10 Things You Didn’t Know About Drive (1997)

1997’s Drive, starring Mark Dacascos and Kadeem Hardison, can officially be scratched off my Blu-ray wish list thanks to the fine folks over at the MVD Rewind Collection.

Drive is considered by many to be Rush Hour before Rush Hour (including director Brett Ratner) and has been a favorite of diehard action aficionados for years. I have to believe I am not the only Drive fan happy to see it finally get a Blu-ray release.

The MVD Rewind Collection release features a brand new 4K scan from the original camera negative, along with some archival special features that include interviews with the cast, a making of documentary titled Drive: The Force Behind the Storm, six deleted scenes and a commentary track with Director Steve Wang, Mark Dacascos, Kadeem Hardison and Stunt Coordinator Koichi Sakamoto from Alpha Stunts.

The commentary was a fun trip down memory lane for the foursome, but between them cutting up (and Koichi cutting the cheese) some behind the scenes knowledge was dropped. Now that knowledge serves as the source material as I present 10 Things You Didn’t Know About Drive (1997)…

1. The song that Kadeem Hardison’s Malik Brody is writing at the bar when we are first introduced to the character was actually a song written by Kadeem’s future wife, Chanté Moore, titled “He Remembers She”. Another song that Kadeem tried to bring to Drive was the Edwin Starr classic “Twenty-Five Miles” but there was no room in the $3.5 million budget to license music from Motown.

2. Speaking of the budget, a running joke on set was the film was being produced by LBB Productions… that’s Low Budget Bastards for those in the know.

3. Kadeem Hardison did not always stick to the script and he ended up improvising a lot of his lines, which often made it difficult for Mark Dacascos to keep a straight face.

4. Director Steve Wang pointed out that “The Extended Director’s Cut” is not a true Director’s Cut and instead it was the cut without the edits made for the movie’s run on HBO. Wang mentioned that the fight scene he shot at the quarry where Toby (Mark Dacascos) and Malik (Kadeem Hardison) find themselves handcuffed and battling the mercenaries sent to retrieve Toby (and more importantly the bio-engine the Leung Corporation installed inside him) was actually twice as long.

5. John Pyper-Ferguson played Vic Madison, the head mercenary in the movie. It was JPF’s idea to have Vic accidentally shoot off his gun and nearly shoot himself in the foot after Malik and Toby get away after the big quarry fight.

6. After the production wrapped, the set used for the quasi-futuristic Leung Corporate Headquarters was sold to the television series Babylon 5. The set was actually seen on Babylon 5 TV before Drive was released.

7. When Toby’s nemesis The Advanced Model (played Masaya Katô) is introduced, we see that something as simple as a coin can become a deadly weapon in his hands… or at least in the hands of a magician positioned out of frame beneath the camera…. this was the simple but effective solution Steve Wang used since Masaya was not skilled in the art of coin juggling.

8. Hundreds of actresses auditioned for the role of Deliverance Bodine, but the role went to the last actress who auditioned… Brittany Murphy. Wang recalled that Murphy was thrilled about getting to shoot a gun in the movie and Kadeem Hardison admitted to feeding Murphy the line “Chocolate Boy Wonder”.

9. Production on Drive lasted 6 and a half weeks and during that time Steve Wang was pulling 22 hour work days! Wang would only sleep during the lunch breaks for the two crews that were working around the clock to get the film completed.

10. Originally Steve Wang wanted the movie’s finale at the Apollo 14 restaurant to be a big action set piece with Toby and the Advanced Model fighting their way up the rocket that stood next to the Apollo 14 building. But the limited budget reared its ugly head once again and they needed to come up with a different explosive finale which ended up being Toby and Malik using Vic Madison’s own bombs against him and blowing up the Apollo 14 in the process.