One Fast Move Director Kelly Blatz on Working With K.J. Apa & Eric Dane

ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke to One Fast Move director Kelly Blatz about the motorcycle racing drama. Blatz discussed the characters, star K.J. Apa and Eric Dane, and more. The film begins streaming on Prime Video on August 8, 2024.

“One Fast Move is an action-adventure thrill ride about a young man down on his luck who seeks out his estranged father to help him pursue his dream of becoming a professional motorcycle racer,” says the synopsis. “With the help of his small town love interest and a motorcycle shop owner who moonlights as his mentor, he begins to break down the walls that his father’s absence had built up.”

Tyler Treese: One aspect that really impressed me was just the genuine love One Fast Move has for racing. Tail of the Dragon gets referenced. There’s a real respect for motorcycles and the community around it. I know you’re very passionate about motorcycles, so how was it just getting to combine your two loves of film and motorcycles for one great project?

Kelly Blatz: It was a dream come true to blend both. I mean, that’s where this film came from. Motorcycles came late in my life. It came in my late twenties, and it really was at a time when I needed them, and I didn’t know it. It was a form of meditation for me. It was a challenge. It was a part of my identity at that point.

Obviously, I love film and was making films and I hadn’t seen a grounded motorcycle racing film. We’ve had a lot of motorcycle films, even one recently with The Bikeriders, but I hadn’t seen something set in the world of supersport racing. I love great sports dramas like The Fighter, Rocky, and Raging Bull and these are also great character pieces. So my attempt with this was to create a very strong character drama from themes that I was taking from my own life while mixing it with the world of motorcycle racing.

I spoke with K.J. and he discussed how collaborative you were as a filmmaker, and I saw that you two kind of went through the script and fine-tuned the dialogue and such. How is it just getting into CK J’s full creative mind because he’s done a lot of television and you don’t always get as much much input there?

It was a dream with K.J., honestly. He came on board about a year before we started shooting, and he was in the middle, I think, of the sixth season of Riverdale. An insane schedule he was on. His creative energy is really unbounded and his passion and commitment… I mean, he was calling me almost every single day throughout that year with questions and ideas. He’d say, “Oh, in the middle of the night I had this thought about this particular scene. What do you think?”

As a director and a writer, you know, that is a dream to have an actor who’s that committed and who cares that much. Because throughout that year, there were these amazing discoveries, so many that came from these conversations that he and I had. So that by the time we were shooting, all those questions had been answered, and it was just ready to explore and to see what was gonna happen on the set. But there were no questions about the material and about the character. So I can’t say enough about K.J. Apa. He is just a dream to work with and an incredible talent.

I saw all these photos of him from years ago of him riding bikes, and I was like, “Oh, was that a preexisting interest?” But no, it all came from this film. So that really shows the dedication that he’s been working on getting ready for this for a long time and really learned to ride.

Oh, absolutely. He had never really ridden before. I threw him on my Triumph for a couple of months, and then he ended up buying three bikes, and he was riding those bikes for an entire year. So he really wanted to make sure he felt comfortable on a bike while also falling in love with motorcycles and what it gave him, which was really important for him to understand that. Because that’s a lot of the theme of the film, and yeah, his dedication means so much to me. I hope to do every film with K.J. Apa, to be honest.

I love Eric Dane in this film. I wanted to ask you about your approach to this estranged father mentor-type storyline that we get here. Because I feel like in another film, it’d be so easy to make him suddenly, halfway through the film, start becoming father of the year. He doesn’t get a drastic shift like that. He does change, but it is not cartoonish. How was it just making sure everything was grounded in that way?

Oh, I’m glad you recognized that. Thank you. For me, Dean was a character who was stunted in his maturation. He was still living like he’s 22 years old, and I feel like Wes showing up was a catalyst for him to have to deal with, I think, this biggest thing that was holding back his maturation, which I think he had felt this guilt and this shame for abandoning his son before he was born and essentially shedding his responsibility. So when Wes shows up, he has to face all these things. Now he has to face the abandonment, he has to face all these things. For me, Dean is somebody who is incredibly charismatic. He’s a guy you’d love to have a beer with, but who also is harboring these demons within him.

Eric, he’s an amazing actor, and he just carries that balance so well. To your point, I didn’t see Dean as having this massive transformation because I don’t think we can change that much in that quickly [a time]. But I do think that through this process, he at least recognizes Wes and gives him validation, teaches him something. He’s able to give his son something that he knows, which is motorcycle racing. Maybe he’s not gonna be the empathetic, caring, loving father, but he’s able to give him something, and he’s there and present in his life moving forward.

Thanks to Kelly Blatz for making the time to speak about One Fast Move, which premieres August 8 on Prime Video.

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