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Welcome to Stuff you should know? From HowStuffWorks dot Com?
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and this is stuff you should know.
Well, Jerry had an itchy trigger finger today, you hear in there.
Yeah, she's ready to go home.
Yeah, she's like, come on if you want to go.
You guys aren't my entire life.
I know we like to think we are, but that is we're like zero point one percent of Jerry's life. Yeah, she's giggling in there. She's quite the adventurer.
Uh. How you doing, man?
I'm great, man, I'm ready to jump from a tall building or roll a brand new car.
Man. Sorry, that's what I was gonna ask you. So, I guess you did the intro for us.
Go ahead, let's pretend like that didn't happen.
No, it's fine, okay, you were just doing what The theme from The Fall Guy starring Lee Majors nineteen eighties awesome TV show with probably the best truck ever featured in a TV show.
That gmc man, The thing is sweet Yeah. You know, dudes recreate that truck if you if you google it, there's a lot of guys that have like made that truck for themselves.
For a good reason too. It's a cool truck.
Yeah, And it's interesting that the fall Guy points out a couple of The show itself points out a very important things as far as stuntman go. One is that he had to moonlight as a bounty hunter, and that's kind of one of the things we'll learn is that there's not a lot of work out there and to go around, you know, like it's tough to make it as a stunt man.
Yeah, you get punched.
And b He's if you look at the lyrics to that theme song man, he is really salty about not getting the glory and the girls, mainly the girls and the glory.
He he uh. Well when he winds up in the hey, it's only hey hey hey.
Uh So the song complains about not getting glory or when, and that is one of the hallmarks though, of the stunt person, is to remain anonymous.
And to be bitter about it.
I guess so very few stunt people you've ever heard of, Well, yeah.
They're the Academy of Arts and Sciences. They give out the Academy Awards.
Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Yeah, they don't have a category for stunt people. Nope, never have And the reason some people give is because they like to maintain the anonymity and the illusion. Sure that's provided by stunt people filling in as doubles for stars.
Yeah, but you can win a What Will See Award.
You can win an Emmy for Best Stunt Coordinator.
True, or the Stunt Award. They had their own Stunt Awards.
Oh yeah, the Taurus World Stunt Awards.
Yeah, you can win a Tory.
They took a hiatus. I saw that there was twenty ten and then they're having stuff for twenty twelve. Couldn't find anything about twenty eleven. Really, Yeah, so if you know what happened to the Taurist World Stunt Awards for twenty eleven, we are curious. Interesting, let us know.
So thanks for listening.
So anyway, well let's talk about the history of stunt people. They pretty much have only been around as long as you've had motion pictures, right, Yeah, there wasn't much of a need for him before then. I mean maybe for like a show or something like that like a wild Bill Hickcock show, we call them stunt men, but really you kind of want to differentiate because you can also say, all right, so people who ride horses on standing up on a horse's back, that's a stunt person. Yeah right.
A guy who like is in the X Games, those extreme sports kids, sure that all the kids are into these days, that's a stunt. These are by, you know, technically stunt people. What we're talking about are movie stunt people, sure. And the whole point to their craft isn't to like, you know, do a five to eighty on a bike unless somebody asks them to. What they want to do is create what you would just take for granted, like, oh, that guy just got clocked, right, No, he didn't actually
get clocked. That was a stunt man who knows what he's doing, and that was a carefully choreographed scene that just flew right past you. But it's still your brain still just absorbed it as that man just got punched, even though they didn't really happen.
That's right, And we will probably slip into the word stuntman here and there instead of stunt people. Of course, there were tons and tons of stunt women but we'll say stunt person's or stunt man, and like, luckily there are women now. In the back in the day, they would dress men as women to do stunts many times. Yeah, there's a lot of cross dressing back in the day, there was until they decided, hey, women are people too, and they can act and do stunts just like guys.
Caan, we could put them in danger just as much as well, exactly, so, so there wasn't much call for stunt people for movies before movies just by definition. Sure, don't be ridiculous, but right out of the gate when we started making movies, we started needing people to do stunts. And the earliest people who were doing stunts were actually comedians, slapstick comedians like Buster Keaton had a very famous.
