The Stunt Man

Plot synopsis:
Cameron (Steve Railsback), a Vietnam vet who's wanted for attempted murder, is caught by the police but escapes. Crossing a bridge, he dodges an antique car that seems to be trying to run him down; when he turns around, the car has disappeared. While he wonders whether it went into the river, a helicopter flies close to the bridge and a man inside looks intently at Cameron. Later, Cameron is attracted to a movie shoot -- a World War I battle scene -- on the beach. After the scene, he notices an old woman who walks through the set greeting the actors, then falls in the water. Cameron dives in to rescue her and is horrified when she pulls off her face -- a mask. She's not an old woman, but the movie's leading lady, Nina Franklin (Barbara Hershey), testing the costume and make-up for the scenes set late in her character's life.The director, Eli Cross (Peter O'Toole), descends from the sky on his camera crane. This is his second entrance from on high; Eli is the same man who stared at Cameron from the helicopter. He offers Cameron a job, explaining that their last stunt man just ran a car off a bridge. They haven't found the body, and Eli can't afford the production delays that will result if the police get involved. The local police chief is aware of the accident on the bridge and Eli has to do some fast talking to convince him that Cameron is Burt, the stunt man who went off the bridge into the river. (Eli claims divers pulled him out of the car, and Cameron is convincingly damp, having just pulled Nina out of the ocean.) Cameron's job is to pretend to be Burt and do his stunts -- a role within a role that allows both Eli and Cameron to avoid entanglements with the police.Cameron is rechristened "Lucky." Denise (Sharon Farrell), the film's hair stylist, dyes his hair and makes a pass at him. Ostensibly the color change is to make him resemble the blond leading man, Raymond Bailey (Adam Roarke) -- Lucky is Ray's stunt double -- but of course it also, conveniently, makes him harder to recognize. There's a running theme about how the movies are all about making things look like what they're not. When Cameron is convinced Eli's selling him out by showing the cops the film shot when Burt ran off the bridge -- because Cameron's in it -- Eli reassures him by telling him that the original King Kong from the 1933 movie "was just 3 foot 6 inches tall -- he only came up to Fay Wray's belly button. If God could do the tricks that we can do, he'd be a happy man." "How tall was King Kong?" becomes their catchphrase.Lucky learns stunt work under the tutelage of Chuck (Charles Bail), the stunt coordinator; there's some cool detail about how stunts are pulled off. (To film part of the wing-walking scene, they tether the plane to the ground and fly in circles at an altitude of about 6 feet.) There's an elaborate scene where Lucky, standing in for the leading man, is chased up and down the sloping red roofs of a large building (in real life, the Hotel del Coronado near San Diego, California), shot at, and falls through a skylight into a bordello. Lucky is thrilled to learn he'll be paid $600 for the scene. At the same time, Lucky/Cameron's getting involved with Nina -- who, it turns out, once had a romance with Eli and still admires him tremendously. Eli admits to her that he's jealous of Lucky.The last shoot at the current location involves Lucky's most difficult stunt, driving a Duesenberg off a bridge and escaping under water -- the same scene Burt was shooting when he died. Lucky believes Eli is trying to kill him, and will use the stunt to make it look like an accident. It's plausible; killing Lucky would get him out of Nina's life and remove the most unreliable witness to the cover-up of Burt's death.In the wee hours of the morning before the shoot, Lucky and Nina have a heart-to-heart in the set shop and Lucky finally tells his story. He'd planned to open an ice cream shop with a friend when he got home from Vietnam, but the friend backed out -- he didn't want Cameron around because, Cameron realized, the friend was the guy Cameron's girlfriend had left him for. Cameron took out his fury one night on the ice cream shop (which he reenacts by trashing the set shop). When a cop turned up to see what was going on, Cameron threw a big tub of ice cream at him and fled. The cop was knocked out and spent several hours with his head in the ice cream, which didn't kill him but resulted in frostbite damage to his nose and ear and an attempted murder charge for Cameron, who's been on the run ever since. After Nina stops laughing, the couple plans to escape together: Nina hides in the trunk of the stunt car, which Cameron will drive away in the morning instead of driving off the bridge.Unbeknownst to Lucky, Chuck has planted an explosive in one of the Duesenberg's front tires to make the car's tumble off the bridge look more realistic. Lucky panics everyone by starting the scene too early. (He's in the Duesenberg with the windows rolled up and mistakes a question about the on-board camera for his cue.) The car goes into the water when Chuck triggers the exploding tire, and Lucky scrambles to reach Nina in the trunk -- until he happens to look up out of the sinking car's rear window to see Nina with Eli on the bridge. Lucky emerges, gasping, from the river and notices that there were divers in the water with him all the time. Nina tells him that she was found in the trunk hours before the shoot, and Eli told her that Lucky had changed his mind and decided to do the stunt. Lucky, of course, had done no such thing, but Nina's so pleased that he and Eli have made up that he doesn't set her straight. Eli, descending as usual from heaven on his crane, explains that he wouldn't let Lucky run off thinking that Eli was trying to kill him (and not incidentally leaving the film incomplete). The best way to convince Lucky of Eli's good will, Eli felt, was to make sure Lucky got through the stunt in one piece. Lucky, though furious -- not for the first time -- at Eli's high-handed manipulations, is amused in spite of himself and giddy with relief at surviving. As the movie ends, Cameron and Eli are bickering over Cameron's pay for the stunt and planning to catch a plane to the production's next location.

