Speed Movie Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
6correct to beat the crowd
This Speed movie trivia quiz has 100 free questions with answers and covers the 1994 action classic from the elevator to the subway crash: how Graham Yost got the idea from his father's misremembering of Runaway Train, why the film was almost called Minimum Speed, the studio that passed because nobody would watch a film set on a bus, the week Joss Whedon spent rewriting the dialogue and inventing 'Pop quiz, hotshot', and the parade of stars who turned down Jack Traven and Annie before Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock got the parts. It also covers the production: the eleven GM buses, the unfinished freeway interchange that inspired the jump, the first attempt that wrecked a bus, the airport that stood in for LAX, the 1/8-scale subway model, the Oscar for Best Sound, the $350 million gross, and the sequel that scored 4% on Rotten Tomatoes. Early questions are for anyone who has watched it on a rainy Sunday; the last third is for people who know what a MythBusters episode concluded about the bus jump. Every answer was checked against a reference source and each question shows its citation once you have answered.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Below what speed will the bomb on the bus in Speed detonate?
50 mph
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.
Q 02Why is Annie riding the bus in Speed rather than driving herself?
Her licence was revoked
Her licence was revoked, and for speeding, as she admits to Jack moments after grabbing the wheel.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.
Q 03What is the name of the ex-cop bomber Dennis Hopper plays in Speed?
Howard Payne
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'.
Q 04In Speed, where must the ransom be dropped?
A trash can
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.
Q 05Where does Speed's bomber trap his first hostages?
An elevator
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.
Q 06Which 1985 thriller, described to him by his father, gave Graham Yost the idea for Speed?
Runaway Train
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.
Q 07What did Graham Yost first call his script for Speed?
Minimum 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.
Q 08What was Paramount's complaint about the Speed script?
Too much time on the bus
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.
Q 09Which uncredited writer reworked Speed's dialogue and came up with 'Pop quiz, hotshot'?
Joss Whedon
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.
Q 10Which character was originally intended to be Speed's villain before Dennis Hopper was cast?
Harry Temple
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.
Q 11What did Sandra Bullock earn while preparing to play Annie in Speed?
A bus driver's licence
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.
Q 12Which earlier Keanu Reeves film convinced Jan de Bont to cast him as Jack Traven in Speed?
Point Break
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.
Q 13In Graham Yost's first draft of Speed, what was Annie's job, to explain her skill at the wheel?
A paramedic
Q 21What happened the first time Speed's crew tried the bus jump for real?
The bus was wrecked
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.'
Q 22What did MythBusters conclude about Speed's bus jump?
It was impossible under real-world conditions
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.
Q 23Which airfield stood in for LAX when the bus in Speed hits a cargo plane and explodes?
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.
Q 14What slip tells Jack that Speed's bomber has a hidden camera on the bus?
He calls Annie a wildcat
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.
Q 15Which close friend of Keanu Reeves died in October 1993, midway through the filming of Speed?
River Phoenix
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.
Q 16Which Speed stunt did Keanu Reeves rehearse in secret and then perform after his director had ruled it out?
The Jaguar-to-bus jump
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.
Q 17Where did Speed's stunt driver sit as Annie steered?
On the roof
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.
Q 18The doomed bus in Speed was painted to resemble those of which real Los Angeles-area operator?
Santa Monica's Big Blue Bus
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'.
Q 19Why could Speed's crew film on a Los Angeles freeway for weeks on end?
It had not opened yet
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.
Q 20How was the gap in the freeway that the bus jumps created?
With computer-generated imagery
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.
Mojave
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.
Q 24What does Speed's bomber find when he finally opens his bag of ransom money?
A dye pack that bursts
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.
Q 25How does the bomber die in Speed?
Decapitated by a signal on the train roof
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.'
Q 26How does Jack save himself and Annie when the subway train cannot be stopped?
He accelerates it so it derails
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.
Q 27What puts Annie behind the wheel of the bus in Speed?
A passenger's gun wounds the driver
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.
Q 28Which rock singer recorded 'Speed', the title song on the 1994 soundtrack album of Speed?
Billy Idol
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'.
Q 29Which of these Academy Awards did Speed win in 1995?
Best Sound
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.
Q 30Why did Fox move Speed's release up two months?
Test screenings went well
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.