Early stunt Steamboat Bill Junior. Is that what it was in, Yeah, the very famous you've probably seen it in like you know,
Hollywood Legends of screen clips and things like that on AMC. Yeah, it is the famous shot where the front facade of a house falls down and on well would have been on Buster Keaton, but he is saved because the attic window or attic door was open, so it just falls all around him, and there was some careful measuring in place, because if he would have been off by a few inches, he would have been dead.
Yeah, and that was a real thing, Like the earliest stunts were nothing but the real thing. Like apparently, if you had I don't know, somebody hanging from the construction the skeleton of a steel skyscraper, yeah, you needed that shot. That's what the guy did.
Yeah, and they ed the Grabster wrote this one, of course, and Ed points out that back in the day before they were like, you know, before they called them stunt men, they were just like, let me go find someone crazy enough to go do this exactly, and that guy, that guy craft Service, looks crazy enough to do it, and let's go see if he wants an extra twenty bucks.
Yeah, and he does. Yeah, because beck, you know, in nineteen oh two, twenty bucks was a lot.
Sure.
So as the film industry grew and grew early in the twentieth century, we went from just nothing but slapstick comedies to things like westerns and action flicks, and all of a sudden, those people who really can ride on the back of a horse standing up became stunt people as well. And as stunts became more and more complex. The idea of having somebody whose job and specialty was to just do the stunt and make it look like the act to the star sure was doing it started to really develop.
Yeah, and then flash forward even more the sixties and seventies is when things really came to their own as far as stunt technology developing. Things like squibs, which we will talk about for gunshots and air rams.
Is that what they're called. Yeah, it's like a like a hydratic lift. Yeah, it's pneumatic, just shoots you up into the air like with a human cannonball.
Right.
But like so if somebody, if a grenade blows up by somebody.
And you see the dude fly through the air and he was on a ram, that's right. And then other things like airbags and and you know, more technology with cars with the roll cages, Like it just got more and more complex, right, And now of course you have CGI, which replaces a lot of stunts in many cases.
Not necessarily to a better effect. Like all I have to say is Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Yeah, where it was like they suddenly cut the drawings of Harrison Ford swinging on a lasso.
He's famous for doing his own stunt.
Snow he didn't do him in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
Well, it's because he's eighty nine years old. Then he would die.
He was awesome in Bruno.
I didn't see that. Was he hairs borders in that?
Yeah? For about two seconds?
Did they do like gay jokes to him or something?
They didn't even get that far?
Okay, yeah, did he just shut it down?
Yeah? Always hilarious. But anyway, so stunts like the I guess throughout this progression of the field of stunt people, safety has gotten better and better, is what I think we were just trying to say. To the point now where they're not even used it's c GI. Yeah, but there's there's always going to be room for stunt people. Oh yeah, and the fact that it's gotten safer is much better. But there's still there's an element of risk
to it no matter what it's Grabs points out. If a stunt didn't present some sort of risk, there'd be no need for stunt people at all, as actors would do it. Yeah, but the actors can't always do it.
That's right, And when you want to call them a stunt person is when they either have a specific skill that they're really good at, like fake martial arts or I mean real martial arts, but fake hitting and kicking, or fake.
Marshal arts like chew kwong like stuff you just made up. It's a lot of like just front kits in the air.
That's what you practice, qong sword fighting, stage combat, like we've talked about stuff like that. They are trained to fall. They are trained to you know, safely fall. I guess I should point out. And it just basically it's a safety factor on one hand, and it's a financial factor on the other because you can't have your main actor actress going down with a broken leg, yeah for four weeks, so you put your stunt person in there and keep your actor all license safe in their trailer.
Yeah.
Or you want to be shooting two things at once, so you have your second unit out there shooting the fast cars whizzing by in the car chase. Then you have your first unit shooting the actor inside the car driving a lot slower and acting like it's really fast.
But shouting and like moving the steering wheel back and forth a lot. Yeah, maybe there's somebody rocking the car.
What's that called uh, poor man's process. Yeah is yeah, so when you I guess we should say this. When you're in a car, you either have a camera rig on your car where it's the real car with cameras attached to it. We've done that, or the cars on a process trailer, which means a lot of these shots you see with someone driving and you're like, they're not even paying attention to the road.
