Stunts and Stuntmen

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    Kevin Costner Is Sued by ‘Horizon’ Actor Over Rape Scene

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    A stunt double said she was left with trauma by an unscripted scene that did not include an intimacy coordinator. Mr. Costner’s lawyer said the claims were meritless.A stunt double who worked on the western “Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter 2” sued its director, Kevin Costner, and producers on Tuesday for what she called forced participation in a “violent unscripted, unscheduled rape scene” without advance notice or an intimacy coordinator.The plaintiff, Devyn LaBella, who was the lead stunt double for the actress Ella Hunt, who plays Juliette, said she was left with permanent trauma after the scene and was seeking a public apology and unspecified compensatory and punitive damages. A lawyer for Mr. Costner said the claims were meritless.According to Ms. LaBella’s complaint, the unscripted rape scene took place in May 2023, one day after she had filmed a similar one without incident. Mr. Costner, the suit said, inserted additional scenes to be shot with a different male actor in which he would climb on top of Ms. Hunt and violently rake up her skirt.The additions, the suit said, were not outlined in the day’s call sheet and no arrangements were made for an intimacy coordinator, who works with actors before and during scenes involving nudity or simulated sex to make sure they are comfortable.“Ms. Hunt became visibly upset and walked off the set, refusing to do the scene,” the complaint said.At that point, Ms. LaBella was asked to stand in. She had not been prepared for the scene, the suit said, and learned its details after filming had already begun. There were multiple takes of the scene, according to the lawsuit.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      What Tom Cruise Understands About Stunts. (And Movies.)

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      His intense devotion to doing his own stunt work can seem pathological. But it’s part of a more charming devotion to moviegoing itself.Every “Mission: Impossible” movie can be boiled down to a single, central image. Tom Cruise in glasses and a black vest, hanging by wires, inches above the floor. Tom Cruise dangling from a rocky cliff ledge. Tom Cruise sticking like a gecko to the glass panels of the Burj Khalifa. Tom Cruise in some kind of spacesuit, hurtling through the air toward the camera. Tom Cruise in midair again, arms stretched backward as a motorbike falls below him, making it look all the more as if he were flying. For the newest and purportedly last installment in the series, “The Final Reckoning,” the iconography has been perfected: We see Cruise dangling from a banana-yellow biplane as it hurtles through the sky. Oh, and the plane is upside down.In the opening minutes of “The Final Reckoning,” all of the iconic images from previous films are repeated back to us, reminding us that what we are here for is to see Tom Cruise perform breathtaking stunts. Of course, if you were in the theater, then you would have been sold on this idea already. The film’s marketing has made the sight of the upside-down biplane so familiar that before the movie had even started, I overheard a couple in the seats behind me discussing how the stunt might have been done. (“Where are the wires, you think?”)We’re compelled to know how these stunts were done for one very simple reason: We believe that Tom Cruise really is clutching the side of a skyscraper or an upside-down plane. This is because Cruise and many, many other people have worked hard to ensure our belief that Tom Cruise does his own stunts.‘How can we involve the audience?’Some of this belief-bolstering work is technical and filmic: The cameras move close to Cruise and linger there, convincing us that it really is him doing the thing. But a monumental part of the effort has to do with Cruise himself, and his ability to persuade us that if we buy a ticket for his movie, we will see him create a harrowing spectacle. On one hand, we will be watching a movie about a fictional character named Ethan Hunt, whose mission seems impossible. On the other, we will be watching Tom Cruise, a movie star we have known for 40-plus years, doing the seemingly impossible.This collapsing of character and star has become only more central to the films as the franchise goes on, sometimes sabotaging the movies’ impact, sometimes making them more interesting, sometimes both at the same time. For example, the antagonist in these final two installments is a runaway A.I. called the Entity. For a series that once had the great Philip Seymour Hoffman play a villain, evil software feels like a step down. But Ethan Hunt/Tom Cruise battling a faceless, ageless superintelligence that is able to fake practically anything? That is a rich text.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Stunt Design Becomes a New Oscars Award Category

