a wheel challenge
Shooting the bike messenger thriller 'Premium Rush' on Manhattan streets had its perils
In 20 years of spinning out blockbusters, writer-director David Koepp has unleashed an island of dinos for Steven Spielberg (“Jurassic Park”), pitted a trapped heroine against a gang of psychos for David Fincher (“Panic Room”) and flung Spider-Man across New York in his first movie adventure.
But getting a guy on a bike from Morningside Heights to Chinatown for “Premium Rush” was just as thrilling.
The action-drama, opening Friday, finds bike messenger Wilee (Joseph GordonLevitt) unwittingly holding an envelope needed by an on-the-edge cop (Michael Shannon). Riding a “fixie” — a superlightweight bike with the brakes removed — Wilee careens from Columbia University across Central Park to Canal St., through traffic and down steps and even over cars.
This was all done on real streets without computer effects. And it got Gordon-Levitt, 31, stitches in his arm at Roosevelt Hospital after he crashed into the window of a cab.
“Sending actors into live traffic at 30 miles an hour is just risky,” says Koepp, whose star’s accident came after a diplomat chose to ignore the production’s safety cone and opened a car door as GordonLevitt was speeding by. The snafu turned out to be the most worrisome incident when “Rush” filmed in New York two summers ago. “Everybody was really game, though, and trained” for the production, Koepp says. “And Joe was up and riding again the next day.”
The idea for “Rush” came out of movie lover Koepp’s desire to make what he calls “a map movie.”
“I wanted to go from the upper left of the screen to the lower right,” he says. “The character would have 90 minutes to get there, and I wanted to see how he does it. That became a story about a bike messenger, because I live in New York and those guys have real purpose and always almost hit you on the sidewalk.”
Koepp lists “The French Connection,” “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three” and “Dog Day Afternoon” as favorite New York-set action dramas. He says after his last turn behind the camera, the 2008 comedy “Ghost Town,” he and co-writer John Kamps set a different task for themselves.
“The idea of how logistically difficult this movie would be was a joke we made while writing,” says Koepp, who moved to the city in 1999 and says he was inspired to write “Panic Room” while remodeling a townhouse.
“It was so much more difficult than I even imagined,” hesays. “First of all, New York is a wild, untamed beast. And while we got great cooperation from the city and police, there’s only so much you can do when you have to close 10 blocks of Broadway in both locations. And car chases are one thing. But actors and stuntpeople on bikes are ridiculously exposed.”
Filming the movie’s two-wheeled pursuits involved a lot of planning. While many of the cars GordonLevitt’s character zooms past and around are stunt cars, their drivers were allowed to drive as fast or slow as they wanted — but couldn’t change lanes.
Koepp and cinematographer Mitchell Amundsen used a camera on a crane in the trunk of a Porsche to capture the fluidity of motion, along with small cameras on helmets and in pedals.
During the preplanning process, the director thought of scenes where cars would move and he would be able to get a clear shot. “But once you get out there, things become impossible to choreograph,” Koepp says. “We’d have meetings using matchbox cars, where everybody would see their car and where in the pattern they’d be. So stunt drivers would know if they’re behind the green Impala, they have to stay there and to the left of the white pickup. But then reality intrudes, and the green Impala has turned because otherwise they’d hit something.”
Stunt rider Austin Horse, who joined the production when bikes were being picked for the characters, worked with the actors on the tricks of urban biking. Another stunt rider, Danny MacAskill, also climbed aboard for a ride across cartops in an impound yard. It all worked to keep the stunt dangers feeling real.
“Our guiding philosophy was, ‘We’re not a CG movie, we’re a stunt movie,” says Koepp, who also wrote “Carlito’s Way” and “Mission: Impossible.”
“The idea was, everything was going to be done by a real person on the real bike it’s being done on,” he says. “Computergenerated effects don’t lend themselves to everything. Sometimes, the fear of something bad happening to somebody — which increases the suspense — can only truly be felt if you see someone actually doing it.”
There was, though, one necessary concession to reality.
“We hung out with some bike messengers, and several of them act in the film, because we wanted authenticity. But only about two-thirds of them really wear helmets,” Koepp says. “After doing screen tests, I said, ‘Everybody’s got to wear a helmet!’ And the day Joe went through the back window of the cab, I was extremely happy that was the decision we made.”
jneumaier@nydailynews.com