Yeah, it's because the.
Car is sitting on a trailer being pulled by a.
Truck, right, Or it's got a little rock to it, a.
Little rock to it, or you do the poor man's processes when the car is not going anywhere.
And you have PA's pushing on the outside.
Pushing on the outside, little tricks with lighting to make it look like headlights going by.
We've done that.
It's really neat in the end to look get a scene that's poor Man's process and think, wow, they're really not even moving and it looks so good.
See if you can pick it out and the stuff you should know TV series they can probably pick it up. So yeah, it's financial. It makes sense. Also, one of the other reasons people use stunt people is they come with a set of skills that the average actor doesn't.
Have a particular set of skills.
Exactly that makes them very dangerous to you. And so you can either hire a stuntman who looks like your star to carry out like a combat scene.
Or sort of look like your star, or you can teach.
Your star, you know, spend all this extra money and time to training the star to this skill in a crash course. So it just most of the time it makes sense to just hire a stunt person.
Yeah, And you know, chances are these days you're gonna get a mix in a big action movie. You're gonna get a mix of all three. You're gonna get some CGI, you're gonna get some stunt people, and these days you're gonna get real actors doing some of the real fake fighting.
Doesn't Tom Cruise do a lot of his own stunts?
Yeah, I gotta list to the vectors who prefer to do. I don't mean to jump the gun, No, the Cruise is famous for that.
I was reading this and I was like, I wonder if I would do my own stunts. I would do some. I would say, sure, I want to learn how to sword fight. Teach me that's something I want to know, and I'm certainly not going to shell out for it myself ever, so let's go ahead and learn. Now that's a good point.
I would do my own stunts.
It depends the heights. No way I would do that.
I would jump off. So California state law. And of course they shoot movies all over the place now and the union rules in Hollywood have really made it pretty safe these days. But you're still going to find injuries and your occasional death on set, which is really awful. Yeah.
Well, there always have been pretty much from the beginning, deaths and injuries.
Howard Hughes.
Yeah, the movie Hell's Angels, which we must have talked about in the Hell's Angels podcast. I'm sure we did, because I think we talked about the origin of the name, which was from there combat. It was, you know, that's what they think the fighting hell. I think that was one of the theories. But there were three, maybe four fatalities, yeah, because they were doing like real dog fights with airplanes and there are a lot of crashes. Yeah, so that was a movie where people died.
Yes, very famously, The Twilight Zone, the movie Jennifer Jason Lee's father Vic Morrow and two little Vietnamese kids died when a helicopter crashed into the water where they were crossing a river. That's on YouTube, by the way.
I know it's pretty awful.
It is, and I saw it recently because I was just curious. I'd always wondered how it went down in my head, because I've heard the story since the movie came out, since I was a kid, and I always wondered, like, exactly what was the logistics and how did that go down.
It's pretty bad to watch, it is, because it just goes totally out of control.
It does, so I would not recommend that, but you do have to enter your age, by the way to watch that video. Yeah, and on set, the AD is ultimately responsible the assistant director for everyone's safety. And in fact, on our own little TV show, when we had fake guns on set just as props. Yeah, like we didn't even use them in the scene, but just to have a fake gun on set, the AD has to announce to the whole crew and show them the gun. Say it's fake, it's not real. Look at the barrel. There's
no bullets, there's no nothing. It will not be fired. We will not be shooting blanks or dummy cartridges, and it's just you know, even on a stupid, little silly show like ours, you got to be really careful with that stuff.
Yeah, so chuck. Because of this incredibly high risk profession work, the stunt people must be paid out the yin yang true. False.
Well, they make a good rate, but like we said earlier, there's not a ton of work for the amount of stunt people trying to get work. Oh okay, that was when I used to work out in la as A Pa. I would always try and talk to the stunt people when I worked on jobs where they had stunt people, because they're just really interesting. Yeah, and to say the least, and they would usually bemoan the fact that there's not a ton of work, and you know, they're all kind
of scrapping for the same piece of cheese. But that's like everyone in the film business, sure, from crew to the lead actor. You're you're all after that same piece of cheese.
