Dax Shepard (“Hit & Run,” TV’s “Parenthood”) and Michael Peña (“Ant-Man”) star in the action comedy “CHIPS,” directed by Shepard from his own script.
Jon Baker (Shepard) and Frank “Ponch” Poncherello (Peña) have just joined the California Highway Patrol (CHP) in Los Angeles, but for very different reasons. Baker is a beaten-up former pro motorbiker trying to put his life and marriage back together. Poncherello is a cocky undercover Federal agent investigating a multi-million dollar heist that may be an inside job—inside the CHP.
The inexperienced rookie and the hardened pro are teamed together, but clash more than click, so kick-starting a real partnership is easier said than done. But with Baker’s unique bike skills and Ponch’s street savvy it might just work…if they don’t drive each other crazy first.
“CHIPS” also stars Rosa Salazar (“Insurgent”), Adam Brody (“Think Like a Man Too”), Kristen Bell (“Bad Moms”), and Vincent D’Onofrio (“Jurassic World”).
The film was produced by Andrew Panay (“Earth to Echo,” “Wedding Crashers”), who previously produced Shepard’s “Hit & Run,” and Ravi Mehta (“Get Hard”), and is based on the popular television series created by Rick Rosner. Robert J. Dohrmann, Nate Tuck, Rick Rosner, Michael Peña and Dax Shepard served as executive producers.
Collaborating behind the scenes were director of photography Mitchell Amundsen (“Ride Along 2”), production designer Maher Ahmad (“Hangover 3”), editor Dan Lebental (“Ant-Man”), costume designer Diane Crooke (TV’s “Parenthood”) and composer Fil Eisler (“Empire”).
ABOUT THE MOVIE
SEX, DRUGS & HIGHWAY PATROL
What happens when you team up a former X-Games star with a busted-up body and a painkiller habit, and an over-sexed undercover Fed with too much confidence, give them each a badge and a bike and set them loose on the sun-baked highways of Southern California?
CHIP happens.
More to the point, if you’re writer/director Dax Shepard, you deliver a buddy cop comedy loaded with enough action, stunts and hard-R humor to push it to the legal limit.
Shepard also stars as Jon, opposite Michael Peña as his partner, Ponch. “This is about two very different guys with vastly different agendas and skill sets, who have to learn how to ride together, pick up the slack for each other and ultimately trust each other with their lives,” Shepard says. And if that sounds a little high-minded, “It also has nudity—though granted, mostly of me—and epic chases, destruction, and explosions. I don’t think we went more than three days on this movie without blowing something up. The action is real, the jumps are real and the fights are almost real.”
In other words, this ain’t your parents’ “CHIPS.”
Jon Baker is a newly minted officer of the California Highway Patrol, CHP for short. Jon’s a mess. But, fueled by optimism, prescription meds and a single-minded desire to make good and win back his ex-wife, he’s ready to face any challenge or humiliation with everything he’s got. For now, that means playing it by the book, keeping his nose clean and writing lots of tickets. Just one problem: he’s stuck on day one with a take-charge partner who doesn’t give a damn about any of that.
Francis Llewellyn Poncherello, aka Ponch, is actually Miami FBI agent Castillo, a guy with a big success rate and the swagger to match. He also has a pathological weakness for women, especially women in yoga pants, which is a much bigger problem now that has to straddle a bike every day. Perpetually cocked and locked, he’s in L.A. undercover to smoke out a dirty-cop robbery ring inside the CHP.
Of course Jon doesn’t know this up front, including the fact that he was picked as Ponch’s partner only because they figured he was too green to ask questions. Or get in the way.
But when things get real out there, these two newest members of the force have to find a way to get past each other’s bulls**t and get on with it, because they have only each other to rely on.
Producer Andrew Panay, who collaborated with Shepard on the 2012 romantic action comedy “Hit & Run,” signed up for the ride as soon as he read the script. “It’s incredibly funny, and wall-to-wall action,” he says. “The comedy is edgy and the action is a little throwback because it’s not a lot of visual effects. We did most of the stunts in-camera, and Dax does a lot of his own stunts, so it feels authentic.”
