Spotlight on Stunt Work

I recently recorded a guest spot on the GeekSweat movie review and news podcast for a segment asking whether it is time the Academy Awards added a stunts category. It was a relatively brief slot that involved me speaking with two co-hosts and many of the notes I had prepared became redundant. It's not an area of film production I've delved into much before, but I am concerned about safety on sets, particularly as I have begun to learn more about the production process through speaking to practitioners for Audiovisual Cultures and listening to The Delta Flyers. Here I've typed up my notes for the recording, which I hope will be of interest to anyone else keen to learn more about what production entails and the implications of prize culture.

Stunt work being snubbed by the Academy Awards and other prestigious film and television awards ceremonies is a question of acknowledgement and it is telling that the stunt community in Hollywood has established their own body to redress that omission. Stunt performance and coordination are very obscured parts of the production process, necessarily so or they break the illusion of the action's verisimilitude. But it is tremendously hard and dangerous work with further difficulties arising in the lack of workers' rights and guarantees over pay. The average viewer likely is not aware that stunt performers have to be present when stunts are needed in filming scenes, but if the actors decide they want to perform the stunt themselves, the professional stunt performer has to hang around and on many productions they'll only get paid if they participate in takes. So before we even get to handing out Oscars for stunts or stunt coordination, I'd like to see an end to exploitative working conditions. 

As is common with any marginalized group, stunt workers have banded together to ensure they have each others' backs, and that is in the Taurus World Stunt Awards. It seems to be more Hollywood than world, but that's also an issue with the most prominent of awards - they're based on what gets seen and circulated most where they're based. As well as recognising the work of all kinds of stunt performance, they have a fund for performers who are injured or disabled in doing their jobs, because no matter how physically adept or trained someone is, things can go wrong and gravity is cruel. 

As shown on the Taurus website, the awards are attended and celebrated by many of Hollywood's most recognisable actors who know that they simply wouldn't be able to play the roles that they do without stunt performers and coordinators. Categories include: best fight, high work, stunt rigging (the technical side of supplying and fitting apparatus to enable stunts, e.g. wire work), vehicle work (even ordinary driving or cycling is considered stunt work), specialty stunts, hardest hit, best overall stunt by a stunt woman, best action in a foreign film, and best stunt coordination or second unit direction. While this is a comprehensive list, Taurus is an exclusive club - performers must be members to get nominated, so it is still only scratching the surface of recognition.

It seems that for the Oscars, acknowledging this array of labour is out of the question as it is not considered to possess enough artistic or creative merit. Perhaps if the coordination and choreography are stressed enough, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences could eventually shift its position. I do wonder if, as well as being elitist, their denial has something to do with benefiting from general viewers' lack of knowledge of production processes. The Academy Awards are the pinnacle of movie magic, glitz and glamour upon which much of the mainstream film industry depends for marketing. Stunt and the related field of prop work are much more behind-the-scenes than make-up, costume, hair, sets and locations as areas of production design, which do have award categories. Stunt work isn't meant to be noticed in the ways these other elements tend to be. We're supposed to be convinced that a stunt performer or a body double is the actor. For this to be noticed is a marker of low quality or parody.

Parodies are where I reveal something of my sense of humour and my curiosity for how it all works; I tend to notice and appreciate stunts most in pastiches because they tend to be more reflexive and audacious. A fun example is in Spaceballs (1987), Mel Brooks's send-up of Star Wars, when the main cast's stunt doubles are captured and the heroes get away. The joke-not-joke within is that even for women, the doubles are (or were) usually men in a wig. I recently saw The Other Guys (dir. Adam McKay, 2010) in which there is incredible stunt work of all kinds, again made explicit to poke loving fun at buddy cop action movies wherein the heroes cause more havoc in catching the criminals than the criminals are costing the economy in thefts. They have action, shooting, fighting, driving, car chases, crashing through glass, jumping off buildings, helicopter work, being thrown by an explosion blast, and probably other stuff I'm forgetting. Drawing attention to how outlandish and improbable it all is is comedy I appreciate and it reveals usually hidden labour.

Again before we get to prestigious awards, I want to see more understanding amongst viewers of this dangerous and at times life-threatening and life-taking work that is for our entertainment. This is part of a desire I have to broaden media literacy and critical thinking. For me, understanding how the illusion is produced is more interesting than the illusion itself, but most viewers likely don't agree. What I would stress is that for the most part it is not considered that even for the lowest quality films, a huge amount of labour of different kinds goes into making them, and I feel that people should be as safe as possible in doing their jobs.

When it comes to stunt and prop work, safety seems consistently to not be enough of a concern. A recent example is where prop and stunt work intersect, namely the firing of a live round during a take rehearsal on the set of Rust in October 2021 which led to the death of the film's cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and injured director Joel Souza. Real guns and functioning replicas loaded with blank rounds are favoured as props in the making of period films, especially Westerns, for realism. Many argue that it is high time CGI began taking over to ensure safety. The armourer for Rust, production of which has halted indefinitely, is Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the daughter of Thell Reed who was a veteran armourer in the industry. From what I've read, Gutierrez-Reed's short history as a film armourer has been troubled with incidences in which her conduct seems to fall short of professionalism and required safety standards. This also goes for a number of production personnel on Rust. 

The problems with this production extend beyond props and stunt performance with complaints around the crew's health and safety, so I encourage anyone who's interested to read around this. Notably, the news broke at a time when the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees were striking over dangerous working conditions and low pay. It is also tricky to say too much because so many of the claims pertaining to what was going on during the making of Rust have been disputed and are under investigation. We simply do not know the truth, only a few different perceptions of what went on. This tragedy sounds like the plot of a more interesting story to be told. 

I also want to highlight issues around training and representation. Ultimately what's at the root of any area of film production is money: how can we make the most from spending the least? Some productions with constrained budgets might hire a cheap, inexperienced crew. That's not to say that accidents can't happen with highly experienced performers, but how many deaths and injuries have needlessly occurred due to a lack of investment and equity in training?

It has been argued (and refuted) that this is what happened to Joi Harris, the stunt motorcyclist who died during the production of Deadpool 2 in 2017. Although an experienced motorcycle racer, Harris was killed when she missed a ramp at low speed and crashed through a glass window. Due to the requirements of the scene, she was not wearing a helmet. Her death was ruled accidental and was described as a freak accident. It was pointed out by many commenting on the situation that this was somebody trained to race at high speed and not to control bikes for intricate manoeuvres at slow speeds, and that it is rare for black women to be involved in this kind of action, meaning the pool of possible stunt performers is small for such a role. There was speculation that the stunt and Harris's hiring were acts of tokenism to address gender and race inequality in action and superhero films, and because there was simply no other stunt performer who could at a distance pass for actress Zazie Beetz, who was also a fair bit younger than Harris. These claims were all refuted by the production crew who insist that Harris was properly trained and experienced. This was more certainly the case for John Bernecker who died from a fall while filming for The Walking Dead, also in 2017.

Perhaps some learning did happen after the accidental shooting of Brandon Lee while filming The Crow (dir. Alex Proyas, 1994) and things today could be much worse, but they also could be substantially better. Nevermind the Oscars, just give people decent working conditions, good training and more robust health and safety measurements on sets.