Trivia / Speed

• Creator-Chosen Casting: Jan de Bont cast Keanu Reeves after seeing Point Break (1991) and feeling that he was "vulnerable on the screen. He's not threatening to men because he's not that bulky, and he looks great to women".
• Deleted Scene:
  • After Jack shoots Harry in the leg, he then shoots at Payne and hurts his neck.
  • The cop's party is extended.
  • Additional dialogue between Annie and Helen (Annie is a graphic designer but works in a fish restaurant).
  • More dialogue between the hostages after Helen's death.
  • A conversation which shows why Ray pulled his gun at Jack.
• Divorced Installment: The film was originally conceived as Beverly Hills Cop III.
• Dueling Movies: Another movie about attempts to stop a Mad Bomber came out three weeks after Speed: Blown Away. Speed crushed it at the box office anyway.
• Dyeing for Your Art: Keanu Reeves got a buzzcut and spent two months at Gold's Gym in Los Angeles to get in shape for the film.
• Irony as She Is Cast: Glenn Plummer's driver's license was taken away two days before his scene was scheduled to be filmed.
• Life Imitates Art: There was an instance where 13-year-old Jeremy Wuitschick 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.
• Orphaned Reference: Payne has a scar on his neck, as a result of a deleted scene where Jack shoots him in the neck.
• Reality Subtext: Keanu Reeves's close friend River Phoenix died during the film's production, and he was understandably shaken by the news. Director Jan deBont deliberately altered the shooting schedule to avoid shooting scenes that would be emotionally demanding for Reeves, although one can't help but imagine the news somewhat informed Reeves's performance when shooting the scene in which he reacts to the news that Harry has been killed.
• Release Date Change: The film was originally supposed to be released in August 1994 as 20th Century Fox had concerns that the film would underperform at the box office, and they felt it would be a worthy action successor to True Lies, which opened that July. However, the film performed very well during test screenings, and test audiences loved it so much, which prompted Fox to move the release date up to June, as their first movie of the summer season, and to provide adult action competition in comparison with the family friendly The Flintstones, which opened two weeks earlier. In the end, Fox made the right decision, as the film grossed $121 million in the U.S. and Canada, and $350 million worldwide, against a budget of $30 million.
• Romance on the Set: Downplayed. Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves admitted in separate interviews with Ellen DeGeneres that they were crushing on each other, but neither dared to make the first move.
• Spared by the Cut: The Alan Ruck character (Stephens) was originally written as an abrasive lawyer, who gets his comeuppance in an unexpected death scene. Joss Whedon re-wrote him as the sympathetic, dull-witted tourist of the final version, but kept the death scene, intending to give it more emotional impact. His character changes were kept, but the death was written out. For the record, the scene in question is when the hostages are leaving the bus via a platform, and when the bus hits a bump, Stephens slips and is nearly run over. Originally he was run over, giving him a (rather horrifying) "almost made it" death.
• Star-Making Role: Sandra Bullock. To a lesser extent, Keanu Reeves. He had a fairly extensive filmography beforehand, but Speed, and eventually The Matrix trilogy cemented him as an A-lister more than Bill & Ted or Point Break (1991).
• Technology Marches On:
  • Skyscrapers today would have more advanced security to protect vital systems, such as elevators, from sabotage. It would take more than just posing as an electrician/mechanic to even get through security checkpoints so Howard Panye would have to be more elaborate, such as using identity theft to pose as one of the workers. His infiltration may resemble something out of a realistic Spy Fiction story.
  • Jack having to take the cell phone of the driver of the car he hijacks before getting on the bus was believable in 1994. A little odd today, since Jack would most likely have his own, as would probably every passenger on the bus.
  • Likewise with the availability of cellphones, most modern busses have radio communications and Jack could call the transit company through his mobile phone to radio the driver about the situation and have much better communications. The bus would most likely be trackable by GPS as well, making it much easier to guide the driver to safe places to keep the bus above 50, assuming this part of Payne's plan is inevitable.
  • In the modern age, the problem is that people aren't required to remember phone numbers anymore.
• Tom Hanks Syndrome: While Keanu Reeves was already quite well-known as Ted, this showed he could manage dramatic roles.