“I can think of a lot of movies that are funny but I don’t remember the action, or it was just background,” says Peña. “This is obviously a comedy, but Dax wanted the jokes and the stunts to work together so when we transition into the action sequences there’s validity to it. He really gets the setups and the payoffs and how to break down the characters so people can relate.”
It helped that Shepard was writing about something he loves—motorcycles—and that he knew the players. “I started this project knowing Michael and I were Ponch and Jon, so I could play to our strengths. A lot of times you’re writing in a vacuum because you don’t know the cast, but I could be more specific here. My passion is motorcycles and cars, so I knew we’d be doing a lot of riding, and that gave me the freedom to write scenes where we’re talking trash over a chase. All of that definitely informed the kind of story I was going to tell.”
Shepard was committed to showcase a range of stunts with high-performance machines. “I wanted great motorcycle action from a variety of disciplines, so we have motocross-style stunts, road race stunts, drifting, a lot of different things,” he lays out. “We needed bikes that could jump and corner tight with amazing speed and braking, bikes that could handle stairs. But I couldn’t do those things on stock CHP bikes because the logic wouldn’t hold up. The bad guys could have whatever they wanted, and that was a completely different vibe, but I had to figure out how to get Jon and Ponch onto cool motorcycles to catch up with them. That introduced the premise of Ponch being undercover FBI.”
The writer/director also took a page from his own life by giving Jon the need to figure out what makes people tick. “Jon’s always trying to understand why he does what he does. I’m very much interested in what drives me, or what drives other people, so that became a part of the character,” Shepard explains. That translates into Jon trying to analyze his hug-averse partner, or, say, figure out why Ponch requires so much “alone time” in the bathroom multiple times a day…
A running joke in the film, Jon’s touchy-feely observations contrast with Ponch’s more down-and-dirty commentary, like the way he has to enlighten his out-of-circulation partner on the current sexual scene—namely certain back door maneuvers Jon had no idea had gone mainstream.
Either way, what it boils down to is them being themselves. And being guys. “Ponch and Jon come from opposite directions on so many things,” says producer Ravi Mehta. “Not only tight-lipped versus TMI, but Jon’s a stickler for the rules and Ponch likes to fly by the seat of his pants, so they start out not clicking at all. But once they’re through fighting it, and let their guards down, they actually feed off of how different they are. That’s when it becomes more of a bromance and a true partnership.”
That means owning their screw-ups as much as merging their talents.
Citing the inspiration he drew from the late ‘70s/early ‘80s TV series created by Rick Rosner, who is now one of the film’s executive producers, Shepard says, “To me, the key elements of that show were the setting, the bikes, and the fact that Jon and Ponch were heroes.” And as much as those characters were unique to the show, his Jon and Ponch are different. This is a new incarnation, with its own personality—a big-screen “CHIPS” for a new generation that takes the stunts, action, and comedy further than the small screen would allow.
It wouldn’t be the CHP without Southern California. “The CHP is emblematic of California and we worked incredibly hard to keep this production in Los Angeles,” says Mehta. “We made sure L.A. was featured in the art direction and the action, so audiences will see parts of the downtown area as well as beaches and deserts. There’s even a chase through pine trees in the Angeles National Forest.”
“Growing up in Detroit, where it was overcast a lot and freezing cold, I loved L.A.-based films,” says Shepard. “For me it was a two-hour vacation to sunny SoCal.”
But this take on California living is far from laid-back. “The story is constantly moving,” says Vincent D’Onofrio, who stars as Lieutenant Ray Kurtz, a veteran cop with the power to make a whole lot of trouble for the new recruits. “It wows you with the action and the motorcycle scenes. Then so many of these actors are also great comedians and they’re just killing it.”
The “CHIPS” main starring cast includes Adam Brody as Clay Allen, an FBI agent Castillo shoots “accidentally on purpose” in Miami before taking this West Coast gig as Ponch. His arm in a sling, the still-pissed-off Allen follows Castilo to L.A. as the bureau’s point person on the case. Rosa Salazar also stars as CHP officer Ava Perez, who shares Jon’s love of hot bikes…and possibly other things, if only he’d get with the program.
