Paul Walker, and his character Brian O’Connor, was one of the best things in the Fast and Furious movies. Brian was arguably the Fast and Furious character who held the whole ridiculous action movie franchise together through his friendship with the one and only Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel).
It turns out, though, that Walker was more than just the narrative special sauce. He was also pretty handy when it came to planning stunts. During an interview with IGN from way back in 2001, Walker was asked if he did any of the stunt driving, and he explained how this led to him concocting one of the film’s stunts.
“I got to do quite a bit of [stunt driving] actually, you know, all within reason,” he said. “I got to pull a couple of pretty gnarly E-brake pulls. Like you know where I’m shooting Johnny Tran when he’s driving away? That was my idea. They wanted just like a sweeping chase as I was driving, and baam! Me just shooting wildly. I told [director Rob Cohen], I was like, ‘No, it doesn’t work that way.’ I was like, ‘Let me set it up. I’ll load out the parking brake, just whaaa! Pitch like a 90, and I’ll just come out and shoot over the door.'”
“[Cohen] was like ‘Can you do that?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah!’. So all the crew, they’re freaked out ’cause I’m comin’ right at the camera, and I was doin’ like 60-70 miles an hour.,” he continued. “So they put up a stake bed, so they had a bit of a barricade, and they put the camera on the other side. I did it three times, just stuck it every time… It was just me in the car, and I had the gun right here, holstered in my lap, and had to do the full quick draw and everything. That’s what I love. I love doing the action stuff. It’s so much fun!”
The Fast movies have become well-known for their crazy stunts. Honestly, the Fast Saga has pulled off so many magical stunts it’s basically a fantasy movie series at this point, although the filmmakers still try and keep things practical when they can.
This includes the time they dropped a load of cars from a plane (yes, they really did that, although the Fast and Furious cast weren’t in their cars) with a bit of help from the US military. If you want to know what Dom’s family get up to next, then check out our guide to Fast and Furious 10.