Double-Play
Dangers
Stunt specialists again sub for the stars in this year's biggest action films.
May 15, 2002
By Todd Longwell
During his tenure as superspy James Bond, actor Roger Moore was often asked if he did his own stunts. His standard reply was, "Yes. And I do all my own lying." Today, stars far less witty and candid often boast that they're involved in virtually every piece of hair-raising action you see on the screen. In truth, they are most likely either a) starring in a stage-bound melodrama, or b) like Moore, doing their own lying.
Why? First, only a director with a career death wish would unnecessarily put a star in harm's way and risk shutting down a multimillion-dollar production. Secondly, no one star or stunt person, for that matter, is an accomplished enough driver, cyclist, gymnast, rock climber or parachutist to pull off all the daring feats regularly executed by your average action-movie hero.
The people who bring all this talent together are the stunt coordinators, who often double as second-unit directors, fleshing out the action in the script and even helming entire stunt sequences while the above-the-title director is off filming actors running lines in another soundstage, city or continent. With a growing number of action-heavy movies filling up studios' slates -- including such summer releases as "Men in Black 2," "Minority Report," "XXX" and "Windtalkers" and the currently shooting "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines" and "Daredevil" -- stunt coordinators have become an increasingly vital ingredient in Hollywood's recipe for boxoffice success.
These experts are usually veteran stunt people who are more than willing to let others take falls for them while they choreograph the action, but sometimes circumstance calls them into duty, as was the case with stunt coordinator and second-unit director Kenny Bates ("Pearl Harbor") on the set of Touchstone's action-comedy "Bad Company" (opening June 7), which filmed in Prague last year.
A low-speed van turnover intended for the climax of a car chase proved to be dull and unconvincing, so they decided to shoot the stunt over again with the van barreling down the road at 60 mph.
"It was close to the end of the shoot," Bates recalls. "I had a crew with me but nobody with the background that the studio would sign off on to do the stunt. So I had to drive."
The van had a reinforced roll cage, and Bates wore a helmet, a carbon-fiber collar and a five-point harness. But, in spite of these precautions, when the nitrogen cannon installed underneath the speeding van was triggered, the vehicle's resulting four-and-a-half-revolution tumble knocked Bates out cold.
"It wasn't the first time," Bates says of his brief loss of consciousness. "When you turn something over, there's a good chance you're going to get knocked out; it's part of the deal."
On Dimension Films' "Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams" (Aug. 7), stunt coordinator Jeff Dashnaw ("Spy Kids") could not risk any such injuries to his juvenile leads, Alexa Vega (age 13) and Daryl Sabara (age 9), nor their underage doubles, but he still had to make the action appear death defying.
One particularly challenging scene had the young stars engaging in a sword fight (with CGI skeletons to be added later) atop a narrow boulder on a rocky precipice high above the Rio Grande in Lajitas, Mexico. Ten feet below the boulder, nature had provided them with a rocky shelf that would prevent the actors from falling into the abyss. "We framed out the bottom, and it looked like they were 800 feet up in the air," says writer-director Robert Rodriguez. "It's like safety-net mountain."
But a 10-foot fall onto rock could still be fatal, so Dashnaw fit the actors and their doubles (including one of his own kids) with hidden padding and harnesses attached to wires that could be digitally erased in post.
"I told the kids, 'If you ever get uncomfortable, no one is going to make fun of you,'" Dashnaw recalls. "But the kids had less of a problem with it than anybody."
Besides, the wires were so secure, Rodriguez says, that "they couldn't even jump off even if they wanted to."
As the stunt coordinator and second-unit director on the three most recent James Bond spectaculars, including MGM's upcoming "Die Another Day" (Nov. 22), Vic Armstrong works with one of the most seasoned stunt teams in the business. During the course of its 40-year, 20-film history, the Bond series has written and rewritten the book on spectacular stunts, which makes Armstrong's task of coming up with original feats a daunting one, particularly when it comes to the trademark precredit sequence.
"There are times when I lie awake at night and think, 'Oh, my God, how can I do it differently?'" laments Armstrong, who began his career with the 007 franchise as a stuntman on "You Only Live Twice" (1967). "There are only so many things you can do."
This time out, the opening sequence centers on a hovercraft chase, but Armstrong's favorite set piece in the film is a high-speed pursuit across an iceberg-studded glacier involving two of the world's most expensive cars, an Aston Martin Vanquish ($228,000) and a Jaguar XKR ($98,330).
"We took the original engines out and put in our own V-8 racing engines and four-wheel drive units," says Armstrong, who prepared four cars of each model for the two-week shoot. "The total cost of the modifications was #1.25 million ($1.8 million)."
