SYSK’s Summer Movie Playlist: How Stuntmen (and -women) Work
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Hi, everybody. Back to the Stuff You Should Know summer movie playlist, and this one is from January 2013. It's our How Stuntmen and Women Work episode. I think your socks are going to be knocked off by how hard these people work for our movie viewing enjoyment. You enjoy, too. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com.

Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And this is Stuff You Should Know. Well, Jerry had an itchy trigger finger today. Did you hear in there? Yeah, she's ready to go home. Yeah, she was like, come on. 3, 2, 1, go. You guys aren't my entire life. I know. We like to think we are, but that is, we're like 0.1% of Jerry's life.

Yeah. She's giggling in there. She's quite the adventurer. How are you doing, man? I'm great, man. I'm ready to jump from a tall building or roll a brand new car. Man. Sorry. That's what I was going to ask you, so I guess you did the intro for us. Go ahead. Let's pretend like that didn't happen. No, it's fine. Okay. You were just doing what? The theme from The Fall Guy starring Lee Majors? 1980s awesome TV show with...

Probably the best truck ever featured in a TV show. Yeah, that GMC man, that thing is sweet. You know dudes recreate that truck. If you Google it, there's a lot of guys that have made that truck for themselves. For good reason, too. It's a cool truck. Yeah, and it's interesting that the Fall guy points out a couple of, the show itself points out a very important things as far as stuntmen go. One is that he had to moonlight as a bounty hunter, and that's kind of one of the things we'll learn is that there's not a lot of work out there.

and to go around, you know, like it's tough to make it as a stuntman. - Yeah, you get punched. - And B, if you look at the lyrics to that theme song, man, he is really salty about not getting the glory

And the girls. Yeah, mainly the girls. And the glory. He, well, when he winds up in the hay, it's only hay. A hay hay. So the song complains about not getting glory or women, and that is one of the hallmarks, though, of the stunt person is to remain anonymous. And to be bitter about it. I guess so. Very few stunt people you've ever heard of. Well, yeah, the Academy of Arts and Sciences is,

They give out the Academy Awards, the Oscars. Motion picture arts and sciences. Yeah. They don't have a category for stunt people. Nope. Never have. And the reason some people give is because they like to maintain the anonymity and the illusion that's provided by stunt people filling in as doubles for stars. Yeah. But you can win a what was the award?

You can win an Emmy for Best Stunt Coordinator. True. Or the Stunt Award. They have their own stunt awards. Oh, yeah, the Taurus World Stunt Awards. Yeah, you can win a Tori. They took a hiatus. I saw that there was 2010, and they're having stuff for 2012. Couldn't find anything about 2011. Really? Yeah, so if you know what happened to the Taurus World Stunt Awards for 2011, we are curious. Interesting. Let us know.

So thanks for listening. So anyway, let's talk about the history of stunt people. They pretty much have only been around as long as you've had

Motion pictures, right? Yeah. There wasn't much of a need for them before then. No. I mean, maybe for like a show or something like that, like a Wild Bill Hickok show. Oh, I guess I see your point. You call them stuntmen. But really, you kind of want to differentiate because you can also say, all right, so people who ride horses on standing up on a horse's back, that's a stunt person. Yeah. Right? A guy who like is in the X Games. Yeah.

Those extreme sports kids that all the kids are into these days. That's a stunt. These are technically stunt people. What we're talking about are movie stunt people. And the whole point to their craft isn't to do a 580 on a bike.

unless somebody asks them to. What they want to do is create what you would just take for granted. Like, oh, that guy just got clocked. No, he didn't actually get clocked. That was a stuntman who knows what he's doing and that was a carefully choreographed scene that just flew right past you. But your brain still just absorbed it as that man just got punched, even though that didn't really happen. That's right. And we will probably slip into the word stuntman here and there instead of stunt people. Of course, there were tons and tons of stunt women. Yeah.

but we'll say stuntpersons are stuntmen, and luckily there are women now. Back in the day they would dress men as women to do stunts many times. - Yeah. There was a lot of cross-dressing back in the day. - There was until they decided, hey, women are people too, and they can act and do stunts just like guys can. - We can put them in danger just as much as well. - Exactly. - So there wasn't much call for stuntpeople for movies before movies, just by definition. - Sure. - Don't be ridiculous.

