Digital Nation by Gary Dretzka

Here's a prediction: Sometime before Sunday afternoon, when the opening-weekend grosses for 2 Fast 2 Furious are announced, one of two things will happen.

1) A hyperventilating reporter for a local television station will be shown standing in front of a theater where John Singleton's sequel to The Fast and the Furious is playing. He will report that a terrible traffic accident had occurred that day, somewhere within a 100-mile radius of the multiplex. This location will be employed even if the accident didn't involve street racing.

2) Some doofus will leave a theater showing 2 Fast 2 Furious, get behind the wheel of his over-amped rice burner, lose control and wrap it around a tree or pedestrian. A hyperventilating reporter for a local television station will position herself in front of that theater and her report will lead the 11 p.m. news.

If a spokesperson for Universal can found awake at that hour of the night, she'll pass along her condolences on behalf of the studio, but deny the movie had anything to do with the tragedy. For the next couple of days, blabbermouths in the print and electronic media will debate the issue, then turn their attention back to the Laci Peterson murder case.

If a rash of such incidents occur - and the movie is No. 1 at the box office – it is unlikely Universal distribution gurus will spend much of their time Monday publicly crowing about their good fortune. Instead, its message already out, the studio's marketing team might elect to pull the more orgasmic ads for 2 Fast 2 Furious and concentrate, instead, on quotes from randomly chosen audience members, who will attest to the coolness of the flick.

Mitsubishi, which lent some of its hottest new models to the production, might also decide to pull ads that feature those lead-footed studs Paul Walker and Tyrese Gibson. When quizzed about the rash of accidents, and ads that continue to emphasize speed over safety, a company spokesman will avoid the temptation to point out "cars don't kill people, people kill people," but he might alert reporters to the fact that there were a few Dodges, Acuras and Toyotas in the movie, as well.

Here's hoping I'm wrong.

According to a marketing story last month in the Hollywood Reporter, the match between Universal and Mitsubishi was considered by studio executives to be nearly perfect.

"In many cases, the extent to which a product and the message of a partner is a direct fit with the movie is 20%, 30%, 40%," Universal marketing president Adam Fogelson was quoted as saying. "This is a case where I'd say it's much closer to a 100% fit."

The article went on to point out, "The carmaker's demographics dovetailed with Universal's objectives for 2 Fast in other ways: Mitsubishi ties with Volkswagen for the youngest median consumer age (38, according to a recent study by auto industry consulting firm Strategic Vision). And Mitsubishi is second only to Nissan in the racial diversity of its customer base, with more than 22% of customers who are non-Caucasian."

Now, I enjoy watching a good chase scene as much as the next guy. I've also been known to break the speed limit on occasion.

Nonetheless, when it was reported last month that a 74-year-old Huntington Beach woman was killed in a street-racing incident, I immediately flashed on the upcoming 2 Fast 2 Furious.

The woman's crime, apparently, was driving her Volkswagen Golf in the opposite direction of the street racers at 1 in the afternoon, and not being nimble enough to avoid the collision. The Mustang-wielding suspect suffered broken bones, while a second offender split in a Honda.

Local TV stations had a field day with the report, even though few made the connection between the accident and the impending release of the movie. Such a coincidence would be difficult to ignore this coming weekend.

So, what am I trying to say here, anyway?

I love cars, and especially enjoy navigating a high-performance sports model through the desert or along the coast. I dig movies about racing, and was fascinating by many of the things I learned about the local racing scene researching articles on The Fast and the Furious.

At the time, the multi-ethnic street-racing scene was pretty much a mystery to most mainstream newspaper readers. The kids' ability to transform compact cars into fire-breathing monsters, and then duck under the radar of their insurance companies by underreporting the horsepower boost, was ingenious.

Anyone who's driven the streets of southern California since the release of Rebel Without a Cause - especially along Mulholland Drive at night - has a near-miss-with-death story to relate. Everyday drivers are reckless enough in L.A., without the added impetus of a dropped flag or a nitro tank in the trunk.

The Fast and the Furious seemed to be saying that the kids would gladly trade the streets for an out-of-the-way air base large enough to accommodate their desires ... a dog park for sports cars, if you will. Somehow, I doubted that this was all it would take to satisfy the speed junkies, but, as a taxpayer, would have been happy to carve out a corner of Camp Pendleton or El Toro air base for them to play.

The participants would waive all insurance coverage, of course, and the marines could provide surplus Hummers, tanks and land mines for slalom runs. No one would be allowed to complain if his or her Ford Focus disappeared in a bomb crater.

