Reply #162: This is going to sound pretty weird... [View All]

But maybe it will change the direction of the conversation a little bit. I think there was something going on in the popular consciousness at the time.

The Bronco chase on the LA freeway took place on June 12, 1994. The movie Speed opened Friday June 10, and I remember going to see it the day after it opened. When I saw the O.J. Bronco chase on tv THE NEXT DAY it was absolutely surreal to me. It was like somebody had transplanted the LA freeway chase in the movie (with Keanu in the silver Jeep -- early on) onto the small screen and substituted O.J. in the white Bronco. There were the aerial shots tracking the car from above, the same as in the movie. It was like reality and fantasy were conflating. The similarity of the scenes was so glaring to me, I wondered why I never heard anybody *else* mention it. Of course then, too, most of the country hadn't seen the movie yet.

I was deeply impacted emotionally by the movie Speed (for personal reasons that I won't get into), and then to see some of that drama reenacted again so soon on the small screen really messed with my conceptions of the nature of reality. And certainly fascinated me, to say the least. I was obsessed with Speed for a long time after that, and to a large extent the O.J. saga too. You could say the obsessions fueled each other, even though they diverged.