100 Fun Facts About Speed Movie

Below what speed will the bomb on the bus in Speed detonate?

50 mph was a friend's idea. Graham Yost had been stuck on 20 mph, reasoning that the bus only had to outpace a running person, until his writing partner told him to make it 50.

Why is Annie riding the bus in Speed rather than driving herself?

Her licence was revoked, and for speeding, as she admits to Jack moments after grabbing the wheel. The one passenger banned from driving fast then has to keep the bus from slowing down.

What is the name of the ex-cop bomber Dennis Hopper plays in Speed?

Howard Payne is a former Atlanta bomb-squad officer, forced to retire after an accident. He calls the ransom 'money due me', and sneers that a bomb that never goes off is just 'a cheap gold watch'.

In Speed, where must the ransom be dropped?

A trash can, set over a hole that drops the bag into a tunnel below. Graham Yost's writing partner, an English professor, had first imagined the trick as a way to steal a rare book.

Where does Speed's bomber trap his first hostages?

An elevator. The scene was not in the first outline; Graham Yost used it to show that Jack wins by spotting the trick, as Perseus did with Medusa and the shield.

Which 1985 thriller, described to him by his father, gave Graham Yost the idea for Speed?

Runaway Train, filmed from an Akira Kurosawa script about a locomotive with no brakes. Yost's father Elwy, a Canadian TV film host, described it to him, and he thought a bomb on a bus would be cooler.

What did Graham Yost first call his script for Speed?

Minimum Speed, after the rule the bus must obey. Yost decided nobody wants the word 'minimum' in a title, and says the sequel's subtitle, Cruise Control, makes the same mistake.

What was Paramount's complaint about the Speed script?

Too much time on the bus, the studio said. Graham Yost's first draft never left it, circling Dodger Stadium before blowing up by the Hollywood Sign, and the subway finale was written only afterwards.

Which uncredited writer reworked Speed's dialogue and came up with 'Pop quiz, hotshot'?

Joss Whedon wrote '98.9 percent of the dialogue', by credited writer Graham Yost's own reckoning, yet Yost was told he could not so much as mention him on the DVD commentary.

Which character was originally intended to be Speed's villain before Dennis Hopper was cast?

Harry Temple, Jack's partner, was to be unmasked as the man behind the bombs. The idea was dropped in the summer before filming; Graham Yost says it took too much work to make the betrayal believable.

What did Sandra Bullock earn while preparing to play Annie in Speed?

A bus driver's licence. It was never needed on camera: Bullock says she did not really drive in a single shot and was simply thrown about at the wheel.

Which earlier Keanu Reeves film convinced Jan de Bont to cast him as Jack Traven in Speed?

Point Break showed Jan de Bont a hero who was vulnerable rather than bulky. He wanted the long hair gone, so Reeves shaved his head almost bare, and the director says everyone at the studio was scared by it.

In Graham Yost's first draft of Speed, what was Annie's job, to explain her skill at the wheel?

A paramedic, used to threading an ambulance through traffic at speed. Yost later tried making her a driving instructor, decided both excuses were too convenient, and left her an ordinary passenger.

What slip tells Jack that Speed's bomber has a hidden camera on the bus?

He calls Annie a wildcat, and Jack later notices the Arizona Wildcats sweatshirt she is wearing. Once he knows about the camera, the police loop a minute of taped footage and empty the bus unseen.

Which close friend of Keanu Reeves died in October 1993, midway through the filming of Speed?

River Phoenix, his My Own Private Idaho co-star. Jan de Bont says he reshuffled the schedule to give Reeves easier scenes, and Dennis Hopper recalled that on set the next day neither of them mentioned it.

Which Speed stunt did Keanu Reeves rehearse in secret and then perform after his director had ruled it out?

The Jaguar-to-bus jump. Jan de Bont had called the idea irresponsible, so Reeves practised behind his back and on the day simply jumped; the director says he almost had a heart attack.

Where did Speed's stunt driver sit as Annie steered?

On the roof. Some of the buses had controls mounted up top, so a stunt driver steered while Sandra Bullock sat at the wheel below and, she says, was flung at whatever the director wanted hit.

The doomed bus in Speed was painted to resemble those of which real Los Angeles-area operator?

Santa Monica's Big Blue Bus. The side of the film's bus names an invented 'Santa Monica Intercity Bus Lines', yet the back carries real jokey bank adverts from the actual fleet, such as 'Save the clams'.

Why could Speed's crew film on a Los Angeles freeway for weeks on end?