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      Movies that are released in 2027 will be the first ones eligible for the new category honoring the people who make some of the most audience-pleasing moments.There will soon be a new category at the Oscars: achievement in stunt design.Starting with movies released in 2027, for the ceremony the following year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will honor the people who make some of the most memorable and audience-pleasing moments.It is recognition that to many people is a long time coming.Jack Gill, a stuntman turned second unit director, joined the academy in 1991 with the hopes of getting himself and his colleagues recognized. He was told then it would take three to five years to make that happen.More than 30 years later, the director and former stunt man David Leitch took up the mantle, making several presentations to the academy and centering his 2024 movie, “The Fall Guy,” on the unsung heroes of the stunt community. During its Hollywood premiere, the movie’s star, Ryan Gosling, told the audience, “This movie is just a giant campaign to get stunts an Oscar.”“It finally happened,” Gill said in a text on Thursday after the academy announced the new category.Category rules for eligibility and voting for the inaugural award will be announced in 2027. More than 100 stunt professionals are members of the academy’s production and technology branch.“We are proud to honor the innovative work of these technical and creative artists, and we congratulate them for their commitment and dedication in reaching this momentous occasion,” Bill Kramer, the academy’s chief executive, and Janet Yang, the academy’s president, said in a statement.Last year, the academy added achievement in casting to its list of awards. The category’s inaugural prize will be handed out in 2026 for films released this year. More

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      Investigation of Georgia Movie Set Crash Finds No Violations

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      Eight people were injured, three of them seriously, in a crash on the set of “The Pickup” in April. A federal investigation found no health or safety violations.An investigation into a crash that injured several crew members on the set of the movie “The Pickup” this year found no safety violations, federal officials said.A spokeswoman for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration said in a statement this week that the agency’s “thorough” investigation of the production company, Armored Film LLC, “did not result in violations of workplace safety and health regulations.”The investigation into the crash, which occurred at a small airport outside Atlanta on April 20, was closed last week, she said.A spokeswoman for Amazon MGM Studios declined to comment.Eight crew members were taken to hospitals after the crash, including two who were treated for life-threatening injuries after they were ejected from a vehicle, the authorities said at the time. A third person was treated for serious injuries.People with direct knowledge of the episode said at the time that none of the actors in the film, including Pete Davidson, Eddie Murphy and Keke Palmer, were involved in the crash.Amazon MGM Studios has not disclosed the plot of the film, which Deadline has described as a heist comedy. No release date has been announced.Video of the crash obtained by The New York Times shows a red armored truck, a GMC C6, pulling up alongside a BMW X5 S.U.V. before swerving into it.The vehicles then veer off the road and onto the grass, where the armored truck flips on top of the BMW. Both land upright, with the back door of the armored truck swinging open, causing one person to tumble out of it and spreading debris onto the field.Several crew members were injured when two vehicles collided during filming.The police said that the BMW had one occupant, the driver, while the armored truck was carrying seven people: a driver, a front-seat passenger and five crew members who were secured in the back with belt restraints attached to the walls.While the collision was planned, the armored truck’s brush guard became entangled in the smaller vehicle’s wheel well, the authorities said.In the days after the crash, there was no consensus on whether emergency workers or an ambulance had been on the set during filming, although an ambulance was called to the scene. It is fairly standard practice to have an ambulance on set for dangerous stunts, experts said.Sean Miller, a spokesman for the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, said in a statement on Thursday that the organization appreciated the work by OSHA’s Atlanta office.“IATSE members are the best in the industry and work hard to ensure their safety and the safety of those around them,” he said. “This incident is a reminder that all workers deserve to earn a living in a safe environment.” More

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      Toni Vaz, Stuntwoman and Founder of N.A.A.C.P. Image Awards, Dies at 101

