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LOS ANGELES --
The stench of scorched tire hangs over Universal Studios' back lot, refusing to
dissipate in the slow valley breeze. But for the eager media types who've
gathered for the launch of Universal's latest installment in its blockbuster
street-racing franchise, "The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift," watering eyes
and sulfur-scented clothing seem a small price to pay for the
once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to sit in the passenger seat of a car being put
through its paces by a top competitor on the international drifting circuit.
A throng of
print, broadcast and online journalists have signed up to experience five
minutes of insane g-forces, head-snapping turns and stroke-inducing power
slides that stop inches from the back lot's concrete boundaries. As reporters
clamber out of cars with wobbly knees and deliriously silly grins on their
faces, it becomes increasingly obvious that the odor of burning rubber might
just as well be the sweet smell of success.
The first
"Fast and the Furious" was positioned as a mid-market summer
actioner, featuring Vin Diesel as a street-drag champ suspected of jacking
transport trucks and Paul Walker as the undercover cop assigned to bring him
down. After it opened with a surprise first-weekend gross of $40 million --
going on to make over $200 million worldwide -- a big-ticket sequel was
green-lighted, dubbed "2 Fast 2 Furious." Despite the absence of
Diesel's raspy anti-charm, it opened to even higher box office totals,
ultimately taking in nearly $240 million on a global basis. Naturally, a third
installment wasn't just predictable -- it was inevitable.
What was
unexpected was Universal's decision to have the third movie sever all principal
ties to its predecessors, bringing back neither Diesel nor Walker, the
franchise's nominal stars. Instead, in a decision that went all the way up to
then studio chief Stacey Snider, the third film would bring in a whole new cast
and move the action out of the United States entirely, to the
"exotic" world of underground car racing in Japan. Also out of the
picture were original director Rob Cohen and sequel helmsman John Singleton.
Instead, Universal announced, the series' third heat would be lensed by Justin
Lin, the auteur behind the brilliantly caustic indie hit "Better Luck Tomorrow."
Though Lin's
star was rising steadily, "Tokyo Drift" would be just his third solo
directing experience -- and his biggest budget by far. The credit-card-financed
"BLT" came in under $250,000; "Annapolis," Lin's
sophomore film for Disney's Touchstone Pictures, cost $35 million. Rumor has it
that "Drift" had a top line of well over $100 million -- making it
seem like a dicey decision to put it in the hands of a young director without a
summer popcorn track record.
"The
expectations around the movie are big," admits Lin. "The budget is
big. But the funny thing about studios, they're always going to make money --
it's just a matter of how much money they're going to make. Real bombs are
really rare. This movie is going to be fine; they're not worried about it at
all."
And why should
they be? As far as the studio was concerned, the reason fans had turned out in
droves for the first two installments was simple: Take hot car. Apply
acceleration. Wreak havoc. Rinse and repeat. The new setting would just involve
taking the tried-and-true formula and updating it with, like, geishas and
stuff. Right?
Well, no. Lin
had no interest in stamping out a cliched, teriyaki-style remake of films one
and two -- or, for that matter, a nitro-burning turbocharged "Lost in Translation."
"After I
read the original script, they called me up and asked, 'What do you
think?'" says Lin.
"And I
said, 'I think it's offensive and dated, and I don't have any intention of
doing it.' But Stacey [Snider], the head of the studio, said, 'Just tell us
what you'd do differently.' So I said, 'To begin with, I'd get rid of all the
gongs and temples and Buddhas and the visual gags about how the white guy is a
foot taller than all the Asians.' And she said, 'OK, we'll make the kind of
movie you want.' I was like, 'Uh, are you sure?'
"Ultimately,
it ended up being a constant challenge -- I kept on getting into discussions
that were like, 'You signed me to do a certain type of movie, if you don't want
to do that movie, get rid of me.' But all you can ever ask is that the
producers and the studio be fair and reasonable. And to their credit, they were
very fair and reasonable."
Lin's first
request was that the role of the protagonist, an American juvie who's sent to
live with his estranged dad in the Land of the Rising Tachometer, be rewritten
to be played by an Asian American.
"They
looked at me like I was stupid and said, 'There's nobody bankable,'" he
remembers. "I said, 'OK, well, if you think so, I want you to open the
search up globally, Asia, Europe, Australia, whatever, and if the best actor
for the role turns out to be Asian, you gotta give it to him.' And it was
pretty incredible -- they went ahead and did it."
After seeing
dozens of candidates from across the nation and around the world, Lin finally
agreed with the producers that the best choice was Lucas Black,
who'd starred opposite Billy Bob Thornton in "Sling Blade" and then
again in the varsity football film "Friday Night Lights."
"Lucas is
great," says Lin. "As soon as I saw him, I was like, 'This is it.'
But once we had him, I told the studio that I wanted to cast Sung Kang [who
starred in "Better Luck Tomorrow" and can now be seen in Michael
Kang's "The Motel"]
as the guy who teaches Sean, Lucas' character, how to drift. And you know what?
When we were screening this movie, Sung tested through the roof. It was
unanimous: Every focus group we threw out there, he was their favorite
character. Now they're looking for vehicles for him to be in. That's what it's
all about, man: opportunity. It's not a revolution or anything -- it's winning
one gunfight, not the war. But it's important. Little by little it adds
up."
