Kevin Conley - The Full Burn: On the Set, at the Bar, Behind the Wheel, and Over the Edge with Hollywood Stuntmen

On the Set, at the Bar, Behind the
Wheel, and Over the Edge with
Hollywood Stuntmen

Kevin Conley

To Amy, for lighting the fire

If the book equivalent of a popcorn movie exists, The Full Burn is that book. A breezy cocktail of Expect the unexpected shaken with a large measure of Dont try this at home, it is an under-the-fireproof-underwear, wired-to-the-hood-of-the-car view of movie-stunt professionals.

Charleston Post & Courier

Conley is certainly a fine writer, one with a knack for careful, prolonged observation.

Buffalo News

The Full Burn is a winning short history of the movie stunt Spending time with the Hollywood legends and future legends was as enjoyable as an afternoon at the movies, and the authors journey through the stunt of the title alone was worth the price of admission.

Louisville Courier Journal

Lively and entertaining Highly recommended.

Library Journal

Enter journalist Conleys edge-of-your-seat look at the slam-bang world of stunt pros Conley covers the spectrum of stuntmen and women, from those who appeared in classic films to the new breed working now. It makes for great supplemental reading for movie fans An engaging and insightful look behind the curtain of action movies.

Rocky Mountain News

Scratch your itch for adventure travel with this true tale of some real fall guys, and get a lesson in the business of jumping from tall buildings and rolling brand-new cars.

Fortune Small Business

Kevin Conley takes the reader on a fascinating journey into [stunt players] fearless world in The Full Burn, helping us understand how and why they go to the limit each and every time they go in front of the cameras.

Jerry Bruckheimer

So interesting that its difficult to stop reading. The author transmits his fascination for the profession, and readers come away with knowledge and respect for those actors for whom tumbling head over heels down a staircase or falling off a galloping horse is all in a days work.

School Library Journal

Ever watched a movie with an epic car wreckor a 40-foot free fall, or an old-fashioned alligator tussleand wondered how they do that? Well, youll get plenty of geeked-out clarity in The Full Burn, a fascinating chronicle of the Hollywood stunt world But the main draw is less the how than the who, like the guy who fell down the Mayan pyramid in a leather thong, or the matriarch of modern stuntwomen who thinks nothing of tending to a stranger who wrecked his motorcycle right outside her home.

Entertainment Weekly

This is not a how-to book. You cant do this stuff at home. You may want to. Stuntmen make it look like so much fun. But before you try anything rash, ask yourself: Am I a World Champion Something or Other? Am I nationally ranked? In tae kwon do? Rhythmic gymnastics? Street luge? Am I an ex-Green Beret?

You get around these guys (as I have for the past few years) and you start to think its rubbing off. The problem seems to be universal. One stuntman told me that once hed gotten to the point in his career where he was hiring other stuntmen and stuntwomen, arranging fight scenes, and directing car chases, his wife started thinking, Hey, maybe I could take a stab at this. The moneys good. Maybe he could throw me a bone. The stuntman pointed to the coffee table, which was short, in the living room, which was carpeted, and he said, Fine. Just jump off that. She got up on the table.

And land flat on your back, he said.

She looked down from her perch.

Give me something else, she said.

There are deeds that your body will not let you do. Stuntmen do them anyway. They arent foolish about it. Theyre incredibly ingenious at devising ways to make it look as if theyve pulled off something far more painful and dangerous than what they actually did. Nothing in the contract says that they must defy death, no matter what the shooting script says. For all the riskiest maneuvers in the stunt arsenalfull burns and high falls, cannon rolls and cable-offs, pipe ramps and running Ws, boat transfers and descenders and drift-reverse 180sthere are, in most cases, provisions to ensure a stuntmans survival. Cars are crash-proofed, bodies are padded, cameras are angled just so, and this allows the stuntman to survive the stunt. Death is an unlikely outcome, a remote possibility due only to miscalculation or mechanical error.

But from time to time, a stuntman will face a stunt that is exactly what it looks like: sliding between the legs of a team of horses in full stride and straight on between the stagecoach wheels, say, or racing off the highest bridge in California in a Corvette convertible and then climbing out the backseat, while airborne, and BASE jumping to earth. Death is a distinct presence, haunting every step of preparation.

This book is about both situations, and about the rare sort of person with the skill and guts to deal with either one. Even among stuntmen such people are rare. There are about three to six thousand people who work a few days a year in stunts. Most of them perform what the call sheets refer to as N.D. or nondescript stunts: they tussle around the background of bar fights, drive in the opposite direction during chase scenes, move away from the restaurant table just when the stunt double crashes through the skylight and lands on the wedding cake. The business is brutal, and these N.D. guys almost never get the chance at the one signature job that would put them in the big leagues.

But a lucky few do get the call: Hows your Tuesday? Would you like to jump in a gator pit for us? Or We need somebody your size to go through a Hummer windshield. Can you do it in a bald wig? The list of top professionals who prove reliable in this situationwho can pull off the gag, take after take, without dying or endangering the crew, or breaking the camerasis as short as the roster of NBA players, for many of the same reasons: the jobs are scarce and the skills difficult, and the ones who make it tend to have an unusual personality, something beyond athleticism that allows them to perform consistently under pressure in the public eye.

For a writer, it wasnt easy to get to this elite group. Stuntmen, like special-ops agents, must commit acts of courage without sacrificing their professional invisibility; they dont always like it when their cover is blown. But after I made it onto a few sets, the men and women who wrecked the cars and shot each other started to share their expertiseand their misadventures: how one, known for his unworldly calm before a stunt, fell asleep on the set just before he was to be set on fire; how another, after messing up a high fall on a sword-and-sandal movie, ended up bare-chested and unconscious in the emergency room in a centurion skirt and Caesar wig with pin curls; how a third, after breaking his wrist falling for the fourth time to the concrete through the windshield of a truck, did eight more takes because he didnt want to lose the job to some young gun.

All our lives we have been watching these athletes drop out of the sky or race through the alley and down the stairs, straight into oncoming traffic, showing up at the crisis points in our favorite entertainments. As it turns out, their personal lives are every bit as pyrotechnic as what they do for a living. They ride expensive bikes and ruin the fastest cars (both tax-deductible activities) and they encourage their kids to do things you or I would never dare. They attempt the impossible, get hurt, and dust themselves off for another take as if nothing happened. And in between they tell stories that, coming from most people, might sound like exaggerations. For a stuntman, its all in a days work.