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The Rewatchables ·

The Fast and the Furious

year 2001decade 00sdirector Rob Cohengenre Drama
host Bill Simmonshost Shea Serrano
All 17 categories

Most Rewatchable Scene · 16:04

Dom's post-race 'you almost had me' speech to Brian

The plot is summed up as truck heists that Paul Walker's undercover cop first pins on Dom's crew, then on Johnny Tran's, with a twenty-second fake-out on Hector's crew, before circling back to Dom once he has shared a Corona with Vin Diesel; the movie is described as centered on rewatchable scenes with recovery stretches between them.

Nominees: the first big street race; Dom's quarter-mile-at-a-time speech about his background, with special recognition owed to whoever wrote real dramatic acting for Vin Diesel; his flipping out at the street race when Johnny Tran accuses him of selling him out, with the line 'I never knocked on nobody'; the aborted truck hijacking with Vince dangling from the car; and the last ten minutes.

The Neil McCauley “A Book about Metals” Award for Best Line from the Movie · 1:00:41

"I live my life a quarter mile at a time. Nothing else matters. Not the mortgage, not the store, not my team and all their bullshit. For those 10 seconds or less, I'm free."

Nominated: 'You can have any brew you want. as long as it's a corona', recommended for high school yearbook quotes because it phrases a non-choice as a choice; and 'it's not how you stand by your car. It's how you race your car', another yearbook candidate.

The film

The Fast and the Furious (2001)

Directed by Rob Cohen · Drama

107 minutes

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Cast

Selected cast credits · Film reference

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Everything from the episode

In the order the hosts got to it. Open a row for the discussion.

11:37

Roger Ebert's review
In the discussion (1)
Approx. transcript time · 00:11:37Read transcript
  • Rotten Tomatoes has the film at 53 percent, which the hosts find terrible; Roger Ebert, said to be having a rough 2019 on the show after The Godfather and Old School, gave it three stars and really liked it.
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41:54

Casting What-Ifs

The studio would greenlight only with Timothy Olyphant as Dom, and he declined; Neil Moritz suggested Vin Diesel off ...

The studio would greenlight only with Timothy Olyphant as Dom, and he declined; Neil Moritz suggested Vin Diesel off Pitch Black; Mia was written for Elijah Dushku (as transcribed), who turned it down; Colin Farrell was pushed for Dom at one point

In the discussion (3)
Approx. transcript time · 00:41:54Read transcript
  • The studio told the producers they would greenlight the film if they got Timothy Oliphant (as transcribed), who had starred in the previous year's car blockbuster Gone in 60 Seconds, to play Dom; he declined, which the hosts think was a bad move for him but good for the film, since Vin checked many more boxes than another white guy in an action movie; Neil Moritz suggested Vin Diesel, coming off Pitch Black, a perfect call.
  • Mia was written for Elijah Dushku (as transcribed), who turned it down, a tough one since Jordana Brewster went on to five films and multi-millionaire status; everything else was built around Paul Walker, for whom the movie was made.
  • Colin Farrell was pushed for Dom at one point, a what-if that surfaces late during research; the hosts like him and SWAT but pass, joking that Vin Diesel would then have to take Phone Booth, which would have been better with him.
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42:54

Recasting Couch

Ryan Gosling as Jesse

Ryan Gosling as Jesse

In the discussion (2)
Approx. transcript time · 00:42:54Read transcript
  • Asked whom they would swap in, from only the first film, one host admits a lot of problems with Jordana Brewster as the series goes along but thought she was pretty good here; the other has no problems with her in any of the movies and answers a 'she can't act' jab with the franchise's five-billion-dollar gross as proof the actors are pretty good.
  • The proposal is Ryan Gosling as Jesse, since the guy who plays Jesse looks like a slightly less attractive Gosling; the other host agrees the Jesse part could have been improved, Vince is perfect and cannot be touched, and Leon obviously did not work since he was written out after the first one.
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44:56

Half-Assed Internet Research

Working title Redline; the title was owned by Roger Corman and traded for stock footage; Dom's house is really at 724...