Although there have been car chases across frozen terrain in previous Bond films, Armstrong promises this one is the topper. Weaving in and out of icebergs jutting from the glacier, the vehicles -- driven by doubles for Pierce Brosnan (Bond) and Rick Yune (the villainous Zao) -- execute slides, spins and various other high-speed maneuvers. "I wrote it like a ballet, almost, with these cars floating on ice," Armstrong says.
The ice only achieved sufficient thickness two weeks before the shoot, and by the time they wrapped, it was beginning to melt. So Armstrong wisely decided to film shots of the two-ton cars turning over on an iced-over British airfield at a later date, along with inserts of Brosnan and Yune.
As fans will attest, Asian action star Jackie Chan is no fan of insert shots. He is the one movie star who, over the course of his career, truly has done the bulk of his own stunts -- without the aid of doubles or CGI -- and he likes to make sure that his face is clearly visible on-screen, so audiences know he's the one risking life and limb.
"Never mind his acting, he is a stunt man," says Branko Racki, stunt coordinator and second unit director on the DreamWorks action-filled comedy "The Tuxedo" (Oct. 4), in which Chan plays an ordinary guy whose life is turned upside down when he comes into possession of a secret agent's gizmo-packed formal wear. "I've seen guys who've been in the business a long time, and no one is as calm and cool as he is."
DreamWorks agreed to let Chan -- who has suffered a frightening array of injuries while making films in Hong Kong, including a life-threatening skull fracture that left him with a permanent hole in his head -- do some of his own stunts for "The Tuxedo," including a 120-foot fall on a descender (a device that lowers a stunt person on a wire at a controlled rate of speed). But with others, such as a scene in which Chan was to hang from a wire attached to a crane and pretend to run after a car piloted by co-star Jennifer Love Hewitt (the tux gives his character superhuman speed), the studio said "no go." Yet, Chan was undeterred.
"He just jumped on it and went," Racki marvels. "He said, 'I'm doing it; I don't care what they say.'"
While Chan has certainly earned the right to say he does his own stunts, most stars who make the claim could most generously be described as shameless fibbers. But according to Bates, who earlier in his career did the daring rooftop fire-hose leap for Bruce Willis' character in "Die Hard," that's simply how the business works: "We're paid for them to take credit."
Stunt specialists again sub for the stars in this year's biggest action films.
May 15, 2002
By Todd Longwell
During his tenure as superspy James Bond, actor Roger Moore was often asked if he did his own stunts. His standard reply was, "Yes. And I do all my own lying." Today, stars far less witty and candid often boast that they're involved in virtually every piece of hair-raising action you see on the screen. In truth, they are most likely either a) starring in a stage-bound melodrama, or b) like Moore, doing their own lying.
Why? First, only a director with a career death wish would unnecessarily put a star in harm's way and risk shutting down a multimillion-dollar production. Secondly, no one star or stunt person, for that matter, is an accomplished enough driver, cyclist, gymnast, rock climber or parachutist to pull off all the daring feats regularly executed by your average action-movie hero.
The people who bring all this talent together are the stunt coordinators, who often double as second-unit directors, fleshing out the action in the script and even helming entire stunt sequences while the above-the-title director is off filming actors running lines in another soundstage, city or continent. With a growing number of action-heavy movies filling up studios' slates -- including such summer releases as "Men in Black 2," "Minority Report," "XXX" and "Windtalkers" and the currently shooting "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines" and "Daredevil" -- stunt coordinators have become an increasingly vital ingredient in Hollywood's recipe for boxoffice success.
These experts are usually veteran stunt people who are more than willing to let others take falls for them while they choreograph the action, but sometimes circumstance calls them into duty, as was the case with stunt coordinator and second-unit director Kenny Bates ("Pearl Harbor") on the set of Touchstone's action-comedy "Bad Company" (opening June 7), which filmed in Prague last year.
A low-speed van turnover intended for the climax of a car chase proved to be dull and unconvincing, so they decided to shoot the stunt over again with the van barreling down the road at 60 mph.
"It was close to the end of the shoot," Bates recalls. "I had a crew with me but nobody with the background that the studio would sign off on to do the stunt. So I had to drive."
The van had a reinforced roll cage, and Bates wore a helmet, a carbon-fiber collar and a five-point harness. But, in spite of these precautions, when the nitrogen cannon installed underneath the speeding van was triggered, the vehicle's resulting four-and-a-half-revolution tumble knocked Bates out cold.
"It wasn't the first time," Bates says of his brief loss of consciousness. "When you turn something over, there's a good chance you're going to get knocked out; it's part of the deal."
