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Paul Walker RIP


Whit Norris

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I'm am currently working on Fast and Furious 7. We lost one of our main actors this past weekend. Paul was one of my teams favorites. We did Fast 5 with him also. He was a great guy and real pleasure to work with. Always there to let us wire him, always had a joke and just all round great guy. My team is very sad at the loss of him and we wish his family and daughter the best. He was only 40 years old. 

 

I would like to share what my friend Darryl wrote about our production and Paul. Darryl and I have grown up together in the this business and both old Alabama boys. He summed it up and I could not have even come close to the words and blog he had to say about our production and Paul. Darrryl is our A camera dolly grip and one of the best in in the biz in the United States. This was posted on his site. This is what we do on features and he summed it up better than anyone I have ever seen or read.

 

Whit

 

A Sad Day Off
 
I was going to write a post on crane moves that come very close to other objects, like cars. I was going to call it "Scraping The Paint." I'm sure at some point I will get around to writing it but can't seem to do it right now. Please indulge me this one post, and then I'll get back to the usual drivel.

  Take up to fifty or sixty highly skilled and driven people. Put them all into a pressure cooker for anywhere from twelve to sometimes eighteen hours a day. Have them do the most ridiculous things, from mugging in front of a camera to waving a smoke machine around a set. Lock them into this situation for anywhere from three, to five or more months, and you'll have yourself a movie. But you'll also have a highly dysfunctional, sometimes contentious, but often fiercely loyal family. Now, at the end of this long period, you fire them all and send them on their separate ways. No matter what happens you will rarely, if ever, have the same combination of people together at the same time again. Out of this pressure cooker, lifelong friendships are made, as well as lifelong enemies. Babies are born, marriages begin and end. No matter what the outcome, strong ties are made. This is a film crew.

   I have a day off tomorrow. It wasn't planned. I'm not happy about it, though not for the reasons you might think. My current job was supposed to carry on until just before Christmas. I've been on this particular show for three months now, and like the story always goes I've made some good friends. Forged some ties. Together, the cast and crew of this production have been frozen, rained on, shot at, blown up, and smoked out. We've had countless hours of down time to tell our stories and miss our loved ones and wonder, "What is the holdup?" And I've enjoyed almost every minute of it. Until now. One of our own, a young man of immense talent, humility, and humor has left us before the last martini shot. Now this pressure cooker I spoke of earlier, it makes you forget the outside world. You forget that in the scheme of things, what we are all doing means less than nothing. None of us are heroes. I'm not saving lives or protecting anyone. The danger that our cast is in and the heroics that they perform are purely manufactured. You get to know people beyond the screen persona that the rest of the world sees.
 
I didn't know Paul Walker well. I had passing words with him for the first month or so of production. In the last month or so, however, our hours and downtime had placed us in the position of having time to talk. He told me about his daughter and how much he missed her. He told me how much his father loved seeing him and his brothers when they visited and how they had in recent years become much closer. I told him about my daughter. And my father. We didn't become friends, but we were acquaintances...thrown into that pressure cooker we've both been a part of for upwards of twenty years now. I made him laugh. And he made us all laugh. I don't know what went wrong with that car on Saturday afternoon that caused it to crash and take the lives of two young men. I do know that I am grateful to have had the small sliver of insight into the life of one of them. The other, I know nothing about. As the media machine does, it has virtually turned him into a shadow, obliterated by the celebrity of his passenger. I'm sorry for that. It must be incredibly hard on his family to see him become an unnamed footnote in the media gossip machine. I wish things were different. I wish I didn't get that cold stone in my chest every time I think of Paul Walker now. Above all, I wish I didn't have that day off tomorrow.

   I'm sure the show will go on. We're in far too deep to just scrap it now. Scenes will be rewritten. Special effects technicians will work overtime to stream it all together as seamlessly as possible. But for those of us who were in that three month pressure cooker, and those who had known Paul much longer than I, there is a hole that will not be filled. Thanks for the laughs, buddy. See you down the road.
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So very sad. The accident happened so close to my home. Were I not gone for the weekend, it's likely I would have heard it.

On set today, we had a police officer who went to high school with Paul. He didn't know him well, but remembers him as one of the good guys. A sentiment I have heard a lot the last couple of days.

My thoughts are with his family and the family of Roger Rodas.

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I am sad for all who die to young. 30,000 plus men, women, children died last year in car crashes in our country. This also breaks my heart. I hear Mr Walker was a good guy.  So were the vast majority of those who died last year. Cars are dangerous. Probably the most dangerous thing all of us do on a regular basis. Is there any relationship to real life and death car crashes as compared to the cartoon nature of the Fast and Furious style of movie car chases? Who knows? Does it even matter? Drive like your life depends on it. 

CrewC

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Yeah, I saw on the news where this was only a mile or so away from Denecke's offices in Santa Clarita. I know that area pretty well. It's a terrible tragedy. I don't doubt that Universal is going crazy trying to figure out if they can reshoot and still get the film out in 7 months. 

 

Walker did solid work and did a lot of films in his career. Good actor, too. Glad to hear from Whit that he was as nice to work with as he seemed on-screen. It's awful when things like this happen, especially to good people. 

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Nice Letter from Darryl,
Really sad when i heard the news. Worked with him on Brick Mansions this spring.
He's daughter was staying with him in Montreal and he was saying how much he wanted to get close to her and spend more time with her. He was a gentlemen and a great person to work with.

All my condolences to his family and loved ones.
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