Aaron Paul landed in California at 1:30 a.m. the night after the smash hit TV show Breaking Bad wrapped up shooting for good. At 6 a.m. the next day, he was back in front of the camera, on the set of the Dreamworks blockbuster Need for Speed.
Matched up as the lead role in the film with director Scott Waugh, the two had a peculiar task ahead of them – turn the widely popular racing game series into a character-driven action film.
Paul plays Tobey Marshall, a young blue-collar auto mechanic moonlighting as a talented street racer. During a street race, he witnesses the death of his friend Pete, and gets blamed and incarcerated for it when the real perpetrator flees the scene. Upon his release from jail two years later, Marshall breaks parole and drives across the country to compete in a prestigious race against the real perpetrator to avenge his friend’s death.
Need For Speed is certainly a video game adaptation, but it is first and foremost a car movie, and that was the director’s intention. There are tire-screeching car chases galore, and sometimes the stunts go beyond the street. In one scene, a car clears four lanes of highway traffic and emerges virtually unscathed on the other side. In another, an apache helicopter lifts the same car out of the air as it drives off a cliff. Waugh had only directed one film before, the hyper-realistic war flick Act of Valor that followed active Navy S.E.A.L.S. while on duty. Now, he was shifting rapidly to a car flick that definitely pushed the boundaries of reality and required some expertise on the other side of the camera. Good thing he was a former stuntman and stunt coordinator with credits in over 150 films, as well as a car chase aficionado in every sense of the word.
Waugh chose to shoot all of the stunts in Need For Speed practically, with real backgrounds and no visual effects. Part of his vision was to pay homage to the classic car films of the 60’s and 70’s, namely the 1968 Steve McQueen classic Bullitt, which relied on nothing but adrenaline and pure stunt-car driving to create thrills. That meant to green screens, no CGI – just a man and a car.
“When you watch [Bullitt], there was no music,” said Waugh. “It was just 18 minutes of motor noise and great tension, and no CG. I think that was really the focus when we made this movie. It was looking at that, and trying to figure out, why do we still quote today, a movie 50 years ago, as the best car movie of all time?”
Waugh’s goal to limit the visual effects and shoot every stunt as advertised was one of the things that attracted Paul to the film, although he would admit he was skeptical at first.
“[Waugh] wanted to do all these stunts, and after reading the script, I thought, well that’s impossible,” said Paul. “You can’t drive a car off a cliff and be caught by a helicopter! You can’t capture that on camera. The studio will not allow that to happen. But they did, and that’s really why I wanted to jump on board.”
Live stunts weren’t the only way Waugh and co. paid homage to Bullitt. Just as McQueen drove a Ford Mustang, the central car in Need for Speed was a modern and souped-up version of the same car, and Paul drives it cross-country for a majority of the film.
“It was one of the deciding factors of why we wanted to go with the Mustang,” said Waugh. “The movie was made in 1968 with a 1968 Mustang – why not make a 2015 movie with a 2015 Mustang?”
They had the stunts. They had the car. But did they have the sneering, ultra-suave man behind the wheel to pay a proper tribute to the legend McQueen himself?
Waugh, for one, was brave enough to put Paul and McQueen in the same category.
“When I was looking to cast Tobey Marshall, it was all about who was that next young Steve McQueen,” said Waugh. “And that is a big frickin’ boot to put your foot in. That would be an energetic, edgy, charming, likable, humble guy that Steve was, but also physically talented. I was the alien on earth that hadn’t seen Breaking Bad, and when I saw [Paul’s] tape, and I was like, oh my god, this kid is amazing!”
Paul was quick, however, to deny that he was stepping into McQueen’s shoes.
“I don’t know if I’m doing that whatsoever,” said Paul.
While Paul may have been new to Hollywood stardom, he certainly wasn’t new to the crime genre or the portrayal of an “edgy” character. In fact, the casting department originally looked at him to play the role of the villain, the role that Dominic Cooper (Captain America) ended up filling. The role of Jesse Pinkman in Breaking Bad, which catapulted him to international prominence and won him two Primetime Emmys, painted a picture of Paul as a hardened criminal. Even his role in the independent film Smashed had him playing the alcoholic husband of Mary Elizabeth Winstead. In Need for Speed, Paul dove right back into that niche, portraying another criminal figure with “damage,” as he described it.
Still, like his role as Jesse, Paul brings an air of sympathy to Tobey. The minds behind Breaking Bad always looked at Jesse as the drug dealer with the heart of gold, affectionate towards children and seemingly dragged along in the psychopathic criminal rampage of his partner, Heisenberg. In Need for Speed, his motives for his recklessness lay strictly in the love for his dead friend and his desire to avenge the man who killed him.
“For some reason, I always gravitate towards characters that are affected by life,” said Paul. “I think that’s just how life is. It’s not always rainbows and butterflies. I like zipping on skins that make me feel deep emotions, and make the audience feel emotions.”
Tobey Marshall is no Jesse Pinkman. The film as a whole is mostly lighthearted action fare – it is a video game after all. Still, Paul found himself tapping into that same vein in the film, and had to produce some legitimate catharsis at certain moments.
Amidst all of the character sentiments and the stylistic elements of the 60s, the film still pays a proper tribute to the video game it’s based on. Waugh incorporated a lot of first person, behind-the-wheel shots that looked like they were plucked straight out of the video game, dashboard and MPH gauge included. Waugh’s father developed the first helmet camera in the 1970s, so he was no newcomer to the first person perspective. For a few key racing sequences, a series of cop cars trail the street racers just as they did in Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, a popular game in the series. Waugh also made a serious effort to incorporate the format of the game into the film.
“If you watch the movie in a very subliminal way, it follows exactly the format of the game,” said Waugh. “If you’re a newcomer in the game, you can’t just jump into a super car. You gotta work your way up to those skills. You start in an old classic car, work to a modern car, rally car, then you’re up to a super car. That’s how the movie rolls out.”
Indeed, Tobey Marshall begins the film in a muscle car and eventually makes his way to a Koenigsegg Agera R, a car that would go for about $1.6 million today. Though Waugh did his research, he had no experience with the Need for Speed video games before and had never been much of a gamer, claiming that as a stuntman, his life “was a video game.” Paul, however, had been a big gamer for a number of years, but decided to forgo that lifestyle once his acting career started to blossom.
“I haven’t owned a game console in a while,” Paul said. “It took over my life! I had to do something else. But I knew the game, was a fan of the game.”
Whether or not one can chalk it up to letting go of the controller, Paul’s acting career is surging. It only took him less than six months after Breaking Bad and Jesse Pinkman rode off into the distance to be on the big screen, as a leading role in a major studio film. Paul is also slated to star alongside Christian Bale as Joshua in Ridley Scott’s upcoming film Exodus, an epic account of Moses’ journey to free the Jewish slaves in Israel. But if you ask him, he doesn’t see himself taking the role of the Hollywood superstar anytime soon.
“I still consider myself very much a character actor,” said Paul. “I don’t really see myself as a leading man. I don’t think I ever will.”
Humble as he may be, Waugh certainly saw potential for the TV star to be more than just a character actor. And he admits Paul’s humility was one of the main reasons he decided to cast him in the lead role of Need for Speed.
“I think that’s why he makes a great Tobey,” said Waugh. “Tobey sure as hell doesn’t see himself as a leading man either. He doesn’t want to be the dude in the limelight.”
And as they discussed the film, Waugh turned to Paul and offered a comment that he would have never expected to hear five years earlier.
“Sorry buddy. Looks like you’re going to be the lead for the rest of your life.”
Need for Speed opens in theaters everywhere on Friday, March 14th.