The Art of Danger

Who would deny that stunt work in movies can be dangerous? Which is why few actors do their own stunts. Or, rather, why the insurance companies won't let certain actors do their own stunts.

Here a short list of a few unfortunate events involving stunt work:

• The Wicked Witch of the West (Margaret Hamilton) was burned in the scene where she vanishes from Munchkinland in a cloud of smoke in The Wizard of Oz (1939). And it was the actress who did her own "stunt". (Note: In the finished movie, they did not use this take. Instead, they used was an earlier take where you can see the smoke is released a tad early -- which is why they had asked for another take in the first place.)
• In the Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001-2003), actor Viggo Mortensen (Aragorn) was known for doing his own stunts. Director Peter Jackson dubbed him one of the "Walking Wounded" since he sustained some fairly serious injuries during filming.
• Unfortunately, there are also stuntman who have died on set. For example, the stunt pilot who crashed his plane in The Flight of the Phoenix (1965). (The movie is dedicated to his memory.)
• And who of recent years can forget hearing about the tragedy that befell Brandon Lee, killed in a stunt involving a gun during the filming of The Crow (1994).

And yet audiences crave stunts.

Okay, so while we don't have any big car chases or people jumping off mountains -- including stunt disasters -- in our upcoming feature film Under Jakob's Ladder. But the movie did require a few of its own "stunts".

A while ago, we posted an interview with our stunt coordinator, Matthew R. Staley... In that interview, we decided to save some of the interview questions for a later blog post. Well, this is a blog post. And this is later...

We asked him about how he goes about preparing for a stunt.

Matthew's answer:

"Though science is frequently involved, preparing a stunt is still very much an art. Every script is different and presents its own unique challenges. It is all-too-easy to write a line in a script without having to give thought to the difficulty involved of actually visually achieving it onscreen (i.e. "The hero leaps to safety just in time as the helicopter explodes above him"). It is up to the Stunt Coordinator to devise a way to safely and believably achieve a physical action that a writer has written and that a director wants to shoot a certain way."

Of course, that is just our problem... as script writers. It is easy to write in a stunt. It's much harder to get that stunt safely performed.

And yet there are people who thrive on the potential danger. Mind you, these stunts are well thought out. Matthew was very safety-conscious on set. The key of a stunt is to make it look dangerous, not actually be dangerous.

When asked if there was any stunt he hasn't yet done, but would love to do... this was his answer:

"I have been very fortunate to have performed a variety of different stunts over the years. But if a script called for me to perform a high fall while on fire or roll a car, I certain wouldn't turn the opportunity down!"

Maybe that's something to consider for our next movie!