The Extras - Talking Cinema's Greatest Stunts

Episode Date: April 19, 2022

Scott McGee,  senior director of Original Productions at Turner Classic Movies, joins the podcast to discuss his new book "Danger on the Silver Screen: 50 Films Celebrating Cinema's Greatest Stunts."  We start with the earliest stunts of silent film stars Douglas Fairbanks, Tom Mix, Yakima Canutt, and Buster Keaton before highlighting the chariot race in "Ben Hur," likely the most spectacular stunt ever created.  And then we talk about cars, motorcycles, and the development of James Bond.  With the '80s came "Mad Max," "Raider of the Lost Ark," "Romancing the Stone," and more James Bond.  Ultimately "The Matrix" brings the discussion up to the modern era with a mix of CGI and practical stunts.  And we end with a discussion of some of the top action franchises of the last twenty years and action stars Charlize Theron, Matt Damon, Keanu Reeves, Daniel Craig, and Tom Cruise.Purchase Danger on the Silver ScreenFollow Scott on Twitter @jscottmcgeeThe Sitcom StudyWelcome to the Sitcom Study, where we contemplate the TV shows we grew up with and...Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify The Extras Facebook pageThe Extras Twitter Warner Archive & Warner Bros Catalog GroupOtaku Media produces podcasts, behind-the-scenes extras, and media that connect creatives with their fans and businesses with their consumers. Contact us today to see how we can work together to achieve your goals. www.otakumedia.tv

Hi, I'm film historian and author John Fricke. I've written books about Judy Garland and the Wizard of Oz movie, and you're listening to The Extras. Hello and welcome to The Extras, where we take you behind the scenes of your favorite TV shows, movies, and animation, and they're released on digital, DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K, or your favorite streaming site. I'm Tim Millard, your host.

My guest today is the Senior Director of Original Productions at Turner Classic Movies, is a programmer for the TCM Classic Film Festival, the lead programmer for the TCM Classic Cruise, and has been a presenter at many of TCM's past events and other industry conventions. But today we will be talking about his new book just released in April of 2022 called Danger on the Silver Screen, 50 Films Celebrating Cinema's Greatest Stunts. Scott McGee, welcome to The Extras. Thank you so much for having me, Tim. I really appreciate the opportunity to speak to you.

Well, before we dive into the discussion of your fantastic new book, I did want to ask you a little about your day job at TCM. Maybe you can tell us a little about what you do there. Oh, of course. I love to talk about what I do because sometimes I have to remind myself that this is a job and that I get paid for it. I've been with TCM almost 20, 22 years. And what I do there now is I am in the programming department and I oversee the original programming that we create for the network that supports the films and the programming that we have on air. So a lot of the interstitials, the short form videos that appear between the movies I develop, I hire producers to write and produce them. And also some documentaries,

not a huge amount of those, but just a few. And of course, I also take part in the programming of the festival. I, along with my boss, Charlie Tabish, and my colleague, Stephanie Thames, we put our heads together probably starting in July or August of every year and start hammering out, okay, what is the theme going to be? What are some of the anniversaries? What are some of the restorations that our partners at Archives and Studios are working on that we can premiere? And then it all flows from there. So it's a labor of love. It sounds like a fantastic job, though. A lot of fun.

And you guys must have had fun knowing that this year, finally, after two, three years, you're going to be back in person. Talk a little bit about the upcoming film festival here in April of 2022. I will say that for my part, it's going to be hard not to shed a few tears when I see people that I haven't seen in three years. Right. And just see the fans soak up this TCM festival and come together again as a community of film lovers. There's a reason why this year's theme is all about reunions, reunited. There's a reason why this year's theme is all about reunions, reunited.

So we're all so very excited and so happy to be back together again. You know, we have a lot of premieres for restorations. Of course, our opening night film is E.T. the Extraterrestrial, which is celebrating its 40th anniversary. We have a live silent film orchestra playing for the Fox film Seventh Heaven. The Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra will be playing for that. We have special guests, Bruce Stern, Piper Laurie, the animator Floyd Norman. Lily Tomlin is getting a handprint in the Grauman's forecourt. It's just a cornucopia of stuff that we're just going to love tocourt. Hey, it's just a cornucopia of stuff that, uh, that, that we're just going to love to, to see again. Yeah, it sounds fantastic. So, uh, I'm sure that everybody who has been

itching to get back to the theater, uh, fans of, uh, the Turner classic movies and just films in general, it's just going to be fantastic. Get it back and, uh, to be there again. So, uh looking forward to it. And you'll be there. Will you be introducing any movies or just partaking? I will actually be doing a presentation in Club TCM, which is our sort of our festival hub where we present things that are not necessarily movies. But this is where our conversations with our tribute personages is held, various presentations on any number of things like we got something on based on a book called Letters from Hollywood. We have our annual thing called Meet TCM, which I Saturday at 1 p.m., is called Catch Them If You Can, a celebration of the great movie chase, which is in large part based on the book that I wrote. I give a brief history of why the chase is such a mainstay of motion picture history from the very beginning to today. And then I will bring up on stage for pretty much the majority of the hour, two stunt people that I interviewed for the book, but I have not actually met in person.

One is named Buddy Joe Hooker, and the other is Debbie Evans, both of whom were involved in some amazing chases. Buddy was involved with two that I'll be showing clips from, 1985's To Live and Die in L.A., directed by William Freakin. Buddy Joe was the stunt coordinator for that, for that big chase in the film. And then Death Proof, where Buddy Joe was the stunt double driver for Kurt Russell in the epic 25-minute chase. I'm not sure how long that it takes. And then Debbie was, uh, won a several awards for her stunt work in movies, including one for the fast and the furious from 2001,

where she drove a Honda civic underneath a moving semi truck. And then especially 2003 is the matrix reloaded where she doubled Carrie Ann Moss in a motorcycle chase on a busy freeway. So I'm really excited to be able to introduce people to Debbie and Buddy Joe, because just in talking to them, they're so wonderful people. And I just want people to know more about them. Right. Well, that sounds great. And that leads us kind of right into, we should start talking about the book here. It's called Danger on the Silver Screen, 50 Films Celebrating Cinema's Greatest Stunts. And I know you've been wanting to do the book for a while. So tell us a little bit about what led you into wanting to do this and then doing this as your first book. has been an interest of mine for a very long time. I think the germ of it started with Raiders of the Lost Ark in 1981. Saw it three times. I saw Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade in 1989, 10 times in the theater, mind you. And then when I started working at TCM in 2000,

shortly thereafter, I got the chance to propose a programming idea. And so I had pitched, why don't we do something on stunt people? And Charlie, my boss now, agreed. And so in June of 2002, we had a whole month on stunt work in the movies. And in preparation for that, I got to tag along with two producers who went to Los Angeles for a three-day shoot to interview some bonafide legends in the business. Terry Leonard, Jack Williams, Bobby Hoy, Gene LaBelle, Lauren Janes, and so many others. And that really kind of cemented an idea of, I'm not through with this topic. I want to know more. So almost as a hobby, I just started doing research. And it just became apparent that

