Route Irish has just been chosen to as an official selection for Cannes International FIlm Festival. Last year I worked as stunt co-coordinator and Read the rest of this entry »

I started my career the good old fashioned way by driving across country in lure of the Hollywood dream. Except my goal wasn’t to be the star of the show; driven by the desire to do something much more interesting and adventurous than just deliver a few lines of dialogue.  Amazed by all the on screen action at a young age I’ve always taken an interest in the film industry though as a child and even a naive teen I never really grasped the concept of there being a whole industry designed to produce films. Guess you could say I always thought there was just some magic movie wand that got waved and the people inside the box I stared at weren’t really real.

I think it all came together for me one day when I was watching a behind the scenes making of Batman. I immediately said, “That’s me, I can do that. I can jump off a building and set myself on fire for a living”. At the time it was the only career that made sense. Not because I possessed some daredevil quality, cause I don’t but because I quickly realized that it took more than just bronze and athletic ability. A qualified stunt performer, stunt rigger or stunt coordinator is more brains then anything and has to know the working intricacies of more than just the physical movement of the body. You have to utilize a myriad of skills from random and various career fields. Stunt design and performance is a dynamic array of being multi-facetted and resourceful, along with knowing when something is just out right ridiculous. I’m a problem solver so this job suits me. I would never be comfortable at a desk unless it was the only thing around hard enough to press on for me to sign a SAG stunt contract. I don’t have a death wish though I do wonder where everyone goes after life, I’ve never wondered enough to find out.  Though some think that I’m increasing the odds of finding out sooner than I hope by “risking” my life for a quick performance in front of a 35 mm lens but to me its no riskier than working a construction job or carrying out an every day chore. We calculate and asses the level of risk and figure out ways to better engineer and then minimize the possibility of incurring or inflicting damage upon our bodies. Film making itself is an interesting concept. I know the final product is going to be viewed and enjoyed or completely hated scrutinized by people I’ll never meet. Its a product that once it is in the can and gets a distribution deal its out there for good and no take backs so no matter how big or small the budget or significant the script is as a stunt performer and stunt coordinator I always give the best performance possible because I never want my name on a so so product. Even if the rest of the film fails to meet my personal taste I still want to be proud of my involvement.

I’ve had a rather decent run at my career over the past several years. I’ve been active in the stunt industry for the past several years now. I took a couple years off to work with my former sponsors Safety Strategies Inc. and Corvo Industries to help research and develop fire suppression materials that are currently being used in the military, law enforcement and racing industries to save lives. Essentially I was the stunt guy that got to field test the final product and collect data to provide real time feedback and how to improve upon the product to achieve maximum safety. Performing stunt fire burns became a weekly event. After the company shifted owners I delved back into film. I called a few coordinators and sent out my resume, landing stunt gigs on John Adams where I got to share several scenes with Paul Giamatti and dress up in twenty pounds of stinky authentic wardrobe. Working that flick is the reason why I now carry a spare pair of thick insoles in my stunt bag. The shoes they gave us might as well have had steel insoles. I got killed a couple times, help saw of Lt. Baron’s leg and washed off deck by crashing waves. From there it was a bunch more stunt work on independent films and a couple films working with some recognizable talent such as Vivica Fox in Junkyard Dog. I stunt doubled Innis Casey who portrays the main bad guy JYD. I’d be giving the end of the story away if I tell you how everything happens but lets just say that it involved gallons of gasoline, an exploding car and an extra set of matching wardrobe knowing that the set they gave me wasn’t coming back in the condition it left in. Wardobe people are usually keen on knowing that when they help suit up a stunt performer that something bad is about to happen to their precious digs.

I left filming of Border Town to go work in Tennessee on that film. Border Town was filmed  in Mechanicsville Virginia and produced by all locals. For a low budget film it turned out rather decent but I was very disappointed to hear the budget for the stunt department knowing their overall budget but that’s movie making. Stunts are always the first thing to get cut when the money runs low. What a lot of viewers don’t fully understand is that stunts aren’t exactly relevant to the final story. You can show a car driving down a winding back road at night, headlights of another approaching in the same lane and then cut to the interior of a hospital ER and the audience will be able to piece it together and assume there was a car crash. As long as the story unfolds the actual visual isn’t needed. The human mind has become very adept to powers of persuasion to help influence the imagination. In movie land some things are better left to imagination any ways.

