Aggressive drivers, speeding traffic, and oblivious pedestrians are all challenges real bike messengers face, and Koepp was determined to do all of the film?s riding and stunts realistically. So how did the crew of Premium Rush, out Aug. 24, manage to film the movie?s crazy chase sequences without any (other) serious injuries?
Gordon-Levitt trained for six weeks to prepare for his role, and the production employed actual bike messengers, stuntmen, and trick riders to help the actor pull off Wilee?s riding and stunts. They also provided expertise, weighing in on how a messenger would get on and off the bike, access his bag, and even where he?d put his pen. "I rode every day, and when you see me riding, that?s really me," Gordon-Levitt says. "But certainly there?s a lot from the other guys who are much, much better cyclists than I am."
One of those guys was Austin Horse, a New York City bike messenger who has won global competitions for speed. He spoke to Popular Mechanics while he was delivering packages. "I had to ride near cars and do skids and near misses," he says. "Pretty much a regular day of work." The toughest thing he had to do, Horse says, was a skid and short-stop in front of a truck. "I wanted it to look like he was at the very edge of control; as short and nearly horizontal as possible," he says. "I pushed it, and I fell down. But we did it again, and I got it on that take."
To capture the action, Koepp used a Porsche Carrera equipped with a camera crane, small digital cameras attached to the bikes, and a camera on a motorcycle. Some sequences, especially those with dialogue, were filmed on streets closed for the shoot, using cars with stunt drivers. "There isn?t enough control in live traffic," Koepp says, "and it?s really dangerous." In these scenarios, the stunt drivers had to follow one rule: Don?t switch lanes. "The people on the bikes had to know that they could weave between the cars and not have to worry about the Impala cutting them off and killing them," Koepp says.
Horse, for one, enjoyed the choreographed sequences. "I went from being 50 percent sure that a car is going to do a certain thing [in real life] to being 98 percent sure," he says. "Predictability is gold. It makes everything so much easier."
Even with those precautions, the shoot was kind of crazy. Case in point: Gordon-Levitt?s accident. "That was New York intruding on our best-laid plans," Koepp says. "The city is this giant, uncontrollable organism that runs on a certain amount of chaos. And the stunt riders were so fast that they would quickly outrun the stunt cars, particularly Austin. So they would just take off and go, and hopefully the motorcycle would stay with them and get some good stuff."
Even after training and filming, Gordon-Levitt doesn?t think he could cut it as a New York City bike messenger, but he does have a new appreciation for fixie bikes. "I learned to ride a fixed-gear bike, which is different from what you learn to ride growing up," he says. "You have more control, because there?s no mechanism in the way?you?re directly connected to the wheel. It feels less like you?re riding on top of a vehicle and more like your feet are attached to wheels. I grew to prefer it, actually."
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