I'm not the kind to kiss and tell, but I've been seen with Oscar

If the hardest thing you ever do is watch your leadin' lady kiss some other guy while you're bandagin' your knee, there's new hope for you. Hollywood's unknown stuntmen are closing in on getting their own Academy Awards category. According to The New York Times (reg. req.), it's been a bone-cracking, death-defying leap to recognition:

[The] road to the Oscars is long and arduous. Stuntmen, led by the industry veteran Jack Gill, have been lobbying the motion picture academy for a category since 1990. They have been backed by luminaries (and academy members) like the directors Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese, and the actors Dustin Hoffman, Robin Williams and Robert De Niro, who in the early 9o's all signed a petition in favor of the move.

But even with such support, "it takes a long time," said John Pavlik, a spokesman for the academy. He added: "Stunt groups have asked for categories in the past. The board of governors has looked at it in the past, and is reluctant to add categories."

Mr. Pavlik said the board would look at the request again, though not until after this year's Oscar ceremony on Feb. 27.

The most recent new Oscar category is best animated feature, added in 2002.

This should be a no-brainer, and while the move (which might help the Oscars butch up a little bit) is long overdue, it also falls into the now-more-than-ever category. A couple years ago I did an article about stuntmen, and while I forget the figures, the upshot was that in this age of CG and and digital everything, there are actually more people doing more stunts in more spectacular ways than ever before—all rendered even more stupendaculariffic by the flexibility digital movie technology allows. Also, stunts are among the more diverse employers in movies, offering opportunities for women, minorities, the handicapped, even the vertically challenged. (My favorite part of the Jaws featurette was finding out that Richard Dreyfuss' shark-cage scene was done with an average-sized shark and a little person in the cage.)

The problem is that, as with so much in the age of plenitude, we've been spoiled by the rapid progress. If, say, The Italian Job remake had come out in 1983 instead of 2003, people would have been screaming that it had the greatest car chase in the history of the universe. As it happened I don't even remember anybody mentioning that the movie had a car chase at all. Every year the spectaculars are twice as eye-popping as the year before. Which is all the more reason the lonely stuntfolks deserve to know that we like them, we really like them!

Comments

[Gary Gunnels]

Tim Cavanaugh,

...the upshot was that in this age of CG and and digital everything, there are actually more people doing more stunts in more spectacular ways than ever before?all rendered even more stupendaculariffic by the flexibility digital movie technology allows.

Examples of this can be found in The Bourne Supremacy: (a) the house explosion and (b) the Moscow car chase.

[Gary Gunnels]

Tim Cavanaugh,

The Moscow car chase had that really neat "go mobile" which is essentially two vehicles melded together to allow all sorts of camera angles impossible just a few years ago. It also makes it appear as if the actor (Matt Damon in that instance) was actually in the car driving and doing all those stunts.

Matt Damon on the "go mobile":

Dan invented something called "The Go-Mobile." It's basically this 550-horsepower, uh, rocket that attaches itself to a car and pulls the car. So you've got a professional driver in there, and you can do all these things with an actor in the car and a camera in the car that you could never do before.

[Adam]

c'mon...minis ... in the subway?? i thought it was badass.

[Luca Brasi]

I thought the Itailan Job was just a 90 minute Mini Cooper ad.

[Twba]

Those Minis outacted Mark Wahlberg.

[Jason Ligon]

Spoiler If You Are Really Anal Alert

GG:

I gather you might have a preference for the Bourne movies, but I have to say that I thought the cinematography in Supremacy was so choppy and chaotic, it ruined the rest of the film for me. To wit, in the car chase at the end of the movie, it is very difficult to actually see what is going on such that Bourne winds up in such a, er, tactically advantaged position relative to the other driver.

The fight scenes in the first Bourne are among my favorite in recent movies because they looked a lot more Krav Maga (http://www.kravmaga.com/krav09.html) than Kung Fu. They tried the same thing in the second one, but it was unbelievably choppy camera work. I wanted some Dramamine ...

[Gary Gunnels]

Jason Ligon,

The Russian spy makes the mistake of allowing Bourne to see him.

Here is how the scene unfolds:

Bourne gets shot, runs through the supermarket, gets car, etc.

At this point, Bourne hasn't seen the man who shot him; for all he knows it was just some regular Russian cop. The Russian assassin grabs the Merc SUV and takes off after Bourne. The Russian assassin tries to smash into Bourne's car but misses; Bourne then notices that he is being pursued by not only the cops but also potentially by a Merc SUV; Bourne doesn't know who is in the SUV (yet). Bourne sees who is in the SUV when they both manuevre around a city bus; at this point the Russian has inadvertently lost the advantage he once had.

Anyway, I liked the coppy nature of the film; it reminds me of how I drive. 🙂

[Tim Cavanaugh]

cinematography in Supremacy was so choppy and chaotic

I think you mean the editing was choppy and chaotic. Cinematography is just photography: lighting, filters, fog, etc. Unless your complaint is that the image itself was hard to make out.

[wallace winfrey]

Also, stunts are among the more diverse employers in movies, offering opportunities for women, minorities, the handicapped, even the vertically challenged.

There was a great "making-of" segment in the Dawn of the Dead remake which exemplified this to a great degree -- one of the zombie actors was missing his legs, but he nonetheless had a great scene where he swung from rafter to rafter in a parking garage to drop down and munch one the humans. Impossible to do with a "full-bodied" stuntman, but requiring lots of skill and talent nonetheless.

[Jason Ligon]

Tim:

Yes, editing is what I meant to criticize. Hard to believe I'm the product of a liberal arts school, eh?

[Gary Gunnels]

Jason Ligon,

Ever been a fight? (The first rule...) If so, did the fight feel choppy and quick? Fights always feel that way to me. I assumed the filmakers wanted to give the audience that feeling or impression about these fights, car chases, etc. Choppy, chaotic, non-linear, etc.

[Gary Gunnels]

Jason Ligon,

BTW, breaking a beer bottle over someone's head is far harder than it appears in film. I assume they use candy glass in film. 🙂

[Captain Awesome]

It's like the x-games, but for oscars instead of Quicksilver contracts.

[David T]

Not many people realize the dangers stuntmen undergo: I once read that more people were killed in the filming of the "storming" of the Winter Palace in Eisenstein's *October* than were killed in the actual event...

[Tim Cavanaugh]

Does that mean the Oscars' people-who-died honor roll will now be supplemented with footage of stuntman snuff?

[Ryan]

They may be waiting awhile....before adding animated features in 2002 (and that is conditional that 8 or more films make the grade), the Academy added makeup...in 1983.