Not surprisingly, “CHIPS” bears little resemblance to the day-to-day lives of actual CHP officers, some of whom worked with the production to keep everyone safe during their location shoots on active roadways. “The officers on set with us were great sports,” says Shepard. “It goes without saying, we have nothing but respect for the job that law enforcement does every day to keep us safe in the real world. Everything we did was to the extreme and played for entertainment.”
In fact, there was a great deal of cooperation between the CHP and the filmmaking team, from informal pre-production meetings over the content and logistics of the script to a tour of the organization’s Sacramento training facility. “During the shoot, they gave us escorts on scouts, which gave us freeway access that would have otherwise been nearly impossible to secure,” Panay recounts. The filmmakers were even granted access to the CHP headquarters in downtown Los Angeles, which, he adds, “was something we had been hoping for and was the pinnacle of our working relationship.”
But in case there’s any doubt about what audiences are in for, “CHIPS” opens with this friendly disclaimer: This film is not endorsed by the California Highway Patrol. At all.
TO SERVE AND BRO-TECT
The oldest rookie to ever join the force, as his supervisor points out, Jon Baker may not seem like an obvious candidate for the job—that is, until his fellow recruits see him ride. Clearly, “The Baker” is still a force to content with on the road, but, says Shepard, “As an X-Games motocross competitor he had sponsors and fans; he had the money and the glory and the great life. That’s all over now. He’s had about 20 surgeries, broken a lot of bones, and he’s not in the best physical shape. He’s in a transition period.”
Mostly, Jon is still reeling from the breakup of his marriage. Karen, played by Shepard’s real-life wife Kristen Bell, is a trophy from his heyday that he can’t let go. He’s convinced he can get her back once he gets out of his slump, so he continues to live in the tiny guest room behind the luxury home they once shared, and that Karen still occupies, just to remain close. And, in spite of her total lack of interest, Shepard offers, “he continues to attend couples therapy. Alone.”
At the same time, the former star athlete is focusing on a new career path he hopes will make his ex take notice. The only thing he really knows how to do is ride a motorcycle, so he picks a profession for which that advantage might tip the odds in his favor.
But, whatever his motives, Shepard notes, “It turns out that once they decide to give him a badge, he takes this job very seriously.”
Not so with Ponch. In his mind, this ace fed is just passing through. He’s here to wrap up his assignment, hang up his helmet and go home. The truth is, Ponch’s high-profile cases have created some high-profile collateral damage, and sending him to California was good for the bureau in more ways than one. Sure, he’s here to break up this insider ring. But, since he was caught sexting with the wife of a drug kingpin he just busted in Miami, it would also be better for everyone if he was out of town, and out of touch, during the trial.
“Yeah, he’s a little bit of a sex addict,” Peña acknowledges.
“I actually like some of Ponch’s quirks,” the actor continues. “He’s kind of clumsy, for one. He thinks he can do anything, so, even though he can’t really ride a bike that well, he’s always pushing that limit. His ego gets in the way and sometimes he crashes. But beyond that, he’s capable at what he does and he’s really focused on the case, and I like that about him.”
Peña’s portrayal, Mehta feels, “preserves the machismo of the character while bringing a whole level of comedy to it with these very human flaws.”
For Shepard, “I couldn’t see anyone but Michael in this role. He’s a phenomenal actor and effortlessly charismatic, even when he needs to be angry or embarrassed.”
Matched up with Jon, it’s a sure bet he’s gonna be angry and embarrassed a lot.
What Ponch expects in a partner is someone who can follow orders, keep his mouth shut and not draw too much attention. Unfortunately, none of those things describe Jon. On the other hand, Jon’s ideal partner would be a generally more easygoing guy who knows how to take a bunny hill without rolling off his ride, and is open to a little meaningful conversation from time to time.
“So much of the story is about their dynamic,” says Peña. “Ponch is very logical and focused on the present, and Jon is more in tune with his feelings and about fixing his marriage, like he’s always ‘three beers too deep’ with the intimacy.”
To his credit, Ponch comes to grudgingly acknowledge Jon’s instincts as a detective, not to mention his insane skills on two wheels. As they continue to work together, with all the minute-by-minute sacrifices and real heroism that entails, they begin to understand more about each other. “Ponch starts to meet Jon in the middle and maybe even attempt a more emotional point of view, and it’s funny to watch him try out this completely unfamiliar approach,” he adds.
