“To know [women did these stunts] 100 and something years ago erases the question of ‘can they do it now?’ Well of course they can do it now. Look at what they did back then.” April Wright
Women have been jumping from moving motorbikes onto moving trains for our movie pleasure since the 1910s. April Wright’s new documentary traces the history of stuntwomen in films, and the hand they’ve been dealt by Hollywood, from then to the present day – with stuntwomen working today interviewing some of the extraordinary pioneers from the 1960s and ’70s.
I talked to April over Zoom about silent movie stunts, the stories older women carry with them, and having to fight the same battles over again…
(Interview edited for length. You can read my four-star review here. Stuntwomen: The Untold Hollywood Story is out on digital and VOD in the US now.)
Sarah Cartland: I’ve always been really fascinated by the whole world of stunts, particularly stuntwomen, maybe because I know it’s something I’d be really terrible at.
April Wright: When I was making the film, and sometimes now when people are interviewing me, they’re asking if I was ever a stuntwoman and I’m like, no. I’m flattered that they think I could have been that athletic, but no.
If you were able to do one stunt, what would you really like to do?
It’d be the driving. I am a good driver and I did grow up in a family that was into cars – I love cars, and growing up who didn’t love Evel Knievel?
So when I got out to [stuntwoman] Debbie Evans‘ house and she hopped on that motorcycle and started riding wheelies the whole length of the street right next to me, I was like, she’s even better than Evel Knievel!
This is real life and she’s right in front of me, doing what he does, blowing him out of the water.
The stunt that fascinates me but also repels me the most is the full burn. Obviously any stunt you have to massively trust who’s setting it up for you but I just think with that one…
We spent maybe 90 seconds on the burn in the film; we could have spent a lot more time because there’s a lot more involved. They first put on a fire retardant undergarment, to keep the fire from getting to the skin if it ever gets that far, and then they put the fire retardant gel everywhere, which we show in the film.
And then they have to put on whatever wardrobe the character has; they dip that in ice cold water before they put the wardrobe on, and then they set people on fire.
The other interesting thing is you cannot breathe while you’re set on fire because you’ll burn your lungs. So before that flame goes up, you have to take a deep breath. As long as you can hold your breath is as long as that burn can go.
Is the film essentially the book in film form [Stuntwomen: The Untold Hollywood Story, by Mollie Gregory], or did you use that as a jumping-off point?
The book is a jumping-off point. The book is very good, very researched, very thorough, I would say almost to text book level, and Mollie did a fabulous job. If I’m not mistaken, [it] goes up to around 2007, so there was a lot of ground to cover, and people to cover, that are big in the industry now.
So yeah, the book was wonderful research. For example, I would never have known about the Hazards of Helen and women doing stunts in some of those black and white early silent films, but because that was in there, then I could go research which of these films exist, where can I find them, where can I find the clips?
But then being a film lover myself there were certain things I knew I wanted to include. For example Back to the Future II, we mention that there was a stuntwoman who hit a pillar and fell through glass and she had to have major reconstructive surgery.
So I read the book but then I did my own research and then had to figure out, who are the people that we should bring in to tell the story in the film to bring it to life, and what are the right mix of people?
I knew I wanted to show some of the living legends that were still alive that were doing it in the ’60s and the ’70s like Jeannie Epper, Julie Ann Johnson and Jadie David; even though they’re in the book, to hear it out of their own mouths what happened and how it happened.
…the book was wonderful research. For example, I would never have known about the Hazards of Helen and women doing stunts in some of those black and white early silent films.
The black and white movie stunts were just astonishing – there’s either no camera trickery or just very basic camera trickery going on. And they were doing this so early! Quite often you find, particularly with women, it’s two steps forward, one step back, and they were doing all this 110 years ago.
I know, crazy right? I think that was the most interesting thing that I learned. We had Ben Mankiewicz from Turner Classic Movies. He’s an incredible film historian but when we wanted him to help with that section, he was aware of some of these serials, but he did not know the degree to which stunts were being done and performed.
But for Ben and I both, once I could find the footage to show a woman jumping from a motorcycle onto a moving train, and jumping from a motorcycle into water, and some of the horse stuff, and know that women were doing those things, that was probably the most shocking thing.
To know [women did these stunts] 100 and something years ago erases the question of can they do it now? Well of course they can do it now. Look at what they did back then.
One thing that surprised me in stunt work was the paternalism; in the utility stunts, the background stunts, where a director just didn’t want women to get shot. So that means less work for stuntwomen.
