May 9, 2017 4:56pm
By Alan farthing
Brooklyn is home to some strange sights — rainbow bagels, unicorn lattes — and now there’s a new bizarre offering: a minivan chock full VHS tapes of the 1994 movie Speed.
Why? How?
For those who were living under a rock in 1994, Speed is an action movie starring Keanu Reeves, Dennis Hopper and Sandra Bullock. In the movie, a terrorist puts a bomb on a Los Angeles bus and threatens to detonate it if any passengers are let off. To prevent the bomb from exploding, the bus must clock 50 miles per hour at all times.
The Speed fans that invaded Brooklyn are a band called Idaho Green. According to DNAinfo, the band collected copies of the movie to send them to a man who vowed to collect all the VHS copies of Speed in existence. His name is Ryan Beitz and his venture is called the World Speed Project.
Why does he want to collect every VHS copy of Speed? According to his Facebook page, it was an impulse that needs no further examination. “To forever spend your life examining our own unconscious compulsion is to leave yourself without an existential grounding from which to operate in the world.”
Okay.
Years ago, Idaho Green met Beitz in person and listened to his story. From that day on, the band has been trying to help his cause. According to DNAinfo, they currently have around 50 copies of the movie.
Now that’s dedication.