But right out of the gate, when we started making movies, we started needing people to do stunts. And the earliest people who were doing stunts were actually comedians, slapstick comedians. Like Buster Keaton had a very famous early stunt. Steamboat Bill Jr. Is that what it was in? Yeah, the very famous. You've probably seen it in Hollywood legends of screen clips and things like that on AMC. It is the famous shot where the front facade of a house

falls down and on well it would have been on Buster Keaton but he is saved because the attic window or attic door was open so it just falls all around him and there was some careful measuring in place because if he would have been off by a few inches he would have been dead yeah

And that was a real thing. The earliest stunts were nothing but the real thing. Apparently if you had, I don't know, somebody hanging from the construction, the skeleton of a steel skyscraper, you needed that shot. That's what the guy did. Yeah, and Ed the Grabster wrote this one, of course. And Ed points out that back in the day, before there were like –

Before they called them stuntmen, they were just like, let me go find someone crazy enough to go do this. Exactly. And that guy at craft service looks crazy enough to do it, and let's go see if he wants an extra 20 bucks. Yeah, and he does. Because back in 1902, 20 bucks was a lot. Sure. So as the film industry grew and grew early in the 20th century, we went from just nothing but

slapstick comedies to things like Westerns and action flicks. And all of a sudden those people who really can ride on the back of a horse standing up became stunt people as well. And as stunts became more and more complex, the idea of having somebody whose job and specialty was to just do the stunt and make it look like the actor, the star was doing it started to really develop. Yeah.

Yeah, and then flash forward even more, the 60s and 70s is when things really came to their own as far as stunt technology, developing things like squibs, which we will talk about for gunshots, and air rams. Is that what they're called? Yeah. It's like a...

Like a pneumatic lift. Yeah, it's pneumatic now, I think. It just shoots you up into the air, like with a human cannonball. Right. But, like, so if somebody, if a grenade blows up by somebody. And you see the dude fly through the air. And he was on a ram. That's right. And then other things like airbags and, you know, more technology with cars, with the roll cages. Like, it just got more and more complex. Right. And, yeah.

Now, of course, you have CGI, which replaces a lot of stunts in many cases. Yeah, not necessarily to a better effect. All I have to say is Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Yeah. Where it was like they suddenly cut to drawings of Harrison Ford swinging on a lasso. He's famous for doing his own stunts, though. He didn't do them in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Well, that's because he's 89 years old and he would die. He was awesome in Bruno.

I didn't see that. Was he Harrison Ford was in it? Yeah. For, for about two seconds. Did they do like gay jokes to him or something? They didn't even get that far. Oh, okay. Yeah. Did he just shut it down? Yeah. Awesome. Uh, but anyway, so, um,

I guess throughout this progression of the field of stunt people, safety has gotten better and better is what I think we were just trying to say. To the point now where they're not even used. It's CGI. But there's always going to be room for stunt people. Oh, yeah. And the fact that it's gotten safer is much better. But there's still...

there's an element of risk to it no matter what. As Grabster points out, if a stunt didn't present some sort of risk, there'd be no need for stunt people at all. That's true. The actors would do it. Yeah. But the actors can't always do it. That's right. And when you want to call in a stunt person is when they either have a specific skill that they're really good at, like...

Fake martial arts, or I mean real martial arts, but fake hitting and kicking. Fake martial arts, like Qigong. Like stuff you just made up. It's a lot of just front kicks in the air. That's what you practice. Qigong. Sword fighting, stage combat, like we've talked about, stuff like that. They are trained to fall. They are trained to safely fall, I guess I should point out. And it just basically...

It's a safety factor on one hand, and it's a financial factor on the other. Because you can't have your main actor or actress going down with a broken leg for four weeks. So you put your stunt person in there and keep your actor all nice and safe in their trailer. Yeah. Or you want to be shooting two things at once. So you have your second unit out there shooting the fast cars whizzing by in the car chase. Then you have your first unit shooting the actor inside the car chasing

Driving a lot slower and acting like it's really fast. But shouting and moving the steering wheel back and forth a lot. Yeah. Maybe there's somebody rocking the car. What's that called? Poor man's process. Yeah. Yeah. I guess we should say this. When you're in a car, you either have a camera rig on your car where it's the real car with cameras attached to it. We've done that. Or the car is on a process trailer, which means...