We've worked with some stunt people too.
Yeah, you'd be surprised when you need to call in a stunt person. I worked on this one commercial where the was just like bad traffic on the highway that the shot was and cars had to just sort of pull over to the side while another car came through. All the cars that pulled over to the side of the road had to have stunt drivers. I was like, I could do that, but then I'd be taking bread off the table at a stunt person.
Right, and the whole production was shut down.
That's true.
Okay, So the most stunt people, you say, because there's just so little work for so many people. It's not a high paying job. A lot of people do it for the love of it.
Right, Yeah. I mean you can make money if you're experienced and get tons of work, obviously, but right I'd say those are the few and far between.
But you'd have to love it because the hours are usually very, very long. Yeah, to do a stunt is not You don't just walk up and get in the car and drive it and all of a sudden it flips and there's an explosion and you're hoping for the best. Like when you see a stunt, these things are rehearsed
over and over again. Say for a car chase, they'll go through the entire car chase, but they'll do it at a low speed so that it's choreographed, rehearst and everybody knows what's going to happen when that takes a very long time. If you need to flip a car, you need to do measurements. The pyrotechnics guys are probably involved. There's a lot of standing around, there's a lot of practicing, there's a lot of measuring, there's a lot of talking.
And then if say you're doing something like it in water, you're probably standing in water the whole time. So you're doing that for fourteen hours. Yeah, it sounds like some you would have to love your work to do this.
Yeah, it's definitely not a glory job, especially factoring in the anonymity factor.
Right, when you do all this and you do it absolutely perfectly, no one notices.
That's the goal.
Yeah.
In fact, one of my biggest pet peeves is when you do notice and you see that one shot of the dude with a wig on, it's supposed to be Clint Eastwood, right, Yeah, just disappointing.
So you're saying the second unit director handles this. The second unit director is in charge of shooting stunts, but the person who's in charge in like of the stunts themselves, is the stunt coordinator. Yeah, and that person hires the stunt people, plans the stunts, oversees the stunts, execution, does everything, but actually sets up the camera and all that, or handles the camera shooting it. Right.
Yeah, it's basically it's like a film crew is broken up into many departments, and that's just sort of its own little department headed by the coordinator. Gotcha, Like they'll have a budget to work with and all that kind of stuff, just like any other department.
So let's talk about how they do some stunts.
Okay, and actually the second unit director a lot of times is a former stunt person or stunt coordinator.
Right, it makes sense.
It comes in handy. Sure, let's talk about stunts without fire.
How about punches?
How about them? Stage fighting man something we have not learned yet.
That's pretty much a must if you want to become a stunt man. That's less than one is, go take stage fighting courses. Yep.
Learn how to sell a punch as the giver and as the receiver without looking corny and hoki and fake like pro wrestling.
Right, But it's very much similar to pro wrestling, especially if you've ever seen somebody throw a punch in pro wrestling and you can hear the skin slap. Yeah, that's because that person was actually just punched. Yeah, the key is they weren't punched very hard, certainly not as hard as there the jerk of their head would would say.
Yeah, you've got camera angles and you've got sound effects, and through the art of movie magic, it looks like a good knockdown, drag out brawl.
Right, And if you've got it like a really good stunt coordinator, there'll be like a punch that's sold and the person who's being punched is on a ramp, so they fly through the air.
Yeah, that's awesome, all right. Gunshots. We talked about squibs. A squib is basically you're gonna have a chest metal chest plate with a squib on the front of it, right to protect your body. And it's it's it's basically a little blood packet that's rigged electronically to explode when it's supposed to.
And so the plate in between the squibbing and chest protects you. Sure, and maybe you are in charge of you, the stunt man are in charge that you have a little button, Yeah, maybe to explode the charge or there's somebody else doing it remotely and it's pretty awesome. Releases theater blood opens a hole in the shirt. Yeah, pretty awesome.
It is very awesome.
This I didn't realize though, how they make bullet holes in like like a wall, like stuck a wall. Yeah, I thought this was pretty ingenious. They drill the hole ahead of time and then they cover it up with like putty or paper or something and paint with a squib in there. Yeah, and they blow that squib out and it makes a bullet hole.
