Paul Walker is Hollywood’s latest teen idol, but the star of the adrenalin-charged Fast and the Furious, doesn’t mind a bit, as he happily admits to Paul FISCHER.

When movie hunk Paul Walker first appears on screen in the action thriller The Fast and the Furious, the young audience goes wild. The young actor, previously seen in The Skulls, doesn’t mind one bit, this whole teen idol thing, he admits while chatting at Universal Studios. “It might be bizarre but I definitely like it. There’s no getting around it and it definitely helps me out, if you know what I mean”, he says with a slight wink. No, he wouldn’t elaborate. “I think you get the idea.”

Perhaps his latest film, in which pumping male bodies become intertwined in the raucous world of illegal drag racing in The Fast and The Furious, may further ‘help him out’. In this action-packed youth drama Walker plays Brian O’Conner, a young undercover Los Angeles detective. who must infiltrate a street gang in order to discover who is hijacking freight trucks. The Los Angeles police and FBI are convinced only skilled street racers could carry off the daring, high-speed heists with such precision. But O’Connor becomes more entrenched in this world than he ever though possible.

The 28-year old Walker, whose films include Varsity Blues, Pleasantville, She’s All That, Brokedown Palace and The Skulls, was a natural for the role.  He admits he’s probably “the illegal U-turn king of L.A. I just got my licence back after having it suspended for getting too many speeding and illegal turn tickets. I was still driving the whole time, but with my fingers crossed.”

This frenetic world of illegal dragsters was a far cry from his childhood being educated “in a proper Catholic High School” but the LA native soon turned to modelling.

 “My mother was a model and not long after I was born, my mum’s old agent asked her to come in and do a little modelling. When my mom told her she had a baby, she told her to bring me along.” Walker ended up getting more work than his mother.

While still in high school, Walker fell in love - with Surfing.

 “Surfing soothes me,” he says. “It’s always been a kind of Zen experience for me. The ocean is so magnificent, peaceful and awesome. The rest of the world disappears for me when I’m on a wave, and I love to see the sea animals and stuff. It’s an incredible world down there.” In fact, Walker even contemplated studying marine biology at one point and started it at college. “I got into school and realised there were a whole bunch of other things that I liked. I had friends graduating in Chemistry and Science who were just miserable and I thought: There was no way I was going to be that guy.” So he quit, for a very unacademic LA life of “smoking bowels [dope] and living out of a garage for a while.” He recalls going “nowhere fast” but having fun “and panhandling and Magic Mountain; I could make a good 500 bucks in 6 hours, it was a great way to NOT make a living.” The good times ended, of sorts, when his former agent called to ask him to audition for a role in Touched By An Angel. It was the part of a surfer, “which is why the casting guy knew I was perfect for the role.” He got the part and a week later was cast in Pleasantville. Young Paul hasn’t looked back since. “I figured that acting was a great way to make money so I could continue surfing and avoid real responsibility.”

 The Skulls producer Neal Moritz and director Rob Cohen encouraged him to be more serious about his career. They told him he reminded them of a young Steve McQueen, and insisted they wanted to work with him again. Moritz asked the young actor what he would like to do next.

“I told Neal I really wanted to play an undercover cop,” Walker says. “I had no idea that Rob had been researching the illegal racing scene in L.A. About a month later, Neal and Rob came to me with their idea to set a film in this subculture of street racing. They told me I could play a cop, drive fast cars, make out with a beautiful leading lady and they’d actually pay me. I mean, hey man, a young guy’s fantasy come true.” The car racing aspect of the film ended up striking a deeper chord than playing cop.

“My grandfather raced factory cars for Ford in the 1960s, so the speed thing is in my blood, and  my dad still races cars. And now I race cars. I imported a Nissan from Japan.”

No wonder “the whole idea behind The Fast And The Furious really spoke to me,” Walker recalls..

Walker prepared for Fast and the Furious, firstly by attending an actual illegal drag meet in the outskirts of LA. “It was everything Rob promised and much more,” Walker recalls. “The police raided the meet and everyone scattered. My buddy drove off without me and I found myself engaged in a long foot race with a couple of cops who were in their car. I ended up alone on the freeway.” It was such a powerful real-life moment, that director Cohen even worked it into the movie.

With this movie destined to get many hearts pumping, Walker is ready to come to terms within his continued adulation, but of course wants to be taken more seriously.

“I know that I got a lot of my early roles because of the way I look, but I hope I’m putting all that past me.”

