The Stunt Man

You want to see Peter O'Toole channeling David Lean as the megalomaniac director trying to make a WWI epic against all odds who will stop at nothing to "get the shot"? He goes berserk at his AD ("no one yells cut at my set!"), he often descends from the top of the frame in his crane like a deus ex machina, he insists that his cameraman keep shooting even though his stunt man is drowning. His WWI film is a long string of big action pieces woven together with slapstick shenanigans, people dancing Charleston on the wings of planes and gatecrashing German bordellos.

No, scratch that. You want to see Steve Railsback with a Charles Mansonesque gleam in his eye playing the 'Nam veteran who finds himself chased by the police into the set of said WWI movie where he is turned in the spur of the moment into the stunt man who he accidentally helped kill a few minutes earlier? No one knows what he's guilty of but O'Toole takes him under his wing because he carries that same madness he's looking for in his movie, 600 bucks at a time.

No? How about a million movies rolled into one, a chaotic, rampant, insane smorsgabord that is at once a comedy about the trappings of big budget film-making, a romance between a famous actress and a halfmad Vietnam veteran, a drama about an emotionally scarred man with no future that finds himself betrayed again and can do nothing but laugh crazily about it and yell after a helicopter for his thousand bucks? All this filled with cinematic references (King Kong, Wings) and constant games with the viewer's perception of what is real and what is fiction, the lines separating real world from film-making wizardry becoming dangerously blurred.

Well, if you answered yes to one of the above, there's only one movie for you, Richard Rush's THE STUNT MAN. Nine years in the making, this is for all intents and purposes his APOCALYPSE NOW, the sprawling film that signalled the pinacle and decline of its director's career. The logistics of the production must've been a nightmare yet perfectly reflect the chaotic nature of the film. This is the kind of movie that deserves praise for just getting made. It's one of the only films I can think of that can afford soaring melodrama, political critique, black comedy and plain absurdism in the same scene and magically pull it off.

I won't carry on about the plot of this marvelous flick since it's already been adequately limned, but do let me emphasize a few points that have been kind of grayed out in other comments. The score by Frontiere is outstanding, from the up-tempo opening blast to the final credits. It's not only unnerving but vertigo inducing, so it supplements the plot perfectly. The photography is outstanding as well, the colors appallingly vivid, as in an MGM cartoon, which in this context is most apt. (It is a mystery/comedy/thriller/philosophical disquisition, after all.) The Hotel Coronado in San Diego has never looked quite so palatial, not even in "Some Like it Hot."

Rush's direction boggles the mind, to coin a phrase. The film begins with a helicopter. A hand pops out of the helicopter and drops a half-eaten apple. The apple bounces on the hood of a parked car. We follow without comment the apple, the line of events, and it turns out to be what gets the story moving.

There are multiple very strange touches throughout. As a movie star myself, having been a faceless extra in half a dozen films, I have to add that movies are simply not shot this way. An expensive and dangerous (and ultimately lethal) stunt is performed as we enter the actual narrative and there is only one camera rolling -- and that in a helicopter so far away that its engine can't be heard? But it doesn't really matter. The movie plays tricks all along with the difference between "reality" and "illusion," an old game into which it's difficult to inject more life, as this movie manages to do.

At one point, Railsback is told to perform a short if dangerous stunt, leaping from one roof to another. He does so, but the stunt escalates. Not only escalates but goes on and on, with Railsback unexpectedly crashing through ceilings and floors in a shower of glass before winding up in the midst of drunken, partying enemies who shout at him and laughingly lift his body above their heads and pass him around the room. It will shock you almost as much as it shocked him. O'Toole asks him after this long gag what it is he wants. Says Railsback: "Not to think I'm going crazy."

The smallest parts are done well. A very authentic-looking German soldier with a cheery old face and big white mustache is loading his rifle for a scene in which he and his comrades are going to fire at Railsback. "I hope those are blanks," Railsback tells him. "It doesn't say so on the box," replies the soldier with a friendly tone and a big smile.

Let me mention Eli Cross, the director, played by O'Toole. At one level this movie is made, through his character, into an examination of God, and his whimsical sense of responsibility towards the human beings whose lives he controls. "Eli Cross"? I mean -- okay -- Elihu, the crucifixion -- the whole JudeoChristian tradition is embodied in that cognomen. Cross has a habit of riding around the sky in a giant crane whose seat drops unexpectedly out of space and into the middle of peoples' conversations. Before the shooting of the final stunt, Cross raises his hand, looking at the horizon, and says something like, "I hereby decree that no cloud shall pass before that sun." And while shooting another scene, the cameraman calls "Cut." Cross pauses, then asks, "WHO called cut?" The cameraman explains that there were only a few seconds of film left on the reel so they had to cut at that point. Cross, like the angry God of the Old Testament, shouts that, "NOBODY cuts a scene except ME!" After chewing the cameraman out thoroughly, he fires him on the spot. You see, if a movie is supposed to resemble life, then ending a scene suddenly ends the filmic exposure of the two human conversants and only -- well, you get the picture. A lot of this rather obvious theological stuff seems to have gotten by unrecognized or at any rate uncommented upon. It doesn't need to be dwelt on.

