Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock’s ‘Speed’ Turns 25: 10 Things You May Not Know About the Classic Action Film

Keanu Reeves Was Not the First Choice for the Film

As the actor himself will happily acknowledge, he was pretty far down the list of leading men that 20^th Century Fox was considering for Speed. The real desire was for one of the so-called “Toms,” either Tom Cruise or Tom Hanks. When it became clear that wasn’t going to happen, discussions of Keanu began — and this despite the fact he was so well known for Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. It seems the combination of his performances in Parenthood and Point Break did the trick.

Neither Was Sandra Bullock

The character of Annie went through a number of changes during the different drafts of the screenplay. Initially she was African-American and instead of being a bus driver, was a paramedic and then a driver’s ed teacher. In terms of actresses, early choices included Halle Berry and (believe it or not) Ellen DeGeneres!

Would You Have Seen an Action Movie Called ‘Minimum Speed’?

Thank goodness clearer heads prevailed, because Speed’s original title was Minimum Speed. Ultimately this was changed because it seemed to work against the theme of the film, suggesting something a bit slower. Case in point, the sequel, Speed 2: Cruise Control. Seriously, how can you “speed” when you’ve got cruise control on? One of the great conundrums of our time.

Joss Whedon Did Uncredited Rewrites on the Script

At the time of Speed’s production, Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon was working as a “script doctor,” and Speed was one of his patients.

“Basically,” he told us at the time, “when they are making a movie already and they should not be, they call me in. That can be, ‘Gosh, this one scene doesn’t work’ or ‘Wow, this script sucks.’ What it is, for me, is connecting whatever dots they already have. It’s taking whatever they’re wed to and then trying to work something good in between the cracks of it. In the case of something like Speed, there were a lot of opportunities to do that. They had the entire premise and I couldn’t change a single stunt, but I could change every word. Apart from rewriting about 90 percent of the dialogue, the best work was stuff that nobody would ever notice: just trying to make the whole thing track logically and emotionally so that all of those insane over-the-top stunts, one after the other, would make sense. That’s the biggest part of script doctoring that’s interesting to me. When somebody says, ‘We’ve got a guy and he’s falling off a cliff, and later he’s hanging from a helicopter and we need you to tell us why. We need you to make the audience believe that he’s doing it’ — that’s what Speed was about, apart from writing the jokes. What I like about that is taking a scene and saying, ‘OK, she’s married to him, but he’s shooting at her, so wouldn’t he feel this? What if we do it like this instead?’, all without changing who gets shot. I think that’s really fascinating, because a lot of scripts, even when they’re well-wrought, people will throw something in and they won’t track it emotionally. They’ll say, ‘This would be cool, this would be cool, this would be cool,’ but then you have to go in and say, ‘How on Earth did this happen?’ Even if it’s just throw in some jokes, throw in some action, it’s all about making my contribution fit with what they already have.”

Keanu Wasn’t a Fan of Early Drafts of the Script

Prior to Joss Whedon coming aboard to perform script rewrites, Keanu wasn’t really a fan of what he was reading. It was his feeling that the film was trying too hard to fit into the Die Hard formula, mixed in with what he called screwball comedy. When the actor’s request for the character to be less glib and more earnest was fulfilled, he was much more ready to jump on board that speeding bus.

Director Jan de Bont Brought Action Cred to the Film

Prior to Speed, director Jan de Bont had been a director of photography for films like the original Die Hard and The Hunt for Red October. Since then, his directorial credits include Twister, Speed 2: Cruise Control, The Haunting and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider — The Cradle of Life.

Keanu Had Made Connections With the LAPD Prior to This Film

When he was filming the movie Point Break, Keanu had spent some time consulting with the Los Angeles Police Department to get some insight into his character. As he explained to Entertainment Weekly, “The thing that came off is their concern for human life: ‘We get the bad guys, and we get to save the good guys.’ And with that basic tenet I began with Jack.”

Originally the Bus Was Going to Explode Near the Hollywood Sign

Speed ends with a massive action sequence in the L.A. subways, but the original concept was that the bus would circle around Dodger Stadium rather than LAX, and climax with Jack getting the bus back into traffic, but away from people as fast as possible, allowing it to detonate by the Hollywood sign. Apparently that wasn’t exciting enough, hence the subway sequence that, in a way, feels like a sequel built into the original film (check it out again to see what we mean).

Keanu and the Death of River Phoenix

During production, Keanu was deeply affected by the October 31, 1993 overdose death of close friend River Phoenix (Stand by Me, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade), and his costars noticed that it was a pain he attempted to keep as private as he could. According to de Bont in that Entertainment Weekly story, “It got to him emotionally. He became very quiet and it took him quite a while to work it out by himself and calm down. It scared the hell out of him.”

Success and Blacklisting

Speed was produced for a budget of about $30 million, but it went on to gross $350 million — obviously quite a profit-maker for studio 20^th Century Fox. It’s also understandable why they’d want to produce a sequel. What was not understandable, at least to them, was Keanu’s refusal to reprise the role of Jack Traven.

As Keanu explains it, there was a decade following the release of Speed where he didn’t make another film for 20^th Century Fox, and not by his choice. As he told Jimmy Kimmel back in 2015, “I didn’t get to be in [Speed 2: Cruise Control]. Well, I decided not to be in that. I loved working with Jan de Bont and Sandra, of course. It was just a situation in life where I got the script and I read the script and I was, like, ‘Ugh,’ it was about a cruise ship … a cruise ship is even slower than a bus and I was, like, ‘I love you guys, but I just can’t do it.’”

In the end, though, things seemed to have worked out OK. Happy Anniversary, Speed!