Working title Redline; the title was owned by Roger Corman and traded for stock footage; Dom's house is really at 724 East Kensington Road in Echo Park; LA locations including Dodger Stadium and San Bernardino International Airport for Race Wars; the rig heist on Domagoni Parkway (as transcribed); Neil Moritz's Ferrari cameo; the Neptune's Net nod to Point Break; an alternate ending with Brian resigning from the LAPD; 1,500 real drivers at Race Wars; Vin Diesel and Michelle Rodriguez dated during filming; the camera-truck rig for driving shots; Brewster and Rodriguez had no driver's licenses; Vin Diesel and the director chose XXX over the sequel

In the discussion (12)
Approx. transcript time · 00:44:56Read transcript
  • The working title was Redline, which sounds like a Nick Cage or Timothy Olyphant Netflix movie; redline refers to a car's maximum speed; the title The Fast and the Furious belonged to director Roger Corman, who traded it for some stock footage owned by Universal Studios, a trade jokingly ranked with the Luka Doncic trade.
  • One host thought the title was bad when it came out and loves it now; it is a running frustration that in all the ridiculous things the series has done nobody has ever said 'the Fast and the Furious', and the hosts script how Dom could have dropped it into the 'Salud Me Familia' toast after the heist before cutting to credits.
  • A tangent on saying 'Salud Me Familia' at Ringer holiday parties, and on how by Fast Five even people barely in parts two through four were part of Vin's extended family: a touch on the forehead or passing the barbecue sauce gets you in.
  • Dom's house shows the address 1327 but the real house is at 724 East Kensington Road in Echo Park, blocks from Dodger Stadium and now a tourist place; the hosts plan a field trip to shoot an Instagram video re-creating Jesse getting shot, one as Jesse and one as Vin crawling across the yard.
  • Key LA locations: the Dodger Stadium parking lot where Brian tests his car in the opening, Angelino Heights, Silver Lake, Echo Park, Little Saigon, and San Bernardino International Airport as the venue for Race Wars, which one host of sixteen years in LA had never heard of; the entire rig heist was filmed on the Domagoni Parkway (as transcribed) on the south side of the San Jacinto Valley.
  • Producer Neil Moritz made the movie happen and cameos as the bald driver of the black Ferrari who drag races Brian and Dom, as he told the hosts on an earlier podcast; the Malibu lunch at Neptune's Net on the Pacific Coast Highway is a little homage to Point Break, where Lori Petty's character worked there.
  • Asked whether Brian being a cop was a surprise on first viewing, since the film does not hint at it until the police pull him over, one host already knew from reading that it was Point Break and wishes that had not been the case.
  • An alternate ending was filmed in which Tanner drops Brian at the Toretto house, Mia is packing to move away, and Brian reveals he has resigned from the LAPD and has time; the hosts are glad it is not in the movie. Over 1,500 real drivers brought their cars to the Race Wars scene.
  • Vin Diesel and Michelle Rodriguez dated during filming, which delights the hosts, who argue it should have been a magazine-cover story the way Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston were and imagine how cool a kid of theirs would have been.
  • To put the real actors behind the wheel at 80 to 100 miles an hour, the production built a rig: a high-powered truck with a long chassis driven by a stunt driver while the actors steered a dummy car and bounced along; the hosts guess this decade just puts cameras in the car or uses CGI, and recall the chase in Ronan (as transcribed), where the lead actor, filmed beside the real driver, looks terrified and never cool for a single second.
  • Stepping on research earlier: neither Jordana Brewster nor Michelle Rodriguez had a driver's license before the film and both needed intensive driver training.
  • Forgotten research surfaced during Who Won: the director and Vin Diesel skipped Fast 2 to make XXX, wanting to own a franchise themselves; the hosts are unsure it was a good career move and place XXX in a weird era of music, video games and sports heroes, X games and Grand Theft Auto; Vin was pulled back for a cameo and did not really return until four.
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57:40

Picking Nits

Brian risking the break-in at Hector's garage while Vince watched him; no good cops anywhere in the franchise, Hobbs ...