It's pretty cool.
It's ingenious. It's simple, it seems like, but it's very ingenious.
Well, especially when you watch a movie. Ideally you're getting lost in the movie, not paying attention, but if you watch like a John woufilm or something, yeah, and you see just like a wall get riddled with bullets. Just think about all the time, Yeah, it took to set up all those squibs.
And like what if the actor trips in the middle of it, You're just like, we have.
To do it again, Yeah, which is no good. And in fact, big stunts they go with many mini cameras on stunts that you don't or can't recreate because of either danger or money. Yeah, And like some of the shots have, like, you know, a dozen more camera shooting right time.
Which makes a lot of sense, of course, and Grabster points out that another reason why you don't want to do a big take like that more than once is because every time you do, the danger for the stunt person multiplies. Yeah, and I was like how, and then I thought, oh, well doing it more right, and your your chances of injury or increased the more you carry out the more times you carry out a dangerous act. So yeah, that's how it multiplies.
Getting back to squibs, these days, a lot of directors are opting for CGI blood and uh and bullet wounds. But supposedly Quentin Tarantino and this is out. By the time this comes out.
Jango and Change, I can't wait to see it.
Supposedly he had one real squibs and the blood like they're supposed to be the bloodiest, nastiest squibs that hollywould have seen in years.
Is that right?
Yeah, it's supposed to be pretty awesome.
Huh. Yeah, have you seen a machete? Yeah that was pretty bloody. Yeah that was though I agree it was, but it was still pretty blank.
They also blanks if you were firing a gun on set. It is probably a blank, you would hope. So it's not the same as a dummy cartridge. No, a blank actually fires gunpowder, has gunpowder and fires what's called a wad. It's like paper or wood or plastic. But it does not obviously have shot or a bullet.
No, but there's sometimes when the bullet explodes, bits of metal can end up being shot out as well. Yeah, that's how Brandon Lee died when they were filming The Crow.
Yeah. His was actually an accident. There was a bullet lodged in the barrel that they didn't know about.
What I thought, Okay, well then I'm thinking of somebody else who like was messing around with a gun.
That was man, I can't remember anything, put it to his head.
Yeah, pulled the trigger and like the water, like the gases or something killed them.
Yeah, that was I can't remember his name, but it was on a TV show set and he like goofing around put it to his head as a joke. So you should never mess around with blanks. No, very dangerous. Still No, but there was a bullet in the Yeah, there was a bullet. They got the guns mixed up and there was a real bullet slug lodged in the barrel that they didn't know about, so it fired a blank, but it ejected that other thing and Brandon Lee died.
Wow, I didn't know that.
Yeah, man, it was one of the biggest oops is probably in Hollywood history.
Yeah, you know, I guess you could call it that.
And I think he they thought he was still acting and continued to roll cameras for a bit afterwards. Oh gee, even Yeah, very sad tragic. Are we to falling?
Yeah, which he'll do I won't do.
Yeah, I'll jump off of stuff. I've always done that.
Well, they use these huge, huge air bags right.
Well, back in the day they did, and if you and if you're doing a fall today, they still will sometimes, but generally these days they have like a bungee type contraption.
I would still demand an air bag. Yeah, they apparently also for shorter falls, they'll take some cardboard boxes and they'll cut the sharp corners off. Yeah, and then you jump onto that. Did you do that when you were a kid.
No, no, no, I always would jump into water.
I would jump like onto the ground off of like the credenza or whatever. And now I'm like, I wouldn't even do that. It's dangerous.
Falls used to be the thing, Like I'm sure you remember as a kid, falls were a really big deal for stuntmen and Dar Robinson, remember that guy. No, he did the Sharki's Machine fall. Okay in Atlanta and the Burt Reynolds movie. Nope, it's very famous fall out of the Peachtree Plaza hotel.
I was up in Toledo at the time.
It was still it was released in Toledo in Toledo Sharky's Machine one.
Yeah, uh off the off the Waist Hotel.
He went through a window of the Peachtree Plaza and uh into onto an air bag. And it's just it was one of the famous early falls, and or not early falls, but one of the famous falls.
