Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Dania Ramirez in “Premium Rush.” (
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When you’re shooting a big-budget action movie and your leading man gets sent headlong into a car window and starts gushing blood, it’d normally be hard to find a silver lining in it. When that happened to Joseph Gordon-Levitt while shooting a scene for “Premium Rush” in Midtown, though, it was more like method acting.
In the movie, out Wednesday, Gordon-Levitt plays Wilee, an adrenaline junkie and hot-shot New York City bike messenger who’s chased through the streets of Manhattan by a renegade cop looking to intercept a delivery. And, as anyone who’s seen a bike messenger flying through traffic might guess, it’s a job where the occasional crack-up is all part of a day’s work. So when an errant driver sent Gordon-Levitt off course and into a taxi’s rear window, resulting in 31 stitches to his forearm, it was something of a badge of authenticity.
“Everyone on the set was freaking out — the guy’s insured for, like, $9 billion dollars — but he was pumped that it happened, because it’s the real s - – t,” says Kevin “Squid” Bolger, a veteran city messenger who served as a technical consultant on the film.
Bolger was one of many city messengers who worked on the thriller, recruited by the producers and director David Koepp to add a shot of authenticity to the movie — the first big-budget picture to feature bike messengers since Kevin Bacon played one in “Quicksilver” 26 years ago. They included consultants, stunt doubles to perform the pulse-spiking chase scenes, actors in bit parts and dozens of extras, who informed everything from the setup of the actors’ bikes to the costumes and the dialog.
Koepp, an Upper West Sider who’s written blockbusters such as “Jurassic Park,” “Mission: Impossible” and “Spider-Man,” reached out to messengers early in the production, after knocking out the first draft of his script.
Prior to that, he had the same limited knowledge of bike messengers that plenty of city dwellers have, shaped by the occasional run-in when, Koepp says, “They almost hit you, and you wonder, what is the deal with those jerks?”
But he set out to school himself. He hit the Web, finding a trove of videos by “people who are interested in putting a camera on their bike helmet and showing you what it’s like out there, which is absolutely fascinating.” He started asking around at bike shops and courier companies. It was inevitable that fingers would point to Bolger, a 20-year veteran who’s something of a legend among messengers in New York City and beyond, due both to his street skills and the length of his tenure in a job where fast burnout is the rule.
(He also helped found, and currently runs, the nonprofit New York Bike Messenger Foundation, which helps messengers who’ve been injured and otherwise supports the city’s messenger community.)
Koepp met with the 40-year-old Queens native to pick his brain, and ended up asking him to read the script. “He had me go through it and pick out the stuff that didn’t seem realistic, and talk him through it,” says Bolger, sitting in an outdoor cafe in Midtown between delivery runs on a recent afternoon, his fixed-gear bike lashed to a nearby lamppost with a heavy chain Bolger carries around his waist.
When shooting approached, others were lined up to help prepare Gordon-Levitt and actress Dania Ramirez, who plays Wilee’s love interest, Vanessa, and Wolé Parks, who plays a rival messenger. Their preparation started with six weeks of training to build stamina.
When production began in New York, lessons turned to the specifics of navigating the deadly urban maze. Gordon-Levitt was tutored by local rider David Jordan, who, Koepp says, gave him a crash course in “defensive and offensive riding.”
“He would take him around and say ‘OK, you’re approaching this intersection, and the light is going yellow, what can you expect from this traffic pattern?’” says Koepp. “It was basically getting in shape, but then learning how to ride in the jungle.”
Gordon-Levitt got further schooling from both Squid and another Brooklynite, Austin Horse, an eight-year veteran whose speed and skill have earned the 30-year-old top-dog status among city messengers, as well as numerous wins in the North American Cycle Courier Championships, an annual competition for messengers from around the country.
Hired as Gordon-Levitt’s stunt double, Horse says he also schooled the actor on “how to anticipate stuff and ride with a readiness to move in an unexpected direction,” and how as a messenger, “you’re always calculating the odds and weighing different choices.”
In the movie, such choice-making is depicted with a visual device Koepp calls “bike vision.” When Wilee hits a tight spot, he mentally runs through his options, and the horrific consequences of making the wrong choice are shown in gruesome detail.