It had not opened yet: the Century Freeway carried its first traffic in October 1993, a month into the shoot. Driving the empty road, Jan de Bont noticed a missing section, which gave him the bus jump.

How was the gap in the freeway that the bus jumps created?

With computer-generated imagery: the ramp was already complete, so artists at the young Sony Pictures Imageworks digitally erased a stretch of real road. The flight itself was genuine, launched off a ramp with the driver slung in a harness.

What happened the first time Speed's crew tried the bus jump for real?

The bus was wrecked, and a second one had to be readied before the jump could be tried again. Jan de Bont recalls that his first words were 'Don't tell the studio.'

What did MythBusters conclude about Speed's bus jump?

It was impossible under real-world conditions: in 2009 the show's scale model plunged straight into the gap, and a full-size, remote-controlled bus launched off a ramp still fell far short.

Which airfield stood in for LAX when the bus in Speed hits a cargo plane and explodes?

Mojave, because nobody was going to let a film crew blow up a bus and a jet at a working international airport. The fireball was staged out in the desert on an old runway.

What does Speed's bomber find when he finally opens his bag of ransom money?

A dye pack that bursts in his face the moment he opens the bag to offer Jack a bribe. With the money ruined, he empties his gun in a rage.

How does the bomber die in Speed?

Decapitated by a signal on the train roof: Jack sees the light coming and shoves him up into its path. His only answer to the villain's last boast of being smarter is 'I'm taller.'

How does Jack save himself and Annie when the subway train cannot be stopped?

He accelerates it so it derails, because Annie is handcuffed to a pole and he will not leave her. The carriage bursts up onto Hollywood Boulevard and slides to a halt in front of a tour van.

What puts Annie behind the wheel of the bus in Speed?

A passenger's gun wounds the driver. A nervous crook, sure that Jack has boarded to arrest him, pulls a pistol, and it goes off as he is wrestled down.

Which rock singer recorded 'Speed', the title song on the 1994 soundtrack album of Speed?

Billy Idol wrote it to order with guitarist Steve Stevens. The album's compilers wanted every track to be about speed, cars or travel, so it sits beside Gary Numan's 'Cars' and Kiss's 'Mr. Speed'.

Which of these Academy Awards did Speed win in 1995?

Best Sound, plus a second Oscar for its sound effects, so a film sold on its stunts was honoured only for what audiences heard. Forrest Gump beat it to the one other prize it was up for.

Why did Fox move Speed's release up two months?

Test screenings went well: a preview crowd in Pasadena began applauding after the first scene, Jan de Bont recalled, and Fox, which had expected a routine action film, brought it out in June instead of August.

Which live-action cartoon remake did Speed knock off the top of the US box office in June 1994?

The Flintstones lost the top spot to it. Insiders had tipped the comedy sequel City Slickers II to win that weekend, yet it came third behind both despite playing in more cinemas than Speed.

Variety named Speed as Sandra Bullock's highest-grossing film until which 2013 release passed it?

Gravity, in which she is adrift in orbit, finally did it. The part came to her only after Angelina Jolie and Natalie Portman had turned it down.

Which critic filed Speed under Bruised Forearm Movies?

Roger Ebert gave Speed four stars and chose the label because, he wrote, you are always grabbing the arm of the person sitting next to you. At their best, he added, such films generate 'a kind of manic exhilaration'.

Which director named Speed one of the top 20 films he had seen between 1992 and 2009?

Quentin Tarantino started his list at 1992 because that was the year he became a director himself. His top pick was Japan's Battle Royale, the one film of those years he said he wished he had made.

Who played Annie's new boyfriend Alex Shaw in Speed 2 after Keanu Reeves declined to return?

Jason Patric took over as a new hero. The sequel's first scene has Annie admit that she and Jack did not last, just as she had joked in the first film that romances begun under intense circumstances never do.

In Speed 2, what does the luckless motorist whose car Jack wrecked in Speed lose to the new hero?

His boat, seized at sea by another cop in a hurry. Glenn Plummer returns as the driver whose prized car Jack borrowed and wrecked in the first film, and the new boat fares no better.

In which 2020 film does the hero secretly watch Speed and start copying the line 'Pop quiz, hotshot'?

Sonic the Hedgehog, secretly watching along with a small-town couple, declares Keanu Reeves a national treasure. Reeves later joined the series himself, as the voice of Shadow in the third film.

In Speed, what new problem does Jack cause while under the bus trying to disarm the bomb?

He punctures the fuel tank, so a bus that cannot slow down is now running out of fuel as well. Smelling it, Annie asks whether he thought he needed another challenge.