Tags: anti war, cult, comedy, psychedelic, romantic

Review:
Peter O'Toole gives a marvellous performance as a film director in this film which looks (to an extent) behind the scenes of movie making.
But it wasn't until I got the DVD that I realised there were many layers to the film.The director had great difficulty with the studios in various stages of making the movie and although it was originally intended as an anti-Vietnam film, that had to be changed as production got further away from the war years.
A short plot outline: Fugitive Cameron (Railsback) stumbles onto a movie set where megalomaniac director Eli Cross (O'Toole) promises to hide from the police if he replaces his ace stunt man, who got killed earlier on the set in a freak accident while filming a scene.
Barbara Hershey gives a great performance but without Peter O'Toole's tour-de-force performance, I doubt if the film would have worked as well as it did, especially with such a challenging and multi-layered script.
The director of the movie is the eccentric and megalomaniacal Eli Cross (Peter O'Toole, in one of his best ever performances), who takes Cameron under his wing and protects him from John Law, as long as he keeps his mouth shut about the accident.Cameron practices to be a stunt man and takes the place of the man he killed.
But as the movie shoot becomes more elaborate and dangerous, he falls in love with the leading lady (Barbara Hershey) and starts to suspect that Eli is trying to capture his death on film.Although it seems nasty, the movie is wonderfully light-hearted and the outrageous stunt scenes are backed up by an awesome score by Dominic Frontiere.
Great performances by O'Toole and Railsback, along with Barbara Hershey, Allen Garfield, Alex Rocco and Sharon Ferrell add so much to the suspense.See this movie.
Barbara Hershey is the leading lady love interest, delivers an intelligent and understated performance, and is appropriately bewitchingly beautiful.Roger Ebert didn't like this movie, but he got confused into thinking that it was something deeper than a comedy.
At the time Peter O'Toole was Academy Award nominated as Best Actor, for his portrayal of one-step-above-God-himself, Eli Cross  in The Stunt Man, my movie going experience was limited to The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm, Mary Poppins, and some post pubescent indulgences into the realm of Flint, Matt Helm, and James Bond.Through the magic of video I was able to see Richard Rush's wonderful black comedy- And have never tired of it.Had Mr. O'Toole and The Stunt Man not run headlong into the likes of Raging Bull, and Robert De Niro, I venture to say it would have garnered WINS, not just NOMINATIONS from the Academy that year.Rent itand while you're at it reach for `My Favorite Year' and make it a Peter O'Toole double feature.You will not be disappointed..
I found it difficult to follow and disjointed despite some really fascinating scenes and some very good acting.Steve Railsback plays a Vietnam vet named Cameron who escapes the police after he is caught for attempted murder.
The police are sniffing around, so O'Toole introduces Cameron as Burt, the missing stunt man, and the rest of the cast and crew play along.Cameron learns a lot about stunts (as do we) and he falls for the film's leading lady (Barbara Hershey) who at one time was involved with Eli. Cameron over time becomes increasingly paranoid and believes that the manipulative, kind of crazy Eli wants to kill him.O'Toole, Railsback, and Hershey are all excellent -- we first see Hershey in an old lady mask and clothing.
O'Toole is madcap, and doesn't seem to care what happens to anyone as long as he gets the shot he wants, and one can see how Cameron would be unclear about his motives.The print I saw didn't look particularly good - I wonder about the budget for this film.
When Eli Cross (played by Peter O'Toole) invites Cameron (Played by Steve Railsback) to, "...Step into my looking glass, Alice" I knew that this motion picture was no ordinary movie.
Peter O'Toole and Barbara Hershey are equally effective in their roles, but director-screenwriter Richard Rush is the driving force behind this movie, and the entire production was dedicated to Rush and his vision.
And, if you can still find the deluxe two-DVD set with "The Sinister Saga Of The Making Of The Stunt Man" take an additional two hours and enjoy this fascinating behind-the-scenes story which has as many plot turns as the film itself!.
This is one of the top ten movies of the eighties and gets better with repeated viewing.Premise: A vietnam veteran becomes a stuntman to escape the police.The Stunt man was nominated for three Academy awardsGrade: 10/10 (Cult classic).
