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24 out of 27 people found the following comment useful :-
A true original comedy that wouldn't get made today., 27 August 1999

Author: Pinback-4 from Stockton, California

This is a very funny and entertaining movie that doesn't fit into any one category. It's about a slightly crazed movie director who is making a WW1 movie in Southern California who hires a fugitive to replace his top stuntman. Peter O'Toole gives perhaps his best performance ever as the egomaniacal filmmaker who will do anything, perhaps even murder someone, in order to protect his artistic vision. The underrated Steve Railsback is good also as the paranoid Vietnam vet turned fugitive from the law. The action scenes are very funny and well-done, especially the rooftop chase. The music score is appropriately clever and matches what's happening on screen. Real-life stunt man Chuck Bail has a good part as a stunt coordinator who shows Railsback the ropes. The editing techniques help blur the line between reality and make-believe. The film is a bit too long, though, and some key scenes go on longer than necessary. These are minor complaints, however, because a film like this doesn't get made very often anymore.

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17 out of 20 people found the following comment useful :-
The art and artifice of filmmaking, 22 October 2000
Author: Space Oddity_2001

Revered as one of the greatest "cult" films of all time I recently saw it and most of my expectations were met. Steven Railsback plays a character named Cameron. A former Vietnam veteran and fugitive on the lam. At the begining of the film we see him being pursued by the police after he is spotted in a restaurant. Cameron while being chased accidentally stumbles onto a movie set where a World War I epic is being shot. After almost being killed by a stunt man on a bridge by a car Cameron picks up an object and throws it at the windshield of the vehicle causing it to swerve off the bridge and fall into a nearby river. A helicopter suddenly descends in front of Cameron. Inside it are the filmcrew documenting the bridge scene with it's director Eli Cross ( Peter O'Toole) starring at Cameron and what has happened. Cameron flees from the scene as the helicopter soars away. Eventually Eli Cross meets up with Cameron and convinces him to replace the stunt man or Cross will turn him into the police. Cameron has little choice. Thus begins the main characters harrowing journey.

The Stunt Man is a complex and multilayered film. It requires multiple viewings in order to catch all of the subtleties and nuances. As the film progresses we see Cameron placed into various stunt scenes, each one more dangerous than the last. Is Eli Cross trying to kill him? The film is a fascinating battle of psychological mind games. Cameron's perception of reality becomes skewed with the fantasy world of filmmaking as he becomes less able to distinguish until the final frame. We the viewer are also constantly confused as the film makes many unpredictable twists and turns with it's convoluted plot. Peter O'Toole is perfect as the flamboyant, megalomanical filmmaker. No one else could to the role justice and bring that much class to the part. Barbara Hershey is also good as the lead actress of Eli Cross' film who becomes romantically involved with Cameron. I have many favorite scenes from the movie. Especially the crash course in stunt work Cameron is given by the lead stunt man played by Chuck Bail, a real life former stunt man. Director Rush has seamlessly balanced pathos with humor to create a unique film of epic proportions. It is a film that the viewer must discipline oneself in order to watch.....but what a payoff.

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13 out of 15 people found the following comment useful :-
I'm gonna get caught gushing!, 30 March 2001

Author: youremythrill from Ohio USA

One of my favorite movies of all time. Must admit that I'm a bit biased since Peter O'Toole's one of my favorite actors of all time. This movie has NEVER gotten the attention that it deserves. Maybe that's, in part, due to the difficulties involved in categorizing it. I don't even know in which section of the video store I'd start looking.

Peter O'Toole is so swell in it. I love that enigmatic character, movie director Eli Cross! Like the movie (and O'Toole, for that matter), he's so hard to cubbyhole. You like him, but you don't trust him. Like Cameron/Lucky (Steve Railsback's escaped convict character) does, you NEED to know exactly where his motives lie ... all in good time. You know Cross'll do whatever's necessary to get "the shot", but he's still got a conscience ... right? Would Cameron have been better off (read safer) just staying in jail ... hmmm?

All the action in the film circles around this question and while the viewer (and Cameron) decide what to make of Eli, it's a fun trip through the world of filmmaking (how realistic a trip, I've no idea). Great performances by O'Toole and Railsback, along with Barbara Hershey, Allen Garfield, Alex Rocco and Sharon Ferrell add so much to the suspense.

See this movie. You can feel how much fun it was for the cast to make. Look at Eli's devilish grin as he tries to soothe Lucky's worries. Try to imagine how many other movies have you sympathizing for an escaped convict. And don't worry if you don't know what to make of mad genius filmmaker Eli Cross because nobody else does either, and if they do, they ain't talkin' ... that might spoil the movie!

