DIRECTOR REINVENTS CAR RACING GENRE WITH “NEED FOR SPEED”
Movie online release
In
2012, Variety honored former stuntman Scott Waugh as one of its “10 Directors
to Watch” for his debut film “Act of Valor” -- about an elite squad of Navy
SEALs -- which was widely praised as one of the most realistic action films
ever made. Now, Waugh follows through the promise with DreamWorks Pictures’
anticipated action-thriller “Need for Speed” (based on the eponymous car racing
video game franchise).
Tapping into the significance of the car and the open road
in American car culture and the freedom and individualism with which they both
provide, “Need for Speed” is a story of honor, friendship and loyalty and the
testosterone-fueled journey of one man out to clear his name.
Question: The “Need for Speed” games, being without a
narrative, gave you a freedom to tell this story uniquely. Please tell us about
that.
Scott Waugh: It did. But I think one of the things that was really great
for myself about the games was, even though there's no narrative story there's
a particular style to each one, whether you chase cops, whether you race in
certain areas or the types of cars you drive. So what we wanted to do was
combine all of the games so that in the film we get to drive a huge variety of
cars. You get to race them in a huge variety of places. And what really freed
us up as filmmakers is, we were able to really bring a true heartfelt story to
this crazy visceral world of “Need for Speed.”
Q: What is the movie “Need for Speed” about?
Waugh:
The film is really about a team of guys at Marshall Motors, and they go through
a travesty in the group. They have to avenge the things that were done wrong to
them. They have to drive from New York to San Francisco in 48 hours. And
through that course of action, all the characters test themselves and how far
they will push themselves and their moral integrity. To me, that’s the great
human component of the movie. I feel that the film has a tremendous amount of
heart. Each character really opens up. The film is a metaphor for the racing
culture, and the things that humanly we do to seek that thrill.
Q: How would you describe the spirit of your movie?
Waugh:
I think the spirit of this movie really lends itself to one line from the film:
“You always go back. You never leave a man behind.” It applies in warfare, it
applies in life, and it really applies in car racing, especially in places
where you’re out remotely. You always go back if somebody’s down. It’s a
morality and integrity thing that’s involved in our culture that is applicable
to every aspect of life. And when you've grown up in the racing culture, and I
grew up in the motocross world, a lot of times you’re riding in environments
where you're far from populations, and if you crash, you're only relying on the
people around you to come help you. It's really just one of those things in the
racing culture that's inbred in you.
Q: Is “Need for Speed”a story of revenge or redemption?
Waugh:
It turns from revenge to redemption. That’s the twist. The characters,
especially Tobey, want revenge. But is that in his morality? That’s what he has
to find out. Tobey Marshall’s a blue-collar kid who comes from the family that
owns Marshall Motors. At the beginning of the story, his mother and father have
already passed away and he’s left with the shop and the burdens of the shop. It
has been in the family since 1974, and he’s trying everything he can to keep it
open. His band of friends all work at the shop and are really there to support
the shop but also to support their racing habits. And they get tied into Dino
who has come back to town after being an indie car racer, and he gives them a
business proposition to help them with the shop.
This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Nobody likes Dino.
He’s always been trouble. He’s a rich kid who doesn’t really have any morality.
This opportunity conflicts everybody. But they go against their own instincts
and accept the offer. It creates nothing but problems. And those problems make
them want revenge against Dino.
Q: Why do you think auto-racing movies are exciting to
audiences?
Waugh:
I think because racing cars today is complicated for most people. It wasn’t as
complicated from the ’70s and before, because the roads were vast, the
populations weren’t as dense, you could go to places pretty easily outside of
the city limits and go race your car. But now that the population is so
massive, you’ve got to go far to try and race a car. And tracks have closed, or
the tracks are really far, and it’s just hard. They don’t really have that many
point-to-point races like the Cannonball Run anymore. They still have the
Cannonball going, but it’s super private. They still have the quarter-mile
tracks, but personally, that doesn’t fascinate me. I’m more of a point-to-point
course kinda guy. And this movie allows us to go there.
What we really strove for in the film was the chance for you
to actually sit in the seat and open it up. Not to be a spectator and watch but
to participate in the film and drive. Which is what’s great about the video
game. You get to drive the cars. And I think in “Need for Speed,” oh, you
drive.
Q: What do you hope audiences will get out of this film?
Waugh:
I hope audiences get out of this movie what they don’t expect. I think that’s a
wonderful thing that can happen in a theater, where you go to see a movie
expecting one thing and it completely throws you another way, in a really good
way. And you leave satisfied, because it wasn’t what you were expecting. And I
hope that “Need for Speed” does that because we really tried extremely hard to
make something different, that wasn’t expected. One of my mottos in
preproduction was, “Don’t replicate. Reinvent. Make it the same but different,
so it’s new and it feels fresh.” And that was hard, but I think when you see
the cameras and the way we move it and the way the characters’ arcs are, it’s
definitely a reinvented car culture film.
Opening
across the Philippines on March 12, “Need for Speed” is distributed by
Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures International through Columbia Pictures.
Comments
Post a Comment