Fast & Furious:

Alumnus Justin Lin's breakthrough feature “Better Luck Tomorrow” (2002), filmed on a budget of just $250,000, a startling suburban noir about “model minority” Asian-American high school boys drifting into crime, established his reputation as a stereotype-buster.

Arguably it was an even bolder move for Lin when he ventured off the indie cinema reservation into the glossy realm of mainstream Hollywood commercialism. His second contribution to the internationally successful “Fast and Furious” fast cars 'n' violent crime franchise opened to recod-breaking box office April 3, and in his press appearances Lin was forthright about acknowledging that he grew up enjoying, and wanting to make, the same kinds of high octane popcorn movies as other filmmakers of his generation.

Although he has continued to alternate high octane entertainments such as “Annapolis” (2006) and “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift” (2006) with edgy low-budget fare like “Spotlighting” (2005) and “Finishing the Game” (2007), Lin recently told TFT staffer Sheila Roberts that when he saw the first mega-hit installment, “The Fast and the Furious” (2005), while still an undergraduate at TFT, he was instantly intrigued by the sub-culture of underclass street racing it portrayed.

JUSTIN LIN: The thing that made the first film work for me was that it was an introduction to a scene that nobody had seen before. I was still in graduate school and working as a TA when I saw it in theaters. I didn't understand but it was very interesting. These kids were very proud. They know that the American-made muscle cars are faster because they're bigger, but they were determined to figure out how to beat these big cars. That sub-culture was fascinating.

In a way, the illegal street scene has really died down. They confiscate and crush the cars now that are caught racing, so they have actually kind of legalized it. People go out in the desert and do the races there and make it more real. The scene has changed and I think characters grow. If we try to put the characters back into the same environment, it would “ kind of silly.

SHEILA ROBERTS: Why did you want to do the new film, the fourth? What appealed to you about revisiting the franchise again after making “Tokyo Drift”?

I am a movie fan. I grew up in the working class suburbs in the ’80s so I do love Hollywood movies. But what I don't like is when they take something that's successful and just recycle it. The goal here was not to do that, in the first place to acknowledge that there's been a passage of time. When these characters go back to the car scene, they seem a little too old for that scene. There is growth and there is maturity and I think that's part of the mythology. The way it's presented, we want the audience to figure out the timeline for themselves. I think that's part of the fun.

I think a lot of times when people think of “Fast and Furious” they think of fast cars, hot chicks, stuff like that. But I think there are good reasons why people keep wanting to see more of this franchise. Part of it is the characters and part of it is the theme. Aside from all the superficial things, this is really a franchise that's exploring the idea of family in a non-traditional way. On this film, we were trying to take that and explore the idea of sacrifice. We talked a lot about how these stories are really Westerns, but with cars instead of horses.

Was it tough coming up with a different approach for the look in “Tokyo Drift” compared to this one?

My job is to try to serve the theme of the film. When I came on the third one, “Tokyo Drift,” I was like “Well, okay, do you have to shoot it this way and does it have to look that way?” And it turned out there was a lot of flexibility. What's great about this franchise for me is that it's a bit post modern, in that stylistically it has evolved quite a bit and it's changed a lot. That's a plus for any director coming on. The challenge is not to take anything for granted.

Some directors say that while they enjoy watchhing action movies they don’t enjoy shooting them, that they find it too mechanical and therefore boring.

I’ve heard that,because action takes a lot of time and patience. The key is having a point of view — which is very much the UCLA approach to working on thse things, as opposed to (can I say this?) the USC approach. You could say UCLA filmmakers try to bring an indie attitude even to studio pictures. We always try to find some kind of subjectivity or point or view.

Designing the chases and the races is surprisingly easy, especially with the budget that we have on one of these. It's easy to say “Oh, let's do this just because it looks cool.” Many times you have to pull back and say “What are we trying to say here? Where is Brian [Paul Walker] at this point? Where is Dom [Vin Diesel] at this point?” Because we don't have a lot of scenes to really explore character we have to use the chases for that. The way they handle the cars tells the audience much more than a dialog scene about who they are. It's a short cut to see where the characters are at that point in the story.

What was one of the hardest scenes you had to shoot, logistically or otherwise?

The chases in the tunnels were something that had never been done before. What happened was I actually went and scouted tunnels in Mexico, but I wanted angles you just can't do in a real tunnel. So we had to go and find this super long warehouse down in San Pedro and build our own tunnel, in four sections. We couldn't shoot anywhere else because we needed that much control. And actually I wanted even more space. It made it tougher because we had to reconfigure our tunnel every few days.

What's your dream project as a director?

I would say it's “442,” about the Japanese American battalion. They're the most decorated battalion in history. In World War II, they were sent into all the craziest battles. I worked at the Japanese American National Museum for a while. I looked at a lot of archival interviews and stuff like that.

Unfortunately, a lot of the people that served are all passing away now and that's something that's part of their history that you hear about but you don't really know. That's a story I think should be told

Have you been pitching it to the studios? It sounds like it would be a large scale film…

It has to be a studio film. It's not a no-budget scenario. Hopefully I have enough relationships and have earned enough trust that I can do it the right way. That's the goal.

I do really feel like I'm learning and I'm growing. I'm a better filmmaker today than I was five years ago, and I'm just getting started. I feel like my best films are still ahead of me. Now it's about positioning myself to make those films.

What’s next?

I don't have anything right now. I tend to like to go do no-budget movies and stuff in between. I'm always looking to do that. I like that challenge. You have to convince everybody from the actor to the PA to come on and do it for nothing. I do feel very fortunate to be able to have both worlds, to do those and also do something like this.

Somebody told me that you drive a SAAB. That seems so anti fast and furious, somehow.

It fits me, though. With American cars, I feel like a little kid. I can't see over the hood. Japanese cars like the Lexus are just a little too nice, like it's a little too easy to drive. The SAAB is just temperamental enough. On the SAAB, you can't bring in your own phone. They have their own phone system.You have to get a special phone number just for the car and they have this voice recognition thing that maybe its native language is Swedish and it never calls the right person. My coolant light is on right now and I don't even believe it anymore.

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