Pop Quiz, Hotshot: Somebody Is Live-Tweeting ‘Speed,’ What Do You Do?


Someone is live-tweeting the movie Speed. On Twitter. And there is nothing you or I can do to stop it. Because it’s the Internet, and we all knew this was bound to happen eventually.

And so it came to pass on the twentieth day of April that web developer Michaela McCann – who says on her personal site that she does not enjoy web design but does enjoy Speed – began tweeting choice quotes from the action-packed 1994 thriller starring Keanu Reeves, Sandra Bullock, and Dennis Hopper. McCann began transcribing the flick Sunday evening, and the hours since have seen her not just tweaking passages from Speed to fit Twitter’s 140-character limit, but also turning to emoji and other internet heiroglyphics in order to portray some of the more action-packed sequences. For instance:

A screen grab of the live-tweet of Speed.

Which we can only take to symbolize Speed‘s unforgettable sequence wherein Imperial Japan explodes 14 times and then attempts to download something nine times. Either that or Speed‘s earlier scene with 13 passengers in an express elevator, where the only thing to stop them if it falls is the basement.

Now, we all acknowledge Speed as an instant classic that only missed inclusion in the Criterion Collection due to the committee’s longstanding grudge against Keanu Reeves, but some may find themselves asking why an ostensibly sane person would devote any significant portion of her life to tweeting the movie (almost) word for word. To that, we would respond: because the Internet? Duh.

Also, there is the fact that Speed is rapidly approaching its 20th anniversary, and there is no way to stop it. See what we did there? Let us also not forget that Speed won two Oscars – for Sound Editing and Sound Mixing, yes, but Oscars nonetheless – and pulled in $121.3 million in domestic receipts. And who needs Criterion when Entertainment Weekly ranked Speed in the Top 10 of their “The Best Rock-’em, Sock-’em Movies of the Past 25 Years” list?

Speed undoubtedly boosted the career of Keanu’s co-star Sandra Bullock, who went on to take top billing in Speed 2: Cruise Control, a film that exists whether you like it or not. It didn’t hurt Keanu’s career, either, giving fans something good to remember about the action star when he followed up Speed with Johnny Mnemonic, Chain Reaction, and Feeling Minnesota.

McCann’s live-tweeting of Speed may be, as Death and Taxes puts it, “recycled at random for no purposes other than irony, nostalgia and, above all, to please its author,” but who’s to say that’s a bad thing? With Keanu churning out lackluster action flicks and Sandra following up an Oscar nod with talk of a “Miss Congeniality” TV show, maybe it’s better to look back to those halcyon days of the Clinton era, when all you needed was a bomb, a bus, a one-word title, and Dennis Hopper.

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