I'm going to have to do something with this research. And so I started noodling around with some dummy chapters that I started writing about five or six years ago. And then I decided, well, I should probably go the next step and make a book proposal. So I decided in November of 2019 to pitch one to TCM. I figured, well, if they turn me down, then at least no harm, no foul, I still have a job. But I also figured that it would be a good learning experience for me, you know, in terms of what was about the book proposal that didn't work. Well, I didn't have to do that because they accepted it. And I got hired to do it in April of 2020.

So I had a lot of time sitting at home to write it. So that that's how it all came about. Well, I know I spent 13 years at Warner Home Video doing the extras for the, you know, the home entertainment releases. And whenever possible, if the show was the right kind of show, you know, we would always pitch doing stuff on the stunts. And if it was part of the show. And we found, of course, that the fans love that. And it's so visually arresting to capture all the behind the scenes of the stunt. You know, you've got so much work that goes into it.

You know, that's why I was saying to you earlier when I asked if you'd come on, this is really in my wheelhouse because I love action movies and I love the stunts. And you mentioned Raiders. You know, I think we're about the same age. And me too. That movie really was something that said, wow. I mean, not only did it blow my mind, but the way that Spielberg and Lucas made film going fun,

because it was humor and then Harrison Ford. I mean, he just embodied everything, even though he didn't do all his stunts, but just the way that they made the stunts fun and part of the storytelling and really changed things. So absolutely. Yeah. So it's a fantastic book. I'm really glad that that worked out because it feels like it's,

it's the right time to be talking about some of this. And I read something in the introduction that kind of stuck with me. You said stunt work is as meaningful, varied, and integral to filmmaking as any other cinematic element, whether it be cinematography, acting, art direction, or scoring? Why don't you think stunts have gotten more respect in the industry? That's a, I mean, that's a, that's a good question. I think it goes back a long ways. I think the explanation could be varied depending on, on what era you're talking about.

Today though, I think it's, I think large, it's largely a matter of ignorance, maybe. I don't know. I'm sure if that's the right word. But I think a lot of people just assume that crashing a car or falling off a building into an airbag or setting yourself on fire is easy. that, oh, well, anybody can do that. They all got pads on. They all got protective suits. What's the big deal? And, you know, you can see thousands of YouTube videos of people crashing their cars and falling off buildings, albeit usually by accident. But in order to make it cinematic and in order to make it in service of the story and in service of the characters, you have to have people who are not just willing to take the risks, but people who are also artists in and of themselves. And I don't think a lot of people know that. I just think that they think of stunt work as just this almost blue collar job, that there isn't an artistic merit to it. And I wholly disagree. When you consider what Sam Zemblis, the producer of Ben-Hur,

said about the chariot race, he said that if the chariot race is no good, the picture is no good. What that means is when you walk out of that theater and whether or not you're talking about Ben-Hur or Raiders of the Lost Ark, if there's not extraordinary stunt people doing the job, these movies wouldn't be half as memorable. Right. And wouldn't, wouldn't stick in the public consciousness as much as they do. Right. Well, one of the things I enjoyed about your book is how it's structured in a linear fashion. So it starts with the early days of film and then it comes right up to the present. And that allows, I think, the reader, at least as I was reading it,

to put some historical context into the stunts and the action. And the first actor you focus on, people might find actually a little surprising. It isn't Douglas Fairbanks, senior, but actually it's an actress, Lillian Gish. Tell us a little bit about that decision, how you went about structuring the book. Well, I wanted to be clear from the get-go that this is a celebration of stunt people, of stuntmen and stuntwomen, no doubt about it. But some of the greatest stunts in movie history don't involve stuntmen and stuntwomen, no doubt about it. But some of the greatest stunts in movie history don't involve stuntmen or stuntwomen. And so I wanted to make that distinction that there are also other people involved in the creation of these great stunts,

not just the stunt people, of course, but directors, second unit directors, also editors, special effects artists. These are all people that contribute in some way to the overall enjoyment and the overall impact of what is put up on the screen. And when it comes to stars taking risks for the camera, that was something I also felt needed to be said because it appears time and time again throughout the book, throughout the history. And I think it started with, well, it didn't start, but I think one of the biggest impacts of a star putting themselves in danger for what was going on on the movie in the movie was Lillian Gish and Richard Bartlemas for Way Down East in 1920.

Just the story of how that scene was put together, I thought it was just really interesting and very courageous on Lillian Gish's part to spend all that time in frigid weather conditions. Her arms are uncovered for most of it. And for her to actually spend time on actual ice flows on this river, I just thought was amazing. So yeah, I just, I wanted to make that distinction pretty early, that it wasn't just about stunt people, but about the whole totality of who put these stunt sequences together. Well, that reminds me that in the book, you have these amazing photographs that you, you know, that go along with the written word. How did you get some of these amazing archival photos?

A lot of them I found within the public domain. A lot of them I got from archives, the Margaret Herrick Library, a part of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Pepperdine University. Let's see, I worked with George Eastman House. Also a lot of private collectors I worked with. And especially my photo researcher at Turner, Eileen Flanagan, was instrumental. My philosophy is I wanted to find pictures that really did the stunt work itself a service. Like in the case of, say, I don't know, Mission Impossible, I could have just come up with some stock studio footage or studio photographs. But I wanted to find something that really captured the action and captured it in a way that would make it a visceral impact for the reader. And in terms of some of the older photographs, you know, like there was one

in way down east where you see Lillian Gish on an ice floe, and then you see some crew members pushing the ice floe away from the camera with a big stick. I've never seen that photo before. And so I thought, gosh, I got to get this one. So I really tried my best to find material that had not been published much. And again, just did a service to the book. Well, I will say one photo in particular that I'm really, really happy made it into the book. It's a photo from the Black Pirate, 1926, of the character played by Douglas Fairbanks swinging on a rope between two masts of a ship. And that photo came courtesy of Jeffrey Vance, who is a top-notch historian and author who's written books on many people, including Douglas Fairbanks. And I reached out to Jeff and asked

