The bizarre way Keanu Reeves was convinced to do his own ‘Speed’ stunts: “I tried to do as much as I could”
Pop quiz, hotshot: there’s a first-time director and a fast-rising star partnered up for a high-concept action movie with a premise so ridiculous it could turn out to be a disaster in the wrong hands. What do you do?
The answer, for Jan de Bont and Keanu Reeves, was to put their heads together and craft one of the genre’s all-time greats in Speed. It continues to stand up under scrutiny as a fast-paced, no-frills, and nerve-jangling thrill ride 30 years on from its initial release.
The filmmaker may have never helmed a feature before, but he was far from a novice. De Bont was an experienced cinematographer who’d previously worked on John McTiernan duo Die Hard and The Hunt for Red October, Ridley Scott’s Black Rain, and Richard Donner’s Lethal Weapon 3 as DP, so he was hardly an amateur in the action arena.
Reeves, meanwhile, had already showcased his action hero chops in Kathryn Bigelow’s Point Break, with Speed taking his career to the next level after it recouped its production budget ten times over at the box office and won two Academy Awards. Not to forget the memorable contributions of Dennis Hopper, Sandra Bullock, and Jeff Daniels, but it was the leading man who was tasked to perform the most dangerous stunts.
He wasn’t a rookie in that regard, either. Still, Reeves still took a little convincing when it came to leaping from a moving car onto a moving bus, being strapped onto a cart dragging underneath the explosive-rigged public transport, and generally leaping around and diving through the air like there was no tomorrow.
Not that it comes recommended by every filmmaker, but one of the easiest ways to convince an apprehensive cast member to do a stunt is to do it themselves first. De Bont revealed to Yahoo that he wouldn’t ask his leading man to do anything he hadn’t already done himself.
He would tell Reeves that “you’re totally in control whether you’re afraid or not,” which emboldened the actor to give it a shot. Not only that, but that sense of realism and the ability to capture close-ups in the moment was integral to the vision de Bont had for Speed from the very beginning.
“I feel like my whole idea was to be with the characters as much as possible, to let the actors do as much as the stunts themselves,” he explained because he wanted the audience “to understand why the actor or the character reacts in a certain way.” For his part, although Reeves admitted that “I tried to do as much as I could,” but there were still occasions when the stunt coordinator was the best candidate for the job.