A lot of these shots you see of someone driving, and you're like, they're not even paying attention to the road. Yeah. It's because the car's sitting on a trailer being pulled by a truck. Right. So it's got a little rock to it. A little rock to it. Or you do the poor man's process when the car's not going anywhere. And you have PAs pushing on the outside. Pushing on the outside, little tricks with lighting to make it look like headlights going by. We've done that. It's really neat in the end to look at a scene that's poor man's process and think, wow.

they're really not even moving and it looks so good yeah yeah see if you can pick it out and the stuff you should know TV series oh they can probably pick it out so um yeah it's financial it makes sense also one of the other reasons people use stunt people is they come with a set of skills that the average actor doesn't have a particular set of skills exactly that makes them very dangerous to you and so it's you can either hire a stuntman who looks like your star or

to carry out like a combat scene. - Sort of look like your star. - Or you can teach your star, you know, spend all this extra money and time training the star to this skill in a crash course. So it just, most of the time it makes sense to just hire a stunt person. - Yeah, and you know, chances are these days you're gonna get a mix, in a big action movie you're gonna get a mix of all three. You're gonna get some CGI, you're gonna get some stunt people, and these days you're gonna get real actors

doing some of the real fake fighting. Doesn't Tom Cruise do a lot of his own stunts? Yeah, I got a list of actors who prefer to do stunts. Oh, okay. I didn't mean to jump the gun. No, the Cruise is famous for that. I was reading this and I was like, I wonder if I would do my own stunts. I would do some. I would say, sure, I want to learn how to sword fight. Teach me. That's something I want to know. And I'm certainly not going to shell out for it myself ever. So let's go ahead and learn now. That's a good point. I would do my own stunts.

It depends. The heights? No way. I would do that. I would jump off of something. So, California state law, and of course they shoot movies all over the place now, and the union rules in Hollywood have really made it pretty safe these days, but you're still going to find injuries in your occasional death on set, which is really awful. Yeah. Well, there always have been, pretty much from the beginning, deaths and injuries. Howard Hughes? Yeah, the movie Hell's Angels? Yeah.

Which we must have talked about in the Hells Angels podcast.

I'm sure we did, because I think we talked about the origin of the name. Which is from the air combat? Yeah, that's what they think. Like the fighting hellcat? Yeah, I think that was one of the theories. But there were three, maybe four fatalities. Yeah. Because they were doing real dogfights with airplanes, and there were a lot of crashes. Yeah. So that was a movie where people died. Yes. Very famously, The Twilight Zone, the movie. Jennifer Jason Leigh's father, Vic Morrow, and two...

little Vietnamese kids, died when a helicopter crashed into the water where they were crossing a river. That's on YouTube, by the way. I know, it's pretty awful. It is. And I saw it recently because I was just curious about

I'd always wondered how it went down in my head because I've heard the story since the movie came out since I was a kid. And I always wondered exactly what was the logistics and how did that go down. It's pretty bad to watch. It is. Because it just goes totally out of control. It does. So I would not recommend that. But you do have to enter your age, by the way, to watch that video. I saw. And on set, the AD is ultimately responsible, the assistant director for...

everyone's safety. And in fact, on our own little TV show when we had fake guns on set just as props. Like we didn't even use them in the scene. But just to have a fake gun on set, the AD has to announce to the whole crew

and show them the gun. Say it's fake, it's not real, look at the barrel, there's no bullets, there's no nothing, it will not be fired, we will not be shooting blanks or dummy cartridges. And it's just, even on a stupid little silly show like ours, you gotta be really careful with that stuff. - Yeah, so Chuck, because of this incredibly high risk profession work, stunt people must be paid out the yin yang. True or false?