That is a huge thing because there are only so many actresses to double. The bread and butter of their careers, [stuntwomen] call it, are not the doubling roles – it really is working every day and that means you might be cast as a cop, as a police officer, as a person in a crowd scene.
Anybody that’s going to fight, fall, run, take an impact, those are not regular extras, they are stunt performers and the balance of that should be 50/50. Traditionally it has not [been], so that was another eye-opening thing.
Anybody that’s going to fight, fall, run, take an impact, those are not regular extras, they are stunt performers and the balance of that should be 50/50. Traditionally it has not [been], so that was another eye-opening thing.
Although we’ve got more films with women doing things that require stunt doubles, could technology shrink the work available for stuntwomen?
People think no. We interviewed people about this and we show, for example, the previs [previsualisation] that became the Ghostbusters work [Paul Feig’s 2016 film]. When CG really started becoming a big thing, people were asking: would you continue to need stunt people, would you even not need actors someday?
Michelle Rodriguez talks about how she worked on Avatar with James Cameron and she said all the actors came in and got every single movement turn, every inch of them made so that he could create the characters that they were in the CG world.
At some point, he had everybody come back in, the stunt performers and the actors – and they were like, “Jim, why do you want to do this, you’ve got everything, you’ve got every angle of us, you can make us do anything you want to, you can make us say anything you want to?” And he said “yeah, I have all that, but I don’t have the performance.” So he had them come in and redo things so that you would get the performance.
That’s just one example of where the industry has evolved overall. When you have a sequence that is completely CG, it was just built in the computers, the audience can tell. There’s something that an audience can sense about human movement, so if it’s not a real human, we don’t care. We’re not engaged in the story, we don’t feel the jeopardy of the character, we don’t feel any risk that is happening and so it disengages the audience.
Stunt performers in a way are more needed because they perform it first, whether it’s on wires or a green screen. A lot of times nowadays, stunt people are early in the process, they perform it first and then it goes to CG to be built upon.
It’s creating work in video games; a lot of stunt people will go in and perform it first and then they’ll build out the CG in the video game world.
When you have a sequence that is completely CG, it was just built in the computers, the audience can tell. There’s something that an audience can sense about human movement, so if it’s not a real human, we don’t care.
Michelle Rodriguez wasn’t just a narrator was she. At what stage did she come in? Did you change what you were doing because of her passion or was she always part of the setup?
She came in very early. Michelle had been online talking about stunt people, defending stunt people. I think there was an incident in one of the Fast and Furious movies where they were listed in the credits but they couldn’t come to the premiere and she really spoke up about that, about [how] these people are putting their bodies and lives on the line for us and they deserve this recognition.
She personally gets really angry when actors claim they do all their own stunts if they don’t, because she’s like, why would you want to take credit for somebody who’s doing that for you, making you look good?
She’s also a huge feminist so a lot of the issues in the film – for women to have opportunities – she’s all for that, so she was the right person.
I wanted to try to figure out how can we integrate her into the story and she basically told me, “whatever you want to do, I just love it, I love everything about it and I trust you”. So the way that she’s in the film was the way that made sense to me to reflect her point of view as an actress who is known for doing action.
Jadie David and others talk about not just the sexism but the racism that Black stuntwomen have faced. Was that something that you wanted to bring out or did it emerge once your interviewees started talking?
We definitely wanted to cover that, and that was certainly one of the topics in the book as well.
It is important and it does tie into the bigger picture of having women and people of colour on screen and behind the camera – and the fact that this struggle has been going on since the ’60s and ’70s. Jadie put it in the film when she told us how The Black Stuntmen’s Association had women as founding members because they both understood and were feeling the discrimination – so it is intertwined.
It’s the same story today. The sad thing is that yes, there has been significant progress, but these are some of the same struggles that are happening.
We see the struggles the older stuntwomen and stunt co-ordinators went through in the ’60s and ’70s, but also, hearing them talking, do you think they miss the Wild West feeling of those days?
100 percent, 100 percent! That was one of the coolest things that I think comes across in the movie: you’re watching Julie Ann Johnson who had doubled Doris Day and did Charlie’s Angels, so you’re looking at her now as a woman in her seventies and so she’s got the white hair and she’s telling these stories and then she’s like “well if I get in a fight with someone, I don’t want to do girl fight where I’m pulling hair. If I get in a fight I want to punch somebody out.”
