“Fast Company” has to be one of the most random curve-ball movies I’ve encountered whilst deep-diving a director’s filmography. It is a bizarre attempt at motor-induced escapism from a filmmaker whose career would go on to excel in themes and tones that are completely fucking alien to this.
Lonnie ‘Lucky Man’ Johnson is a drag racing legend, having escaped more crashes and burn-outs than anyone else on the circuit. With the aid of his trusty pit-crew of misfits, he tours the racing scene from venue to venue, often duking it out with his arch-rival team headed by Gary “The Blacksmith” Black.
High-octane rivalry, relationship troubles, and pressure from a cut-throat racing sponsor all coincide to compound Lonnie’s woes as he deals with getting older in a younger man’s sport.
Drag racing events are probably awesome in real life, and I don’t want to come off as snooty about them. But as a movie premise, it fucking stinks. It’s like watching two guys blow their wads as quickly as possible, then arguing with each other over who was the fastest.
My honest read is that “Fast Company” was a means for Cronenberg to take his mind off the messy divorce he was going through at the end of the 1970’s. Apparently he has been a life-long motor-head, and this was just a natural outlet for him to latch onto. It’s also worth mentioning that at the time he was not yet known to the world as a horror maestro, but rather a guy from Canada who directed 2 horror movies.
The one great positive I can take from “Fast Company” is the jump in production value, which would remain consistent if not improved upon with Cronenberg’s future efforts. For all its flaws, this movie looks and feels more professional than Rabid and Shivers combined. Perhaps “Fast Company” served as a necessary evil to elevate his future works beyond the doldrums of grainy hand-held genre film-making.
“Fast Company” doesn’t know whether it wants to be an honest-to-goodness underdog sports movie, or descend into a Porky’s-esque comedy romp where the protagonist sticks it to the man while tits burst out of bra’s. Personally I just think it was a missed opportunity to have people ejaculating into exhaust-ports and cars giving birth to disgusting, fucked-up flesh vehicles that people climb inside and satisfy in order to achieve orgasms and win races.
My final thought: if you ever wondered what Canada’s answer to Bruce Springsteen would sound like, then look no further than the movies main theme which plays at least five times throughout.