The bottom line is, they have a job to do. Someone in the CHP has been running a series of armored car robberies with black-and-whites and motorcycles, in broad daylight, to the tune of millions of dollars. And that’s not all. There was a suspicious suicide at one of the recent heists, which gives the guys their first promising lead. The questions are: who in the department is involved? Who knows what’s going on and who doesn’t?
Their investigation soon turns toward Ray Kurtz, played by Vincent D’Onofrio. Whether or not he proves to be one of the cops they’re after, no one denies that Kurtz is one scary dude.
As D’Onofrio sees it, “Kurtz has been around a long time and he’s a bit of a hardass, but he’s also a really good cop and I think everyone on his team respects him. He’s in a tough situation and he has to get out of it. Whenever I play characters like this, I don’t play them necessarily as good guys or bad guys but just people. I feel for his situation and the difficult things he has to do, to get what he needs done, and that’s his part of the story.
“He has a problem with Ponch right away, and goes after him,” D’Onofrio goes on to reveal, “but there are also moments of lightness where they’re talking back and forth and it’s just crazy and funny. We did different versions, from super funny to serious, because my character has issues and you don’t know what’s going to work and how far you can go.”
As Jon and Ponch dig deeper into the case and find new ways to run afoul of Kurtz, they also catch the attention of officers Ava Perez and Lindsey Taylor—played by Rosa Salazar and Jessica McNamee. Lindsey calls Ponch for herself, while Ava sets her sights on fellow bike enthusiast Jon. At least that’s what he thinks when she invites him on an off-road excursion.
Extenuating circumstances would never stand between Ponch and a hot date, but with Jon it’s more complicated. At the first hint of Ava’s interest, he launches into full disclosure. Says Salazar, “It’s touching that he wants to repair his marriage and says so. He’s like an open wound, vulnerable, but in a nice way. Ava likes that, and she’s obviously attracted to him but she’s a brass-tacks type of woman, very straightforward and real, and what she actually says is, ‘Get over yourself. I just asked you to go for a ride.’”
“It’s important that Ava have the upper hand on Jon at all times,” Shepard comments. “She’s witty and sarcastic, cool and tough. She loves motorcycles and she loves being a cop. I worked with Rosa on ‘Parenthood’ and she’s wonderful. She brings great ideas to the table.”
On reading the script, Salazar recalls, “It was the funniest thing I’d read in forever but that’s not surprising because Dax is the funniest guy you’ll ever meet.” About the action, she thought, “I’m gonna get so hurt on this movie. I’m going to be jumping over barriers and there’s fire, and fights, and helicopters. But I love action-comedy and Dax assured me it would all be safe and it really was a blast.”
Ponch, meanwhile, heats things up with Lindsey. “I get to kick ass and chase bad guys around,” McNamee says. “The relationship Lindsey strikes up with Ponch is kind of unlikely and unexpected, so it’s cool to play into all of that. Jon and Ponch certainly come in and shake things up. I think for Ava and Lindsey there’s a kind of ‘fresh meat’ instinct to it, but they also find them endearing and charming in their own odd little ways.’”
Throughout all of this, Ponch touches base with his former FBI colleague turned bureau contact Clay Allen. Supposedly calling the shots on the case, Allen mostly ends up eating Ponch’s dust after arriving five minutes late to the party every time. It’s a role based largely on “anger and indignation,” observes Adam Brody. “When Allen and Castillo—now Ponch—were working together in Miami, things went south. Ponch shot a suspect through Allen’s shoulder and he’s still mad about it. He feels that wasn’t necessary.”
Shepard credits Brody’s expressions and keen timing for elevating the role beyond his expectations. “He’s just so funny and so quick—anything you throw at him, he will say it in such a way that immediately makes it twice as entertaining.”
Adds Brody, “At first, it looked like the part was mostly playing straight man for Ponch, but when I arrived on set it was, no, what they want is for Allen to be an idiot. And I really liked that, because I love playing an idiot.”
“Dax’s dialogue is amazing, so we had all these well drawn characters on the page,” says Panay, “but what we looked for in assembling this fantastic cast were actors who could also push the comedy in their own way. Dax likes everyone to open up and swing big.”
