Speed, and Dying Like a Doofus.

Dear Readers,

I was watching Speed the other night, (guilty pleasure) and something occurred to me that I hadn't noticed before. This sort of thing happens when you watch a movie too often and over-analyze. Before you get too carried away with your speculation I am not a big movie geek. I have watched Speed, (for example) maybe ten times in the fifteen or so years since it's been out. I have watched Star Wars no more than twenty times. Debbie Does Dallas (the directors cut) however...

Sorry, I was talking about movies, specifically Speed. For some reason I was drawn to the expression on the face of Keanu's partner when he realised he had blundered into a house rigged with explosives. The camera lingered on the look, but it wasn't the (acted) look of someone who was about to die. It was the acted look of someone who was a bit of a doofus. I was confused as to how this particular moment of the film made the final cut, as the look didn't really gel with mood of the film. It bugged me for a good ten minutes, I missed half of the final subway sequence as a result.

I do have an explanation however, with pictures and words...

So, the actor in question was Jeff Daniels, and for those of you who have a foggy memory of the movie and the era he looked like this:

At this point he has about a minute left before being exploded, a crazed and steely eyed expression was in place. The smirk/smile will shortly evolve into the look of a doofus.

Jeff was also working on another movie that was released in same year, (1994), so it is possible that he was working on both projects at the same time. Perhaps this was too much for him to cope with, as I think an acting expression from the other project found it's way into Speed. At this point it would be helpful to illustrate Jeff in his other major role released in 1994:

That will be Dumb and Dumber; not an action movie! By an amusing coincidence the character played by Jeff in both movies was called Harry. It would be fair to say that the Harry character in Dumb and Dumber was a doofus of the highest order.

What I like to think happened is that Jeff may have got a little confused on the set of Speed when the director asked "What would Harry do?" and got in the wrong character.

Jeff (I believe) was suffering from auditorysplitharry disorder, a disorder so rare I had to make it up.

Hence slap bang in the middle of one of the best action movies of the 90's is one of the best comedy movies of the 90's trying to come out.

Hope this all makes sense to the lovers of these two very fine, albeit, sixteen year old films.

PS: I wanted to write a smart PS that tied into the Speed theme of things needing to go at 50MPH, and I did. However it was pointed out to me by the thought police (wife) that you have to very careful about the use of certain words in airports and also in blogs. As a consequence a certain word beginning with b has had to be replaced with the word bubble. I hope that this does not in anyway reduce the your enjoyment of the next statement.

PPS: There is a bubble on this blog, if you read this blog at a rate of 50 characters a second the blog is armed, if you then read the blog below 50 characters a second the blog will explode. What 'cha gonna do hotshot?

PPPS: For legal reasons I have to point out that all of the above is nonsense just in case I end up being hounded like the Wikileaks man.

End. Lots of love! x