In addition to big-picture lessons, there were details such as showing actors how to jump on and off a bike as a seasoned messenger would, or handle a messenger bag “so it looks natural, which can be tricky for someone who’s not used to doing it,” says Bolger, who gave Gordon-Levitt points for being a quick study.
The messengers also recommended bikes each character should ride — Wilee gets a fixed-gear bike with no brakes, befitting his daredevil status, built by Affinity Cycles in Williamsburg, Brooklyn — and how to set them up for messenger work. Adjusting the toe straps so they’re not too tight, for example, allows for a quick dismount for deliveries.
Even the messengers’ sense of style informed the production. Both Kym Perfetto and Sean Kennedy, messengers who were tapped to play bit parts, described being given costumes that were close copies of what they’d worn to their screen tests.
“I walked in, and they said try these pieces on. And it was, like, a copy of my jean shorts and a copy of my tank top,” Perfetto says. Perfetto was also hired to ride as Ramirez’s stunt double. And like the other messengers who worked on the movie, she says her insights were constantly tapped during the filming to get small details right: Chain or a U-lock? Helmet or no helmet?
“They’d ask us all kinds of questions: What would you do in this situation? Would you call your dispatcher, or would you go to the office? Would you use a manifest?” she says.
Koepp cites two concessions that were made in the pursuit of realism: The messenger bags were scaled down when typical ones looked too bulky on camera, and he decided to give everyone a helmet, even though a sizable minority of messengers don’t wear them.
“My greatest fear was that I’d get someone killed” during the shoot, Koepp says. “I decided, f – – k it, I’ll be wrong on this.”
While nobody was seriously hurt, plenty of smaller injuries were inflicted on both the stunt riders and the actors. Ramirez, for one, felt the wear and tear that comes with days of aggressive bike riding. “I was in pain every day, sore from riding and falling down all the time,” she says.
It’s one of the things that gave her respect for real-life messengers, whom she found to be a friendly group with an admirable moral code, in opposition to her prior impression of them as “bad-ass, rude people.”
For his part, Koepp said he gained “huge respect” for the messengers while working on the movie, not only for their fearlessness, resilience and “crazy level of conditioning,” but for how hard they work for low pay under difficult conditions.
He and others were struck by the bond between messengers, and the strength of their community. Koepp depicts that in the movie in various ways — most notably a final scene, where messengers from around the city rush to to a colleague’s aid. Messengers say it’s a significant thing the movie gets right.
“The cohesion, the lattice of the community, they hit that pretty much on the head,” says Kennedy. “All the messengers form one big union, so to speak. We’re all there to try and look out for each other.”
Both Horse and Bolger say there’s a major buzz about the movie among messengers. Bolger hopes it will give messengers a boost in the sometimes jaundiced eyes of the public. And there’s another reason some city bike messengers have for appreciating the movie: Whether for a few days or a few weeks, it offered a relatively plush gig compared to what they’re used to.
“The pay was 10 times what you make messengering,” says Heather Muller, who rides for a courier’s co-op called Mess Kollective, “and the catering was awesome.”
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Kym Perfetto moved to New York City to pursue acting, and being “not a very good waitress,” she ended up supporting herself as a bike messenger. So when the producers of “Premium Rush” told her they were looking for an actress who could ride — or a messenger who could act — to play the bit part of Polo, she knew it had to be her.
The 28-year-old Brooklynite got the part and a role as stunt double for Dania Ramirez, the female lead. Perfetto spent three months working on the movie, and given the chance to ride her bike all day and hang out with messenger pals, she deems it a dream job.
“It was all the perks of messengering with more money and good weather,” she says.
Even when riding on a set, she managed to be sideswiped and knocked into the side of a cab. The crash not only wound up in the movie, it made the trailer.
“The director was like, ‘That’s perfect,’ ” she says. “I’m thinking, we try to avoid situations like this all day, and here I am putting myself into this willingly.”
Perfetto still rides at messenger competitions — she took third among women at the North American Cycle Courier Championships this month — but she has quit messenger work to work as a spin instructor, teaching classes at SoulCycle in the East Village.
So who’s in better shape, generally speaking, bike messengers or spin instructors? “Oh, bike messengers, definitely,” she says, “if you leave out the drinking.”