Also suiting up for the “CHIPS” cast is Isiah Whitlock Jr. as Ponch’s FBI boss, Peterson, who runs the gamut from disgusted and ticked off to full-on apoplectic. But he still manages to find laughs in anything that puts his least-favorite employee on the hot seat. Jane Kazcmarek is Ponch’s supervisor Captain Lindel, a woman with a shockingly relaxed sense of protocol; Richard T. Jones is officer Parish, the wrong man with whom to pick a fight; David Koechner is Pat, a wrestling trainer who doesn’t appreciate Jon’s unconventional technique; and actor/environmental activist Ed Begley Jr. takes an ironic turn in the unlikeliest role his fans could imagine, for reasons that will be obvious the instant he speeds into frame … in a Ferrari.
Kristen Bell dives into the role of Jon Baker’s carefree ex, Karen, the undeserving object of his self-improvement efforts. Marking her fourth big-screen collaboration with Shepard, Bell says, “Karen needs to be the person audiences don’t want for Jon. They should be shouting, ‘No, don’t do it!’ Karen is vain and all about appearances, and she thinks she’s the ultimate prize. Things started going south in their marriage the day he stopped placing first in his events. That’s the kind of person she is.
“Dax almost didn’t cast me,” Bell contiues. “After he wrote the role, he sat me down and said, ‘I’m not positive you can be as unlikable as I need you to be for this,’ which I took both as a compliment and an insult,” she laughs. “Because I can be very unlikable.”
SETTING EACH OTHER RIGHT
WHEN THINGS GO WRONG
To boost the level of action on “CHIPS,” from bridges to bathtubs, Shepard reunited with renowned stunt performer Steve De Castro. De Castro, who first served as stunt coordinator for him on “Hit & Run,” enlisted pros as well as the best stunt riders to execute the trickiest and most spectacular maneuvers. Also on board were special effects coordinator Larz Anderson, production designer Maher Ahmad, and cinematographer Mitchell Amundsen.
“With Mitch, you get kinetic action; the camera is always moving. He’s a cowboy,” says Ravi Mehta, who had worked with Amundsen and knew he would be a good fit. “Selecting key department heads is just like casting, you have to put the right pieces together.”
“He shot a ‘Bourne,’ he shot ‘Mission Impossible’ and ‘Transformers,’” Shepard offers in short, “so this is a guy who’s been in that pursuit vehicle and operating a crane for hundreds of hours. I had a very accomplished team all around. We were in very good hands.”
Shepard kept the action as real as possible. “That was our whole approach. The most we did digitally was to swap out a bike, so generally if you see something happening on screen, it happened,” he confirms. “Everything the motorcycles do in this movie was actually done by someone. And as much as I could put myself or Michael into it, I would. For example, we got Michael to do his own burnout in a scene and it got a fantastic reaction from him.”
The film opens with a bank robbery, shootout and pursuit through the crowded streets of Long Beach, which doubled for Ponch’s home town of Miami. In the driver’s seat of the lead car, Ponch makes no distinction between the road and the sidewalk. For audiences, it’s an intro to the ride they are embarking on, and to Ponch a sign of things to come, as this chase is the prelude to a bigger and crazier one set in Los Angeles.
The L.A. sequence begins with Jon and Ponch after a suspect in a residential neighborhood that opens onto city streets, then takes them up and down a parking structure, across the beach and into the L.A. river basin before culminating on Downtown’s 4th Street Bridge. There, all hell breaks loose with cars and motorcycles, a helicopter, a SWAT Humvee, a motorhome in the wrong place at the wrong time and yes, even a bicycle cop.
De Castro outlines one of this scene’s key beats: “We had 100 stunt performers and extras on the beach, with bikes jumping into the sand, going through volleyball nets and heading up a sand dune. As Jon and the bad guy hit the berm, the bad guy is in front and spins a 180 in mid air, then shoots at Jon’s leg. That’s X-Games gold medalist Lance Coury. It’s a 75-foot jump. When you see the bike spin around it’s what they call a turndown, but he’s doing it one-handed, which he’d never done before. Then following him over the gap is Dave Castillo, an AMA pro rider who won the Motocross 500. For them to jump 75 feet and so close to each other, with Lance turning the bike 180 degrees, it’s just incredible.”
