Riding in Cars Part One

By: Pamela Harland
Date: Wednesday, March 06, 2002

Years ago when it came to making it big at the box office, there was rarely a second chance. Right out of the gate the film either bombed or sky rocketed to the top five. But now DVD has changed all that. A film like JOY RIDE can do just O.K. at the theaters and then take off at the video/DVD rental/sales counter as a cult favorite. And that's what JOY RIDE producers Chris Moore and J.J. Abrams (ALIAS) are hoping for their film.

"The release of the DVD has become almost something more important than the release of the movie," says Abrams. "It's incredible how many people have access to movies on their schedule when they want to because of DVDs."

The film,

which opened up to good reviews last fall along with so-so box office, follows two brothers, Lewis (Paul Walker) and Fuller (Steve Zahn), in a cross-country trip to pick up a friend of Lewis', Venna (Leelee Sobieski). On the way Fuller decides to pick up the CB and have a little fun with it, taunting lonely drivers aching for some female companionship. What the brothers didn't bargain for was a surly-voiced truck driver with a CB name of Rusty Nail not amused by their frat boy shenanigans. Rusty Nail follows them cross-country, seeking and promising revenge on the brothers.

Deciding how far to take their disturbed truck driver was one of the biggest problems the producers faced in completing the film. It was a crucial decision whether JOY RIDE be derivative of other thrillers with a big fistfight climax or unique and fulfilling on its own. In fact, the producers were so aware of the significance of the conclusion that they re-shot four different endings after being disappointed with their original finale, giving them various choices come editing time.

"It was an amazing thing working on this, trying to figure out what the best, most exciting ending of the movie would be," says Abrams. "We shot all the endings at one shot. We tried them, got reactions when we screened them and then tried a couple more."

Although the DVD shows all four alternative endings, Abrams admits there was actually a fifth ending pre-shooting.

"It was [IMG3L]in the script originally," reveals Abrams, who also co-wrote the script. "Rusty Nail went back... [home] months later and it was a whole other thing. I think the last 20 minutes of the movie was a fade out to months later and it was a bad idea. Where the movie was ending originally wasn't satisfying."

Moore and Abrams used the test screenings to their fullest advantage in trying to figure out JOY RIDE's best conclusion. But the final decision, says Moore, ultimately came from the filmmakers themselves.

"It wasn't like the test screenings came back five points low so the studio said 'You have to do something else,'" says Moore. "It wasn't that process at all. It was the reverse. It was, 'Wow this movie is killing people, we gotta deliver this ending and some of these things are being taken away from what's really good about the film.'"

Also changed was the revealing of Rusty Nail's face. In a different variation of the film the audience continually gets to see Rusty Nail, which eventually took away from the suspense and anticipation of the film.

"The decision was made that he should remain a voice, remain this sort of amorphous thing," says Moore. "He is scarier the less you know about him. I think if you remember ALIEN where you just saw pieces of the alien and JAWS where you just get pieces of the shark and by the time you get to JAWS 2 that giant shark is not nearly as scary as in the first movie."

Moore says all of the decisions were based on what would stay true to the film, the storyline and especially to the characters. The producers were very aware of avoiding variations of the dim-witted, cookie cutter characters from past horror film creations.

"They [the [IMG4R]characters] were more likable and more interesting than [normal] people get to be in this kind of genre movie," says Moore. "There was a lot of pressure on how you end it, but also how you wrap up what's happening with the characters. There's a brother relationship, there's a romance relationship, there's this sort of idea of it's always fun until someone breaks their arm kinda thing."

And again, says Moore, dealing with the bad guy and how far he'd go in the film was an important consideration, especially since the decision was made not to show his face. Ted Levine (Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs) provided the voice uncredited. (Moore laughs that it took a whole lot of money to convince him to do that) and the voice was incidentally cast after production (other actors including Eric Roberts who auditioned for Rusty Nail are included in the special features where you can hear what their voice would have sounded like in the final mix).

"Rusty Nail could be just a psycho or a dude just trying to teach these guys a lesson," says Moore. "There's a lot of subtlety and a little more complexity than your normal genre slasher killer movie. You get to a point where you love these characters and you really cared about what was going to happen to them. You want to find out how their relationships were going to work out."

Be sure to check back soon for part two of our JOY RIDE DVD preview.