So the scene we were shooting last night required that our leading man gets hit by a car. He does not get killed (it’s a comedy after all), but he is supposed to get hit, fly over the car and land on the other side. So a stunt man was employed and imported all the way from France. It turns out that there aren’t as many stunt men around as one might think. These people get to travel all over the world performing stunts; a car accident in Athens on Wednesday, a fall off a cliff in Italy on Friday. One might presume that these people get paid dearly for their unique services. Still the money they are getting paid is relatively little, considering the danger involved. Our man got paid 2400 Euro, which might sound adequate for a 10 sec performance….still, I am not so sure you would think so if you had been there.
Not at all the mucho, Rambo type of stunt man one might imagine, our Frenchman was this short, quite type of figure, rarely exchanging a glance, keeping to himself as if meditating. He always travels with an associate, who gets to drive the car (obviously). So there they were the two of them, rehearsing again and again, meticulously calculating the speed of the car, the exact point of impact. At each rehearsal, each time the car reached its target and before the target stepped aside at the last minute, I swear I missed a heart beat. So after a one hour rehearsal and after our two cameras were set and after our stunt man was dressed and his associate had assumed his starting position and after I had marked the scene and the 1st A.D. had called “action”…
I had thought this man would be performing some sort of acrobatic salto (somersault). I wasn’t at all prepared for the true-to-life car hit I was to experience. The man actually got hit! He flew over the car, limp as a stuffed doll. He even knocked the TAXI sign off and landed on the other side and lay there like dead. Even the blood we saw streaming down his eyebrow was real. And that was not in the script. The blood was streaming and the man was still lying there like dead, true to his role, his body all strewn. The paramedics were already there and thank god the man was fine. He only wanted the director to check if he had the shot. The paramedics told him he could use a couple of stitches, but the man with the thousand lives only wanted some band aid. Don’t know why I felt like hugging this man and thanking him. He didn’t have the star type of attitude I would expect from a man living on the edge like that. This man had the meekness of a man who was there because, well, somebody had to be. I am sure it’s not really like that. You don’t get to be a stunt man simply by being a martyr. Still, I felt like this man was risking so much for such little money and for, well, someone else’s fiction!!!!!!!!!! A fictitious reality!!!!!!!!
And then I couldn’t stop but remembering another reality. A very real one. That old lady flying over the car, the same way this man had. And yet another one before that - an old man lying on the concrete, his body strewn, his one shoe knocked off, his brain spilled out. I hadn't been able to look away. This old man could have been my own grandfather. I had walked up to a bystander and asked “who did it?” The bystander had replied, “I did”.
Two years after that my grandfather was hit. By a motorcycle. He, too, probably flew over head like this stunt man did last evening. My grandfather died though. Instantly.
Not at all the mucho, Rambo type of stunt man one might imagine, our Frenchman was this short, quite type of figure, rarely exchanging a glance, keeping to himself as if meditating. He always travels with an associate, who gets to drive the car (obviously). So there they were the two of them, rehearsing again and again, meticulously calculating the speed of the car, the exact point of impact. At each rehearsal, each time the car reached its target and before the target stepped aside at the last minute, I swear I missed a heart beat. So after a one hour rehearsal and after our two cameras were set and after our stunt man was dressed and his associate had assumed his starting position and after I had marked the scene and the 1st A.D. had called “action”…
I had thought this man would be performing some sort of acrobatic salto (somersault). I wasn’t at all prepared for the true-to-life car hit I was to experience. The man actually got hit! He flew over the car, limp as a stuffed doll. He even knocked the TAXI sign off and landed on the other side and lay there like dead. Even the blood we saw streaming down his eyebrow was real. And that was not in the script. The blood was streaming and the man was still lying there like dead, true to his role, his body all strewn. The paramedics were already there and thank god the man was fine. He only wanted the director to check if he had the shot. The paramedics told him he could use a couple of stitches, but the man with the thousand lives only wanted some band aid. Don’t know why I felt like hugging this man and thanking him. He didn’t have the star type of attitude I would expect from a man living on the edge like that. This man had the meekness of a man who was there because, well, somebody had to be. I am sure it’s not really like that. You don’t get to be a stunt man simply by being a martyr. Still, I felt like this man was risking so much for such little money and for, well, someone else’s fiction!!!!!!!!!! A fictitious reality!!!!!!!!
And then I couldn’t stop but remembering another reality. A very real one. That old lady flying over the car, the same way this man had. And yet another one before that - an old man lying on the concrete, his body strewn, his one shoe knocked off, his brain spilled out. I hadn't been able to look away. This old man could have been my own grandfather. I had walked up to a bystander and asked “who did it?” The bystander had replied, “I did”.
Two years after that my grandfather was hit. By a motorcycle. He, too, probably flew over head like this stunt man did last evening. My grandfather died though. Instantly.