Production closed the 4th Street Bridge for the melee and mash-up between the Hummer and the bulky motorhome. “Dax wanted to do it practically so we drove a stock H1 Hummer straight through a stock RV at 45 miles an hour,” De Castro states.
Shepard attests, “It was crazy. I’ve lived in L.A. for 20 years and I’ve driven across that bridge a thousand times, and to have it as a playground for two straight days to demolish motorhomes and crash motorcycles was pretty amazing. There were many times when I thought, ‘I can’t believe we are allowed to do this.’ We owned a whole exit off the 210 Freeway to blow up a propane tank with helicopters circling and a fireball nine stories high. There are actual cops watching you peel out and do donuts and they’re giving you the thumbs up, which is not a side of law enforcement you usually get to see.”
Bike action being a huge component of the story, the filmmakers needed equipment to support it in style. Shepard used a range of brands and models, some stock and some custom, including what he calls “a smattering of Harleys and the big BMW snowmobiles,” like the BMW RT1200 standard police models. For D’Onofrio’s ride, he worked with Harley Davidson to design a custom Electra Glide that, Shepard says, “shoots six foot blue flames out the back and has titanium pegs that shower sparks.”
Primarily the film featured one of the director’s personal favorites: Ducati, and in particular the Ducati Hypermotard, a versatile and durable model which became Jon and Ponch’s updated “hero” bikes. “Every time we’re jumping, sliding, drifting, stoppie’ing or free endo’ing them, they were all stock Ducatis,” he says, in the parlance of the initiated. Even on the beach, the Hypermotards served, with modified knobby tires in front and paddles in back, while retaining their signature look and sound.
De Castro comments, “Michael Peña had just started riding and he did a great job, and Vincent D’Onofrio hadn’t ridden a bike for maybe 20 years but he hopped right back on and we got the shots we needed.” As for Dax, “He would have made an excellent stunt guy. He’s a high-level rider on both street and dirt, so it was a great position for me to be in. I could say, “Hey Dax, I need you to come in faster, I need you to come in hotter. I’m gonna put the camera here and we’re gonna counter with you,’ and still we know everyone would be safe and it would look amazing.”
Even so, Shepard admits feeling humbled alongside the pro talent, including his double, Joe Dryden, a pioneer of the street bike freestyle. “Before I started this movie I thought I was really great at riding motorcycles, I would have given myself a 9. And now that I’ve seen some of the best riders in the world I feel a little weak,” he allows.
“There were a couple of times when Dax wanted to do a stunt but De Castro said, ‘No, you’re not doing that,’” adds Peña. “That’s Steve’s job. He makes it fun but safe. But with a film like this, you really get psyched up to be part of the action.”
Stunt riders also took cameras directly into the fray not only with Pursuit vehicles, but with Covert Camera Bikes, electric motorcycles that can reach 100mph with cameras in front and back. Perfect for tight situations and able to dolly as needed, they’re effective for bringing audiences into the moment.
The stunt team worked closely with FX supervisor Anderson and production designer Ahmad, as sets were built and destroyed. As the big chase segued into the confrontation on the bridge, Shepard gives kudos to “our special effects genius Larz for figuring out how to slide this massive 35-foot RV along the asphalt. Larz designed a pneumatic cylinder to lift the back wheels. It slides, then you flip a switch and it comes back up.”
Following the slide, Anderson picks up, “we switched it out for another motorhome that was pre-scored and loaded with a bunch of stuff, held together by nothing, so when it’s hit, it all goes flying. Dax was great to work with. He really knows what he wants and he’s open to other ideas that might embellish that—especially if it involves fire or explosions.” Anderson had plenty of opportunity for that, including the challenge of safely igniting a propane truck alongside a hillside full of brush, for which he made a tank out of foam. Later, as a truck slams into Ponch’s bike and drags it down the road, he created a literal trail of fire.
Anderson’s handiwork also appears in one of the film’s major set pieces, a warehouse compound north of Los Angeles near a popular biking site of canyons and valleys known as The Devil’s Punchbowl. It was the perfect setting for the final showdown involving a variety of vehicles, gunplay and hand-to-hand takedowns, all of which leads to a massive explosion.