him for help, and he gave me the permission to use this photo. And it's right there in the chapter on Robin Hood and the Black Pirate. That kind of leads right into, you know, talking about Douglas Fairbanks Sr. It sounds like you credit him kind of as like the first action screen star who, you know, prides himself on doing the stunts and was able to do them. And that was the big selling point. Did he kind of set the mold for that type of action star? I think so. There are many actors prior to him that did their own stunts. Like Helen Holmes, for example, who was a serial star in The Hazards of Helen. She did a lot of her own stunts and in a skirt or an address note, no less. But I couldn't really cover her as much

because I chose not to talk about serials, but feature films. Fairbanks, though, I think was the first one to really evolve his own screen persona using stunt work. You see him displaying his natural athleticism in earlier films that he had made, which were mostly comedies. But then when he made The Mark of Zorro in 1920, and he kept building upon those with films like Robin Hood and The Three Musketeers and The Thief of Baghdad and The Black Pirate, you see his screen persona evolving. And as it evolved,

his stunt work became more and more pronounced and more and more integral to the telling of these stories. So that's why I would consider him the first. And I'm certainly not the first one to make that distinction. I mean, there have been other authors who've made that same observation about Fairbanks. But yeah, I think he really set the mold that others still today are still following. The era that he's in, it's that silent era. And you talk about the 1920s as the age of Ballyhoo and, you know, thrill seekers. And it was interesting. I found that that's a parallel not too far from our times right now with all the bungee jumping and extreme sports and things of that nature. And it seems that film was there and it really became an ideal way to share these

exploits for a mass audience and, you know, let them see it and participate. Talk a little bit about that silent era and how the stunts really had a great impact to increase the popularity of films. Yeah, the age of Ballyhoo was, again, that was not my, I did not coin that phrase either. weird stuff like climbing up flagpoles and dancing on top on the ledges of buildings, doing plane transfers in the middle of the air, jumping off bridges, lots of stuff. And I think that motion pictures really capitalized on this craze by introducing thrills. And nobody did this more prevalently and more obviously than Harold Lloyd when he developed what he called the thrill comedy. And when you look at films like a film like Safety Last, it is born right out of that Ballyhoo era. The whole germ of the idea came from a fellow that he witnessed climbing the outside of a building.

So, yeah, I think that that era had a huge impact on silent films. And in terms of just developing action and thrills as a form of entertainment. You know, the other thing to think about is action itself is a universal language. And so when you have somebody hanging on the side of a building, it doesn't matter if you're in America or in France or in Asia, you get wrapped up in that story. Right. So, yeah, I think I think it just spoke to people in a way that other genres that did not incorporate a lot of stunts didn't do. From that era, you kind of go right into Westerns and the popularity of Westerns and then these very prominent stuntmen from the Western eras. Talk about a few of the early stuntmen who really made a name for themselves in the Westerns. Stay with us. We'll be right back. Hi, this is Tim Millard, host of The Extras Podcast.

And I wanted to let you know that we have a new private Facebook group for fans of the Warner Archive and Warner Brothers catalog physical media releases. So if that interests you, you can find the link on our Facebook page or look for the link in the podcast show notes. in the podcast show notes. Well, the one that I do write about in the book is Tom Mix, who was not a stuntman per se, but he was also in the mold of Douglas Fairbanks, a stuntman star, one who prided himself in doing his own stunts, or at least most of his own stunts. And Tom Mix was a huge, huge star in the silent era, who is largely forgotten today. As I do mention in the book, much of Tom Mix's films that he made at the Fox Film Corporation were lost. There was a huge vault fire on the Fox Film lot in, I think it was 1937. And a lot of these films are gone forever. Fortunately, some of them do survive, such as The Great K&A Train Robbery, which I write about.

But Tom Mix as a star was so popular that he brought people in just based on the merits of what he was going to be doing in his next film. People love to see that. They love to be enthralled by Mix's exploits. And while he did make some contemporary modern day films, most of them were of the Western nature. And there were a whole slew of other stuntman stars that got their foothold in the silent era. But the one who had the most consequence in terms of stunt work in the movies was Yakima Canut. Yakima Canut is considered the grandfather of modern stunt work. And he began his career as a rodeo rider, champion rodeo rider who was known throughout the world, really. And he eventually got into movies, starring in movies. There's a 1926 movie called

The Devil Horse, where he is the star. But once the sound era took over, Yakima Canut didn't really have that star power. In fact, he had a voice that he himself described as a hillbilly in a well. And so he started to take on character roles, playing the villain, but also acting as a hillbilly in a well. And so he started to take on character roles, playing the villain, but also acting as a stunt coordinator, which back then they referred to as a ramrod. And during the 30s, the Western genre kind of fell into a disreputable type of reputation, where it was the purview only of B productions, quickies, if you will. And Poverty Rose Studios would churn out these westerns so quickly and so cheaply that they needed to have a stunt coordinator who knew what he was doing and could do it safely and effectively.

And so Knut really earned his stripes working on these quickie Westerns during the 30s, often with John Wayne starring. Right. And then when John Wayne was tapped to star in Stagecoach by John Ford in 39, John Wayne said, you know what, we really need to hire Yakima Canut to do this. So that and it's so just it really kind of led from there. Right, Right. Well, the other thing that was really popular during that time was, you know, obviously it was the birth of the airplane. Yeah. And I think you talk about it a fair amount that kind of the barnstorming was popular as well. And, you know, planes were a novelty, I guess, you know, most people had never been in one. So you highlight a number of those.