While The Stunt Man is an excellent movie, which tells a valuable story in an interesting multi-layered fashion; it is not really the masterpiece that Director Richard Rush and its biggest fans claim.
Overall the degree of misdirection was rather spartan and not particularly clever (that darn low budget) , meaning that they did not begin to create the degree of suspense that was necessary.That said there were some interesting little details to look for when watching this film: A tight two-shot of Railsback and O'Toole on the beach, they step onto a platform which turns out to be attached to an unseen crane and are lifted into the air, the actors do not betray that this is happening-their conversation continues as the background changes.
If that sounds like a contradiction in terms, welcome to this movie's twisted little world.Although I've seen nothing else by director Rush that I could even remotely call a good film, this one was quite obviously his labor of love.
I wonder what he was thinking; maybe he needed some cash.Barbara Hershey was in about every third movie during this time period, and plays about the same character in each one.I last saw "Helter Skelter" starring Steve Railsback 15-20 years ago, and the moment I saw him the "The Stunt Man," he was immediately recognizable.
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?
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.
The Stunt Man finds Steve Railsback on the run from some police and stumbling into a movie set where Director Peter O'Toole is filming a World War I epic.
O'Toole in his Oscar nominated performance borrowed from any number of film directors, past and present, some of whom he must have worked for to create a very fascinating portrait.Railsback and Hershey are good too and I also liked Alex Rocco as the sheriff and Allen Garfield as O'Toole's best friend and screenwriter for this epic.The Stunt Man is a real tour de force for Peter O'Toole, a film none of his fans should miss..
Now I hate to criticize a Peter O'Toole movie, but he's the only bright spot here and the reason to keep watching.The opening scene and some other sequences (especially the stunts and the scenes between Nina and "Lucky") are overlong to the point that you just don't give a damn anymore.
It is a fun look into the world of movie-making and an interesting character study into whether the director, Peter O'Toole, is actually trying to kill his newest stuntman, knowing that Cameron is running from the police.
The rest of the stunt team are very believable as is Barbara Hersey whose brief appearance as the old woman is delightful.Railsback isn't a total failure in the film but either he didn't have the ability to handle the emotional dynamics required or the writer/director, Richard Rush, just isn't able to get it out of him on camera.What I like most about the film is the parallel between the antics of the film crew and the fictional inmates of the asylum in the movie within the movie.
Allen Goorwitz (aka Garfield) puts in a solid supporting turn as the writer who tries to help the young stunt man sort things out.But, Railsback's handling of his demons and his anger in the midst of a true theater of the absurd is what makes this movie such a classic..
"Shall we stop and ask the bird what his was?""The Stunt Man" is a film about perspective, especially as we see director Eli Cross, the man with the apple, through the eyes of Cameron, a fugitive Vietnam veteran.
Even his very name seems to speak to this duality, suggesting both a double cross and a metaphor for a loving deity.I came to this movie by way of an excellent book by Danny Peary, "Cult Movies 3," which championed "The Stunt Man" as a metaphysical metaphor and told the fascinating tale of how director Richard Rush struggled to get it released.
You have incredible camera work, hilarious dialogue, a dazzling central location at the historic Hotel del Coronado in San Diego, a wonderful sense of mise-en-scene from an assortment of colorful characters played by gifted actors, and especially a rich portrayal of Cross by Peter O'Toole.O'Toole seems so alive, you almost feel him breathing down your neck as he dips down from the heavens on his crane to offer another piece of whimsical advice.
He's intense, yet even when he screams at one of his crew for yelling "cut" on his film, revealing some of the monster Cameron suspects lurks under his smooth surface, you, like Cameron, are unable to take your eyes off the SOB.Over the years, I've watched it a few more times and come to realize Steve Railsback as Cameron gives a performance every bit O'Toole's equal.
The crime he's being chased for is a mystery, though he throws up dark hints of war atrocities that might be true or else just Cameron's skewed sense of humor, projecting what he thinks others think of him, the grunt from 'Nam.Railsback was best known before "The Stunt Man" for playing Charles Manson, and there are times you wonder whether Cameron is a similar character.
The film delivers several elaborate stunts, performed by Cameron on the set of Cross's World War I picture.
Some like Peary complain, validly, that the stunts come off as too cartoony, not realistic as they seem to be filmed as one-take deals, and Cameron doesn't seem to know what he's doing even as he goes through his paces with apparent aplomb.But director Rush is playing with us here, delivering a subtle surreal layer to the film that keeps it (and us) off-center while simultaneously commenting on both the nature of the movies as illusion dispenser and of man's situation in a seemingly capricious and arbitrary world.The film is also very funny, so much so that many wrongly describe it as a comedy.
