How the film "Taxi" was filmed: footage from the filming and 10 interesting facts about the film (10 photos)

In 1998, the cult French action-comedy Taxi was released, which instantly gained popularity, becoming a real hit.





1. The idea to make an action comedy about a taxi driver and a policeman came to Luc Besson while waiting for the filming of The Fifth Element. During this downtime, he wrote the script.

But since “The Fifth Element” was not cancelled, Besson himself did not sit in the director’s chair, remaining only as a screenwriter and producer. The director of the film was Gerard Pires, who did not yet have experience in filming feature films, but had experience in filming car advertisements.



Gerard Pires - director of the film "Taxi"

True, shortly before the start of filming, Gerard Pires had an accident (he fell from a horse), which landed him in the hospital for several weeks. In order not to postpone the filming of the film, Gerard Krawczyk was temporarily put in the director's chair, who then came to Pires and showed the footage so that he would give the go-ahead.





Gerard Pires directs the filming process with a broken arm

By the way, the subsequent parts will be directed by Gerard Krawczyk, and not Pires.

2. For the role of Daniel, Luc Besson immediately took the little-known French actor of Algerian origin Sami Naceri. Even before this, Besson worked with him on the set of the film "Leon". And even though Naseri had a very tiny role, Besson really liked the actor and remembered him.



Well, Sami Naseri himself tried to give his best. He even took aerobatics courses on real race tracks, which is certainly worthy of respect.

But, of course, in the racing scenes no one trusted the actor to sit behind the wheel. At these moments, professional Formula 1 racers were behind the wheel.

3. Mercedes Benz sued the studio. And all because in one of the scenes Daniel, addressing the Germans in a Mercedes, asked them: “So? Do you continue to drive tractors?”



By the way, the Germans won the case, and the studio had to pay the Mercedes company $2 million.

4. After the release of the film, the popularity of Peugeot 406 cars skyrocketed. In total, 6 cars of this model were used in the film for filming the interior, exterior and racing scenes.



5. With a budget of $9 million, the film earned $44 million at the box office, making it a commercial success.

The film turned out to be so successful that it spawned 4 more parts (the last of which became fierce trash) and two remakes - an American and, of course, an Indian one.



6. Did you notice that all the car scenes were filmed only during the day? This is not an accident. The fact is that the city authorities prohibited filming these scenes at night, even though Luc Besson asked them to allow night filming.



7. In total, 38 cars were smashed in the frame, but the creators decided to hide how many cars were dented during filming.

8. The film "Taxi" was shot in just a month. In the same amount of time, Luc Besson wrote the script.



9. We all remember that Emilien cannot learn to drive a car and has failed the driving test for the 8th time. But that's not the point. Pay attention to the inscription on the hood. It says "J. Pires Driving School". Well, as you already understood, J. Pires is a reference to director Gerard Pires.



10. The title theme from the movie "Taxi" is the same as in the movie "Pulp Fiction" by Quentin Tarantino. Just in case (if you didn’t know), let me tell you that this composition is called “Miserlou” performed by Dick Dale.