That, that was pretty interesting. Tell us about a few of those that you highlight. Oh, Wings from 1927 and Hell's Angels from 1930. Stunt pilots are, really, I could have written a book just on the stunt pilots themselves. And in fact, there are some books that had been written already about stunt flying in the movies, but they're a different breed. Oftentimes, they did not start out doing stunts in the movies. They were barnstorming pilots who were really a part of that age of ballyhoo that I discussed earlier. There were people that were paid to thrill paying audiences to see them do all sorts of stuff like barrel rolls and parachuting from planes and doing

plane-to-plane transfers or plane-to-car transfers and also crashing planes. There was a fellow named Dick Grace, who was a World War I pilot who specialized in doing what he called crack-ups. And this is where he would bring his plane in at a controlled descent, and he would make contact with the ground in such a way that it would then flip the plane over upside down and crash the plane in a way that was quite dramatic and quite cinematic, if you will. And William Wellman, the director of Wings, had Dick Grace incorporate some of these crackups into the film. And you see them time and time again in other films during the

silent era and early sound. It was a film called Lilac Time and of course, Hell's Angels in 1930. But as I write in the book, this was a highly dangerous job. I don't know the actual numbers, but I would dare say that more people were killed or severely injured doing these plane stunts than there were in any of the any stunts that would require a car or jumping off a building or a train or anything like that. And it was largely because the planes themselves were basically crates with wings. They were so flimsy. And when they were doing these maneuvers in the sky, sometimes there would be a mechanical failure and the plane would crash to earth. And there were some pretty gruesome tragic stories that I tell in the book about that really detail that fact. Yeah. I noticed that you just got a matter of fact, you have to talk about it because it happened. And of course, safety standards were kind of not yet to where they were later on. Yeah. There was one story, in fact, that it actually happened in 1930, I believe.

And I cannot remember the name of the movie, but there was a stunt scene that was being filmed off the coast of Santa Monica. And there were two planes in the air. In one plane was the stuntman who was to jump out of the plane and parachute into the ocean below. In the other plane was the director, a cameraman, and a few other crew members filming the jump out of the plane. Well, the director of the film was a man named Kenneth Hawks. And Kenneth Hawks was a director at the time who had a brother named Howard Hawks. And unfortunately, during the flight, And unfortunately, during the flight, the two planes collided side by side and they became entangled. And both of the planes crashed into the ocean and killed everybody aboard the two planes.

Wow. Made huge headlines. And it made a widow out of Kenneth Hawks's wife, actress Mary Astor. And so I incorporated that into the chapter talking about The Thing from Another World, which was produced and some say directed by Howard Hawks. But I think that that anecdote really details the danger involved in doing aerial stunts, even aerial second unit photography, which is what was happening in this case. With as dangerous as that was, the aerial stunts and everything, I thought your chapter on Buster Keaton was fascinating because he was fearless. And you state that the famous falling wall stunt may be the single greatest stunt in movie history? I think it is because just of the sheer audaciousness, the unexpected nature of it, and the fact that it's unique, I think, of all the

stunts that I write about, and indeed, maybe any stunt that I could ever think of. It's one of the few that it requires the stunt man, in this case Buster, to stand absolutely still. Every other stunt, motion is involved. Whether you're in a car, plane, or train, running or jumping or falling, this is where the guy just stands locked still. And I just think that along with Harold Lloyd hanging from the clock in Safety Last, it's one of the defining images, I think, of the silent era. And it really emphasizes the audaciousness of what filmmakers could do in the silent era. on Buster Keaton that just came out that really discussed this in detail about how once Buster Keaton lost his independent status as a filmmaker and went to MGM, he couldn't do these kinds of things anymore. That stunt really was the end of an era for Buster and really, I think, for the

silent period. Wow. Just the image, the two that you mentioned, Harold Lloyd hanging off the clock and then the wall just around Buster. Those two images are amazing. And sometimes it's hard to capture one image from a stunt that speaks the way those two do. That's right. And it's also one of the, it's one of the stunts that there is a good photograph of. A lot of the pictures that I include in the book are screen grabs. They're screenshots because so many of these stunts, they weren't officially photographed by a still photographer on set. So I had to, I really wanted to illustrate what I'm talking about. And that wall fall was one of the few where there are some photographs taken that I incorporated in the book. Well, we haven't talked necessarily about

stunt women yet, but you do tell the story of, I think, Polly Burson. Yeah, I do talk a little bit about Polly. I didn't discuss a great deal about stunt women. Perhaps I will in my second book. There's a great book on stunt women in movies written by Molly Gregory, which came out a couple of years ago. But Polly Burson was one of those trailblazers in Hollywood who really paved the way for a lot of people. There's a lineage from Polly Burson to Jeannie Epper to say, um, Debbie Evans, who's still working today. And so Polly was, so I think was sort of the grandmother of much like Yakima Canut was, I think she was the grandmother of, of stunt women in Hollywood.

She was one of the few people that I think she actually doubled a man in a film, which is almost unheard of when it came to actresses and in films. They were usually what they were. It was referred to as wigging, where a stunt man would dress up as the actress and perform the stunt. And Polly, I think, was one of the few who actually doubled a man a couple of times. And she just her sheer longevity, starting in the late 30s or 40s, even into the 70s, I think she was working. So, yeah, she she is a she was quite a character.

You mentioned earlier one of my all time favorites, and that's the chariot race and Ben-Hur. Who do you think that one stands in cinematic history? That's the chariot race in Ben-Hur. Who do you think that one stands in cinematic history? Oh, top five, easily. As I said earlier in the show, you can't leave the theater after seeing Ben-Hur without talking about the chariot race. It's not just one of the pinnacles of action filmmaking, but there is a spiritual quality to the action as portrayed in the screen. there is a spiritual quality to the action as portrayed in the screen. This deathless struggle between Masala and Judah Ben-Hur had to be done in such a way that really spoke to the violence and the hatred between these two characters.

And to do it in such a visceral fashion in that sequence, man, they pulled out all the stops. in that sequence, man, they pulled out all the stops. And as I write in the book, the producers of the film and MGM realized that we're really going to need two second unit directors for this picture. And so they hired both Yakima Canut and Andrew Martin to handle this race. And it's still unparalleled. I didn't see the, I think it was the 2016 version of Ben-Hur, but I assume most of that was CGI. Because they just don't do this kind of stuff anymore. They don't build an actual chariot circus, Maximus, to have these nine charioteers and teams of horses racing around is just too much expense. And why do it when you can all do it in a computer? That's not to say that that filmmakers today still don't do practical stunts. Of course they do. But at that scale, it's just not something

that's done much anymore. When we go into the 1960s and you start talking about the films of the 60s, it feels like cars and motorcycles start to really take on a greater importance in the stunts. There's The Great Escape in 1963, and then now you have the James Bond franchise. How did the stunts in the 60s start changing? There was a couple of reasons why. In the 60s, I think cars, the automotive industry started to make faster cars, car technology that had better suspension for taking corners and just being able to drive faster. And I think they started to be manufactured and marketed to complement

personality. You know, the Joppies of the 1950s and into the 60s. And by the way, I'm not a car historian, so I may be getting some of this wrong. But they did start to reflect the personality of the buyer. And when it came time to make a film like Bullet, what better to detail Steve McQueen's character, Frank Bullet, than have him drive around a Ford Mustang? And if it's going to be a Ford Mustang, well, it drives fast. So it allows you the ability to literally have a faster car chase. ability to literally have a faster car chase. The other reason why I think car chases became more prevalent is because the Western started to fade in popularity by the 60s. There are some many notable exceptions, Wild Bunch, Butch Cassidy being chief among them. And we still have Westerns made today, of course, but they were nowhere near the number of Westerns as they were in the from the 30s into the 50s.