They make a good rate, but like we said earlier, there's not a ton of work for the amount of stunt people trying to get work. Oh, okay. And that was when I used to work out in L.A. as a P.A., I would always try and talk to the stunt people when I worked on jobs where they had stunt people because they're just really interesting. Yeah. To say the least. Yeah.

they would usually bemoan the fact that there's not a ton of work and, you know, they're all kind of scrapping for the same piece of cheese. But that's like everyone in the film business. Sure. From crew to the lead actor. You're all after that same piece of cheese. Yep. And we've worked with some stunt people too. Yeah. You'd be surprised when you need to call in a stunt person. I worked on this one commercial where it was just like bad traffic on the highway, the shot was, and cars had to just sort of pull over to the side while another car came through.

All the cars that pulled over to the side of the road had to have stunt drivers. Wow. Yeah, I was like, I could do that. But then I'd be taking bread off the table of a stunt person. Right. Which is not good. And the whole production would shut down. That's true. Okay, so most stunt people, you say because there's just so little work for so many people, it's not a high-paying job. A lot of people do it for the love of it, right? Yeah. I mean, you can make money if you're experienced and get tons of work, obviously, but...

Right. I'd say those are the few and far between. But you'd have to love it because the hours are usually very, very long. Yeah. To do a stunt is not – you don't just walk up and get in the car and drive it and all of a sudden it flips and there's an explosion and you're hoping for the best. Right. Like when you see a stunt, these things are rehearsed over and over again, say for a car chase.

They'll go through the entire car chase, but they'll do it at a low speed. Right. So that it's choreographed, rehearsed, and everybody knows what's going to happen when. Yeah. That takes a very long time. If you need to flip a car, you need to do measurements. The pyrotechnics guys are probably involved. Yeah. There's a lot of standing around. There's a lot of practicing. There's a lot of measuring. There's a lot of talking. And then if, say, you're doing something like in water, right?

you're probably standing in water the whole time, so you're doing that for 14 hours. It sounds like you would have to love your work to do this. Yeah, it's definitely not a glory job, especially factoring in the anonymity factor. Right, when you do all this and you do it absolutely perfectly, no one notices. That's the goal. In fact, one of my biggest pet peeves is when you do notice and you see that one shot of...

The dude with the wig on that's supposed to be Clint Eastwood. Right. Yeah. Just disappointing. So you were saying the second unit director handles this. The second unit director is in charge of shooting stunts, but the person who's in charge of the stunts themselves is the stunt coordinator. Yeah. And that person hires the stunt people, plans the stunts.

oversees the stunts execution, does everything but actually sets up the camera and all that or handles the camera shooting it, right? - Yeah, it's basically, it's like a film crew is broken up into many departments and that's just sort of its own little department headed by the coordinator. - Gotcha. - Like they'll have a budget to work with and all that kind of stuff, just like any other department.

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Get started with Line2.com slash audio or download Line2 in any app store today. Line2, your second line simplified. So let's talk about how they do some stunts. Okay, and actually the second unit director a lot of times is a former stunt person or stunt coordinator. Right, that makes sense. Because it comes in handy. Sure. Let's talk about stunts without fire. How about punches? How about them? Stage fighting, man.

Something we have not learned yet. That's pretty much a must. If you want to become a stuntman, that's lesson one is go take stage fighting courses. Yep. Learn how to sell a punch as the giver and as the receiver without looking corny and hokey and fake like pro wrestling. Right.

But it's very much similar to pro wrestling, especially if you've ever seen somebody throw a punch in pro wrestling and you can hear the skin slap. Yeah. That's because that person was actually just punched. Yeah. The key is they weren't punched very hard. Right. Certainly not as hard as the jerk of their head would say. Yeah. You've got camera angles and you've got sound effects and through the art of movie magic.

it looks like a good knockdown drag-out brawl. Right, and if you've got a really good stunt coordinator, there'll be a punch that's sold, and the person who's being punched is on a ramp, so they fly through the air afterward. Yeah, that's awesome. All right, gunshots. We talked about squibs. A squib is...

Basically, you're going to have a metal chest plate with a squib on the front of it to protect your body. And it's basically a little blood packet that's rigged electronically to explode when it's supposed to. And so the plate in between the squib and your chest protects you. Sure. And maybe you are in charge of – you, the stuntman, are in charge. You have a little button. Yeah, maybe. To –

explode the charge or there's somebody else doing it remotely and it's pretty awesome releases theater blood opens a hole in the shirt yeah pretty awesome it is very awesome this I didn't realize though how they make bullet holes in like a like a wall like a stucco wall yeah I thought this was pretty ingenious they drill the hole ahead of time and then they cover it up with like putty or paper or something and paint and

With a squib in there. Yeah. And they blow that squib out. Yeah. And it makes a bullet hole. That's pretty cool. It's ingenious. It's simple, it seems like, but it's very ingenious. Well, especially when you watch a movie...

