Stuntman schools peers in film fighting
Proceeds from lessons will go to help clean-water effort in Mozambique
A 20-year veteran stuntman is raising money for a group that aims to get clean drinking water to the country of Mozambique by holding weekend classes for about 50 fellow stunt performers and actors on how to fight on screen.
It’s the fourth year Kirk Caouette (Arrow, X-Files, Watchmen) will teach the course. Martial arts school FKP Mixed Martial Arts lets him use its Fraser Street space for free, and Caouette volunteers his time.
“It’s more important to me to elevate the community than it is to make a couple of bucks,” Caouette said. “I can make way more money doing it on set, so I don’t do it for the money.”
Those taking his class are already industry professionals. The participants each donate to the charity Water Underground, which is working on getting clean drinking water to Mozambique. In previous years they donated to a charity in Haiti.
“The people who are doubling big stars on big shows, I expect them to pay more,” Caouette said.
Onscreen fighting is nothing like real fighting, he said. Real fighters keep their movements close because they’re trying to avoid getting hit.
“We try to just get in there and make it more like a dance,” he said.
“The biggest problem with real fighters is that you put them on camera and they don’t look like they’re fighting.”
Screen fighting involves precise timing, and learning choreography: “It’s all about being in time with your partner, or several partners.”
Caouette got his start in the film business in the mid-1990s, when he was a professional snowboarder living in Whistler. The Disney comedy Mr. Magoo needed a snowboarder to pull off some tricky moves, and Caouette continued from there to other movies, learning on the job.
“There’s so little work for snowboarders, I looked around and the fight guys were the ones that made all the money.”
He studied various martial arts, adapting the moves for screen work. That was Caouette in the spectacular opening of 2003’s X2 as Nightcrawler invading the Oval Office. Two months of rehearsal culminated in a few minutes on screen.
He has branched out to creating his own indie films, in 2009 serving as producer, director, writer, star and chief songwriter for Hit ’n Strum, a character piece about a rich woman who befriends a street musician after hitting him with her car. Caouette also did the film’s centrepiece stunt, a bounce off a moving car that shattered the windshield.
The movie played the festival circuit in Canada and abroad.
Last year he finished a more actionoriented effort called Real Fiction, again serving as director, writer and star. That movie had more than 70 of Caouette’s stunt colleagues joining in. It will roll out this fall.
He’ll be back in the big-budget realm later this year when he joins the stunt team for the Vancouver-filmed big-screen remake Power Rangers.