Interview [Written]: Joss Whedon on his uncredited work on “Speed”

The Huffington Post recently ran an interview with Joss Whedon on the 20th anniversary of the release of the movie Speed. Whedon worked on that script, but received no credit. Here for the first time, he discusses his experiences with that project:

Thanks for taking the time to talk to me about “Speed.”
In my whole career, I’ve never had to talk about it. I’ve never signed a copy of it, I’ve never sort of been a part of it. And I was proud of it, I worked hard on it, I had a really great time and I worked with really cool people. I thought it was good stuff. Graham has been very generous, but I did not get a credit on it. The studio gave me one, but then the Writers Guild of America took it away, and I was pretty devastated. I have the only poster with my credit on it.

Why did they pull your credit?
It has to do with WGA bylaws. You can come in and rewrite all of the dialogue, and still not get credit. They didn’t think I made big enough changes to the plot. I actually did a lot of overhaul, but much of it was to a later draft, so it went back to what Graham [Yost] originally had.

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Did you make a lot of changes to the characters? I know the biggest overhaul was with Alan Ruck [the tourist].
Alan Ruck’s character was written as an angry lawyer. He was a bad dude. He was like, “You are a bad cop! I want blah blah blah!” He was that guy. Nobody is doing that in a disaster. They’re frightened, and they’re pulling together. And what was a lawyer doing on a bus? So, I wanted him to be a nicer guy. In an earlier draft, there was sort of this format where everybody told their backstory, and I didn’t think we needed all of that necessarily. But the tourist, he’s a very grounding figure, and Alan is so sympathetic. For me, the whole essence of what I felt was useful in the movie was him saying, “We’re at the airport, I’ve already seen the airport.” When the absurdity has just gone to the point where I can turn to the mundane.

Overall, that approach to absurdity is huge part of what keeps “Speed” so grounded.
I feel the important thing is to let the characters know that they’re in an insane movie. The audience knows it, and unless it’s a fantasy, you need the audience to feel like that’s what they’d be doing on that bus. In the drafts I read, everybody explains their backstory. You know, I say “I,” but [producers] Walter Parkes and Laurie MacDonald were also brought on right before shooting to shepherd the thing. So, from the start I was working with them, and we had wonderful simpatico. They also felt we should bleed out the things that didn’t feel real, because you are always in danger with this movie.

For the rest of the interview, go here.

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