She also says that when she was with Clint Eastwood in Play Misty for Me and Clint gives her a haymaker [a blow designed to knock out] and she’s like “yeah, that was fun”.
So just hearing those comments, coming out of a woman who looks like your grandmother, it shows they still have that attitude and that spunk.
Jadie [David] is the same way when she talks about it, and Jeannie [Epper] for sure. When Amy Johnston says “you’d probably do a stair fall down your stairs right there, and love it”, and Jeannie says “I don’t know if I would love it after, but I probably would enjoy it during,” it does put a total perspective when you’re looking at what they look like now but they still have that stuntwoman spirit, it still permeates everything that they are. They always say, once a stuntwoman, always a stuntwoman and it’s absolutely true.
It’s just in every part of their being and if they could still be doing stunts right now despite the broken bones – Jadie said she broke her back twice – if she could still be doing it now, she probably would.
It’s a really good reminder, the stories that older women have that they’re carrying around with them all the time. They’re walking past you in the street and there’s so much danger and excitement that they’ve been through.
I’m so glad you said it, because yeah, when you think about Hollywood and the stories that have most been told traditionally, that have been told by male filmmakers and male writers and male points of view, you just gave a perfect example of why we need women’s stories and women’s voices.
Looking at these women that are in the film, you think about other women, what stories do they have that we just no idea of, the lives they’ve led? Because their stories have not been told to the degree that men’s stories have been told.
There’s been an increasing groundswell of voices asking for Oscars for stunts ensembles and also coordinators.
100 percent there should be one, absolutely. Last year people were talking about [how] Brad Pitt won an Oscar playing a stuntman, but an actual stuntman cannot get an Oscar.
Red Bull has put on the Taurus World Stunt Awards, which used to air on television. Those have been going for maybe 15 years or more which does honour stunt performers.
Within Hollywood’s system, the Emmys honours stunt performers and stunt co-ordinators – Shauna Duggins was the first woman to be nominated for co-ordinating, back in 2009 for Alias and then she won it back to back for Glow in 2018 and 2019. So there is a stunt category, and stuntwomen have shown that they’re equal there. And then also, SAG has an award for stunt performers.
100 percent there should be one, absolutely. Last year people were talking about [how] Brad Pitt won an Oscar playing a stuntman, but an actual stuntman cannot get an Oscar.
Everyone believes the Academy should honour them too. Stunt performers at the top of their game are equivalent to anybody else at the top of their game, whether it’s a hair and make-up person, whether it’s a sound designer, whether it’s a director or an actor. They are operating at the top of their field and they make a great contribution to the films that we see.
It is the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, it is absolutely an art and a science to design these stunts and pull off these stunts. And the way that they contribute to the overall story telling and character, it should be a no brainer in my opinion.
You made a film a few years ago about drive-in cinemas. Have you been back to a drive-in since then, because certainly in the States, they’re doing good business again.
April Wright: Yes, it’s called Going Attractions: The Definitive Story of the American Drive‑in Movie. It was released in 2013, but I’m getting a lot of questions about it now. Who would have thought that they would come back?
And yes, I have been. I actually when out to shoot, because I’m shooting a follow up to drive-in. It’s either going to be documentary or docuseries, so I did go out and shoot at a drive-in a couple months ago.
I read that you went to every US State except Alaska.
I did. I drove round the country looking for the remains of drive-ins.
The common knowledge was that they all disappeared because of land values. And that might have been true in some areas and some cities, but I knew that wasn’t the whole story because there were so many abandoned drive-ins. It turned out real estate value was a factor but not the factor. It was a whole bunch of things that really collided at the same time that caused them to diminish.
There was a huge spike when they went up in the late ’40s and there was a huge spike when they went down in the early ’80s and in the middle, they were really strong for about 40 years. But it was like big growth spike, big decline.
I went to over 500 drive-in locations: open drive-ins, abandoned drive-ins, former sites to see what’s there today I’ve been to more drive-ins than anybody.
Read my 4-star review and watch the trailer here.
Stuntwomen: The Untold Hollywood Story is available in the US and Canada on digital and VOD from AppleTV, Amazon, VUDU, GooglePlay, hoopla, Fandango Now, Comcast Xfinity, Spectrum, Cox, and Charter.
April’s documentary Going Attractions: The Definitive Story of the Movie Palace, which was completed before lockdown, is out on digital and VOD on 20 October 2020.