And as the Westerns started to dry up a bit, a lot of those stunt guys and stunt women, they needed to specialize in some other skills. So many of them were only skilled in doing horse based stunts for Westerns. So they started to branch out and started to do car automotive stuff. And so you had people like Hal Needham, who started work as a Western stuntman who did some incredible work in films like The Rare Breed and How the West Was Won and Little Big Man. But he eventually started to do more automotive stuff, coordinating the action and Reynolds films like Gator and White Lightning, and then especially directing Smokey and the Bandit. And I think that the action film, as we know it today, particularly the detective thriller, they started to scratch a lot of the same genre itches that the Western did. And in fact, in Bullet, they kind of devised the car chase as a shootout of sorts.

So yeah, I think there is a definite through line in terms of going from the Western to the action film and going from horse-based stunts to more automotive stunts. You also mentioned the fact that they needed to get fans back in the theater because TV had grown in popularity. So that was a part of it too, wasn't it? That's right. Actually, ironically, TV had become, started to become criticized for the Westerns for being too violent. There was a push to tap down on the violence portrayed in movies in the late 60s. And I think there might be a connection between that and the rise of car chases, particularly in TV shows like Mannix and the Rockford Files, Canon and so many others.

They would have a lot of car chase stunts. And I think that also translated to movies as well. Because you can have a car wreck, but not show people bleeding, so to speak. Yeah. Well, during that same era was the development of the James Bond franchise. And that always contained a lot of action right from the beginning, which meant that they had a lot of stunts, right? That's right. And I had some trouble with the James Bond films because much like the stunt pilots, you can write a book by itself just on the stunts in James Bond. So what I chose to do is sort of take an era approach where I discussed Honor Majesty Secret Service, which I think really debuted the big stunt set piece for James Bond. Not to say there weren't stunts in the earlier Connery pictures,

but I think with Secret Service, I think it really became a much bigger deal in terms of these sequences for the Bond pictures. And I do touch upon some of the Connerys and talk about the many stuntmen who contributed to those films within the context of Majesty's Secret Service. But then I go into the Roger Moore era, which the stunt work in those films became even more important with Live and Let Die and The Spy Who Loved Me, the corkscrew jump from

The Man with the Golden Gun. And it just, the Bond films started to try to top themselves. Honestly, some of the stunts, they were topping themselves in ways that didn't feel quite organic enough to the Bond films themselves. Like the corkscrew jump, for example. It's an incredible feat of engineering and bravery on the part of the driver. But it just seemed a little silly, particularly when it came to the sound effect that the composer inserted into the film. It's a corkscrew whistle, a slide whistle. So some of the stunts just didn't seem very Bond-y, if you will, but they were so rare and so few and far between. I mean, the ski jump off of that mountain in The Spy Who Loved Me, it's incredible. Rick Sylvester, I contacted him and he gave me a lot of great insight into that jump that

he performed. And then it gets into the Timothy Dalton and the Pierce Brosnan era. And I cover two films, Golden Eye for Pierce Brosnan. And the film that I think is highly underrated, particularly when it comes to stunts, is License to Kill. I think that movie is one of the best Bond films in terms of action. And then I covered the Daniel Craig era with just one film with Casino Royale. And I try to name check all the films in the Bond canon in reference to their great stunts because it's too many great moments to Yeah. So I really jammed it in there.

I live in LA and recently I went to the Peterson Museum where they have the Bond in Motion. And they have the cars. They also have the boat. I think a snowmobile. Oh, wow. I'm not familiar with the Peterson Museum, you say? Yeah. It's a car museum here in LA.

They have from all of the different films. And I've got some pictures I took, took my daughter there. She actually really enjoys cars. And it was a great way to kind of relive through the cars because the cars are all associated with stunts and the different eras. You get the cars from the 60s, 70s, you know, it's a lot of fun and was a great way to kind of relive that. But the 60s, 70s, you know, it's a lot of fun and was a great way to kind of relive that. But there's just so much, like you said, you could have done a book just on that. Well, let's jump to the 80s. I mean, we mentioned Raiders of the Lost Ark and the Indiana Jones franchise. Does it feel like that kind of ushered in a new era of stunts

where there was more of this kind of action hero and bringing in more humor? Yes, I think it did. But it wasn't the only one. When you consider the release of Mad Max in 1979, which preceded Raiders, I think that had a huge part in ushering in that new era of faster and just more audacious cinematic stunts. But the 80s were certainly a high point. And I do cover a number of films in the book. Probably one of my favorites is Romancing the Stone from 1984. Oh, yeah. I had a chance to spend a lot of time with the stunt coordinator and legendary stuntman Terry Leonard.

And we talked at length about that film. And he told me great stories that I cover in the book about the making of Romancing the Stone. And I don't know what it is about the 80s that brought stunt work into a new era. It was maybe it was just there was more money involved. Maybe it was because of the demands of the blockbuster, because this was, of course, the 80s. But yeah, I we certainly enjoyed the fruits of their labor with not only the Indiana Jones, but Road Warrior and Remo Williams, which I love. And in any number of films that I like, I didn't really talk about at all to live and die in L.A., which is another William freaking film. But yeah, the 80s were it was a gas when it came to stunts in the movies.

freaking film. But yeah, the 80s were, it was a gas when it came to stunts in the movies. And then in the 1990s, you started to see the impact of some of the Hong Kong cinema as popularized. And you go into this, the Jackie Chan, Rumble in the Bronx. How did that change the stunt industry? Well, I don't talk a lot about the Hong Kong action cinema or really any other international cinema output in terms of stunts. I wanted to focus this book on films that received a wide release in the United States. It's not because I'm xenophobic. It's just because I wanted to focus it and limit it because that's a much, much bigger book and much bigger topic for outside the confines of this book.