Anyone caught racing outside of those venues, then, would be treated with the same disdain as any drunk driver or crank-crazed trucker.

Everybody's happy. Let the fun begin.

I didn't set out to pick on 2 Fast 2 Furious in this week's column, but, frankly, Universal gave me little choice.

Like dozens of other reporters, my intention was to offer a rundown on the various deals between automobile manufacturers and studios with hot summer movies. I also wanted to offer an insight into how digital technology was used to enhance the wild chase scenes in Matrix Reloaded, and The Italian Job.

I had interviewed The Italian Job director F. Gary Gray, who explained how he'd managed to close Hollywood Boulevard for a week and managed to cram all those Minis into the subway station there ... mostly without the aid of computer graphics.

Joel Silver, producer of The Matrix Reloaded, bragged about the 2.5-mile-long stretch of highway he'd convinced Warner Bros. to build to accommodate the Cadillacs, Ducattis and Smith replicants in that terrific chase scene. Unlike Gray, the Wachowski brothers relied heavily on digital technology.

My calls to the publicist handling 2 Fast 2 Furious went unreturned, however, and it left me with lots of time to kill. Usually, when a flack decides to ignore reporters from publications they're familiar with (I was also doing a piece for the San Diego Union-Tribune), it means the studio is trying to hide something ... what, though, I couldn't image.

After reading a review of the movie in Movie City News last week, though, my twisted little mind went off on a conspiratorial tangent.

I was left with the opinion that 2 Fast was less about street racing than a mission to corral a Miami cocaine cowboy and some corrupt cops. There also was some tangential thing about the redemption of Walker's disgraced-lawman character.

Yet, the trailer and TV ads suggested to me that the sequel was all about the thrills and chills of street racing, complete with enough hot guys and gals to fill a Detroit assembly line. Indeed, at one point in the trailer, Walker tries to impress Eva Mendes by driving his vehicle while staring at her boobs, instead of the road ... while the speedometer needle is shown passing 100.

Apparently, girls love it when guys risk their lives -- and those of others -- for a cheap thrill.

Hip-hopper Ludacris' music video - which is featured on the movie's website - also downplays the crime fighting, while accentuating the speeding and booty.

Now, to be fair, the website does caution visitors that, "The motor vehicle action sequences depicted in this film are dangerous. All stunts were performed in controlled environments with professionally trained stunt crews on closed roads. No attempts should be made to duplicate any action, driving or car play scenes herein portrayed."

The same message appears before the website promoting Tuesday's DVD release of a "tricked out" version of The Fast and the Furious, and in a public-service announcement delivered on the video by Walker.

Some lawyer earned his pay with that one. But, they've probably missed the more obvious point.

No street racer who's ever watched a replay of a NASCAR pile-up is stupid enough to think contact between vehicles can't cause harm to themselves or their cars. They also understand that humans are no match for a car - souped up, or otherwise -- even if California law gives pedestrians the right-of-way at crosswalks.

The real danger comes when street racers aren't able to control their most reckless urges, and the need for speed trumps all common sense. That, I think, is where Hollywood ought to take some initiative.

For instance, on Friday, I hope Universal will buy ads in local papers warning pedestrians and law-abiding motorists of the imminent threat posed by the street racers who will be leaving screenings of 2 Fast 2 Furious all revved-up with no place to go for supervised release. After 10 p.m. on Friday and Saturday night, along with the usual assortment of drunks and soccer moms in HumVees, the roads of America will be filled with thousands of kids trying to push their Celicas to the limit.

The streets of Baghdad will be safer.

I would also ask Universal to consider including in "The Fast and the Furious: Part III" - and DVD version of 2 Fast 2 Furious - bonus scenes that actually show the damage done when a non-movie car rear ends a station wagon filled with Little Leaguers or obliterates a pedestrian. By watering down the gore - usually to get a PG-13, and keep the corn popping -- the full horror of reckless behavior is camouflaged and ultimately diluted.

No one who has ever closely examined the torn wreckage of a demolished automobile, in which a group of teenagers has been torn apart by shards of glass and chunks of metal, will forget the sight of the blood, flesh and raw meat dripping from the death car's roof and dashboard. I haven't been able to erase that image from my mind, even after 35 years of trying.

In the wake of Saving Private Ryan, we now expect war movies to show the carnage, as well as the glory, of combat. I wonder what the effect would be if movies about street racing - and, for that matter, commercials that promote horsepower over safety -- did the same thing?