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      She created a program to honor Black artistic success in the 1960s. But she spent decades trying to get its organizers to recognize her role.Toni Vaz, who cut a path as one of the first Black stuntwomen in Hollywood, with appearances in more than 50 movies, and then created the N.A.A.C.P. Image Awards to recognize the often unsung work of Black writers and performers, died on Oct. 4 in Los Angeles. She was 101.Cheryl Abbott, her great-niece, said her death, at a retirement home for actors in the Woodland Hills neighborhood, was caused by congestive heart failure.The notion of a Black stunt performer did not really exist when Ms. Vaz began her career in the 1950s — she and others were officially cast as extras, received no training, and often did not know what dangers they might face on a set until the cameras began to roll.During the filming of “Porgy and Bess” (1959), Ms. Vaz was instructed to lean out a window to catch a glimpse of two of the film’s stars, Sammy Davis Jr. and Sidney Poitier. Unbeknown to her, a carpenter had purposely weakened the railing; it broke as soon as she leaned on it, sending her falling several feet onto a mattress.Shaken, she was handed a shot of brandy to recover.Throughout her career, Ms. Vaz played a critical part in support of Black actresses like Eartha Kitt, Cicely Tyson and Juanita Moore as they began to break out of the racially stereotyped roles that had long been their only options in Hollywood.But she and other Black stunt performers were typically paid less than their white counterparts for the same work. Standing in for Ms. Moore in a scene for “The Singing Nun” (1966), she and a white stuntwoman were directed to crash a jeep; Ms. Vaz got $40, she told the interviewer Amie Jo Greer in 2010, while the white performer got $350.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Bob Yerkes, Bruised but Durable Hollywood Stuntman, Dies at 92

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      A body double to the stars, he performed sometimes bone-breaking feats in movies like “Return of the Jedi” and “Back to the Future.” And he was still at it in his 80s.Bob Yerkes, who was set on fire, thrown down stairs and hurled from skyscrapers, bridges and trains during a nearly 70-year career in Hollywood as a stunt double for Arnold Schwarzenegger, Charles Bronson and other big-screen stars, died on Oct. 1 in Northridge, Calif. He was 92.His death, in a hospital, was confirmed by Tree O’Toole, a stuntwoman who had been his caretaker. He had recently been ill with pneumonia.Though he was virtually unknown to audiences, Mr. Yerkes was a Tinseltown legend.In the 1980s alone, he flew through the air as Boba Fett in “Return of the Jedi,” hung from a clock tower as Christopher Lloyd’s character in “Back to the Future” and clung to scaffolding atop the Statue of Liberty in “Remo Williams.”“He is one of the few stuntmen I would say have celebrity status in the stunt business,” Jeff Wolfe, the president of the Stuntmen’s Association of Motion Pictures, said in an interview. “His lack of fear was kind of renowned.”Mr. Yerkes (rhymes with “circus”) performed stunts in the films “The Towering Inferno” (1974), “Poltergeist” (1982), “Ghostbusters” (1984) and “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” (1988), as well as on television in “Gilligan’s Island,” “Wonder Woman,” “Starsky and Hutch” and “Dukes of Hazzard.”He was concussed more times than he could remember.“I’m better now, though,” he said in a 2016 video produced by My Gathering Place International, a religious organization. “It used to be that when I’d talk, I wouldn’t finish a sentence.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Susan Backlinie, First Shark Attack Victim in ‘Jaws,’ Dies at 77

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      Ms. Backlinie, a stunt woman, appeared in the terrifying opening scene of the 1975 blockbuster in which a great white shark attacks.The actress and stunt woman Susan Backlinie, whose portrayal of a violent death as the first shark attack victim in the opening scene of the blockbuster movie “Jaws” terrified moviegoers, died on Saturday. She was 77.Ms. Backlinie died at her home in California, her agent, Sean Clark, said on Sunday. He said she had a heart attack.“Jaws,” the 1975 movie directed by Steven Spielberg, memorably features Ms. Backlinie in a scene in which she played a skinny-dipper, Chrissie Watkins, who runs along the beach and dives into the water for a nighttime swim.The placid scene is shattered as she is suddenly pulled under the water. She screams while being violently thrashed by an unseen great white shark and tries desperately to cling to a clanging buoy only to be pulled below the water one final time.For the scene, Ms. Backlinie was secured to a harness, according to The Daily Jaws website. The Palm Beach Post reported that Ms. Backlinie was wearing a pair of jeans with metal plates stitched into the sides with cables attached.Susan Backlinie getting prepared for her memorable opening scene from “Jaws.”MPTV, via ReutersWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Jeannie Epper, Groundbreaking Stunt Double on ‘Wonder Woman,’ Dies at 83