On Dimension Films' "Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams" (Aug. 7), stunt coordinator Jeff Dashnaw ("Spy Kids") could not risk any such injuries to his juvenile leads, Alexa Vega (age 13) and Daryl Sabara (age 9), nor their underage doubles, but he still had to make the action appear death defying.
One particularly challenging scene had the young stars engaging in a sword fight (with CGI skeletons to be added later) atop a narrow boulder on a rocky precipice high above the Rio Grande in Lajitas, Mexico. Ten feet below the boulder, nature had provided them with a rocky shelf that would prevent the actors from falling into the abyss. "We framed out the bottom, and it looked like they were 800 feet up in the air," says writer-director Robert Rodriguez. "It's like safety-net mountain."
But a 10-foot fall onto rock could still be fatal, so Dashnaw fit the actors and their doubles (including one of his own kids) with hidden padding and harnesses attached to wires that could be digitally erased in post.
"I told the kids, 'If you ever get uncomfortable, no one is going to make fun of you,'" Dashnaw recalls. "But the kids had less of a problem with it than anybody."
Besides, the wires were so secure, Rodriguez says, that "they couldn't even jump off even if they wanted to."
As the stunt coordinator and second-unit director on the three most recent James Bond spectaculars, including MGM's upcoming "Die Another Day" (Nov. 22), Vic Armstrong works with one of the most seasoned stunt teams in the business. During the course of its 40-year, 20-film history, the Bond series has written and rewritten the book on spectacular stunts, which makes Armstrong's task of coming up with original feats a daunting one, particularly when it comes to the trademark precredit sequence.
"There are times when I lie awake at night and think, 'Oh, my God, how can I do it differently?'" laments Armstrong, who began his career with the 007 franchise as a stuntman on "You Only Live Twice" (1967). "There are only so many things you can do."
This time out, the opening sequence centers on a hovercraft chase, but Armstrong's favorite set piece in the film is a high-speed pursuit across an iceberg-studded glacier involving two of the world's most expensive cars, an Aston Martin Vanquish ($228,000) and a Jaguar XKR ($98,330).
"We took the original engines out and put in our own V-8 racing engines and four-wheel drive units," says Armstrong, who prepared four cars of each model for the two-week shoot. "The total cost of the modifications was #1.25 million ($1.8 million)."
Although there have been car chases across frozen terrain in previous Bond films, Armstrong promises this one is the topper. Weaving in and out of icebergs jutting from the glacier, the vehicles -- driven by doubles for Pierce Brosnan (Bond) and Rick Yune (the villainous Zao) -- execute slides, spins and various other high-speed maneuvers. "I wrote it like a ballet, almost, with these cars floating on ice," Armstrong says.
The ice only achieved sufficient thickness two weeks before the shoot, and by the time they wrapped, it was beginning to melt. So Armstrong wisely decided to film shots of the two-ton cars turning over on an iced-over British airfield at a later date, along with inserts of Brosnan and Yune.
As fans will attest, Asian action star Jackie Chan is no fan of insert shots. He is the one movie star who, over the course of his career, truly has done the bulk of his own stunts -- without the aid of doubles or CGI -- and he likes to make sure that his face is clearly visible on-screen, so audiences know he's the one risking life and limb.
"Never mind his acting, he is a stunt man," says Branko Racki, stunt coordinator and second unit director on the DreamWorks action-filled comedy "The Tuxedo" (Oct. 4), in which Chan plays an ordinary guy whose life is turned upside down when he comes into possession of a secret agent's gizmo-packed formal wear. "I've seen guys who've been in the business a long time, and no one is as calm and cool as he is."
DreamWorks agreed to let Chan -- who has suffered a frightening array of injuries while making films in Hong Kong, including a life-threatening skull fracture that left him with a permanent hole in his head -- do some of his own stunts for "The Tuxedo," including a 120-foot fall on a descender (a device that lowers a stunt person on a wire at a controlled rate of speed). But with others, such as a scene in which Chan was to hang from a wire attached to a crane and pretend to run after a car piloted by co-star Jennifer Love Hewitt (the tux gives his character superhuman speed), the studio said "no go." Yet, Chan was undeterred.
"He just jumped on it and went," Racki marvels. "He said, 'I'm doing it; I don't care what they say.'"
While Chan has certainly earned the right to say he does his own stunts, most stars who make the claim could most generously be described as shameless fibbers. But according to Bates, who earlier in his career did the daring rooftop fire-hose leap for Bruce Willis' character in "Die Hard," that's simply how the business works: "We're paid for them to take credit."
