Yahoo Autos There's Only One Way to Enjoy a Fast & Furious Movie Marathon
They have announced a new Fast and Furious movie. Ninth in the series, arriving next year. The franchise launched in 2001 with The Fast and the Furious, a 106-minute crime opus starring Vin Diesel and Paul Walker and focused on California's import-tuner culture. Equal parts generational touchstone and B-movie goofery.
I had somehow managed to avoid seeing any of these movies. Then iTunes offered them as a package, $49.99 for all eight. Being a sucker for loud noises, I bought the package. Then I decided to watch all eight movies in one night, in order, with a bottle of mezcal, because it's important to be up on your cultural references. Also, I had a fifth of Del Maguey Vida sitting idle in the pantry. Smoky, fruity, hint of vanilla. Letting that stuff sit is a waste up there with using Sunoco 110 as weed killer.
My friend Matt Chapman found out about this plan and decided to help. Chapman is a software engineer, a motorcycle person, a lapsed track-day junkie. We met in Chicago 15 years ago, when I was working as a mechanic and spending too many weekends at Road America. We bonded over shared love of the BMW E30 M3 and the way air-cooled Porsches look when filthy. Matt hadn't seen the films either, but he tends to whirl through life elbows out, maximum attack. It was thus little surprise when he ambled into my kitchen in Seattle on a Saturday afternoon and plopped a grocery bag of marijuana edibles on the counter. Then he gave me a big hug and announced that he had been trying to empty the bag since breakfast.
It seemed fitting. When the first F&F hit theaters, I was a junior in college. Watching B movies while less than sober is half of what you do in college. Matt is 45 and single, one of those people who view body chemistry as a negotiable concept. And if you don't think Vin Diesel is best experienced in frontal-lobe Technicolor, well, you haven't experienced Vin Diesel.
By the time I cued up the movies, Matt was installed on the couch, funneling gummy pot candies into his mouth.
"Wait. Did you just eat four of those things?"
Generally speaking, two pot candies contain enough marijuana to make a grown man talk to trees.
"Look," he said. "Sooner or later, a Fast and Furious movie is going to come on, and I intend to be ready. We should also eat some chips. Chips sound great. I don't want to miss the beginning. Because I want to understand the whole plot."
"Plot" is a loose term here. The opening lines in the first movie are a bellwether. "We just packed up the real money load, and it's comin' your way," a dockworker says. Then three black Hondas attack a semi with grappling hooks, and that's all she wrote: A plane crashing into your living room wouldn't stop you from watching the whole thing.
The Vida looked at me in accusatory fashion, so I broke the seal and whispered sweet nothings into the bottle.
F&F films are not Casablanca. Or even quality cinema per se. They might live in the same county as quality cinema. They maybe knew quality cinema in high school, once made out with her sister. Walker appears in the first act, smiling like a puppy. There is a big drag-racing scene. Diesel enters the competition in a Mazda RX-7, glowering.
Matt raised an eyebrow. "That's the first rear-drive car I've seen. They're drag-racing these front-drive things?"
I boggled. "Where have you been for the last 25 years? The Nineties import world was almost entirely front-drivers. Ever hear of Hot Import Nights?"
He shrugged, as if discovering an entire culture relevant to your interests was just what happened on Saturday nights. Then he pulled some kind of single-serving chocolate pot brownie out of his pocket and swallowed it without chewing. On-screen, Diesel aimed his feelings at a small group of people, in the same way that the 16-inch guns on the USS Iowa once aimed their feelings at coastal artillery.
But then, explosions are key to these films. Uncontrolled demolition of dialogue, emotion, machinery.
“Amateurs don't use nitrous oxide,” a shop owner tells Walker. “You'll blow yourself to pieces!” Another character, observing Walker: “He's got enough NOS in there to blow himself up!” (Shortly after, in a masterful release of tension, the car in question blows up.)
The whole thing reminds you of those Fifties movies about the ills of rock and roll, where the kids are all hopped up on soda pop and everyone is having consequential sex while angry at The Rules. Only with more Toyota Supra. Realism is irrelevant. No one drives without looking extremely constipated. People fire guns from motorcycles. There is a tragic death. Characters have names—Johnny Tran, Dominic Toretto—like Thirties movie mobsters.
The Vida bottle pouted on the coffee table, so I took a moment to apply its contents directly to my face.
Walker, driving through L.A. at more than 100 mph, stared at a laptop on his passenger seat, concerned. “DANGER TO MANIFOLD!” Matt yelled, reading the laptop screen. His arms shot into the air like a football referee's. The camera showed random nuts and washers falling onto the floor of Walker's car, presumably because it was overstressed or furious or whatever.
"This is exactly like an old Saab commercial," Matt said, pointing at the television.
We finished the first film and moved on to the second. Matt paced, concerned.
"I love this. Legitimately. But how are there eight of these movies? How do they not run out of things to say?"
"There were . . . things to say?"
"I mean, on the other hand," he said, building up steam, "if we're on this subject, we should definitely talk about porn. Because at first you're like, 'Oh, it's just a movie with naked people.' And then you watch another one, and it's also a movie with naked people. But you're forgetting the key ingredient here, which is that you went to the trouble to find more."
Kids: Stay off drugs.
Watching these movies, I had several deep thoughts about how important it can be to see your particular brand of culture represented on film. I'd share those thoughts here, but I can't remember them. I can't remember because I didn't write them down, because writing sounded boring and also something something half-empty Vida bottle.
What did not sound boring: cracking my laptop to log F&F dialogue.
"There is something about engines that calms me down."
"I never narc'd on nobody!"
"You're a smart fence, Ted—maybe too smart."
So much camp, you have to watch it in a tent.
"Ask any racer," Diesel's character famously says. "It don't matter if you win by an inch or a mile. Winning's winning."
"Oh yes, I agree," Matt said. "But this doesn't make driving look fun at all! Say something witty, shift gears, crash!"
I allowed as how that image is pretty much the international stereotype for automotive journalism. Matt fell back into the couch, giggling. Later, I passed out in the middle of the fourth sequel, Fast Five. We didn't make it to eight. I woke after midnight, computer in my lap, browser open to an unfinished delivery order for the local pizza place. (Four large pies, three two-liters of Cherry Coke, two paper plates.) Matt was asleep sitting up, mouth open, one hand in a bag of chips.
As I write this, F&F number nine is in the works. It feels like that first scene in Jaws, where you know the shark is coming, just not when. Will the ninth one be terrible? Great? More or less furious than installments previous and sundry? The mind melts at the possibilities. But even if I knew, I wouldn't tell. I never narc'd on nobody.
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