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      Her first stunt was riding a horse bareback down a cliff when she was 9. She went on to soar on the hit TV series “Wonder Woman” and in many other places.Jeannie Epper had at least 100 screen roles, maybe even 150 — no one is quite sure. But because she was a stunt double, galloping on horseback, crashing cars and kicking down doors for the stars of films and television shows, hers was not a household name.In her heyday, however, Ms. Epper was ubiquitous. She hurtled through the air most weeks as Lynda Carter’s stunt double on the hit television series “Wonder Woman” and mimed Ms. Carter’s leggy lope. She tumbled through a scrum of mud and rocks as Kathleen Turner’s double in the 1984 comedy-adventure film “Romancing the Stone,” which also starred Michael Douglas. She threw punches for Linda Evans in one of her many ballyhooed cat fights with Joan Collins on the frothy long-running 1980s nighttime soap opera “Dynasty.”And, in what she often said was her favorite stunt — or gag, to use the industry term — Ms. Epper skidded a Corvette into a 180-degree turn as Shirley MacLaine’s character in “Terms of Endearment” (1983), neatly hurling Jack Nicholson’s double into the Gulf of Mexico.Ms. Epper, whose bruising career spanned 70 years, died on Sunday at her home in Simi Valley, Calif. She was 83.Her daughter, Eurlyne Epper, confirmed the death. She said her mother had been ill for some time and caught an infection during a recent hospital visit.Ms. Epper, second from the left, in 1960, next to her husband at the time, Richard Spaethe, and their son, Richard. Her brother Tony and her sister Stephanie, also stunt performers, are sitting next to her on the fence. Another stuntman, Dick Hock, stands next to them with his wife, Margo, and their son, Johnnie.Los Angeles Examiner/USC Libraries — Corbis, via Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The ‘Fall Guy’ Filmmakers Have a Cause: Give Stunts an Oscar