Ideally, you're getting lost in the movie and not paying attention, but if you watch a John Woo film or something, and you see a wall get riddled with bullets, just think about all the time it took to set up all those squibs. And what if the actor trips in the middle of it? You're just like, we have to do it again. Yeah, which is no good. In fact, big stunts, they go with many, many cameras on stunts that you don't or can't recreate because of either danger or money. And some of these shots have...

a dozen or more cameras shooting at a time. Right, which makes a lot of sense. Of course. And Grabster points out that

And another reason why you don't want to do a big take like that more than once is because every time you do, the danger for the stunt person multiplies. And I was like, how? And then I thought, oh, well. Doing it more. Right. Your chances of injury are increased the more times you carry out a dangerous act. So that's how it multiplies. Getting back to squibs, these days a lot of directors are opting for CGI blood and bullet wounds. Yeah.

But supposedly Quentin Tarantino, and this is out by the time this comes out. Django Unchained. Man, I can't wait to see it. Supposedly he had 100% real squibs, and they're supposed to be the bloodiest, nastiest squibs that Hollywood has seen in years. Is that right? Yeah, it's supposed to be pretty awesome. Have you seen Machete? Yeah. That was pretty bloody. Yeah, that was bad, though. I agree it was, but it was still pretty bloody. They also have blanks.

If you were firing a gun on set, it is probably a blank. You would hope so. It's not the same as a dummy cartridge. No. A blank actually fires gunpowder, has gunpowder, and fires what's called a wad, which is like paper or wood or plastic.

but it does not obviously have shot or a bullet. No, but sometimes when the bullet explodes, bits of metal can end up being shot out as well. That's how Brandon Lee died when they were filming The Crow. Yeah, his was actually an accident. There was a bullet lodged in the barrel that they didn't know about.

What? I thought... Okay, well, then I'm thinking of somebody else who was messing around with a gun. That was... Oh, man, I can't remember his name. He put it to his head and pulled the trigger, and the water, the gases or something killed him. Yeah, that was...

I can't remember his name, but it was on a TV show set, and he goofing around put it to his head as a joke. So you should never mess around with blanks. No. It's very dangerous still. No, but there was a bullet in the... Yeah, there was a bullet that got the guns mixed up, and there was a real bullet slug lodged in the barrel that they didn't know about. So it fired a blank, but it ejected that...

other thing and Brandon Lee died. Wow, I didn't know that. It was one of the biggest oopses probably in Hollywood history. Yeah, I guess you could call it that. And I think they thought he was still acting and continued to roll cameras for a bit afterward. Very sad, tragic. Are we to falling? Yeah, which you'll do. I won't do. Yeah, I'll jump off of stuff. I've always done that. Well, they use these huge, huge airbags, right?

Well, back in the day they did. And if you're doing a fall today, they still will sometimes. But generally these days they have like a bungee type contraption. I would still demand an airbag. Yeah. They apparently also for shorter falls, they'll take some cardboard boxes and they'll cut the sharp corners off. Yeah. And then you jump onto that.

Did you do that when you were a kid? No, no, no. I always would jump into water. I would jump onto the ground off the credenza or whatever. And now I'm like, I wouldn't even do that. That's dangerous. Falls used to be the thing. I'm sure you remember as a kid, falls.

Falls were a really big deal for stuntmen. And Dar Robinson, remember that guy? No. He did the Sharky's Machine fall in Atlanta in the Burt Reynolds movie. Nope. Very famous fall out of the Peachtree Plaza Hotel. I was up in Toledo at the time. It was released in Toledo. Not in Toledo. Sharky's Machine. Off of which hotel? He went through a window of the Peachtree Plaza.

onto an airbag. It was one of the famous early falls. Not early falls, but one of the famous falls. What floor did he jump out of? Man, I can't remember. Was it pretty high? Yeah, it was over 150 feet. Oh, wow. That's nuts. It was pretty cool. Imagine planning that stunt, how many times they measured everything to figure out where the airbags needed to go. Then they probably supplemented it with additional airbags. If they loved the guy at all, they did all this.