What does Jack do when the bomber takes his partner hostage in Speed's opening?

He shoots his partner, and it works, because the bomber loses his human shield. Minutes earlier his partner had set that very dilemma as a pop quiz, and Jack's answer was to shoot the hostage.

Which 1996 disaster blockbuster did Speed's director make next?

Twister was his once Steven Spielberg, first attached to direct it, settled for producing. He was free only because he had just walked away from a Godzilla film he had signed on to a month after Speed opened.

In a late rewrite of Speed, Alan Ruck's character on the bus changed from an unpleasant lawyer into what?

A tourist. The earlier draft made him a lawyer the audience was meant to hate, who was killed off; the rewrite turned him into a nice man out of his depth who had simply picked the wrong bus.

In Speed, what is the baby carriage full of when the bus hits it?

Cans. Annie screams that she has hit a baby before learning there was none, and Graham Yost recalls audiences gasping, then laughing with relief as the cans came out.

What injury ended the police career of the bomber in Speed?

A lost thumb. When police files show no officer with that injury, Jack's partner has the pension fund searched instead, reasoning that such a man must be drawing disability pay somewhere.

Before directing Speed, Jan de Bont had been the cinematographer on which action classic?

Die Hard, which he shot for John McTiernan, a director considered for Speed before him. Hollywood cynics duly tagged his debut 'Die Hard on a bus'.

Which actor plays Jack's bomb-squad partner in Speed?

Jeff Daniels plays the partner who unmasks the bomber from headquarters: noticing that the man knows every trick the squad uses to defuse a bomb, he asks to see the files on cops.

Which actress was offered the role of Annie in Speed before Sandra Bullock but turned it down?

Halle Berry says she 'stupidly said no' after reading an early script, then saw the finished film and groaned. She and Keanu Reeves finally worked together 25 years later, on John Wick: Chapter 3.

Which line was the advertising tagline for Speed in 1994?

Get ready for rush hour: a commuter's dread turned upside down, since this bus is doomed if traffic slows it. The sequel's poster took the joke to sea with 'Rush hour hits the water'.

Asked whether she can handle the bus in Speed, Annie says it is like driving a really big what?

Pinto. Ford's 1970s subcompact was notorious for catching fire when struck from behind, which gives her quip an edge on a bus wired to explode.

In Speed, the bomber tells Jack that poor people are crazy, whereas he himself is what?

Eccentric. Graham Yost says that casting Dennis Hopper, 'America's favorite psychopath' since Blue Velvet, meant the bomber needed no back story at all.

Which actor plays the villain who hijacks a cruise ship in Speed 2?

Willem Dafoe plays the hijacker, a dismissed designer of the ship's own systems. Keanu Reeves had already passed, later saying a film called Speed on an ocean liner struck him as counter-intuitive.

What did Keanu Reeves do to his looks for Speed that frightened studio executives at first sight?

Reeves shaved his head almost to the scalp, leaving about a millimetre of hair, because Jan de Bont wanted Jack to look strong and in control. The cut seen in the film had already grown back in.

Which stand-up comedian did Speed's writer want to cast as Annie because he wanted someone funny?

Ellen DeGeneres had then done only small parts in films and sitcoms, but Graham Yost thought her funny enough to carry the role. Annie was later rewritten as a love interest for Jack.

Which 2006 romance reunited Speed's Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock as pen pals living two years apart?

The Lake House cast them as an architect and a doctor who swap letters through a mailbox that links 2004 with 2006. It was their first film together since the bus thriller, twelve years earlier.

Where did Jan de Bont get the idea for Speed 2's cruise ship crashing into an island?

A recurring nightmare about a liner ploughing into land gave de Bont his ending, and he turned down hundreds of other sequel pitches in its favour.

According to Keanu Reeves, how did the Fox studio treat him for a decade after he refused Speed 2?

Reeves says it cut ties with him for ten years, even though the studio had offered $12 million for his return as Jack Traven.

At the end of Speed, the unstoppable subway train crashes out onto which famous Los Angeles street?

Hollywood Boulevard is where the train skids to a halt, right in front of a tour van. The actual Metro line did not open beneath that street until 1999.

Graham Yost first set the bomb in Speed to explode below 20 mph because that figure matched what?

A human runner's top pace was about 20 mph, Yost reckoned, so he imagined a bus moving just faster than anyone could chase it on foot. A friend, later an English professor, persuaded him to raise the figure.

Which A-list actress did Jan de Bont say he could never picture on a bus when casting Speed's Annie?

