Speed (movie)

So, before the bomb can be addressed, the bus must desperately maneuver throughout the city, unable to slow down for anything with an inexperienced driver until it could be directed to an clear area. Streisand and co-composer Paul Williams won a Best Song Oscar for the film's main theme, "Evergreen.". The difference with this film is that the bus initially runs the immediate risk of collisions in a congested traffic area that would have fatally stopped and/or slowed it down and triggered the bomb. The film was plagued with problems during production but, despite mixed reviews, was a huge box office success and spawned a best-selling soundtrack album. In 1965 the first episode of Thunderbirds, "Trapped in the Sky," had a supersonic airliner threatened with a bomb in its landing gear and the occupants are threatened by radiation poisoning by the craft's power source overwhelming its ablative shielding in hours; in Rod Serling's 1966 TV-movie The Doomsday Flight, Edmond O'Brien's bomb would detonate if the airliner descended below 5,000 feet (1500 m); and in the 1975 Japanese movie Crisis Express109 (Shinkansen Daibakuha) (shown in English as The Bullet Train), starring Sonny Chiba, a Shinkansen train will be destroyed if its speed drops below 80 km/h. The 1976 version, helmed by Frank Pierson and starring Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson, updated the story by bringing it into the rock era. The basic premise of extortion using a bomb that will trigger automatically if a vehicle tries to stop unless a ransom is paid was not original to this movie. In the early 1980s, all but 5 minutes of the cut footage was found and re-instated, but some of the footage had to be reconstructed using production stills.

An additional parody can be seen in the Leslie Nielsen movie Spy Hard, featuring bus driver Ray Charles. Premiering at 181 minutes, the studio cut the film by 30 minutes despite the objections of director Cukor and producer Sid Luft (then-husband of the female lead). A further ironic use of the "Speed" theme came with "Speed for Thespians," an Academy Award-nominated short film, where a group of actors attempt to play out Chekhov's "The Bear" on a New York City bus. This version of the film was re-edited several times. The Speed movies were parodied by the Father Ted episode "Speed 3", in which Father Dougal McGuire is trapped on a milk float with a bomb that will detonate if the float goes slower than 4 mi/h (6.4 km/h). Garland was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Actress for her tour-de-force performance, but lost to Grace Kelly (The Country Girl). The sequel was a critical and commercial flop. Musical highlights included "The Man That Got Away" and the "Born in a Trunk" sequence.

Willem Dafoe played the villain. The 1954 release, directed by Cukor and starring Judy Garland and James Mason, is the best known, and in 2000 the United States Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry. Only Sandra Bullock returned to reprise her role. It won an Oscar for Best Color Photography. There is a sequel, Speed 2: Cruise Control, which is set on a cruise ship. In 1937, William Wellman directed a remake, the first to be titled A Star is Born, with Janet Gaynor and Frederic March. That scene, as well as much of the movie, were all filmed on California's Interstate 105. Its earliest incarnation, released in 1932, was based on a story by Adela Rogers St. John and entitled What Price Hollywood? Directed by George Cukor, it starred Constance Bennett as a waitress propelled to fame by an alcoholic director portrayed by Lowell Shermann, and anticipated Cukor's later, more acclaimed 1954 version.

One of the movie's most famous scenes involved the bus having to jump over a gap in an elevated freeway-to-freeway ramp which was still under construction. His career wanes as her popularity increases, with their relationship ending in tragedy. The cop and a young woman (Bullock) struggle to keep the bus moving at an acceptable speed despite the congested traffic of the city, while local police provide escort, clear traffic, plan the best route for the bus, and search for the bomber. All are variations on the same plot: talented girl meets and falls in love with successful actor. The bomb has multiple triggers, including one that will detonate if the bus goes slower than 50 mi/h (80 km/h). A Star Is Born is the title of several successful movies. Written by Graham Yost, the story is about an Los Angeles police officer (Reeves) who has to stop a insane bomber/extortionist (Hopper) who has rigged a bomb on a public transit bus (a City of Santa Monica Big Blue Bus).

Speed is a 1994 film directed by Jan de Bont, starring Keanu Reeves, Sandra Bullock (her breakout role), and Dennis Hopper.