Yeah, stuntmen, when you go to talk to one, if you're on set, you'll be disappointed by the fact that they aren't these crazy dudes like you want them to be. They're actually really sensible because they want to work and earn money. Right. So they want to be really, really sure that no one gets hurt. It's a little more boring than you would think talking to them. Sure. But they are a little nuts. Yeah. You'd have to be at least a little. What else, Chuck? Fire? How about fire? I just saw Anchorman the other night.

Remember when they had the street brawl and the guy on fire just walks by? Yeah, that's a pretty serious stunt. Sure. Like when you set yourself on fire. Yeah. And there's a lot of safety precautions, but even still, you're on fire, whether you like it or not.

Yeah, you're wearing all kinds of fire protective clothing and fire retardant, and then you're smeared with the flammable gel. Yep, you have a hood on that protects you as well, and there's an oxygen tank in there. So you're basically just completely wrapped in this outfit. But yeah, the flammable gel's on, and they light you and then film you.

and you're going, oh, it's always the waving arms. It always kind of looks the same. And then people run over and put you out with fire extinguisher. That's right. But they time it very closely as well. Oh, I'm sure. Because I think it's kind of like, well, if we go 12 seconds, he actually will catch on fire. So we can shoot for 11. 11.5. Right. Explosions are a big deal, obviously, these days. There are so many explosions in movies. Yeah.

Sometimes they cheat it a little bit with what's called a technique called forced perspective to make it look like the actor is closer to the explosion. And if there's an explosion, you're probably also going to be propelled with the air ram that we were talking about. It's very...

I would call it a Hollywood trope at this point. The explosion and the dudes flying like 20 feet in the air. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that was big in Commando. Oh, yes. Weren't there a lot of Air Rams used in Commando? Many, more than I can count. That was such a good movie. Car chases and crashes.

Yeah, they use rams as well. They may be attached to the car. So if a car needs to flip, you see people going up on a ramp or whatever. Yeah. And they probably use that if you're just trying to stay on two wheels. But if you're trying to flip, there's usually a ram that pushes the car, pushes it off of the ground, and it flips. Or if you have one coming out of the rear, it'll make it jump really high. Oh, true. Like in Hooper.

I don't know all these movies you're talking about. Oh, dude, Hooper was the stuntman movie with Burt Reynolds. I didn't see it. Hal Needham, very famous stuntman, turned director, directed. Founder of the Cannonball Run. Well, yeah, and director of the movie The Cannonball Run and Smoking the Bandit. And Hooper, Hooper was about an aging stuntman, Burt Reynolds, who was challenged by the up-and-comer Jan Michael Vincent.

And, of course, there's the love relationship with Sally Field. She was in that, too. And it was good. It was like the best. It's sort of the best stunt movie ever because it was about stunts. Huh. And he had a rocket car in that one. That was a big rocket car jump. It was the big climax. I did not see Hooper. Oh, dude, you need to see Hooper. What was I watching back then? What were you? You were probably watching TV and stuff. I guess. Yeah. It was a little before your time. Secret of Nimh.

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Keep your main number safe and out of harm's way. Ready to take back your phone? Visit line2.com slash audio or download Line 2 in the App Store today. And like I said earlier, stunt drivers, it's not all like a lot of the stuff you're going to see on TV is stunt driving, even though you might not think it's necessary. Yeah, apparently they just pull off of the highway. Sometimes, sometimes not.

How do you become a stuntman, Josh? Well, apparently, as far as Grabinowski says, you basically have to start off as an extra on the set. That's not necessarily true. Okay. If you want to go from zero to stuntman in the slowest way possible...

And you would start out as an extra on the set. You have to be a member of the Screen Actors Guild in most cases. And when you're hanging around the set, you identify who the second unit director or stunt coordinator is, and you hand them your headshot. This Ed painted a path to becoming a stunt person that we've kind of laughed at. It is not the only path.