Julia Roberts was the star de Bont named when he explained that he needed someone audiences would believe took public transport. He fought the studio to cast the lesser-known Sandra Bullock.

Speed's writer says its producers went first to two superstars sharing which first name?

Tom Cruise and Tom Hanks were the producers' first stops, and Reeves entered the frame only after a studio staffer's child suggested him.

What nickname did Speed's crew give the bus rebuilt with a camera crew's bubble at the front?

The Popemobile had its whole front cavity rebuilt so that a stripped-down camera crew could sit inside a small bubble and film the action from the front. It was one of several specially adapted buses.

In Speed's finale, what stops Annie leaving the driverless subway train with Jack?

She is handcuffed to a pole in the carriage, and with the driver and the controls both shot, nobody can bring the train to a halt.

When Jack tracks the bomber into the subway in Speed, what has Annie been forced to wear?

An explosive vest wired to a pressure-release detonator in the bomber's hand means Jack cannot simply shoot him: if his grip loosens, it goes off.

How does Speed's bomber get close enough to abduct Annie after the bus rescue?

He poses as a police officer and leads her away while the real SWAT team is busy staking out the ransom drop.

In Speed, who helps the LAPD feed the bomber fake pictures from his hidden camera on the bus?

Television journalists covering the chase help tamper with the signal, buying Jack enough time to get every passenger off before the bomber notices.

How does Jack's partner die in Speed after leading a SWAT raid on the bomber's home?

He triggers a booby trap that blows the whole building apart, killing the entire team, shortly after working out who the bomber is.

After blowing up a bus to get Jack's attention in Speed, how does the bomber first speak to him?

On a nearby payphone, the bomber tells Jack that a second bus is rigged and demands $3.7 million, warning him not to take anyone off.

What happens in Speed when a panicking passenger, Helen, tries to step off the moving bus?

A smaller bomb kills her, triggered remotely by the bomber, who is following every move of the bus on live TV coverage.

Speed's bomber turns out to be a retired bomb-squad veteran from the force of which American city?

Atlanta is where he served until an accident forced him into retirement, and his bitterness at how he was treated afterwards drives the whole plot.

Alan Ruck, a passenger on the bus in Speed, had earlier played Cameron in which 1986 teen comedy?

Ferris Bueller's Day Off made Ruck famous as the hero's anxious best friend, and he captained the USS Enterprise-B in Star Trek Generations the same year as Speed.

Joe Morton, Jack's lieutenant in Speed, had played doomed scientist Miles Dyson in which sci-fi sequel?

Terminator 2 put a real injury to use: Morton had punctured a lung in a car crash, and James Cameron worked his laboured breathing into the character's death scene.

Richard Schiff, the subway train driver shot in Speed, later won an Emmy as Toby Ziegler in which drama?

The West Wing made Schiff a star five years after his brief turn at the controls, and he later directed an episode of the political drama himself.

Sandra Bullock's biggest role before Speed was opposite Sylvester Stallone in which futuristic film?

Demolition Man brought Bullock her first real attention, though audiences otherwise knew her, if at all, from comedies such as Love Potion No. 9.

Jan de Bont, who made his directing debut with Speed, was born and trained in which European country?

The Netherlands gave de Bont his start as a cameraman, a career he kept up after the 1981 film Roar, where a lion tore at his scalp and left him needing 220 stitches.

Graham Yost, who wrote Speed, later created which FX drama about US Marshal Raylan Givens?

Justified began in 2010, and Yost also wrote for the war miniseries Band of Brothers and The Pacific.

Graham Yost wrote Speed while out of work after which Nickelodeon teen sitcom, set on a ranch, ended?

Hey Dude wrapped with no new deal on offer, so Yost used the months before the next TV staffing season to write a film script on spec.

Speed's writer got the idea from his dad Elwy Yost, a long-serving TV film host in which country?

Canada knew Elwy Yost as the host of TVOntario's Saturday Night at the Movies, and Speed was the last film he introduced before retiring in 1999.

Keanu Reeves bulked up for Speed straight after looking emaciated in which Bernardo Bertolucci film?

Little Buddha had Reeves playing Prince Siddhartha, after which he spent two months in a Los Angeles gym filling out his chest and arms to play Jack.

Which composer from Hans Zimmer's studio wrote the score for Speed and later for Disney's Tarzan?

Mark Mancina was Jan de Bont's pick for Speed, and he later shared a Grammy with Phil Collins for the Tarzan soundtrack.

Who performed the risky transfer from the moving bus to the rescue vehicle in Speed's airport sequence?