What Florida did he jump out of?
Oh man, I can't remember.
Was it pretty high?
Yeah? I mean it was over over like one hundred and fifty feet in Oh wow.
Yeah, that's nuts.
That's pretty cool.
But see, so imagine planning that stunt. How many times they measured everything to figure out where the air bags needed to go, and then they probably supplemented it with additional airbags and if they loved the guy at all they did all this.
Yeah, stuntman. When you go to talk to one, if you're on set, you'll be disappointed by the fact that they aren't these crazy dudes like you want them to be. They're actually really sensible because they want to work and earn money, so they want to be really, really sure that no one gets hurt. It's a little more boring than you would think talking to them, sure, but they are a little nuts.
Yeah, well you'd have to be at least a little What else, chuck fire? How about fire?
I just saw Anchorman the other night, Remember when they had the street brawl that got on fire just walks by.
Yeah, that's a pretty serious stunt, Like when you are when you set yourself on fire. Yeah, and there's a lot of safety precautions, but even still, it's you're on fire, whether you like it or not.
Yeah. You're wearing all kinds of fire protective clothing and fire retardant and then you're smeared with the flammable gel.
Yep. You have a hood on that protects you yeah as well, and there's an oxygen tank in there, so you're basically just completely wrapped in this outfit. Yeah, but yeah, the flammable gels on and they liked you and then film you and you're going, oh, it's always the wavy.
This kind of looks the same.
And then the people run over and put you out with fire extinguisher.
That's right.
But they time it very closely as well. Oh, I'm sure, because I think it's kind of like, well, if we go twelve seconds, he actually will catch on fire, so we can shoot for eleven.
Eleven point five. Right. Explosions are a big deal obviously these days. There's so many explosions in movies. Sometimes they cheat a little bit what's called a technique called force perspective to make it look like the actor is closer to the explosion. And if there's an explosion, you're probably also going to be propelled with the air ram that we're talking about. It's almost called a Hollywood trope at this point. The explosion in the dudes flying like twenty feet in the hear.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that was big in a commando. Oh yes, there are a lot of air rams used in Commanda.
Many more than I can count.
That was such a good movie.
Car chases and crashes.
Yeah, they use rams as well. They may be attached to the car. So if a car needs to flip, you see people like going up on a ramp or whatever. Yeah, and I'd probably use that if you're just trying to stay on two wheels. But if you're trying to flip, there's usually a ram that pushes the car, pushes it off the ground and it flips, or if you haven't coming out of the rear, it'll make it jump really high.
Oh true. Like in Hooper, I don't know.
All these movies you're talking about.
Oh dude. Hooper was the stuntman movie with Burt Reynolds.
I didn't see it.
Oh my god, how neat am very famous stuntman turned director.
Directed, founder of The Cannonball Run.
Well yeah, and director of the movie The Cannonball Run and Smoking the Bandit and Hooper. Hooper was about an aging stuntman Burt Reynolds, who was challenged by the up and comer Jan Michael Vincent. And of course there's the love relationship with Sally Field choosing that too. And it was good. It was like the best. It's sort of the best stunt movie ever because it was about stunts, huh. And he had a rocket car and that one that was a big rocket car jump. It was the big climax.
I did not see Hooper?
Did you need to see Hooper?
What was I watching back then?
What were you? You're probably watching TV and stuff, I guess, Yeah, Hey, it was a little before your time. And like I said earlier, stunt drivers, it's not all like a lot of this stuff you're gonna see on TV's stunt driving, even though you might not think it's necessary.
Yeah, apparently it does just pull off of a.
Sometime sometimes not. How do you become a stuntman Josh.
Uh, Well, apparently, as far as Grabanowski says, you basically have to start off as an extra on the set.
That's not necessarily true.
Okay, if you want, and if you want to go from the absolutely from zero to stuntman in the slowest way possible, then you would start out as an extra on the set. You have to be a screen act you have to be a member of the Screen Actors Guild in most cases. Yeah, and when you're hanging around the set, you identify who the second unit director or stunt coordinator is and you hand them your headshot.