But one thing is for sure, to become a stunt person, you need to get to know someone else in that department. And that's really with every film department. If you want to be in wardrobe, you should get a job as a PA and start hanging out with the wardrobe people. If you want to be in makeup, start hanging out with the makeup people. And that's just how it works in Hollywood. There is no degree. You can get a film degree, but come on, that's wasted money. Just go to work on a set. You get to know the people in the department and then...

Start bugging them a little bit when they're not busy. Stunt coordinators are a little testy because there's a lot on the line, you know? Sure. So, you know, if you're a new PA on set, don't run over to the stunt coordinator and start bugging them right away. Pick and choose. Right. Your time. And then give them your headshot. And then give them your headshot. But, yeah, what you're saying is that it's apprentice-based. It is. Basically. There are schools –

One recommended driving school, the Rick Seaman Stunt Driving School. Yeah. There's also the International Stunt School. That sounds pretty serious. And this is where you can learn to do some of the stuff, but it's not like you exit with a degree and then show up and say, now I'd like to do stunt work. Right. All the rest of you are fired. I have a degree from the International Stunt School.

And Grabster points out that you should have a large area of specialty rather than one thing. I thought that's a very good point. Yeah, but that's not necessarily true. I've talked to some stunt dudes that say...

Eventually you would like to have a wide range of skills, but a good way to get in is to have one really specific skill that you're great at. And you might get that call. Like this guy's good with wire work or water work. Or he's a hell of a driver. Or a really good motorcycle guy. Or a great skier if you're doing like, what was that, Free Your Eyes Only? Yeah. Was that the one that opened up a big ski chase? Never Say Never Again.

No, it was definitely Roger Moore. Okay. I think it was For Your Eyes Only. All right. But it helps to have these skills. Like a lot of stunt people are former motorcycle, motocross racers or car enthusiasts or they know how to scuba dive. Stand-up horseback riders. Stand-up horseback riding. Yeah. So a lot of them had these skills just anyway and they're like, hey, I've been driving dirt track for 20 years. Might as well make some money. Yeah. Film me.

There's books out there. Are there? So You Want to Be a Stuntman by Mark Aspett. Oh, that's a great name for a book like that. The Full Burn by Kevin Conley. Fight Choreography, The Art of Nonverbal Dialogue by John Kring. And then Hal Needham's biography, Stuntman! With an exclamation. Had to be. Had to be. You said you have a list of actors that do their own stunts.

Yeah, I think most people know this. People like Jason Statham, famous for doing his own stunts. I see Zoe Bell's on there. I thought she was a stunt person. Well, she is. And she was in Death Proof, though, as an actor. Right. And they were like, I guess they include her now because she did that awesome hanging onto the hood scene. I was watching that earlier and it is just nuts.

It's pretty cool. It's like when she's hanging on, it looks like by belts or whatever. Yeah. And then she's kind of sliding still across the hood. Yeah. All it would take is like half an inch, and then all of a sudden she's gone too far, and she's off the side of the car. Yeah. That was it. She's one of the best in the business, apparently. Man, that's scary. Burt Reynolds used to do a lot of his stunts. In fact, he got injured.

pretty bad that led to some bad health problems on set. Oh, yeah? On City Heat, the Clint Eastwood movie. Burt Lancaster used to do his own stunts. He was a tough guy. Yeah? Remember the movie Tough Guys? Yeah. He was in that? Yeah, yeah. I don't think we mentioned Ben-Hur either. That's one of the famous stunts ever, the chariot race. Yeah, you want to tell them about it?

Go ahead. What do you got? Well, there is a stuntman named Joe Canut, and he was doubling for Charlton Heston. And during the chariot race, this big, long, intense race, he falls off the chariot and is about to be run over, but in true stuntman fashion grabs it, is being dragged, pulls himself back up, and continues on.

And I think that made it on screen, too. Yeah, it's in the movie, but that was a real thing. Like, it wasn't a planned stunt. Like, the guy saved his own life. That's awesome. Yeah, it is. Harrison Ford, we mentioned. As far as the ladies go, Angelina Jolie and Cameron Diaz are known for doing stunts. Arnie Schwartz in Niagara. And Jackie Chan, of course, is very famous for doing his own stunts. Sure. And it makes a difference, man, when you can tell...