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      The academy is keeping mum about the prospect, but the movie is part of a renewed push for a new Academy Award first considered more than 30 years ago.The life of stuntmen and women is never glamorous. The job is to take the fall, endure the pain, break the bone, then walk away — unsung, battered and bruised. They usually move on to the next gig without ever seeing the finished product. They rarely get invited to the movie premiere. Oscars? Forget about it.That narrative seems to be changing with the new action-comedy-romance “The Fall Guy,” the loose film adaptation of the 1980s television show that opens Friday. The movie, directed by the former stuntman David Leitch, stars Ryan Gosling as Colt Seavers, a down-on-his-luck stuntman who returns to set after a nasty accident to solve the mystery of a missing leading man (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and, more important, to get the girl (played by Emily Blunt).The director David Leitch and producer Kelly McCormick said they wanted to give stunt performers their due.Suzanne Cordeiro/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesNot only does the film give the best portrayal of the life of a stuntman since Burt Reynolds starred in the 1978 action comedy “Hooper,” directed by another ex-stuntman, Hal Needham, but so much of the promotional efforts have placed the stunt crew front and center, including the newly minted world-record holder Logan Holladay (he rolled a retrofitted Jeep Grand Cherokee eight and a half times) and the high-fall virtuoso Troy Lindsay Brown. They and two others served as Gosling’s doubles in the film.At the Berlin premiere, the team broke through a brick wall with another double, Ben Jenkin, riding on the hood of a truck. In London, Holladay wheelied in on a motorcycle and Jenkin crashed through some breakable glass.And on Tuesday at the Los Angeles premiere, Brown tumbled from a 45-foot-high scissor lift onto a blowup mattress and Justin Eaton, another Gosling stunt double, engaged in a three-way fistfight with all of the performers breaking through another sheet of faux glass. Then Jenkin flipped from the balcony of the Dolby Theater onto the stage moments before Gosling took the mic to declare, “This movie is just a giant campaign to get stunts an Oscar.”Gosling joked, “This movie is just a giant campaign to get stunts an Oscar.”87 NorthIndeed, putting the stunt performers on the very stage where the Oscars are held is all part of deliberate efforts by Leitch, his producing partner and wife, Kelly McCormick, and the marketers at Universal to give these action pros their due. “It’s an important part of why we made this,” Leitch said in an interview. “We wanted to humanize these people. It really does hurt. And yet, we don’t really know what they feel because they’re not supposed to be seen.”They may become more visible if the couple have their way. The push for an Oscar category is not the subtle subtext of “The Fall Guy”; it is the text. There’s even a moment in the movie when Gosling’s Seavers is asked if stunt performers receive Oscars for their work. “Stunts?” he replies. “No,” then raises his glass to the “unsung heroes.”“It’s baked into the film,” the screenwriter Drew Pearce said in an interview from his home office. “There are not that many members of the crew who can break their back by going into work that day. The idea that they wouldn’t be acknowledged but me sitting in here on a laptop is, obviously, doesn’t seem just in any way.”The hit television show “The Fall Guy” ran for five seasons in the early 1980s, and its epic action, including truck jumps and high-elevation falls, proved to be a source of inspiration for the many Gen Xers who now dominate the stunt community. It even inspired those who didn’t make it into that world but found their way to Hollywood, like Pearce (who, as a child, concocted a stuntman course in his backyard only to discover his crippling fear of heights) and another of the film’s producers, Guymon Casady.Casady first convinced the TV show’s creator, Glen A. Larson, to license the property to him some 20 years ago, only for it to languish in the studio development process, as various iterations, including one with Dwayne Johnson and another with Nicolas Cage, fell apart. In 2019, Casady tried again, reviving the project with Leitch, who was fresh off his success on “Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw” and about to start “Bullet Train.” Leitch had begun his career as Brad Pitt’s stunt double and worked as a director and producer on the “John Wick” series.“The big idea from the very beginning was to make a movie where we were honoring the stunt craft,” Casady said. “That was an important idea for David, obviously, given his background, but we thought it was also a really unique character.”Yet, Leitch and company’s efforts are not new.Stuntman-turned-second-unit-director Jack Gill joined the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences in 1991, determined to get himself and his colleagues recognized. The academy told him it would take three to five years of hard work to add the category. Cut to 2024, and Gill, who has no affiliation with “Fall Guy,” is still holding out hope that this happens in his lifetime. The new movie has made him optimistic.“It is a great representation of what a stunt person actually has to put up with and what they go through,” he said in an interview from a set in Phuket, Thailand. “I think a lot of the academy members that vote on whether we get an Oscar category are still a little bit in the dark about what we do. I don’t think they realize that most of the action is designed by us. It’s not designed by the writer or the director.”Jack Gill, with his wife, the actress Morgan Brittany, in his stuntman days. He has been pushing for an Oscar for the profession since 1991.Parker/Hulton Archive Via Getty Images/Hulton Archive, via Getty ImagesTo drive that point home, Chris O’Hara, who orchestrated the action on “The Fall Guy,” is now the first professional to earn the title stunt designer — a new designation approved by the Screen Actors Guild and the Directors Guild of America — that establishes a benchmark for the work of a stunt coordinator and better aligns O’Hara’s work with other department heads on sets, including production and costume designers.O’Hara grew up in the business with Leitch, worked on “John Wick,” and served as his second-unit director and stunt coordinator on “Hobbs & Shaw.” For years he was content to stay in the shadows.“We knew what we did,” he said. “We weren’t out there to get recognition, accolades and attaboys.”But that changed when he started seeing his peers in visual effects ascend the Oscar stage. “They are amazing people at their craft, and visual effects are an essential part of filmmaking,” he said, but he pointed out that most of the effects being recognized involved action sequences with stunt performers. “I just think we need to be included. We are part of the film industry. We are part of cinema.”There are currently 101 stunt performers in the academy. They are part of the Production and Technology branch, which includes colorists, script supervisors and line producers, among others. Unlike other branches, which each have three governors to lobby on their behalf, this branch is headed by one.Yet Gill, Leitch and McCormick are encouraged by the progress the academy has made, including its decision to laud stunt work at the Oscars in March with a tribute that Gosling and Blunt introduced and that Leitch and McCormick produced.“I personally think that tribute is a huge step forward,” McCormick said. “If they didn’t want to recognize the stunt industry, they easily could have filled those two minutes with something else.”Gill is hopeful that the progress achieved by casting directors — who landed their own Oscar category beginning with the 2026 Academy Awards — can be replicated for stunt performers. Yet the academy is remaining mum on if or when this will happen. Its president, Janet Yang, attended the Los Angeles premiere of “The Fall Guy” on Tuesday, but a representative declined to comment on the status of a potential new Oscar.“Here I am, 33 years later, and we’re closer now because of the casting category,” Gill said. “They opened the door to the fact that, yes, we can create new branches and we can create new categories, which before they had told me was virtually impossible.”He added, “We’re trying to follow in their footsteps and jump right in behind them. With ‘Fall Guy’ coming out, I think we’ve got a good shot at it.” More