shot that starts with Dom’s arm as he shifts into gear before zipping into the core of his engine and out through the back of the car as he he takes off in the first race.
The actor, already the owner of a 1967 Chevy II Nova Super Sport and a 1966 Buick Skylark Gran Sport, had always been into American-made cars , but after getting a taste of the Nissan Skyline R33 in the movie, he bought his own, imported from Japan.
“I was never really into this whole import car scene,” he explained to E! News in 2001, “until actually I got more involved with the film.
“I’m a New Yorker, and I don’t think you can live in New York and be a car guy,” the actor told Entertainment Weekly in 2001.
I had a GSX-R that we’d drive at incredible speeds on the Belt Parkway and every direction out of Manhattan when I was in college.
In fact, the 20-year-old didn’t even have a license.
But she took lessons in NYC and passed her test the day before she was due to leave for L.A.
Michelle Rodriguez, however, was bummed that she only got to do so much driving herself before the stunt doubles took over.
“It was a reality check for them to realize that the streets don’t work like that,” Rodriguez told EW for a 2021 oral history of the film.
Reflecting on the input she’d had in the franchise over the years, Rodriguez told Entertainment Weekly in 2017, “At the end of the day, the only leverage I have as an individual is my participation.
Walker and Diesel went to an illegal race to better immerse themselves in the world of Dom and his fellow speed demons—and found themselves having to hightail it out of there when police helicopters showed up to disperse the crowd.
On EW’s Binge Diesel recalled, “Paul grew up in L.A.
Meanwhile, the crowd at the race where Brian is treated to what he’s in for going up against Dom—”You almost had me?”—is full of actual illegal street racers.
“I told them, ‘Sometimes you’re going to be in front of green screen and going no miles an hour,'” Cohen told EW in 2001.
Stunt coordinator and second-unit director Mic Rodgers crafted what came to be known on set as the “Mic Rig,” a truck with the cab chopped off so that they could mount the body of a car in the bed in order to give the illusion that the car was speeding along with one of the actors behind the wheel.
12.
“I like to mix it up,” the Varsity Blues and Pleasantville actor said of doing his own stunts, noting that some actors get a “prima donna” reputation for a reason and that’s not how he rolls.
At first, neither was sure about the other and some of their characters’ confrontations—such as when Brian is outed as a cop and Dom stares him down while a member of his crew holds a shotgun to Brian’s head—got pretty intense.
15.
16.
When Diesel passed on the sequel, the rapper followed suit, telling MTV News in 2002, “He hollered at me ’cause they still wanted me to do the film and they bumped up my role as a starring role and everything.
It was the right move for Ludacris, whose character Tej was created to fill that Ja Rule-shaped hole, according to 2 Fast 2 Furious director John Singleton.
Singleton said he and Ja laughed about it a year later when they ran into each other at the Source Awards.
The humble family abode in Boyle Heights with the street number 1327 whose siren song Dom ultimately can’t resist, no matter how many millions he and his crew make off with, can be found at 724 East Kensington Road in Los Angeles’ Echo Park neighborhood, not far from Dodger Stadium.
“And I went to watch a documentary on Roger Corman, who I’ve known since I was a kid, and there was a little section on a movie he’d made called The Fast and the Furious.
19.
“That year, this is the comment I got all the time: ‘You do know Jerry Bruckheimer is making Gone in 60 Seconds don’t you? And Stallone is making Driven?'” Cohen recalled to Reach Further.