It's Tom Cruise on the side of that mountain. Man, that was scary. Was that really him? Yeah, Emily worked on that shoot. Is that right? Just that segment in Moab, the rock climbing segment. And that's when famously Tom Cruise was like four hours late and flies in on a helicopter and the whole crew was waiting around all day for him. I hadn't heard that. Oh, yeah. I mean, famous in my family. Oh, gotcha. Yeah. And now I guess famous to the podcast community. Yeah. Tom Cruise is not punctual. Well, he was in that day.

Wow, stunts. Have you seen Haywire? The Soderbergh movie? Uh-uh. It's about assassins, basically. It's an action movie. Soderbergh's take on an action movie. But Gina Carano is a former mixed martial artist and she's awesome and does her own stunts. What's her name? Gina Carano. I don't believe I know her. She plays the lead. I think that was her first legit movie. Oh, gotcha. She's known for mixed martial arts. But yeah, she does her own stunts. She's

B-A. Haywire. Haywire. I'll check it out. I got nothing else. I don't either. Pretty straightforward. If you want to learn more about stunts, you can type stunts into the HowStuffWorks search bar. And I said search bar, which means it's time for listener mail. Josh, I'm going to call this...

Things we, I guess, say a lot. Oh, no. Yeah. Like? No, no, no. That's not in there. Oh, okay. Everyone says like, though. I know, but people have pointed it out here and there. You guys say like a lot, and I've started to notice when I say it. When I hear the podcast, I don't hear it when I'm saying it. Only later on when I can't do anything about it. Don't beat yourself up. Everybody says that. There are articles written in...

than the New Yorker about the use of the word like in the 21st century. Okay. So you're part of that crowd. I know. You're no millennial. I'm not. I'm an aged person. Something's wrong with me today. Guys, before I start, I feel like I should get out my adoration of the podcast. Always listen as I'm walking my dog, Chloe. Keeps me entertained for hours. I love that you guys are still going strong and I'm very thankful.

Let's hear it. Sure. He left off the Bon Jovi. Sheep.

Oh, she. We'll talk about this later or we'll get to that. And then a lot of times we don't. Yeah, I feel like I say that a lot. I think it's hilarious when we say that we're going to talk about something later and then we just forget to. Yeah, or I say all the time, I think we should point out. And she didn't put that in here, but I'll go ahead and throw my own on there. Oh, yeah, you do say that.

I'm making air quotes. Yeah. I-E-E-G. Yeah. That's one of yours. So pretentious. That's a good band name. That's usually me. Sure. That's obnoxious. Sweat. We just talk about sweat a lot. Yeah. Because of me. That's a stand-up guy. I don't remember saying that a lot. Do you say that a lot? No. All right. I'm going to take issue with that one, Catherine. On the up and up. I don't know.

COA, of course we say that a lot. Definitely. People always ask it what it means. We never tell. We never tell. And then, have you seen the movie? Ironically. That's about right. Yeah. And those are ten things that we say a lot. And that is, she says she thinks these are great. It comforts her and she smiles. And that is Catherine Phillips. Thanks a lot, Catherine. That's pretty cool. Somebody's out there like writing lists of things we say.

It's nicer to hear people say, like, I take comfort in that, except for the emails we get, like, you guys always say this. You say, like, too much. That's John Travolta taking us to task. Work.

If you want to take us to task, whether you're John Travolta or anybody else, or you just want to say, hey, here's a list of things I noticed because of the podcast or whatever, you can join us on Twitter. Actually, first, before we sign off, let's remind everybody that we're going to be on the TV again.

The TV? Yeah, Saturday night on Science Channel at 10 p.m. will be the premiere of another Stuff You Should Know episode. You can watch us each and every week. Yep, TV show. Stuff You Should Know TV show, 10 p.m. Or get it on iTunes the following day on Sunday. That's right, Chuck. Just go to iTunes and type in Stuff You Should Know and see what comes up.

All right, so now we'll sign off, right? Yep. You can get in touch with us on Twitter at SYSK Podcast. You can join us on Facebook.com slash stuff you should know. And you can send us a good old-fashioned email to stuffpodcast at discovery.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com.

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