The actors themselves made the crossing, and they were paid extra after one of them insisted that stunt work deserved stunt pay.

Which Disney animated blockbuster arrived during Speed's third weekend in American cinemas in June 1994?

The Lion King took over the top spot that weekend, yet the bus thriller held on to second place and added another $12.4 million.

Speed lost its Oscar nomination for film editing to which Best Picture winner of the same year?

Forrest Gump took the editing prize among its six Oscars, leaving Speed's editor as the film's only nominee to go home empty-handed.

Which Jack Nicholson film knocked Speed off the top of the US box office after a single week?

Wolf, a werewolf thriller co-starring Michelle Pfeiffer, took $17.9 million on its first weekend and pushed the bus film down to second.

Which 1994 comedy sequel reached cinemas on the same day as Speed, on more screens, yet lost the weekend?

City Slickers II followed a big hit, so Speed's team spent that first night in a Fox office while an executive tallied takings phoned in from cinema after cinema.

Speed ranks 99th on which American Film Institute list, unveiled in a 2001 TV special?

100 Years...100 Thrills ranked the most heart-pounding American films, and Harrison Ford hosted the broadcast that revealed Speed scraping in one place from the bottom.

According to Jan de Bont, what noise from surrounding streets halted Speed's freeway filming several times?

Gunshots in the South Central neighbourhoods beside the road stopped the cameras more than once, something de Bont said he had never expected.

Which colour named the new Los Angeles subway line seen in Speed's finale, largely recreated with scale models?

Red was the colour of a new underground line that began running in January 1993, months before the cameras rolled. Most trains in the sequence are one-eighth scale miniatures.

Speed's highway chase was filmed on Interstate 105, a Los Angeles freeway better known by which name?

Century comes from the parallel street of the same name, which sits where 100th Street would fall in the local grid.

Which American manufacturer built the 'New Look' transit buses, nicknamed fishbowls, that star in Speed?

General Motors built more than 44,000 of them, and the fishbowl name came from the rounded six-piece windscreen of the early models.

After turning down Speed 2, Keanu Reeves toured as the bass player of which rock band?

Dogstar grew out of a supermarket encounter with drummer Robert Mailhouse, who also has a small part in Speed as a young executive.

Sandra Bullock agreed to make Speed 2 so that the studio would back which 1998 drama of hers?

Hope Floats got its green light as part of the deal, which also paid Bullock a reported $11 million for a sequel she later disparaged.

Speed 2 ends with a cruise liner ploughing into a harbour town on which Caribbean island?

Saint Martin hosted what was then billed as the largest and most expensive stunt ever filmed, a crash that swallowed almost a quarter of the budget.

Which Irish-set sitcom spoofed Speed with an episode about a bomb on a milk float, titled Speed 3?

Father Ted's writers set out to make a worse sequel than Speed 2, so their milk float's bomb goes off if it drops below four miles an hour.

In the 1975 Japanese thriller often likened to Speed, what carries a bomb that explodes if it slows down?

A bullet train carries it in The Bullet Train, which starred Ken Takakura and beat Speed's premise into cinemas by nineteen years.

In the first draft of Speed, the bus circled the parking lot of which Los Angeles sports venue?

Dodger Stadium was picked off a map as somewhere to drive in a big circle, but the team's owners did not want anything blown up on their property.

Which actor plays the motorist whose convertible Jack commandeers in Speed, a role he repeated in Speed 2?

Glenn Plummer came to the role of the luckless Maurice fresh from the crime dramas South Central and Menace II Society.

Jan de Bont shot The Hunt for Red October for which director, who was also considered for Speed?

John McTiernan was considered along with Walter Hill before the job went to de Bont, who had twice been his cameraman but had never directed a feature.

Speed won five prizes at the 1995 MTV Movie Awards but lost Best Movie to which John Travolta crime film?

Pulp Fiction took the top award and the dance prize, while the bus thriller's five wins included one for its airport escape and plane explosion.

After Speed, Sandra Bullock landed a lead as a Chicago transit worker in which 1995 romantic comedy?

While You Were Sleeping kept Bullock on public transport, as a lonely token collector who saves a commuter's life, and earned her a first Golden Globe nomination.

Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson, both considered for Speed, instead reunited for which 1995 action film?

Money Train was already on the pair's schedule, Graham Yost recalled, which left the way clear for a less obvious action lead.

Speed's producer Mark Gordon later produced which Steven Spielberg film set during the Second World War?

Saving Private Ryan heads a producing career that also takes in The Patriot, The Day After Tomorrow and the long-running TV drama Grey's Anatomy.