1979 Soundtrack – Fast Company

Fast Company is a 1979 Canadian action film directed by David Cronenberg and starring William Smith, John Saxon, Claudia Jennings and Nicholas Campbell. It was written by Phil Savath, Courtney Smith, Alan Treen and Cronenberg. It was primarily filmed at Edmonton International Speedway, in addition to other locations in Edmonton, Alberta, and western Canada.

The film is the first of his feature films for which Cronenberg did not originate the screenplay. The production of Fast Company brought Cronenberg into contact with cinematographer Mark Irwin, art director Carol Spier, sound editor Bryan Day, and film editor Ronald Sanders, all of whom became regular crew members on his films. Actor Nicholas Campbell, who plays William Smith’s young sidekick, also went on to appear in three more Cronenberg films, The Brood, The Dead Zone, and Naked Lunch.

Although Fast Company – an all-action, non-horror, non-psychological B-movie – remains an anomaly in Cronenberg’s filmography, it has never lost its place in the affections of its director, who is an enthusiast of cars and their machinery (“which I get very metaphysical and boring about”) and sometime racer.

This was the final film for Claudia Jennings before she was killed in a car accident later that year, several months after the film’s release. The music was written by Fred Mollin:

Mollin brought together a first-rate band to paly the songs and instrumentals for the film. Steve Lukather, who went on to fame as lead guitarist for Toto and is considered among the world’s greatest electric guitar players, played on all the tracks. “He was 21 at the time”, said Mollin. “Even then he was an absolutely virtuostic and flamboyantly brilliant guitar player. So all the tracks, especially the songs, the lead guitar is all Steve, and it’all absolutely, monstrously great – and course very much of its time.” (source: liner notes)