There are already so many layers to this film that the viewer can afford to be only half aware of any one of them at a given moment. It stands by itself as a kind of very strange comedy. I didn't find Railsback's background as a Vietnam vet put on very thickly, by the way. It would be nice if God really were as accessible as Peter O'Toole is in this movie. All you would have to do to find salvation is jump through some well-defined hoops. As it is, though, I for one find myself muddling through from one day to the next simply hoping not to step on too many toes. Gimme a fiery hoop or a dive off a bridge any day. Just as long as my scene isn't cut too quickly.

This is a very funny and entertaining movie that doesn't fit into any one category. It's about a slightly crazed movie director who is making a WW1 movie in Southern California who hires a fugitive to replace his top stuntman. Peter O'Toole gives perhaps his best performance ever as the egomaniacal filmmaker who will do anything, perhaps even murder someone, in order to protect his artistic vision. The underrated Steve Railsback is good also as the paranoid Vietnam vet turned fugitive from the law. The action scenes are very funny and well-done, especially the rooftop chase. The music score is appropriately clever and matches what's happening on screen. Real-life stunt man Chuck Bail has a good part as a stunt coordinator who shows Railsback the ropes. The editing techniques help blur the line between reality and make-believe. The film is a bit too long, though, and some key scenes go on longer than necessary. These are minor complaints, however, because a film like this doesn't get made very often anymore.

This is a work of art about the creation of a work of art. The work in this case happens to be a movie, and as with all great works of art, there is one obsessed, cruel, megalomaniacal genius at the helm. Eli Cross (Peter O'Toole) is the most vivid depiction of a Hollywood director ever captured on film. He is a true patriarch, playing father/lover/drill sergeant to his cast and crew, and they all love/hate/fear him for it. Anyone who's ever been near an actual film set can tell you how accurate the character is. But what makes this film just about the last word on the subject is Richard Rush's brilliant blurring of fantasy and reality. That, after all, is the main occupation of those who toil in the "Dream Factory" of show biz. This was director Richard Rush's dream project and it took him nine years to get it on the screen.

Although it seems nasty, the movie is wonderfully light-hearted and the outrageous stunt scenes are backed up by a joyous score by Dominic Frontiere. A long scene with Cameron running over a rooftop, as biplanes attack and enemy soldiers give chase, is the stuff of legend. There is a great comic sense of humor in watching them trip over each other, fall off and get blown up. The performances are uniformly excellent. O'Toole is truly magnetic here, and you can see that he was hammered in some scenes and still pulls it off. Now that's a pro drinker! Railsback is perfect, and Hershey is mighty alluring indeed. This is the inside look at film-making that Hollywood doesn't want us to see: the egos, the drugs (watch the t-shirts and background scenes), the general insular idiocy of it all, and mainly the non-stop irony. Yes, "The Stunt Man" is a deceptively-accurate look into what the most highly acclaimed directors do to get the most out of their cast & crew.

Overall rating: 8 out of 10.

Movies about movies have a special fascination, and, despite some flaws, "The Stunt Man" is no exception. Arrested for an unnamed offense, Cameron, a crazy-eyed young man played by Steve Railsback, escapes custody and encounters a film company on location. The crew is on a beach shooting a World War I battle that involves dozens of extras, vintage biplanes, and explosions. Aided by the film's director, who does not want to admit that he has lost a stunt man in a tragic car stunt, Cameron becomes the stunt man and is goaded into performing daring and dangerous stunts of his own. In an Academy Award nominated performance, Peter O'Toole plays the determined Eli Cross, the movie-in-the-movie's ruthless manipulative director. Cross stops at nothing to get footage in the can, irregardless of the consequences, even the death of a stunt man. When not jumping from buildings or hanging from ledges, Cameron becomes involved with the film's female star, Nina Franklin, played by Barbara Hershey, whose history with Cross further complicates things.

The screenplay by Lawrence B. Marcus and Richard Rush was adapted from a novel by Paul Brodeur, and both the screenplay and Richard Rush's direction, like O'Toole, received Oscar nominations. While much of the film's fun comes from the action and the stunts performed for the movie within the movie, O'Toole's delicious performance as the flamboyant philosophical director is also a major draw, although the supporting cast is also fine, with Alan Garfield and Alex Rocco deserving mention.

The mystery of Cameron's crime and the cause of the stunt man's death plunge into a river are slowly revealed, but character is emphasized over plot and the romance consumes much screen time. Thus, the film is often slow, overlong, and not as clever as Rush wanted it to be. Judicious editing could have tightened the film and improved the pace. However, while "The Stunt Man" is fairly entertaining, O'Toole's star performance remains the film's major asset and chief draw.