But I was able to get Jackie Chan in there because Rumble in the Bronx, released in 95, did have a wide release in the United States. Right. And so that did allow me to talk about the influence of Hong Kong cinema within this book. What Hong Kong cinema brought to the United States filmmaking, particularly in the stunts, is I think it brought back the pain. I think it brought back the need to really show these people really doing the stunts. There have been many instances where

great stunts have been undermined by other factors. Case in point, Sharky's Machine, 1981, directed by Burt Reynolds and starring Burt Reynolds. There's a famous stunt at the end of the film where the villain is shot and falls out of a skyscraper. Nominally, it's the Peachtree Plaza Hotel here in downtown Atlanta. In reality, it was the Hyatt Regency Hotel that the stuntman doubling the actor fell out of. And that stuntman was Dar Robinson. And he made something like a 28-story fall into an airbag. It was a record-breaking stunt at the time. It may still hold up. I'm not sure. In the finished film, you see Dar crash through the window, fall, and then there's a jump cut to a dummy. I don't know why

the filmmaker did that, but I feel like they could have stayed on Dar falling a little longer and maybe cut away to something. But for them to jump cut to a dummy, I think really undermined the power of that sequence of that of that gag. The Hong Kong films, they don't do that. They don't cut away. They don't cut. They don't do a jump cut to a dummy. And I think when you look at a film like Police Story that Jackie Chan made, I think in 1985, that Jackie Chan made, I think, in 1985, which is one of the great stuntman movies ever. I remember seeing this film for the first time at my alma mater, Georgia State University. My jaw dropped watching just the first 10 minutes of this film.

Yeah. Seeing these cars crash through this village on the side of a mountain and there are no cuts. It's all being done for real. Right. And then at the end of that sequence, Jackie Chan chases down a bus that's been commandeered by the villains. Right. He forces the bus to stop. The bus slams on the brakes and then the stuntman doubling the villains fall out of a window from the top of the bus and crash to the pavement below. Right. There's no cut. These are not dummies. These are actual stuntmen doing this. And I think that's what Hong Kong did. It reminded movie makers that people want to see the real. They want to see they want to see the pain. Right.

want to see the real, they want to see, they want to see the pain. Right. There, you know, certainly you could take that to an extreme much to the, you know, to the detriment of the, of the stunt men and women doing the gags themselves. But I think it reminded filmmakers that people don't want, they don't want to see fake. They want to see a real as much as possible. Well, uh, like you said, you had to find some limits to the book. You know, you can always do another book, but you had to put some parameters on this one just to try to cover all that you did. But that kind of leads, you know, that Hong Kong cinema leads right into the Matrix films. And in 1999, the first Matrix one, which I think really it did take another jump kind of instance in my mind, because you had Keanu Reeves really,

what months of training he puts into this, he learns the moves. And yes, they have the wire work that goes into that. But talk a little bit about the Matrix and how it evolved, continued to evolve the stunts. Well, you know, a large part of the Matrix, their indebtedness to the Hong Kong action cinema is in large part to the Wachowskis, who wrote and directed the film. They were deeply influenced by the Hong Kong action cinema output, and they wanted The Matrix to draw heavily on that. Right. Which is a large part why they hired Yun Wu Ping, the stunt coordinator who devised all of the fight scenes, particularly when it comes to the wire work.

And I think that there was an effort to bring to these action scenes, to these stunt scenes, a ballet type quality to them, a dance, if you will. And I think that also gets to the very nature of some of the great stunt scenes in history, whether they be car chases or fight scenes, it is a choreographed dance, which also gets back to my earlier point about there's an artistic merit to stunts, much like choreography and musicals. And so when you look at the wire work in the Matrix and in the Matrix Reloaded, you see this on the screen. And I don't think that that influence can be, really can be overstated. Today, you have a lot of stunts being devised using wires that are then digitally erased. So it allows the stunt men and women to do gags that previously would have been

far too dangerous to pull off. So I think that that technology, and I should note that I'm not an expert when it comes to wire technology in movies, but when it comes to how it's portrayed on screen, yeah, I think The Matrix certainly did bring in a new era of showing the action and showing the stunt work as a ballet of movement. And hats off to Keanu Reeves and also Carrie Ann Moss and Lawrence Fishburne and Hugo Weaving. They all trained and did their blood and sweat equity in terms of preparing for these roles. And we've talked about it here on this podcast, but that movie also, because of Joel Silver and the production company that was behind the movie, they knew that this was going to kind of be a step up in terms of the action and the stunts and the kung fu element. And so they did a lot of filming behind the scenes of the actors doing their preparation

and of the stunts and things. And then when the home entertainment release, and of course, DVD was just beginning burgeoning then. When that came out, they were able to put all those behind the scenes looks on there for the fans. And I think that helped fans to really see and engage with some of the stunts from a home entertainment perspective. And that was the beauty of home entertainment, you know, to allow now people to get a view in a side in to some of that stuff. And Jackie Chan had been doing that on the end of like police story with his credits where they actually show the blood coming from the stunt actors after

they get up after the shot has cut. Yeah. But then The Matrix did that same thing where it really allowed the fans to see. And I think that's helped kind of move into the modern era where we kind of understand how stunts work and how stunt people work a little bit more maybe than we did in the past. But it's still very amazing. I think you raise a good point. I hadn't really considered that about the extras that the,

from which you come in terms of educating the viewer in terms of how these things were put together. I think for that very nature, people today, they want to see practical stunts being done to see CGI being so prevalent is before I get in here, I love CGI. I love it as long as it's used in service of the story. And CGI can also be used to a very great degree in service of the stunt work. and people know the work that goes into creating these stunts as they learned in watching those extras on The Matrix and other DVD and home entertainment output, they want to see the

real stuff. They want to see actual stuntmen and women pulling these gags off and not just the touch of a keyboard on a computer. Yeah. And for that reason, I think you state that you do stay away from some of this more CGI heavy movies and try to focus a bit more on the practical. Yeah. There's a number of films that I could have talked about, primarily the MCU films like Captain America Winter Soldier, which has great stunt work in it. By the way, I love the MCU.

So I'm not knocking that at all. But I wanted to really highlight the practical nature of stunt work. And I do mention CGI, again, being in service of the stunt. I talk about The Matrix Reloaded, Debbie Evans, who's doubling Carrie Ann Moss in that film. There were some cars that were not there. They were not practical. They were digitally inserted. Not all of them, though. There were many cars there, which Debbie told me in an interview. She said, some people say that you asked me if it was if all of those cars were created in a computer. And she said dryly, well, certainly the one that hit me wasn't created in a computer.