This ad painted a path to becoming a stunt person that we've kind of laughed at. It is not the only path, but one thing is for sure. To become a stunt person, you need to get to know someone else in that department. And that's really with every film department. If you want to be in a wardrobe, you should get a job as a BA and start hanging out with the wardrobe people. If you want to be in makeup, start hanging out with the makeup people. And that's just
how it works in Hollywood. There's no degree. You can get a film degree, but come on, let's wasted money. Just go to work on the set. You get to know the people in the department and then start bugging them a little bit when they're not busy. Stunt coordinators are a little testy. There's a lot on the line, you know. Sure, so you know, if you're a new pa on set, don't run over to the stunt coordinator
start bugging them right away. Pick and choose your time and then give them your headshot and then give him your headshot.
But yeah, what you're saying is that it's apprentice based.
It is.
Basically there are schools.
One recommended driving school, the Rick Seaman Stunt Driving School. There's also the International Stunt School that sounds pretty serious, and this is where you can learn to do some of the stuff. But it's not like you exit with a degree and then show up and say, now i'd like to do stunt work.
Right, all the rest of you are fired. I have a degree from the International Stunt School.
And Grabster points out that you should have a large area of specialty rather than one thing.
I thought that's a very good point.
Yeah, but that's not necessarily true. I've talked to some stunt dudes that say, eventually you would like to have a wide range of skills, but a good way to get in is to have one really specific skill that you're great at. And you might get back call like this guy's good with wirework or water work and or he's a hell of a driver, or a really good motorcycle guy, yeah, or a great skier if you're doing like what was that for your eyes only?
Yeah?
Is that the one that heard ski Chase?
Never say never again?
I know it's definitely Roger Moore.
Okay, I think it's for your eyes only, all right.
But it helps to have these skills, Like a lot of stunt people are former motorcycle motocross racers or car enthusiasts or you know, how to stand stand forest back riding. Yeah, so a lot of them had these skills just anyway, and they're like, hey, I can I've been driving dirt track for twenty years as we'll make some money.
Yeah, film me.
There's books out there, are they? So you want to be a Stuntman? By Mark Aspitt.
Oh, that's a great name for a book like that.
The Full Burn by Kevin Conley, Fight Choreography, The Art of Nonverbal Dialogue by John Kring, and then Hall Needham's biography stunt Man with a.
Exclamation had to be had to be you got? You said you have a list of actors that do their own stunts.
Yeah. I think most people know this, people like Jason Statham, famous for doing his own stunts.
Huh. I see Zoe Bells on there. I thought she was a stunt person.
Well she is, and she was in Death Proof though as an actor, right, And they were like, I guess they include her now because she did that awesome hanging onto the hood scene.
I was watching that earlier and it is just not it's pretty cool. It's like she's when she's hanging on it looks like by belts or whatever. Yeah, and then she's she's kind of sliding still across the hood.
Yeah.
All it would take is like half an inch, and then all of a sudden she's gone too far and she's off the side of the car.
Yeah, that was it. She's one of the best in the business apparently.
Man, that's scary.
Burt Reynolds used to do a lot of his stunts. In fact, he got injured pretty bad. That led to some bad health problems on set. Oh yeah, though not City Heat. The Clint Eastwood movie Burt Lancaster.
He used to do his own stunts. He's a tough guy, yeah, the movie Tough Guys.
Yes, in that Yeah. Yeah, I don't think we mentioned been hurt either. That's one of the famous stunts ever, The Chariot Race.
Yeah, you want to tell him about it?
Go ahead, what do you got.
Oh, well, there's a stuntman named Joe Cannutt and he was doubling for Charlton Heston and during the Chariot Race, this big, long, intense race. Yeah, he falls off the chariot and is about to be run over. But in true stuntman fashion, grabs it. It's being dragged. Yeah, pulls himself back up and continues on.
And I think that made it on screen.
Yeah, it's in the movie. But that was a real thing, Like it wasn't a planned stunt, Like the guy saved his own life.
That's awesome, Dad, Harrison Ford, you mentioned as far as the ladies go, Angelina and Jolee and Cameron Diaz are the right known for doing stunts. Arnie arts in Niaga and Jackie Chan very famous for doing his own stunts. And it makes a difference, man, when you can tell it's Tom Cruise on the side of that mountain.
