20th Anniversary “Speed” Tour: Get Off The Bus

Pop quiz, hotshot:

You’ve just learned that Speed was released 20 years ago today. Other than practice your favorite Keanu or Hopper lines (“I’m taller” vs “I’m eccentric”) and catch the big blue bus, what do you do? WHAT DO YOU DO?!

Here at CraveOnline, we decided to track the metro routes taken by Annie (Sandra Bullock) and Jack (Keanu Reeves) in the film and choose some spots to see along the way. This sounded easy at first, but then, as the yokel tourist would say, “LA is one large place.” So we came up with some simple rules. 

First, we’d only follow horizontal movements — the direction of the bus that’s been rigged to explode if it drops less than 50 miles per hour and the subway train that’s moving with a rigged to explode woman — so, sorry if you were most interested in the elevator. (Okay, completists, it’s the Gas Company Tower. And the officers are rewarded at City Hall and Jeff Daniels gets blotto at The Derby. And LAX stars as itself.)

Second, while some locations were cheated in Long Beach (look out for those grassy flower medians in South LA! They were apparently everywhere in 1994!), we tried to stay as true to the route as possible.

What’d we find? Speed is steeped in LA metro history. The interstate they jump? That removed The Beach Boys’ home. That physical gap in the road wasn’t real, but the time gap in between introducing that interstate connection and completion was 30 years.

The subway rail that wasn’t completed then? Now LA has four more complete rail lines and more to come. (The “subway to the sea?!” Yes, a portion of the LA metro system depicted in Her will someday be a reality.) 

Currently LAX is under a $4 billion renovation. In 2000, 15 glass pylons were constructed in between all the terminals. They slowly change colors. It seems that all modes of transport have gotten more efficient over the last two decades. Those three hours it took Stephens (Alan Ruck) to leave LAX? Well, now it’s under two! And there are prettier poles, too! 

Madman Howard Payne (Dennis Hopper) might have been prophetically correct when he proclaimed that “Interactive TV is the wave of the future!” But Annie, who loves her car, is still correct that to interact with LA is to be mobile. It is indeed a big place. But get off your butt and get ready to see Inglewood like you’ve never seen it before! Because you’ve never seen it before.

Slideshow: 10 Stops to Celebrate the 20th Anniversary of Speed


Brian Formo is a featured contributor on the CraveOnline Film Channel. You can follow him on Twitter at @BrianEmilFormo.

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