Car Fu
Gunfights are
top of mind for Lin when he thinks of "Tokyo Drift." He readily cites
the iconic American genre of the Western -- all those pulp classics where a man
with no name and no past rolls into town to take on the black hats one by one
-- as a primary inspiration for his vision.
But audience
members may quickly recognize that the real genre referenced by the film is the
equally iconic but not quite as American canon of kung fu cinema. After
all, the film is about a cocky young gun who tries to defeat a seasoned master,
fails in humiliating fashion and then goes into training under the eye of an
eccentric mentor to learn the special technique necessary to take on his
nemesis -- all leading up to a final duel, with the now-wiser hero given extra
motivation by his desire to avenge a devastating murder. Sure, it's got wheels
on, but otherwise "Tokyo Drift" comes out of the same gene pool as
"Drunken Master," "The One-Armed Swordsman" and
"Shaolin Temple."
And as in those
classic martial arts flicks, the key to the hero's success is rethinking
assumptions. Raw force alone never wins; finesse, subtlety, winning the game of
yin versus yang -- that's the ticket to victory. If your opponent is strong, be
fast. If your opponent is fast, be acrobatic. If your opponent is acrobatic, be
smart.
That's what
makes "Tokyo Drift" distinct from its predecessors. The first two
movies were about sheer acceleration -- about that moment when the pedal hits
the floor, that funny spot above your groin goes "Whee!" and your
competition instantly fades into vague dots on the horizon behind you.
But while the
joys of torque are still definitely a factor in this latest chapter, they're
far from the heart of the game. "In the original script for this film,
Sean, the movie's hero, wins the big race by kicking in a hidden nitrous tank
and blowing past the bad guy," says Lin. "Anyone who knows anything
about drifting would have just laughed his ass off at that. It just makes no
sense: You can't win that way. Drifting is not about power."
If drag racing
is the equivalent of speed skating, drifting is like a combination of
short-track and figure skating. It's about exceeding the limits of what a
machine can physically accomplish -- swerving, skidding, sliding, spinning --
and somehow managing to kick the beast back in line, moments before disaster.
As Twinkie, played by junior rapper Bow Wow, says in the movie's trailer:
"The cars are light. The tires are slick. When you drift, if you're not
out of control, you're not in control."
Lin could say
the same thing about his experience making the movie.
"It's
crazy," he says. "The studios basically hire you to battle them the
whole way, to fight to make the best movie possible. You don't get to call all
the shots -- it's not like a little indie film where you're doing everything
yourself. But on the other hand, it puts you in the room with the people who
own and run everything. Three years ago, when we were making 'Better Luck
Tomorrow,' Sung and Jason [Tobin] and I were sleeping on my parents' floor.
Making 'Tokyo Drift,' it was the three of us again, and we're hanging out in
Tokyo on a per diem. I remember waking up and looking in the mirror and saying
to myself, 'You know what, I'm going to be spending more money today, in one
day, than the whole budget of "BLT."' We were shutting down six
blocks at a time, rebuilding entire Japanese neighborhoods from scratch, and
totaling two or three cars a day."
Forward and
Reverse
The film hits
theaters just this week, but early reviews from leak sites like Ain't It
Cool News have called it "the sleeper of the summer," and
referred to the race sequences -- "the only scenes that matter" -- as
"friggin' Frankenheimer-worthy. ... People were so excited that they were
drifting in the parking lot afterwards."
The advance
buzz has already led to Lin getting a cascade of new offers from execs hoping
to get him in the driver's seat for projects that span the usual spectrum:
urban youth flicks, action blockbusters, genre remakes and the like. But Lin is
already working on his next film, a self-financed indie movie called
"Finishing the Game," which reunites the cast of "Better Luck
Tomorrow" for a period comedy set in the '70s.
"I'm
getting all the guys together and going back to my roots," says Lin.
"It's about denial, and about being Asian American, and it'll be done in
six months. I'm excited, because this is the first time in my life that I don't
have to worry about paying my rent next month. I want to see what it's like to
be creative in that world, on my own terms. I mean, hell, we'll probably end up
sleeping on my parents' floor again, but at least it won't be because we don't
have a choice."
It's not that
Lin doesn't appreciate the chance he's had to do a summer blockbuster -- it's
just that, for his mental health, he feels the need to balance the studio
experience with projects he's doing for love.
"I know I
can do a big summer popcorn movie now," he says. "I know I can make a
middle-of-the-road studio drama, too. But if that's all I did, I wouldn't be
happy. I think I've earned the right to go and make an Asian American film now
-- to spend some time with the family, you know?
"Making
indie movies is like falling in love: You can take it out there to the edge, go
for it with all your passion. Making studio movies is kind of like dating a
model. It's pretty hot, but, you know, it is what it is. I just never want to
be in a situation where I'm clocking in and clocking out."
It's all a part
of what Lin calls his "journey." You have to be out of control to be
in control, and you have to be in control to be allowed to get out of control.
Sometimes you speed, sometimes you skid. Sometimes you pull over and just let
it all sink in. One thing's for sure, though -- it's always better to be in the
driver's seat.
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