Word: stunting
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...STUNT MAN Directed by Richard Rush Screenplay by Lawrence B. Marcus...
...best thing about this film is that it has the courage of its own pretentiousness. This may seem dim praise, but it is not. The Stunt Man is not so much sophomoric, with its implications of false sophistication, as it is freshmanic: the movie delights in the play of ideas and in its own unsuspected ability to play fast, loose and funny with them. It is refreshing to see a movie that sends ideas instead of autos crashing headon...
...story concerns Lucky Cameron (Steve Railsback), on the run from the police, who stumbles upon a movie company on location. Eli Cross (Peter O'Toole) is a fine parody of an energetic, egomaniacal director. He offers Lucky a change of identity on high-risk terms: take over the stunt man's job recently vacated by a chap who may or may not have been sent to his doom by the director's pursuit of a terrific death scene. In return the young man will get protection from the police. Cross is as good as his word...
...journey. It is a trip of constantly shifting perceptions and sharply etched satirical sketches of movie types (the anxious writer, the stars in constant need of reassurances and some good lighting, the crew members variously laconic, envious and nymphomaniacal). It is also a carnival of bang-up stunt scenes. which Richard Rush presents with marvelous subtlety. They do not look like the finished product, but neither are they like raw footage: they have the half-polished air of a rough cut. Above all, there is Peter O'Toole, doing his John Huston imitation, but putting a lacy edging...
...reasons best understood by the wee ones who make these decisions. The Stunt Man has languished on the shelf for more than a year, passed by all the major distributors. Now, it is being booked catch-as-catch-can across the country by its makers, and it deserves to be caught. It reminds one not so much of other movies about moviemaking as it does of those blends of action and philosophy that the French intellectual adventurers used to put out. It may not be André Malraux, but it certainly is on the level of Remain Gary...