And there were a number of other gags in that one sequence where obviously not computer generated. But other films like Death Proof I talk about where Zoe Bell, the stuntwoman in this picture playing herself, is on the hood of a car of a 1970 Dodge Challenger. And she is really on the hood of the car. Now, she is tethered to a steel cable and that cable was digitally erased. This allows the performer and the other stunt performers in the scene to really push the action to a degree that they couldn't had she not been attached to a safety cable. That doesn't mean it completely erases all risk because the driver of the car that Zoe was riding upon, the stunt driver was Tracy Keene Dashnaw. She could have lost control of the car or the tire could have blown out.

Right. And it could have caused the car to wreck, in which case Zoe Bell would not be with us today. Right. That's not to say that she still wasn't taking a risk. She was. But it allowed the filmmakers, Quentin Tarantino in this case, to say that she was still wasn't taking a risk. She was, but it allowed the filmmakers, Quentin Tarantino in this case, to go that extra step. And so there is a use for CG in practical stunt work, but it's got to be done in a way where it doesn't take away from the

practicality of the action. That leads to kind of the next film that I know when I saw this film, I thought this is the most incredible action film. It is relentless from beginning to end. And that's Mad Max Fury Road. I mean, you talk about it in the book, but this is just an amazing film for stunts. Talk about where this movie ranks all time. Well, Mad Max Fury Road is so big. I mean, there's its own book is now out by a guy named

Kyle Buchanan. I haven't read it yet, but I can't wait to. So yeah, I could have written a lot more about Fury Road. The reason why I love this movie so much is, first of all, it shouldn't be this good. It really shouldn't. Given the genesis of its development, how long it took, and how many different setbacks it had over the 10 years or so that it took, it shouldn't exist. It shouldn't be as good as it is. And for it to take the structure of a silent film. You know, George Miller, the director, said that he directed it and thought of it as a silent movie. And when you compare it to something like The General, Buster Keaton's film from 1926,

where you have a chase from one geographic location to the other and back again, that's the same structure as Mad Max Fury Road. I thought that was ingenious, also a little bit hilarious. But the action as portrayed in this movie, it's pretty much a seamless synthesis of practical action and CGI. There is so much going on that it's hard for your mind, for your eye to differentiate between what has actually happened and what is what is created in a computer. You know, there's one sequence in the film that is heavily CG, and that's when they are overtaken by the sandstorm. And you see so many bodies flying off the trucks and the vehicles being swept up by the wind. so many bodies flying off the trucks and the vehicles being swept up by the wind.

Obviously, most of that was CG. But my God, the rest of the film is just it's just draw dropping what they what they were able to accomplish. Yeah, I think if you enjoy action movies and stunts, that movie, it's got to be one of your top, top favorites. It is. It's a film that, uh, that I will probably revisit every one or two years just to, just to remind myself of how brilliant it is. And I can't wait to see what George Miller does next. And the fact that this guy, George Miller is such a character given his origins as a, I mean, he was originally a doctor

who would, um, uh, drive around the Australian outback treating car wreck victims. And that's kind of where the genesis of Mad Max came from, because he would witness all the carnage that he would treat. Wow. It's just, and apparently he's a really soft-spoken guy. For this kind of mayhem to come out of his head, it's really remarkable. Yeah. Well, that leads me to mentioning Charlize Theron and her role in that movie. And you also mentioned another movie she's in.

But the dedication she was willing to do for these movies, I mean, from her buzz cut to the physicality. And it was brutal on the actors. But talk a little bit about her and her taking on a role like that and that help, you know, coming back to some of these actors now who are just so involved in their stunts. When someone writes, maybe it'll be me, but when somebody writes the comprehensive history of stunts in the movies, you're not going to be able to write it without mentioning Charlize Theron. She does bring a level of commitment to these roles, whether it's Mad Max, Fury Road, Atomic Blonde, which I write about in the book.

There was a Netflix film called The Old Guard that she appeared in, or starred in rather, and several others. The remake of The Italian Job, for example. She has become a stuntman star, or a stuntwoman star, in her own right, building upon the legacy of people like Helen Holmes from the early silent era to, say, Barbara Stanwyck, who prided herself in doing some of her own stunts in movies and in television shows. Pam Greer in the 1970s did some of her own stunts, not some major ones, but fistfights and stuff like that. So Charlize Theron, I think, really could go toe to toe with a Keanu Reeves, for example. In fact, I would love to see a crossover between John Wick and Atomic Blonde. Man, I would love to see that. That'd be so cool.

That leads kind of right into, and we don't have time to go into all of these, but in the, you know, in the modern era here, the last 20 years, let's just say, there's been these franchises, which you go into in the book and we can touch on here, but the Jason Bourne starring Matt Damon, Mission Impossible starring Tom Cruise, Daniel Craig, of course, his five films as James Bond, and then Keanu as John Wick. There seems to be this pattern of a star who they just go all in on their stunts and they want to be known for doing at least a good, good portion of their stunts and the training that that goes into them, whether it's the fighting, the driving, the, you know, whatever it might be. Talk a little bit about this group of incredible actors who want to do their own stunts and want to be known for that and publish, use that in the publicity. Yeah.

And of course, I would put Charlize Theron in that. Yeah. In that category as well. There's supposedly going to be another Atomic Blonde movie, but I don't know if it may still be in a development as well. There's supposedly going to be another Atomic Bond movie, but I don't know if it may still be in a development or not. But yes, I think so many of these actors and actresses, like the ones you mentioned, they have

the tools and the resources to first train for these roles, to put in the work, the preparation to undergo the physicality of these motions. And they also have, I think, the patience and the discipline to learn the maneuvers, to learn the choreography. There's a great deal of trust. I think they also invest in their stunt coordinators and their

fellow stunt performers. Because when you're in the heat of the moment and creating these action scenes, accidents do happen. And sometimes people get hurt. And these stars have to trust their performers in these scenes. I also think that they are able to capitalize on the expertise of the editors and also of the CG artistry in terms of cutting away between the star doing the gag and the stunt double doing the gag, it's become so seamless that it really is difficult sometimes to tell the difference. You know, when you think back to something like Die Hard in 1988, it's very easy to spot Bruce Willis's stunt double in these films, particularly when it comes to the fight

scenes. But when you look at Jason Bourne films, for example, it's really difficult to tell the difference between Matt Damon and his stunt double. And a large part of that is just the expertise and the direction and the editing and the choreography of where the camera is put in terms of capturing the action. So I think, yeah, this stunt work in the movies is kind of in a new golden era, I believe. When you think of another, there's another Netflix film called Extraction, which was directed by a former stuntman and coordinator named Sam Hargrave. Man, that movie is amazing. And with the star Chris Hemsworth doing much of his own stunt work, it really is something to take a look at if your if your listeners haven't seen.