It's the kind of movie I want to tell everyone about, yet at the same time I'm glad it's relatively unknown so that I can have the pleasure of keeping it to myself.Steve Railsback plays an escaped convict who winds up hiding out as a stunt man on a movie set.
The movie is amazingly entertaining, and happens to be one of the best movies about the making of movies ever put on screen.Barbara Hershey does marvelous work as the film-within-the-film's leading lady and love interest to Railsback.
The crazy director Eli Cross (Peter O'Toole) makes believe that the stuntman didn't die and passes off Cameron as him.
That`s the problem with this movie If I push myself I suppose I can recognise the themes of war ( Via a vietnam vet been given the part of a stuntman in a farcical WW1 film ) and paranoia ( This vet knows everyone is out to get him ) set around the film making process with a meglomaniac director , but THE STUNT MAN is never more than an average film and most of its critical acclaim from the Oscar board and the IMDB is down to the fact only die hard film fans will know what to make of this movie.
This is a stupid, poorly acted and generally lousy film, with a paper thin premise that implodes immediately.The actor Steve Railsback could be a candidate for some kind of All Time Bad, and he's got company here.Also, production qualities are generally of the B-movie standard.
And never before has the circus-like atmosphere of a film crew on location been so perfectly captured; never has the craziness and danger of stunt work (and movie-making in general) been so effectivelyportrayed.
Steve Railsback is perfectly cast as the paranoid and frightened would-be stunt man, while Peter O'Toole has never been betteras his opponent -- the ambiguous, possibly dangerous and always- megalomaniacal director Eli Cross, who is put in the odd position of trying to create the illusion of World War I with the reality of a Vietnam veteran.
In an Academy Award nominated performance, Peter O'Toole plays the determined Eli Cross, the movie-in-the-movie's ruthless manipulative director.
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.
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.
Peter O'Toole turns in one of his best performances as Eli Cross, the overbearing, manipulative director of a WWI film.
The Studio Saw this and was Apprehensive at Best and Determined at Least to let it set on the Shelf for Two Years after it was made.Their Bottom Line Instincts were Correct because No One went to See it, but it did Attain Attention from Critics, Film-Buffs, and Eggheads and Managed (no small feat) to Acquire Three Oscar Nominations, Director, Screenplay, and Peter O'Toole for Best Actor.The Other Lead Performance was not as Endearing as Steve Railsback is Unconvincing, Over the Top, and more Irritating than Not in a Difficult Role that is one of the Films Strong Shortcomings.
Everybody knows King Kong as something monstrous, gigantic but very few know that the real thing was a small toy made to look bigger thankfully to special effects.But what's have to do with the story of a Vietnam War veteran running away from police, who happens to stumble on a film set to be later get invited by the film director to replace a dead stunt man?
The fugitive Cameron (played by a sexy Steve Railsback) while learning to be a stunt gets fooled over and over by the director Eli Cross (a dynamic Peter O'Toole - Oscar nominated for this role), who puts the poor man in the most audacious, risky and dangerous stunts in a World War I film.
This screenplay strategy works but not that much if we consider that most of the time Cameron is performing all the stunts in one long shot where he falls and runs and jumps, I mean, Eli's team is filming like five or six sequences continuously, which is quite impossible to be done in films.
Troubled and paranoid fugitive Vietnam veteran Cameron (a fine and intense performance by Steve Railsback) seeks refuge on the set of a lavish World War I picture that's being directed by cruel and crazed, yet cunning and charismatic megalomaniac director Eli Cross (superbly played with lip-smacking pompous aplomb by Peter O'Toole).
Poor film and though Peter O'Toole received another best actor nomination, Steve Railsback was just as good here.O'Toole always did splendidly especially in parts where there is some sort of homosexual mania behind him.He is quite a character in this one as he portrays a director on the set of a movie about World War 1.
"The Stunt Man" was released in 1980 to apparently universal praise and earned three Oscar nominations including: Best Actor (Peter O'Toole), Best Director (Richard Rush) and Best Adapted Screenplay.
The film's temperamental director, "Eli Cross" (O'Toole), despite being aware of Cameron's fugitive status, immediately hires him as a replacement stuntman.
It is about a Vietnam veteran (Steve Railsback) who accidentally murders the stunt man of a film being directed by Toole.
When Cameron discovers that he has stumbled into a movie being made by Eli Cross (Peter O'Toole), he immediately attempts escape but is stopped when Cross offers the con protection if he'll be a stunt man in the picture.
In scenes with Peter O'Toole Steve Railsback utilizes his Actors Studio training well to deliver the truth of character and scene, with Barbara Hershey Steve Railsback reveals a particularly sensitive side to his persona that very nearly makes him palatable to the mainstream taste.The quality of the script for The Stunt Man clearly sets it apart from other movies like it.