But acting has its rewards. In The Fast And The Furious Walker not only got to attend a racing school in Las Vegas but kiss his gorgeous co-star Jordana Brewster, who plays his love interest.

Walker says he didn’t dare  get too physical, even in their more passionate scenes, because “Jordana was still dating Mark Wahlberg when we were filming, and there were rumours he intended to show up unannounced for the love scenes. Mark’s not a guy I want to tangle with,” he adds laughingly.

In real life, Walker says he’s still single, continues to surf, race cars and looking for “the ideal movie role”, adding that now he has fulfilled a fantasy of playing cop and dragster on screen, he yearns to “be in a period western. I want to wear a cowboy hat and ride horses.” Apparently he can add horseracing to his list of credits.

About his Movies

The Fast And The Furious (2001)

Opens Nationally In The Us This Friday June 22, 2001

Distributor: Universal Pictures

Cast: Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Jordana Brewster, Hill Harper, Michelle Rodriguez, BT, Ted Levine, Chad Lindberg, Vyto Ruginis, Ja Rule, Matt Schulze, Johnny Strong, Rick Yune

Director: Rob Cohen

Composer: BT

Screenwriters: Gary Scott Thompson, Erik Bergquist (debut), John Pogue , David Ayer, Kario Salem

Based upon: This movie is loosely based upon an article in Vibe magazine about gangs that adapt Japanese sports cars into muscle cars for racing. There have been a few other films with the same title, including a 1954 Roger Corman "car chase" movie.

THE CARS...

Cohen's casting needs extended beyond finding principal actors for The Fast and the Furious. He also had to choose cars that would deliver the right look, attitude and performance. "Those vehicles are really the co-stars of this movie," he explained. "This 'rice rocket' technology is a new thing. American muscle cars are based on the V-8 carburetor-based engine, but the import street racers use computer-controlled fuel injection.

"These are 21st century cars," Cohen continued, "and a five billion dollar industry has developed around the import add-on business, with the spoilers, bumpers, tires, rims, intercoolers, megaflows and other high performance parts that can be added. Out of this has come a new subculture which just keeps growing. Because now you can take your mom's Honda Civic, add $10,000 worth of parts to it, and wind up with a high performance racing car."

For up-to-the-minute authenticity, Cohen, Claybourne and Moritz tapped into the heart of the import car community. "When I did Dragon, I tied in with the martial arts community so that we could make a movie that was true to the narrowest target audience," Cohen revealed. "For The Fast and the Furious, we gave the script to Craig Lieberman, who heads NIRA (National Import Racing Association), and RJ De Vera, a former street racer and living legend, who is now an import car website entrepreneur and still involved in sanctioned racing. They corrected details which they felt were off-base, although we do take some dramatic liberties." Lieberman and De Vera participated in the film throughout production, as advisers and on-screen talent.

Assisting the filmmakers every step of the highway was David Marder, one of the industry's most respected transportation coordinators, who had already devoted his talents to such huge cinematic/automotive endeavors as Days of Thunder. "Rob had a very definitive picture in his mind of what this film should be," Marder recalled. "The cars he wanted to film were all show cars rather than street cars - vehicles you see at the car shows and on magazine covers. With massive help from Craig Lieberman, we organized automobile show-and-tells for Rob at Universal Studios with all different types of cars.

"We couldn't afford to do what we needed to do in the movie with cars worth $100,000, so once we chose a vehicle we then replicated it, sometimes in multiple versions. For example, we built seven different versions of our Mitsubishi Eclipse, which is the first car driven in the movie by Brian, the character Paul Walker plays."

The cars driven by the Toretto crew are some of the most spectacular that Marder could find, as was Brian's second car, a legendary Supra actually owned by Craig Lieberman. It's outfitted with two turbochargers, NOS (nitrous oxide) injection and over 600 horsepower. The Toretto cars include Dominic's sleek red RX7; Letty's (Michelle Rodriguez) purple 240SX; Jesse's (Chad Lindberg) white Jetta, a privatelyowned show car that's been featured on three different magazine covers; Vince's (Matt Schulze) blue Nissan Maxima; and Leon's (Johnny Strong) yellow Skyline, a Japanese car not usually imported to the United States (there are fewer than 30 in the entire country), outfitted with right-hand drive, twin overhead cam, twin turbochargers and 450-500 horsepower. Johnny Tran (Rick Yune) drives a black Honda S2000, a factory rod in the mid-200 horsepower range, although this one revs through 9000 RPM.

