It's the demand of all demands to do a car chase that's unique because there are so many... really since the beginning of film, even in the silent era, 'The Keystone Cops.'
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Boy, there's nothing more thrilling than a chase. I'd often thought, over the years, that someone should do a whole film where it's nothing but a chase.
Car chases usually don't involve major criminals - they're usually guys afraid of getting another traffic ticket.
Everything officers go through in any chase anywhere in the country, but amped up 100 times! I'm right in the thick of things in a car going like 80 miles an hour, and doing 360s in the middle of the road. It was a wild ride.
I love 'Donnie Brasco' and 'Days of Thunder,' so after I did 'The Skulls,' I was like, 'I want to be either an undercover cop, or I want to race cars!' Universal came to me with a newspaper article about street racing in L.A., and I was like, 'Are you kidding me? I grew up doing that right off Peoria in Sun Valley.' They asked if I wanted to do it.
People always want cars. It's a huge industry, and there's always new product coming out.
The challenge in most car chases is you're trying to hide the fact that it's not the actor driving.
Why is it we want one car to do everything?
Most film productions, when they're based at a place, they get, like, a 30-mile radius or a 30-minute radius to get out of the town. And once you go past that, your day starts to become shorter, and you have to start paying your drivers more, and everybody just gets paid more, and you have less time to shoot, and everything costs more.
People spend so much time in their cars, and it's a legal way to have fun by speeding a little bit or testing yourself a little bit, and you get to invest in your car. For some people, it becomes their baby.
When I was growing up and watching 'The Sweeney,' the notion of police officers being an inch away from the villains that they're chasing was commonplace.