~ Chris #16 Demaras ~
Last week there was a story in the paper about a getaway driver that Toronto Police captured. Apparently he’d been the crime scene escape artist involved in three serious offenses recently. I thought about the hero from ‘Baby Driver’ and the anti-hero from ‘Drive’ and I found myself feeling bad that the getaway driver was caught.
Why is the notion of the getaway driver so fascinating to people? It’s different than rooting for Al Pacino in a gangster movie. The getaway driver doesn’t do the shooting or robbing. He waits in the car while the bad guys do their dirty work. His job is to help everyone escape.
I thought about movies I watched as a kid that always had me rooting for the getaway driver. It wasn’t just that he got to speed through city streets; even the cops could do that. It’s the idea of escaping. The other guy might be the cops, but they’re corrupt cops. They’re the bad guys, and the getaway driver is the good guy escaping capture, imprisonment or oppression.
Most of our lives are predictable. Even our drive to work is done on auto-pilot where you’re driving on muscle memory and totally miss your highway off ramp. The getaway driver is the queen on the chess board. Totally unpredictable, moving in any direction. I’m going back to watch “getaway driver” movie every Friday this winter to see what fascinated me about them..