Catching a first class flight to The Big Easy is always a great way to start the week off. Especially since I knew I’d have the chance to spend some time with a friend of mine Danny Cosmo. He’s a stunt guy in the New Orleans area and part of the Cajun Stunts crew which is operated by Jeff Galpin another well known local stunt coordinator. Cosmo got his start by performing high dives. He has superior air sense. Enough so that he was able to snag the world record for the highest shallow dive on four separate occasions. What the hell is that you ask; glad you did. It’s a dive performed at roughly 30 feet where the only thing to catch him in his belly flop pose is an inflatable pool filled with 12 inches of water. yeah, I said that right. 12 inches of water. He does a 30 foot belly flop into 12 inches of water. He’s not nuts, he’s extremely talented to be able to perform this. He knows exactly where his body is at at all times during this high dive stunt. Ok maybe he is a little crazy, but in a good way.

Soon as wheels touched the tarmac I was studio bound via taxi where he was doing some stunt pad work for the actors on the Disney show Imagination Movers. These guys are a rather interesting bunch. Never got their full story but rumor has it that they use to play in a band then started writing children’s lyrics since there was a lack of viable options for the young audience. Next thing you know a Disney rep picked up on them and viola, instant tv show. Yeah there’s a lot of things that happened in between, I’m just giving you the quick “what I heard was” version. After leaving set we headed out for some Caretta’s, Mexican food so good just make you wanna slap yo mama.

The next day we headed to the set of Bed & Breakfast a feature film packed with stunts and some great on screen talent, Michael Madsen, David James Elliot and Jeff Fahey. In case you don’t know who any of those are go to imdb and teach yo self fool. Michael Madsen played Bill’s Brother “Bud” in Kill Bill and this guy must have gone to the cool store and purchased all the cool they had because he certainly has that air about him. And David James Elliot is a riot. This guy is one of those sit in the chair and crack jokes and keep the crew in stitches kinda guy. Some other talent that was on set was Sylvester Stallone’s stunt double Mark Deallesandro. He’s the guy responsible for making one of my favorite actors look great during his action scenes. His stunt resume is impressive. Watch his reel on youtube and just be floored watching clips of the stunts he’s performed during his 25 year career. It was an honor to work next to veteran stunt performer. He’s got a super laid back attitude as well. Very humble and informative.

The first night on the show I worked as a stunt rigger, rigging a car for a decent crash scene. Danny Cosmo was the driver of one car carrying Holly Oquin as a passenger. John Askher was driving the other. The car stunt was your basic nose to rear where cars A and B travel at each other at speeds averaging 25 miles per hour. Car A will lock up the rear brake and slide the ass (technical term used amongst stunt guys) around into Car B’s path allowing for the nose of B to dig into the side of A. A quick note on the usual particulars that are written into the safety protocol of crashing cars: Remove the gas tanks and replace with fuel cells. Install four point harness in place of the conventional lap belt. Disable and then remove the vehicles air bags. Hellooooo, you listening; disable then remove the airbag otherwise you could end up with a face full of WTF just happened. So that’s just a quick list without revealing any trade secrets. Afterwards I managed to snag a couple pictures of the “car”nage. The director loved it and the stunt drivers walked away unscathed.

The next night was a long one. Lots of fight sequences and fight choreography between the stunt performers and David James Elliot. Mark Dealessandro threw some of his brilliance behind the sequence making it for a great show. After that it was back to the house for some rest which we didn’t get much of considering the fact that next was an early call time. Mark Chadwick was originally scheduled to prep John Ashker for his full body fire burnbut since he was busy working on Jonah Hex I got the chance to fill in for him. The fire stunt was a big one. We suited John up in all the magical gear that prevents skin from becoming burnt, doused him in fuel and threw him in a Range Rover rigged with two propane poppers and a gallon of rubber cement. Needless to say when the director yelled action there was a beautiful glow of orange and a man on fire. God I love this job.