Brian risking the break-in at Hector's garage while Vince watched him; no good cops anywhere in the franchise, Hobbs included; Brian telling Mia he was a cop; nobody can drive fast in the hills of Echo Park; Dom's crew should be rich from six million dollars in stolen goods; the drive from downtown to Neptune's Net makes no sense

In the discussion (6)
Approx. transcript time · 00:57:40Read transcript
  • Why did Brian risk sneaking into Hector's garage with Vince side-eyeing him at all times? He was checking whether Hector's crew were hijacking the 18-wheelers after ordering three of everything, but with roughly 36 hours left he should at least have noticed Dom and Vince trailing him; not a great cop.
  • The franchise has never had a good cop and basically hates cops: Hobbs, The Rock's character, takes the wrong safe in Fast Five, gets his team killed, is beaten up by a seven-inches-shorter Vin Diesel, gets his ass kicked in his own police office by Jason Statham, and calls in criminals to catch Decker or Owen Shaw instead of trying himself; Hobbs terrible cop, Brian also terrible cop.
  • Why did Brian tell Mia he was a cop? He needed her to tell him what was going on as they were leaving with only a couple of hours left; the hosts think he could have let the case go, and the FBI should have been trailing them anyway.
  • The finale has the cars flying up and down the hills of Echo Park, where nobody has ever gone more than 35 miles an hour; Craig, asked directly, has been there and never seen anyone speeding, since every hill is like a rollercoaster and a four-year-old might run out.
  • Shouldn't Dom and everybody have been rich after stealing about six million dollars of stuff? The answer offered is that it was DVD players and that Toretto's Market was in the hole, wasting hundreds of thousands on tuna, with Dom's sandwich and soup plans never working.
  • A late nitpick: from where they live in downtown LA there is no reason to drive all the way down PCH to Neptune's Net for lunch, a hike squeezed in only for the Point Break nod; the place is still open and a shrimp trip is promised.
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1:06:02

Probably Unanswerable Questions

What happened to Toretto's Market? Did Jesse deserve to die? Was Brian a bad or an atrocious undercover cop? Did the ...

What happened to Toretto's Market? Did Jesse deserve to die? Was Brian a bad or an atrocious undercover cop? Did the franchise have a deal with Corona? Who joins Letty on the Mount Rushmore of female action heroes? What happened to Leon? What is Mia studying?

In the discussion (11)
Approx. transcript time · 01:06:02Read transcript
  • What happened to Toretto's Market once the crew was stealing hundreds of millions from Brazil by Fast Five? Who makes the roast beef and buys the tuna; maybe Danny Trejo's uncle character works it, maybe Dom let the lease expire, or the government repossessed it along with the house and the cars.
  • Did Jesse deserve to die? One host answers no but holds that racing Johnny Tran at Race Wars and driving away gets you shot; the other points out Jesse did not know whom he was racing until the window came down and could not back out, and that Johnny overreacted, trying to kill four people over a car instead of waiting two hours, which is why he cannot be respected despite his own speech about respect.
  • Was Brian O'Connor a bad undercover cop or an atrocious undercover cop? Bad rather than atrocious, since he at least taught himself to drive at a really high level in the Dodger Stadium lot.
  • Did they have a deal with Corona, a question raised by Craig the producer and already in the notes? No; a Ringer story by Andrew found the beer was all gratis.
  • The Letty Mount Rushmore of female action heroes is thrown to the show's Facebook group: Letty is a lock, then Furiosa from Fury Road, Sigourney Weaver in the second Aliens movie (an action movie if Total Recall counts) and Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2, chiseled and doing pull-ups before working out for a movie was cool; an actress may appear only once, so Atomic Blonde is out.
  • Linda Hamilton's character, prepared for years, still panics and falls to the floor when the Terminator shows up at the hospital, likened to the Halloween remake's forty years of preparation ending in 'you're in my house'.
  • What happened to Leon, who was part of the family and just did not make it? Nobody could find out, so a theory is built live: every crew member had a specific job, like a basketball team with Dom as James Harden and Vince, the muscle, as PJ Tucker, while Letty makes every other character better; Leon's only job was the scanner, waiting on the sideline during the races.
  • In the final chase, when Vince is caught up, Leon's is the only car that hangs back listening to the scanner instead of helping, and he goes to get Letty only because Dom's tire is blown; so he was exposed as the most dispensable, dumped from the family, and maybe reassigned to Toretto's Market cutting roast beef and reordering Coronas while the others globetrot and steal billions.
  • Letty is called a true female action hero and an all-timer, probably on the Mount Rushmore, a question saved for later.
  • Teased during what aged worst: did Jesse deserve to die, met with an instant no and a promise to mull it over.
  • At the party after Brian saves Dom, Mia is in her room with a textbook open, clearly studying and maybe taking notes; is she in college, in high school, doing the bookkeeping for Toretto's Market, or studying restaurant management?
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