Man, that was scary. Is that really him?
Yeah, Emily worked on that shoot on there, just that segment in Moab, the rock climbing segment, and that's when famously Tom Cruise was like four hours late and flies in on a helicopter and like the whole crew was waiting around all day for him.
I hadn't heard that, and then yeah.
I mean famous in my family. Yeah, and now I guess famous to the podcast community.
Yea Cruise is not punctual.
Well he wasn't that day.
Wow stunts.
Have you seen Haywire the Soderberg movie. Uh uh, it's about uh assassin. Assassin's basically it's an action movie, Soderberg's take on an action movie. But Gina Karana was a former mixed martial artist and she she's awesome and does her own stunts. What's her name, Gina Carano.
I don't believe I know her.
She plays the lead. I'm she I think that was her first like legit movie. Oh gotcha known for mixed martial arts. But yeah, she does her own stunts.
She's b a hey wy hey, I'll check it out.
I got nothing else.
I don't either.
Pretty straightforward.
If you want to learn more about stunts, you can type stunts into the house stuff works search bar. And I said search bar, which means it's time for listener.
May Josh, I'm gonna call this things we I guess say a lot. Oh no yeah, like no, no, no, that's not in there.
Okay.
Everyone says like, though I know.
But I've people have pointed out here they're like, you guys say like a lot. And I've started to notice And when I say it when I hear the podcast, I don't hear when I'm saying it. Only later on when I can't do anything about it.
Don't don't beat yourself up. Everybody says that, like there are articles written in the New Yorker about the use of the word like in the twenty first century. Okay, so you're part of that crowd. No, you're not millennial.
I'm not. I'm an aged person.
Sorry, he's wrong with me today, Guys, Before I start, I feel like I should get out my adoration of the podcast. Always listen as I'm walking my dog, Chloe keeps me entertained for hours. I love that you guys are still going strong, and I'm very thankful. I have comprised a list, however, of words and phrases used most often in the show, besides obvious ones like Chuck or Josh or search bark. Let's hear them in no particular order. A boy to being a bout a boom.
Sure he left off the bon Jovi.
Oh, she we'll talk about this later, or we'll get to.
That, and then a lot of times we don't.
Yeah. I feel like I say that a lot.
I think it's hilarious when we say that we're going to talk about something later and then we forget.
To yeah, or I say all the time. I think we should point out and she didn't put them in here, but I'll go ahead and throw my own on there. Oh yeah, I'm making air quotes. Yeah, I E E G. Yeah, that's one of yours. That's a good band name, and that's usually me. Sure, that's not just a sweat. You just don't go out sweat a lot because of me. That's a stand up guy. I don't remember her saying
that a lot. Do you say that a lot? All right, I'm gonna take at you with that one, Katherine on the up and up.
I don't know that's c a of course we say that a lot, definitely.
People always ask it what it means.
We never tell.
They never tell. And then have you seen the movie? Ironically?
That's about right.
Yeah, And those are ten things that we say a lot. And that is she says she thinks these are great comforts her and she smiles, and that is Catherine Phillips.
Thanks a lot, Katherine. That's pretty cool. Somebody's out there like writing lists of things we say.
It's nicer to hear people say like I take comfort that. And except for the emails when we get.
Like you guys always say this and it's John Travolta taking against the task. If you want to take the task, whether John Travolta or anybody else, or you just want to say, hey, here's a list of things I noticed because the podcast or whatever. You can join us on Twitter. Actually, first, before we sign off, let's remind everybody that we're going to be on the TV again the TV. Yeah, Saturday night on Science Channel at ten pm would be the premiere of another Stuff you Should Know episode.
You can watch us each and every week.
Yeah, TV show Stuff you Don't You Should Know TV show ten pm.
Or get it on iTunes the following day. Yeah, on Sunday. That's right, Chuck, Just go to iTunes and type of Stuff you Should Know?
And two it comes off all right. So now we'll sign off, right, yep. You can get in touch with this on Twitter at SYSK podcast. You can join us on Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know, and you can send us a good old fashioned email too. Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com.
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