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Authors: Edward Jay Epstein
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to the car,” Liu explains.
At this point in the story, with Barrymore precariously holding onto the hood with one handand banging on it with the other, the interviewer asks her excitedly why she didn’t yell, “Cut”?
Barrymore (“Dylan”) explains despite the danger to herself, she persevered with the shot because “you get so into the adrenaline and you want to be tough. … my character, Dylan, was trying to stop the bad guy.” In other words, she had morphed into Dylan—at least in the PR script.
Now back to reality. Stars may have license on talk shows to fantasize about performing perilous stunts such as hanging off the hood of a speeding car, but on a movie set, no matter how willing they may be to risk their lives and limbs, studios will not permit them to take such risks for two reasons.
First, stars often do not have an opportunity to perform stunts because action movies are not shot linearly. The filming is divided between a first unit, “principal photography,” that shoots the stars and other actors, and the “second units,” which shoot the stunts as well as backgrounds that do not require the presence of the actors. In the James Bond movie
Tomorrow Never Dies
, for instance, this division of labor had five different people playing the James Bond character: Pierce Brosnan, the star, was playing James Bond at the Frogmore Studio outside of London, while four stuntmen at four different locations were playing him in stunts. Similarly, in
Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle
, the “Dylan”character, was played by Drew Barrymore and stuntwomen Heidi Moneymaker, a star gymnast, and Gloria O’Brien. (Lucy Liu’s character had four stunt players.)
A second, and even more compelling reason, is the cast insurance requisites. Even if stars are physically present during the shooting of perilous stunts, the production’s insurers prohibit them from substituting for the stuntmen. Since Harold Lloyd nearly lost two fingers performing his own stunts in 1920, cast insurance has been an absolute requisite for a Hollywood movie. If a star is deemed an essential element in a movie—as Liu, Diaz, and Barrymore are in
Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle
—and the star becomes disabled, the insurer must cover the resulting loss, which in the case of
Charlie’s Angel: Full Throttle
was about $120 million. Before issuing such expensive policies, and no Hollywood movie could be made without one, insurers go to great lengths to make sure that actors do not take any risks that could lead to even a sprained ankle or pulled muscle. Their representatives analyze every shot in the script for potential risks and scrutinize the stars’ prior behavior on and off the screen. Once the production starts, they also station hawk-eyed agents on the set to make sure that the stars are not put in harm’s way. They might require, for example, that a star standingon a stationary car be held by two safety men (masked in blue spandex so they can be digitally deleted from the final movie). Even if a director or producer were willing to risk injuring a star, the insurer would not allow it. So stars, as much as they might enjoy performing their fantasies, cannot do dangerous stunts for movies.
For the most part, stars do not tell these tall tales of daredevilism on television out of either personal dishonesty, vanity, or egoism. It is their job to play a character in publicity appearances, just as it is the job of studios to hype their movies. Nor do others in these Hollywood productions, even if they were not bound by contractual restrictions on disclosures, or “NDAs,” have reason to demystify such off-screen fictionalizing. The subterfuge is part of the system by which studios, talent agencies, music publishers, licensees, and others create, maintain, and profitably exploit the stars’ public personalities. The more interesting question: why entertainment journalists, instead of challenging these preposterous claims, act as the
At this point in the story, with Barrymore precariously holding onto the hood with one handand banging on it with the other, the interviewer asks her excitedly why she didn’t yell, “Cut”?
Barrymore (“Dylan”) explains despite the danger to herself, she persevered with the shot because “you get so into the adrenaline and you want to be tough. … my character, Dylan, was trying to stop the bad guy.” In other words, she had morphed into Dylan—at least in the PR script.
Now back to reality. Stars may have license on talk shows to fantasize about performing perilous stunts such as hanging off the hood of a speeding car, but on a movie set, no matter how willing they may be to risk their lives and limbs, studios will not permit them to take such risks for two reasons.
First, stars often do not have an opportunity to perform stunts because action movies are not shot linearly. The filming is divided between a first unit, “principal photography,” that shoots the stars and other actors, and the “second units,” which shoot the stunts as well as backgrounds that do not require the presence of the actors. In the James Bond movie
Tomorrow Never Dies
, for instance, this division of labor had five different people playing the James Bond character: Pierce Brosnan, the star, was playing James Bond at the Frogmore Studio outside of London, while four stuntmen at four different locations were playing him in stunts. Similarly, in
Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle
, the “Dylan”character, was played by Drew Barrymore and stuntwomen Heidi Moneymaker, a star gymnast, and Gloria O’Brien. (Lucy Liu’s character had four stunt players.)
A second, and even more compelling reason, is the cast insurance requisites. Even if stars are physically present during the shooting of perilous stunts, the production’s insurers prohibit them from substituting for the stuntmen. Since Harold Lloyd nearly lost two fingers performing his own stunts in 1920, cast insurance has been an absolute requisite for a Hollywood movie. If a star is deemed an essential element in a movie—as Liu, Diaz, and Barrymore are in
Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle
—and the star becomes disabled, the insurer must cover the resulting loss, which in the case of
Charlie’s Angel: Full Throttle
was about $120 million. Before issuing such expensive policies, and no Hollywood movie could be made without one, insurers go to great lengths to make sure that actors do not take any risks that could lead to even a sprained ankle or pulled muscle. Their representatives analyze every shot in the script for potential risks and scrutinize the stars’ prior behavior on and off the screen. Once the production starts, they also station hawk-eyed agents on the set to make sure that the stars are not put in harm’s way. They might require, for example, that a star standingon a stationary car be held by two safety men (masked in blue spandex so they can be digitally deleted from the final movie). Even if a director or producer were willing to risk injuring a star, the insurer would not allow it. So stars, as much as they might enjoy performing their fantasies, cannot do dangerous stunts for movies.
For the most part, stars do not tell these tall tales of daredevilism on television out of either personal dishonesty, vanity, or egoism. It is their job to play a character in publicity appearances, just as it is the job of studios to hype their movies. Nor do others in these Hollywood productions, even if they were not bound by contractual restrictions on disclosures, or “NDAs,” have reason to demystify such off-screen fictionalizing. The subterfuge is part of the system by which studios, talent agencies, music publishers, licensees, and others create, maintain, and profitably exploit the stars’ public personalities. The more interesting question: why entertainment journalists, instead of challenging these preposterous claims, act as the
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