"The whole movie is on the bike," says Gordon-Levitt. "I trained for six weeks or so, five days a week, leading up to shooting. I had to be in good enough shape to spend 12 hours a day doing those scenes. I knew I wouldn't be able to say, 'Oh, I'm tired,' while a 500-person film crew was waiting for me to catch my breath."

But even though he took his role and the preparation it required seriously, it wasn't strictly business for him. "I just loved the idea of riding a bike in New York City all summer," he says. "I've done a lot of different movies and it's always really fulfilling, but this job in particular was fun. Not just satisfying -- big-smile-on-my-face fun."

Gordon-Levitt was also attracted to the project by his character -- one who is very clearly living for today and not worried about tomorrow. "He has a very present-oriented personality -- he's not so much about the future or anything other than right here, right now. And I think as the movie goes on, it reveals the merits of that way of present living, but also, in Wilee's relationship with Vanessa, its flaws."

For the role of Vanessa, Wilee's fellow bike messenger and on-again, off-again girlfriend, Koepp cast Dania Ramirez. Gordon-Levitt and Ramirez trained together in Los Angeles before filming began. "Actors talk about being vulnerable, but there's no vulnerability quite like going down a hill at 40 miles an hour with no brakes -- I don't know a lot of actresses out there that would throw themselves into it and get on a fixed-gear bike and go for it," Koepp says. "But she really did. I love working with people who are game like that."

The entire cast and crew spent time with real bike messengers, but Ramirez says her research was especially informative. "I went around with this one girl who was a bike messenger, and what I saw was that the stuff that women bike messengers have to put up with is the same stuff women have to put up with in any field." Just to get by, she says, women bike messengers need to fight a male-dominated system. "You're out there and need to make yourself seen. You let people know that you're nothing to be messed with, and that's especially true in New York City. The one thing that I can say about all these female bike messengers that I've met is that they're tough cookies."



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