♪ Happy birthday to you ♪
♪ Happy birthday to you ♪
♪ Happy birthday dear Paul ♪
- The reason why we all were
devastated about Paul Walker
is because he's the
nicest dude on human feet.
♪ Happy birthday to you ♪
- [Woman] Make a wish.
- Paul had real
relationships with everybody.
You felt his love.
You felt his spirit.
You felt his energy.
You felt the morale, the
camaraderie, the inclusion.
- [Cameraperson] Birthday
boy, look this way.
Paul, look this way.
(somber instrumental music)
- He was somebody that cared,
and he was somebody that
really was experiencing life
and on the daily, trying to
experience it to the fullest.
- Never back down mindset,
you know, go big or go home.
- He was just a kid from
(murmuring), you know?
The gun-toting hippie,
balance of opposites.
You know, a lover and a fighter.
- He got into a lot of
fights when he was younger.
He didn't lose very many fights.
He would've been a great
fireman.
He likes to grind, he's
not afraid to get dirty,
talks a lot of trash; he just
fits in.
- I just thought he was the
coolest guy in the world
and had nothing to do
with the movies, nothing.
- He was a guy who's getting
phone calls
left and right from creditors,
and right in the middle of that,
he's like, dude, I'm gonna be a
dad.
- Ladies and gentlemen,
give it up for Paul Walker.
All the ladies flip out.
- When you meet this dude,
you felt like he jumped out of a
magazine.
It was like, that's who he was.
- The cinema didn't capture it
all, couldn't capture it all.
- Paul was always an actor who
had
one foot in and one foot out.
He would just disappear.
- When Paul wasn't making
movies, he wasn't in LA.
He wasn't even in the country.
He would be, like, in the
Amazon,
or he'd be, like, diving with
sharks.
- Hey, we got him hooked good!
- Each time he appeared
in a Shark Week episode,
he donated to my nonprofit.
He didn't even tell me.
- He did take care of
people to the point where
he wasn't looking after himself.
- He pretty much made a decision
that he was gonna back
away from Hollywood.
- He was like, "Time?
"I don't have time, I don't get
time."
You know?
"I got money, I don't got time."
- He really liked the cars,
and on those movies he got into
it.
He could tell you what
size turbos the cars had,
or what they should do
different to make 'em better,
and the other actors don't even
know
how to drive a manual
transmission car.
He did his homework like nobody
else.
- I always believed the subject
matter
had a chance to be successful,
but when I walked out of that
screening,
I knew he was a movie star.
- I'm enjoying it, I have
a blast, I love my job.
I get to travel.
Gosh, I mean, it's just amazing.
I mean, this has really
been going on for me now,
like, maybe six years.
I think Pleasantville I
did, like, six years ago.
- Please welcome Vin Diesel
and Paul Walker, boys.
(audience screaming)
- You know, I don't ever want it
to end.
- To be young, handsome,
making all that money.
The token negro and the
token white man in Miami.
It was hard to get a lot of
work done out there, you know?
My God.
- I don't know, we just
got along really well.
The problem really was though is
like,
we got along so well that we
were
screwing around more half the
time.
- While you're supposed to be
working.
- Yeah, exactly.
- Yeah.
- And so we got, you know,
John Singleton barking at us
every once in a while
telling us to get serious.
- What up to John Singleton.
- The night when I did a big
car jump over a drawbridge,
yeah, in a little Nissan
Skyline with no suspension,
so it was a hard landing.
- Woo!
(mechanical crunching)
- He would ask me how big the
hits were,
and how much it really
hurt, you know what I mean?
He was so curious on that part
of it.
- Paul Walker was, like,
born for this role.
It was crazy.
I feel like we're, like, actors
that was in Paul's movie.
Because everything that's tied
into cars
and adrenaline, it was Paul's
world.
(car engine revving)
Some dudes, where they handsome,
and they become arrogant with it
and they're unapproachable.
As a man, he wasn't
intimidating,
because he was so regular,
and so grounded, and so cool.
He was the guy that every
woman wanted to be with
and every man wanted to be like.
- I think after "Fast and
Furious 1,"
he became much more
hyper-sensitive
to what he wanted to do.
He didn't wanna live in
Hollywood.
Whenever he wasn't working,
he would be off somewhere on a
boat
or hiding under a tree, or
doing whatever he was doing.
- He'd always say, like, I
wanted to be a Park Ranger.
You know, make $28 grand a year,
and like, live in the
wilderness.
Like, that's really what he
wanted to do.
- Paul looked around hard
where he wanted to settle down
because he was very nomadic.
Santa Barbara is a special
place.
- [Paul] Most of my time is
spent,
you know, Santa Barbara north.
As I've grown older, I
appreciate more
where it's more lush and more
green.
There's nowhere else like it on
Earth.
It's unique.
- Paul, when he got the place
up in Santa Barbara, he was so
excited.
It was the first time I'd
seen him buy something
where he was like, you know,
really,
like, I worked and I got this.
It was really hard to get to.
It was a seasonal road.
The dirt that you had to go up
had a place where you
could go up there and hide.
Take a shower for three or
four days, or five days,
and run around, get muddy and
plant trees
and shoot and, you know,
just do guy shit, you know?
(off-road vehicle engine
buzzing)
- Oh, I thought I was
gone for sure. (laughing)
- It was his playground.
He was a big kid.
He was a big kid.
- Paul liked to race cars.
Not street racing but
really race cars on tracks.
- Our common interest was cars.
Cars brought us together.
He walk it over to me,
go, "Hey, are you the guy
who just bought my GT3?"
Then, yeah, I told him that I'm
the guy
and I also told him that, you
know,
a man should never sell
his GT3 in his life.
And from that moment on,
we become close friend.
(race car engine revving)
He loves things that's fast.
Always evolving.
Paul built that along with
Roger.
They put together a team
and he start hanging around more
and more with professional
drivers,
and he start really learning
a lot of great skills with cars.
He went from a movie character
to really become a race car
driver.
A lot of respect for that.
- He truly loved the Nissan
Skyline
and those kind of cars
more than muscle cars.
He liked the technical
part and the better brakes
and all the stuff, but
then really what he drove
in his everyday life was a
Tacoma truck.
He wanted somebody to ding him,
and he'd like, oh, don't worry
about it,
and they'd just be shocked.
- If he was here right now,
and, you know, had something
cool parked outside,
and you made a comment
about how cool his car is,
he would literally throw the
keys at you
and say just, cool, go have fun.
It didn't matter, like, when
he didn't have anything at all
and then when he had everything.
Like, nothing about him changed.
- Paul had a passage
from George Bernard Shaw
that said, you know, I
want to be all used up.
You know, I'm not just
some flickering candle.
I'm gonna be a torch.
When I'm done, I wanna
be thrown completely used
on the trash heap of life.
And I can actually say
he did a lot of things
that made a lot of difference
in a lot of people's lives.
He was a giver.
- What is success to you?
- [Interviewer] Success
is balance in life.
That's the most difficult thing
to find.
- Every single person in my
family,
every single person
that calls Paul a friend
has been told by Paul from his
mouth,
"This is the last one.
"Oh, this is the last one.
"This is the last one and I'm
done."
Heard that forever.
But he couldn't walk away.
He couldn't quite walk
away yet in his mind,
and that's one thing
that's, like, so killer.
It sucks so bad about, you know,
he never got to really enjoy,
like,
just watching his daughter grow
up
and enjoy everything he
had worked so hard for.
He was finally starting to
really kinda put that together
and like (sighing) and
then just got cut short.
(floaty chime noise)