I'll have to check that one out. You know, obviously, as you mentioned, too, you know, the ability to to have the safety that the wires can provide that, you know, you can take out with the CGI is is very helpful, but it still requires a huge amount of courage. I know you talk about the Tom Cruise on the side of the plane or on the building. I mean, just the courage to do that. You don't have to do that if you're a movie star. You do not have to do that. And I don't really quite understand how Tom Cruise has gotten away with this because there has to be some sort of negotiation with the studio, with the people putting the money up for these movies. But man, as moviegoers,

we are certainly the lucky recipients of whatever negotiations took place, because to have Tom Cruise hanging by safety cables outside of the Burj Khalifa, side of the Burj Khalifa, I just can't think of anything like it. And I just can't say enough about that scene. It's just freaking amazing. Yeah. Yeah. And I think the Mission Impossible films are very similar to the Bond films in that there was a steady progression in terms of from their origins, from their first films to where they are today. You see the stunt sequences becoming more and more elaborate and more and more ballsy. Right. As the franchises continue.

And I can't wait to see what they what Mission Impossible and what the James Bond and John Wick films do next. Yeah, I'm with you. I can't wait. Anytime that I see Tom in an ad, you know, he's going to bring the goods. So that's for sure. Absolutely. Well, there was a one kind of a question I wanted to ask you about a film or franchise you didn't include. And that was the Fast and Furious franchise, which is all about cars and chases and stunts. I mean, really,

it's basically a roller coaster made as a movie. What was your thinking there and why you didn't really focus on any of theirs? That is a fair question. I will say that it's in large part due to the fact that I simply had a lot of movies already discussing car chases. Gotcha. In order to make room, I wanted to talk about various disciplines and skill sets as they are applied in these films. And so I just ran out of room, really, when it all comes down to it. But I will say that aside from some of the great work that Debbie Evans does

in the first Fast and the Furious film in 2001, the great work that Debbie Evans does in the first Fast and the Furious film in 2001. I think my favorite is the one that is often dismissed by the fans of that franchise, and that's Tokyo Drift. It's my favorite because so much of the work in that film is done practically. Right. You know, when you see those cars speeding around and doing the drifting, that's all done for real. Right. And I just love it. I just love watching it.

Terry Leonard was the second unit director on that film. He also did Too Fast, Too Furious, the second entry. I will also say that the Fast and the Furious franchise has become far too cartoony for me. I think a lot of the CGI has started to overtake the practicality of the stunts. And you certainly see the progression. One of the films, and I frankly can't remember which one it is, but it's the sequence where they're dragging a huge vault or a safe through a major city. That apparently was done for real. I don't know if they would still do that for real today in the more recent entries,

but that's just my opinion on the Fast and the Furious. I think they certainly deserved to be in the book. But yeah, for reasons that I already said, I just couldn't quite fit it in. Yeah. Yeah. You do mention Tokyo Drift, to be fair. You do mention it in some of your sidebars, I believe, once or twice. So, but just there was no one chapter devoted to it. So, but hey, there was no, no one chapter devoted to it. So, but Hey, there's so much, like you say, that, uh, that gives you opportunity for another book in the future. You've given me so much today, but I did want to kind of have a couple of rapid fire questions just to wrap things up before we, we call it a day here. Let me know what your thoughts are on these. And let's start with the throwback.

Who is the best classic movie actress stunt performer, would you say? I would say Barbara Stanwyck. She did a lot of her own work. There was a film that she did a horse drag, a stirrup drag, which is a highly dangerous gag to pull off. And she was a very classy, very ballsy lady who, by the way, was very friendly with the stunt people on set. I mean, people knew that Barbara Stanwyck was one of their own. Next, what's your favorite movie franchise for stunts?

You know, it's probably Mission Impossible right now. Here's why. They came on the scene well after James Bond, well after Indiana Jones, and they have somehow found a way to keep topping themselves and doing things that we've never seen before. As we mentioned already with that skyscraper gag. So I just, yeah, I got to hand it to Cruz and his production that they just continually up the ante. What is your favorite James Bond stunt? My favorite James Bond stunt would be the truck driving on its side in License to Kill. It drives on its side in order to avoid a rocket coming towards it. Right. And then it then writes itself on top of a villain's car. And I felt that is that's pure James Bond right there. Right. I mean, there's so many that I could name, but that that is the one that you had never seen it before in a James Bond film.

And it just screamed James. That's what James Bond would do. Who is your personal favorite actor or actress who is known to perform their own stunts? Let's see. Tom Mix from the silent era. Again, not, not very well known to a lot of general audience moviegoers today, but he, he was my favorite. And finally, you have 50 chapters in this book. What stunt would have been chapter 51? Ooh, very good question. Um, let me restate your question. If I had to be able to insert a chapter to make it 51 films, I would probably talk about the seven ups, which would complete the trilogy started by producer Philip D'Antoni who produced bullet produced the French Connection,

and he produced and directed The Seven Ups in 1973, all involving stuntman driver Bill Hickman. And that sequence, which was shot in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, is one of the most ferocious car chases put on screen. So yeah, that's, that's the one I would probably choose. Well, Scott, it's been fun having you on the show. I could talk this kind of stuff all day, but, uh, and I'm sure you could as well, but I think this is a, it's a great insight for the fans about what your book is about. And if they're interested in the stunts and they enjoy stunts and movies that your book is, is going to be something they're going to want to get. Where can they buy your book and learn more about you? They can follow me on Twitter at J, that's the letter J, Scott McGee. They can buy the book at booksellers everywhere. And if it's not currently in stock, you can order it there. You buy it on Amazon. If you're in Hollywood,

or even if you're not in Hollywood, you can order the book or buy it in person at the Larry Edmonds bookstore on Hollywood Boulevard. Well, thanks for coming on the show today, Scott. Really appreciate it. Thank you very much, Tim. This has been a great conversation. For those of you interested in purchasing Scott's book, Danger on the Silver Screen, there will be links in the podcast show notes and on our website at www.theextras.tv. So be sure and check those out.

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