One loyal reader, OK, I only have one reader, sent me the interesting article below about a new stunt school that trains amputees only—so prevalent is their use in explosions and car accident scenes that casting calls for people missing limbs are apparently common place. Never knew that did you? Neither did I.
Amputees were also widely used in Dawn of the Dead (to portray Zombies missing limbs), also in Land of the Dead A.I. , Starship Troopers, Shaun of the Dead, Band of Brothers and more. They are listed in casting books as “specialists” along with people that are extra tall, heavily tattooed, or whatever else a casting director might be looking for.
The same person who sent the article below said this trend continues in foreign films where it is not strictly behind the scenes. There is apparently a Brazilian film called Delicate Crime featuring Lillian Taublib, that has garnered critical acclaim at the Caines, with Ebert and Roper, and other film festivals, Taublib, a one-legged actress, acted her way from a minor character into the star of the movie and the romantic interest of the leading man.
That’s a whole lot of movies featuring amputees. They are threatening to overtake homosexuality as the leading characters in films and television shows. This should be quite a battle for screen time.
By C.A. Wolski
Stunts-Ability trains people with disabilities for work as stunt performers in the entertainment industry.
Steven Spielberg hired eight amputees to work as stunt performers for the movie A.I
R. David Smith might not be a household name but he has made dozens of anonymously memorable appearances in such big-name films as Predator, A. I.: Artificial Intelligence, and Windtalkers. Typically, his face is hidden under layers of makeup and latex and he exits the scene in a suitably graphic way—getting blown off a roof or his arm torn off his body. But Smith’s presence on the screen is notable for another reason. He is a member of an elite Hollywood fraternity—the disabled stunt performer.
FOUNDER AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
In addition to having been a working stunt man for the last 20 years, Smith is the founder and executive director of Stunts-Ability. When he founded the San Diego-area non-profit organization in 1993, his goal was to provide the film industry with a cadre of professionally, trained disabled stunt performers. About 75% of stunts involving dismemberment or the use of adaptive devices like wheelchairs are still performed by able-bodied stunt people. “There’s a [Screen Actors Guild] policy that states—and this is verbatim—all stunt coordinators shall use the disabled in descript and non-descript roles,” he says. “But the thing was, nobody was training them, so they couldn’t put somebody in an area that was dangerous to them.” This was the “Catch 22” Smith decided to correct.
Stunts-Ability not only helps the disabled-would-be stunt performer learn the correct way to fall, leap, and roll, but also how to act on a set and in front of the cameras. Most of Smith’s students in his free classes are amputees. For the amputees and the other disabled people he trains, the chance to have steady work as a stunt person is more important than it is for an able-bodied person. “I think the record shows that for most people with disabilities their job becomes a bigger part of their life than the able-bodied person,” he says.
Smith’s disability is congenital. He is missing his left arm below the elbow. Precluded from following his childhood dream of becoming a fireman, Smith decided to pursue acting. It was while studying acting at Paramount Pictures in the late 1970s that he had his first experience as a stunt man on the film Metalstorm. He followed his Metalstorm appearance with stints on The A-Team and numerous other television and film productions. “I’m better at stunts than I am at acting,” he says, explaining the shift in his career. “I can throw a few lines and get blown up [and] I make more money doing stunts than I do acting.” However, he says that if there had been an organization like Stunts-Ability when he was starting out, he would have avoided the injuries that now plague him.
EARNING A LIVING
In addition to earning a living, the disabled stunt performers get something else—medical benefits. “A lot of the amputees don’t have medical,” says Smith. “If you make $7,500 in a year you get [Screen Actors Guild] medical—it’s called plan 3. On A. I., I worked 4 weeks—there were eight of us who worked on that—everybody got medical after that.”
There are also benefits to the film industry using disabled stunt performers. When able-bodied performers portray the disabled, they often have their arms or legs tied up, causing injury from a lack of blood flow or from being unbalanced when doing the stunt. Production companies can receive up to a $5,000 tax break if they use a Stunts-Ability performer. There is another advantage for the filmmakers: a sense of realism. “If you notice in most movies, whenever a stunt guy gets blown up in [a war movie] now he goes flying through the air kicking both arms and both legs,” says Smith. “The reality is that’s not going to happen. We work with a lot of veterans. We had a guy…who said when he stepped on a land mine, one leg went one way and one went the other.”
In addition to training these specialized stunt performers, Smith has become a kind of disability activist. “There are over 50 to 60 million Americans with disabilities,” he says. “They are the least represented minority.”
As part of his role as advocate, Smith visits up 30 schools a year spreading the Stunts-Ability philosophy to the students, educating them that the disabled are human beings and not scary. But there is another reason Smith goes to the schools, and that is to inspire disabled children that they can pursue their dreams—whether they want to be a stunt player or a fireman or whatever life they desire.
VALUE IN THE EYES OF CLASSMATES
If there are any disabled students at the school, Smith includes them in the assembly. By thrusting disabled youngsters into the spotlight, he gives them value in the eyes of their classmates. “When we go into schools, and a disabled kid [is]…in the audience, I bring them up and say ‘This is my buddy,’ and [their classmates] already see you as a hotshot Hollywood…star,” he says. “And I know I got them and you see every kid looking at you and I say, ‘This is my friend Bobby or this is one of my best friends Barbara and she’s missing a leg or an arm. I can’t be here every day, but, you know what? These are the people, to me, that are the heroes.’ I let those kids have my phone number so they can call me anytime they want.”
Surprisingly Smith sees the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) as a double-edged sword. “I think education is the best thing,” he says. “We’ve got to make society more comfortable. It’s not just the person with the disability [that needs] to feel comfortable. We’ve got to be able to make the able-bodied community feel comfortable with us. I think through that something like stunts has always been cool to people…all of a sudden in a kid’s mind you’re a star, then you can give them what I believe is the truth and educate them that way.”
Smith does not expect Hollywood to give the Stunts-Ability-trained performers jobs just because they are disabled. “You’ve got to also know your craft,” he says. “Don’t expect people to hire you just because you have a disability. They’ve got to be trained, they’ve got to pay their dues. You can’t just expect Hollywood to hire them on a movie because they have one leg or because you’re handsome. You’ve got to work hard at it until you get it.”
Smith’s recent work on A. I. as a robot was a model of how he would like Hollywood to react to disabled stunt performers. “The beautiful thing about [A. I.] was we helped [the casting director] with 130 amputees across the country and Steven hired eight of us and one of us was a principal—and that was me,” he says. “I’ll tell you one thing about Steven Spielberg that I really admired more than anything is that he was like a little kid—he would sit there during breaks and he would talk to the amputees and say ‘how did you lose your legs?’ He had no problem with that. He wasn’t trying to be cool.” Spielberg told Smith that if there were more trained, disabled stunt performers he would use them.
The opportunities for the disabled are changing, thanks to organizations like Stunts-Ability. One of Smith’s disabled stunt men has even realized a dream he was denied—the younger man is a firefighter. “At least when a kid grows up and he wants to be a fireman, at least give him the opportunity to prove himself before you shut him down,” he says.
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