The graphics that adorn the Toretto cars were designed by Troy Lee, another hot name in the import car field, but conceptualized and overseen by production designer Waldemar Kalinowski.

In addition to the hero cars, Dave Marder secured a number of "crotch rockets," thunderously fast Yamaha, Honda and Suzuki motorcycles driven by Johnny Tran's crew. Marder headed a team of 82 professionals who re-designed, built and maintained the automobiles. Throughout the movie, some 150 import cars and their real-life owners are repeatedly utilized for several sequences. How did Marder find them?

"This is the 21st century, and where my generation used radio and television, this generation uses the internet," he said. "It's a completely visual group. Every one of these kids have monitors hooked up in their cars, where they play video games and use the internet. We just put out the word, and they appeared!"

TUNING UP...

Before filming could begin, the key actors had to learn what it takes to commandeer the souped-up speedsters featured in the movie. "We researched some schools and decided Las Vegas was the best place to go," said Claybourne. "The cast, producers, director, cinematographer and anybody who was going to be driving cars either on camera or off had to become familiar with the equipment. It was very educational, and great fun, too. Our two actresses from the East Coast, Jordana and Michelle, had very little previous driving experience. But after they mastered sliding, turning sideways and other stunts, they were both much more confident in their daily abilities."

Driving the open-wheel Formula One Indy cars was a kick for the fanatics. "I learned just how little I actually knew about driving," said Walker.

"My only reservation was that we did it in Vegas," said Diesel, "because it's very hard to rationalize waking up at seven in the morning to work when you've been out till six in the morning!"

The only other complaint about driving school was voiced by Rodriguez: "They wouldn't let us drive faster than 80 miles per hour!"

OUT OF THE STARTING LINE...

The Fast and the Furious began filming on a brutally hot day in late July in a parking lot at Dodger Stadium. True to its subject matter, it zoomed off the starting line with a series of shots of Brian, as played (and driven) by Paul Walker, practicing speedy moves and grooves with his character's green Eclipse. The film then moved to other evocative Los Angeles locations, mostly in downtown-adjacent neighborhoods such as Angelino Heights, Silverlake and Echo Park.

Cohen and company traveled to the west side to film the story's anti-hijacking bullpen operation at the "Circle House," an extraordinary example of late 1950s "googie" architecture, which was built, it was rumored, by singer Eddie Fisher as a love nest for himself and Elizabeth Taylor. Several scenes were filmed in the Little Saigon enclave, in the suburban city of Westminster. Races were staged on the Pacific Coast Highway near Trancas and on the long and wide Prairie Avenue in El Segundo, near the workshop in which the vehicles were constructed and serviced by the production's team of designers and mechanics.

The huge "Race Wars" sequence attracted some 1500 import car owners and enthusiasts to San Bernardino International Airport. "A lot of kids wanted their cars to be seen in the movie," said Claybourne. "We recruited them on the internet and other places and they came out in droves."

The assembled masses broiled under the ferocious San Bernardino sun, with daily temperatures exceeding 100 degrees and hitting 112 one afternoon. For this pivotal sequence, production designer Waldemar Kalinowski constructed an entire tent city as well as the racing area.

The thrilling truck-jacking sequences that bookend the film were staged on the Domenigoni Highway near Hemet, a desert community halfway between L.A. and San Diego. For these scenes, and through out the entire movie, stunt coordinator/second unit director Mic Rodgers used a highly innovative vehicle - appropriately dubbed the "Mic Rig" - which he designed and The Fast and the Furious special effects department built. Until the advent of the "Mic Rig", driving scenes have been filmed by towing vehicles with camera mounts which, unfortunately, have limited capabilities. The "Mic Rig", however, can more than keep up with fast cars both in speed and maneuverability.

"The 'Mic Rig' was a big leap for any filmmaker to take," said Rodgers, one of the industry's most experienced stunt coordinators and second unit directors. "Previously, rigs were too slow, too high up and you couldn't really take them anywhere. The 'Mic Rig' is essentially an elongated van with a flatbed on which we mount the picture car. Because that flatbed is much lower than previous driving rigs, the car is just slightly higher than it would be if its wheels were actually touching the ground. The 'Mic Rig' can pretty much do anything that a car can do."

In addition to the "Mic Rig," Cohen and cinematographer Ericson Core utilized a myriad of other equipment to shoot the racing, truck-jacking and chase sequences, including more conventional insert cars and motorcycles with special camera mounts. It was not unusual to see Core and his camera operators, outfitted in crash helmets, zooming by just as fast as the street racers they were filming.

Available on DVD and VHS

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