The filmmakers found a property of several acres of desert land, housing a private home, barn and outbuildings that would add peripherally to the set. Says production designer Ahmad, “It had everything we needed except the main building, the warehouse, so I found a spot Dax liked and we built the whole thing from scratch. Given that the building was for the big finale and needed to be blown up, set on fire and driven through, it was a virtual certainty we would have to build it. It was about 50 by 100 feet, 25 feet tall, with dozens of windows. We poured a concrete floor. Then we dressed the inside with old cars and junk, and there was enough space outside to build the wall for the bikes to go over.”
“Maher is brilliant,” Shepard proclaims. “I’d show up to sets and they’d be five times better than I even dreamt when I was writing it. If we had a fight scene, I’d ask, ‘What can I break in this room?’ And he’d say, “That’s breakable, that’s breakable, that chair, that desk, that table, that’s fake,’ and you’re like, ‘Oh my God, I can do anything in here.”
But for all the story’s high-octane action, one stunt audiences will not likely forget unfolds on a more intimate scale. After a physically taxing day, Jon wakes up unable to move his wrecked body or reach his meds. He needs a therapeutic soak and calls on a very reluctant Ponch for help getting into the tub.
Ponch trips, catapulting his naked partner in the general vicinity of the bathtub.
“I had to get into pretty good shape for that, so I could do all my nude stuff on week one and then resume eating what I wanted for the rest of the shoot,” says Shepard with typical good humor. “I had a harness and a cable, and I was on a ratchet, so, as soon as he lets go they hit the hammer and I just flew into the wall. It also spun me, so I hit the wall and then went upside down into the tub, bare naked, in front of my crew that just met me two days before.”
“I remember a fair amount of laughter that day,” Peña confirms.
The tub was made of rubber, as was the wall that absorbed Shepard’s impact. “The room had to be high enough for the stunt and FX guys to run a track up along the ceiling,” says Ahmad, who built the bedroom and bathroom comprising the guest house from an existing home’s dining and living rooms, with an eye toward allowing a straight line trajectory from the bed to the tub.
The designer modified numerous other practical locations, including the interior of a suburban home that gets trashed in a fight between Jon and Ponch and an officer who doesn’t appreciate their snooping. But the set he had the most fun creating was the drug den.
“It had to be filthy and disgusting,” he emphasizes. “The direction I got from Dax was that we couldn’t push it too far, and that’s what we did. We laid down pre-grunge-ified linoleum to protect the existing wood floors. Then we painted and did horrible things to the walls and brought awful furniture in, like stained mattresses. The kitchen was all moldy and overgrown with loathsome stuff and rotten food, and we learned a lot about making kitty poop with modeling clay. To accelerate its drying we put it into a microwave oven at the production office and one batch got away from us. It set off the smoke detectors and we had to evacuate the building. But it was the bathroom that just grossed everyone out. It was completely sanitary and smelled fine but it looked awful. I love it when a set elicits such an enthusiastic reaction from the crew.”
When Jon enters the house and is physically overcome by the stench, it’s a fair bet that members of the audience will be right there with him—their hands to their mouths.
Another “CHIPS” location included the Cal Poly Pomona College’s south campus, for scenes set in the Police Academy locker room and gym. The production also shot interiors and the parking lot of the active L.A. Central CHP Center, just south of downtown.
Finally, as a Valentine to locals, the production included a scene of Jon and Ponch at an Original Tommy’s burger stand—a Southern California institution—and not just any Tommy’s, but the one that started it all, at Rampart and Beverly Boulevards.
Overall, Panay says, “Dax went for an authentic L.A. feel. This film was shot entirely on practical, Southern California locations. We did build and augment some sets but we weren’t on soundstages and everything was right here, real and tangible. Our location team found so many great spots to showcase the action and help make L.A. itself an essential part of the story.”
“What I like best about it is the old-school action, which we put together with a lot of love and I think consequently has a really good vibe,” says Shepard, “not to mention great explosions and amazing stunts, and a lot of comedy. I hope every scene is as fun for audiences as it was for us, making it.”
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