Fights and falls are all in a day’s work
At the International Stunt School in Seattle, students are set on fire and learn how to survive fights and falls from frightening heights.
THE students are trying to look stoic, standing in a gravel parking lot near Bothell under the scorching sun – but they all know that, by the end of the day, every one of them is going to be set on fire.
As they burn, they’ll be scrutinised by their instructors, professional stunt performers, who could potentially make or break their budding careers.
This is the International Stunt School (ISS), a three-week course founded in 1992 by the now-septuagenarian stunt veteran David Boushey, where students learn how to punch and get punched, fall from frightening heights, hustle their way through the professional hazards of Hollywood, tumble down stairs, drive cars in a way that would get a normal person arrested – and act for the camera while on fire.
Lee Gifford, a 29-year-old who spent a few years in the Navy, stands quietly on the day’s burn mat, slathered head to toe in icecold protective goop.
“You guys are going to find this gel in every one of your orifices after you’re done!” instructor Daniel Ford Beavis shouts gleefully.
“You OK?” asks Michelle Ladd, an instructor who started as a dancer and has worked as a stuntwoman for The Walking Dead and as a fight choreographer for Lord Of The Rings.
Gifford nods. “When you’re ready,” Ladd says, “take a big breath and give us a double thumbs-up! And don’t breathe in.”
Gifford gives the thumbs-up. Beavis lights the back of Gifford’s coat – which has been covered in a special fire accelerant – with a blue blowtorch. The flames and smoke fly upward.
“Don’t breathe in!” Ladd shouts. “You’re doing good!” Gifford gapes and waves his arms around, pretending to be in agony.
After a few seconds, Ladd signals Gifford to drop to the mat. Two instructors leap forward to put him out and cool him down with a fire extinguisher and water from a hose, asking, “You hot? Where are you hot?”
“You OK?” Ladd asks. “Yes,” Gifford grunts. He stands up and walks slowly to a makeshift shower made of PVC and plastic tarps, where he washes the goo off his face.
Then another student is set on fire. Then another. And another.
There are 50 students in the International Stunt School class of 2016, most of them 20-somethings with athletic backgrounds hoping to make a living in the stunt world: movies, TV, live stunt shows, video games. For the past couple of summers, Boushey says, casting directors have been flying up to Seattle and watching the new prospects.
ISS student Amanda Cook worked as a stunt performer in a haunted house in Denver and now guides river-rafting trips in North Carolina. Gina Kessler is part of a jousting and sword-fighting company that travels the Renaissance fair circuit. Matt Stevens, from the United Kingdom, is a rock climber and professional circus performer whose specialties include high-lining, juggling and onstage fire stunts.
While students are being blazed and extinguished, Boushey stands nearby, wearing sunglasses and scratching at his greying moustache. “That was OK,” he grumbles quietly after one of the burns. “It’s a perfect example of somebody who thinks he’s giving it his all, but it’s not enough. You’ve got to sell it for the camera.”
Fire burns look scary, he says, but they’re one of the safest in the stunt repertoire – fights and falls are far more treacherous. “But everybody,” he shrugs, “is in awe of the guy who gets set on fire.”
Boushey walks into the fire-burn zone and gives the students a stern lecture. “When I’m on set and see somebody not selling a stunt, it drives me crazy! Because I know exactly where that producer is.” He taps his watch and makes an exasperated face. “If you don’t sell it and have to do it over again, you’re costing the company lots of money.”
The starting rate for a stunt performer, he says later, is US$966 (RM4,110) a day. “But that’s peanuts.” After overtime rates and bonuses for pulling off dangerous stunts, “It’s not unusual for a stuntman to make US$2,000 to US$3,000 (RM8,510 to RM12,770) a day.”
The real trick is breaking into the business. Boushey has been in the industry for around 40 years and founded the International Stunt School more than two decades ago.
When Boushey entered the stunt world, he says, it was dominated by a few families who passed jobs from father to son, and resisted newcomers. “It was a dynasty system,” he says. “I’ve worked with people in those families and respect them, but they ran the show. I got sick and tired of seeing talented people never get a break.”
So he started ISS – licensed as a vocational school in Washington. Since then, ISS graduates have worked in some of the biggest projects in the industry: Harry Potter, Pirates Of The Caribbean, 12 Years A Slave, The Hunger Games, Jurassic World, Indiana Jones, Sherlock Holmes and many others. “There’s nothing better than seeing the credits for something like Game Of Thrones,” Boushey says, “and thinking, ‘Hey! Roy Taylor! Class of 1998!’ ”
It isn’t hard to find the ISS during its fight-training days at the University of Washington’s drama-school building – you can hear the rumble from a distance.
By the time you walk into the lobby, it sounds like the building is hosting its own thunderstorm.
Overhead, dozens of students are grunting, groaning and smacking themselves onto the ground. Some are fighting each other on padded mats, some practising solo, hitting and getting hit by invisible enemies.
Combat specialist Greg Poljacik calls the students to attention. They freeze obediently. “Guys!” he shouts. “Die comfortably! Die ‘dead,’ but die comfortably! If you fall over and die in character in an awkward position on set, you’ll think, ‘Uh-oh, I have to live here for the next hour and a half.’ So watch how you fall.”
For the next few hours, the students keep pretending to beat each other up. But they are really beating themselves up – punching and kicking into the air, flinging their bodies onto the floor and getting back up to do it again.
“As David Boushey always told us,” says 2009 ISS graduate Jessica Bennett, “our job is to hit the dirt hard. By hour 16 on set, you’re like, ‘I cannot throw another punch.’ And then you throw another five hours’ worth of punches. At the end of the day, that’s our bread and butter.”