• Throw It In!:
  • The scene in which Annie 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 Sandra Bullock.
  • 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.
  • It was Dennis Hopper's idea to stick his fingers in Jeff Daniels' nose to lift him up. Jan De Bont was worried that it would look silly until he discovered that it's actually pretty painful.
  • While lowering a female extra from the elevator, her skirt rides up and accidentally shows her thong underwear, completely unplanned. The shot made it into the final cut.
• Uncredited Role: Joss Whedon was an uncredited script doctor for the screenplay. Credited screenwriter Graham Yost has publicly admitted that the finished script is about 90% Whedon's work, with the remainder being what little was left of his original draft, plus the occasional line that was thrown in by a couple of other writers who tried tackling the script in-between Yost submitting it and Whedon writing up the final version.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The leads were written with Jeff Bridges and Ellen DeGeneres in mind, not to mention that Keanu Reeves was originally going to reprise his role in the sequel.
  • Quentin Tarantino was originally the first choice for Director after the success of Reservoir Dogs. Tarantino turned down the offer, instead choosing to focus on the creation of Pulp Fiction. Renny Harlin and John McTiernan were both offered the job, but declined (either one would have been fitting, as the film was described as "Die Hard on a bus).
  • Various actors were offered the role of Jack and reportedly turned it down: Kevin Bacon, Alec Baldwin, Stephen Baldwin, William Baldwin, Michael Biehn, Jeff Bridges, Jim Carrey, Nicolas Cage, Bruce Campbell, George Clooney, Kevin Costner, Tom Cruise, Johnny Depp, Michael Douglas, Richard Dreyfuss, Clint Eastwood, Harrison Ford, Richard Gere, Mel Gibson, Tom Hanks, Woody Harrelson, Michael Keaton, Christopher Lambert, Dolph Lundgren, Viggo Mortensen, Chuck Norris, Brad Pitt, Dennis Quaid, Mickey Rourke, Kurt Russell, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tom Selleck, Wesley Snipes, Sylvester Stallone, Patrick Swayze, John Travolta, Jean-Claude Van Damme and Bruce Willis.
  • Robert De Niro and Jack Nicholson were considered for Howard Payne.
  • Halle Berry turned down the role of Annie and calls it one of the dumbest decisions she'd ever made in her career (this was before Catwoman (2004), of course). Others candidates included Rosanna Arquette, Kim Basinger, Glenn Close, Joan Cusack, Geena Davis, Cameron Diaz, Carrie Fisher, Bridget Fonda, Jodie Foster, Melanie Griffith, Daryl Hannah, Mariska Hargitay, Anjelica Huston, Diane Lane, Jessica Lange, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Madonna, Alyssa Milano, Demi Moore, Tatum O'Neal, Gwyneth Paltrow, Sarah Jessica Parker, Michelle Pfeiffer, Julia Roberts, Meg Ryan, Winona Ryder, Jane Seymour, Ally Sheedy, Brooke Shields, Sharon Stone, Meryl Streep, Emma Thompson, Lea Thompson, Meg Tilly, Marisa Tomei, Kathleen Turner, Sigourney Weaver and Debra Winger.
  • Harry was going to be played by Ed Harris—and be revealed to be the bomber.
  • According to composer Mark Mancina, Michael Kamen was the studio's choice of composer, but Jan de Bont wanted Mancina to score the film.
  • In early drafts of the script, the bus was supposed to circle around the parking lot of Dodgers Stadium as opposed to LAX. However, the studio couldn't get the rights to film there.
  • In an earlier script, the bus driver Sam had to be removed from the bus because he had suffered a heart attack and not because he had been shot.
  • There was originally a scene called "Officer Baker's failed rescue" in which a bomb squad officer called Baker was going to be lowered onto the bus from a helicopter only to have to pull up when a bridge gets in the way, where he meets an unfortunate end. This scene storyboard can be found on the special edition DVD.
  • Sandra Bullock nearly was dropped from this movie because Fox were convinced that Keanu Reeves didn't have enough drawing power, and wanted a big name actress to star alongside him. Jan de Bont refused and it became Sandra's breakout role.

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