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23 out of 35 people found the following comment useful :-
The best film of the 1980's., 3 April 2000

Author: captnemo from Skull Island

I was prepared to dislike this film when I heard that it was going to replace the incredible "Empire Strikes Back." What I got was shock. Here was something different, something innovative in style and technique, something amazing. Vader and his gang were soon forgotten as I got caught up in the suspense (Will Cameron survive?), the comedy, the incredible dialogue, and one of the best soundtracks ever put on film. I fell in love with Barbara Hershey all over again after too long an absence. O'Toole was Oscar-worthy, and robbed of one. Richard Rush pulled a one-of-a-kind out of his hat, ala "Citizen Kane." He has never been near this level before or since. This must be watched several times in order to see and hear everything. There are so many subtle touches that are brilliant that I still find them 20 years and 30+ viewings later. A must for anyone who wants to know good film great. No doubt about this one. A "10" out of "10." No film was better(or as good) in the 1980's (or 90's for that matter.)

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12 out of 14 people found the following comment useful :-
Multilayered, 23 June 2002

Author: Robert J. Maxwell (rmax304823@yahoo.com) from Deming, New Mexico

I won't carry on about the plot of this marvelous flick since it's already been adequately limned, but do let me emphasize a few points that have been kind of grayed out in other comments. The score by Frontiere is outstanding, from the uptempo opening blast to the final credits. It's not only unnerving but vertigo inducing, so it supplements the plot perfectly. The photography is outstanding as well, the colors appallingly vivid, as in an MGM cartoon, which in this context is most apt. (It is a mystery/comedy/thriller/philosophical disquisition, after all.) The Hotel Coronado in San Diego has never looked quite so palatial, not even in "Some Like it Hot." Rush's direction boggles the mind, to coin a phrase. The film begins with a helicopter. A hand pops out of the helicopter and drops a half-eaten apple. The apple bounces on the hood of a parked car. We follow without comment this line of events and it turns out to be what gets the story moving. There are multiple very strange touches throughout. Movies are simply not shot this way. An expensive and dangerous (and ultimately lethal) stunt is performed as we enter the actual narrative and there is only one camera rolling -- and that in a helicopter so far away that its engine can't be heard? But it doesn't really matter. The movie plays tricks all along with the difference between "reality" and "illusion," an old game into which it's difficult to inject more life, as this movie manages to do. At one point, Railsback is told to perform a short if dangerous stunt, leaping from one roof to another. He does so, but the stunt escalates. Not only escalates but goes on and on, with Railsback unexpectedly crashing through ceilings and floors in a shower of glass before winding up in the midst of drunken, partying enemies who shout at him and laughingly lift his body above their heads and pass him around the room. It will shock you almost as much as it shocked him. O'Toole asks him after this long gag what it is he wants. Says Railsback: "Not to think I'm going crazy." The smallest parts are done well. A very authentic-looking German soldier with a cheery old face and big mustache is loading his rifle for a scene in which he and his comrades are going to fire at Railsback. "I hope those are blanks," Railsback tells him. "It doesn't say so on the box," replies the soldier with a friendly tone and a big smile. Let me mention Eli Cross, the director, played by O'Toole. At one level this movie is made, through his character, into an examination of God, and his whimsical sense of responsibility towards the human beings whose lives he controls. "Eli Cross"? I mean -- okay -- Elihu, the crucifixion -- the whole JudeoChristian tradition is embodied in that cognomen. Cross has a habit of riding around the sky in a giant crane whose seat drops unexpectedly out of space and into the middle of peoples' conversations. Before the shooting of the final stunt, Cross raises his hand, looking at the horizon, and says something like, "I hereby decree that no cloud shall pass before that sun." And while shooting another scene, the cameraman calls "Cut." Cross hesitates, then asks, "WHO called cut?" The cameraman explains that there were only a few seconds of film left on the reel so they had to cut at that point. Cross, like the angry God of the Old Testament, shouts that, "NOBODY cuts a scene except ME!" After chewing the camerman out thoroughly, he fires him on the spot. You see, if a movie is supposed to resemble life, then ending a scene suddenly ends the filmic exposure of the two human conversants and only -- well, you get the picture. A lot of this rather obvious theological stuff seems to have gotten by unrecognized or at any rate uncommented upon. It doesn't need to be dwelt on. There are already so many layers to this film that the viewer can afford to be only half aware of any one of them at a given moment. It stands by itself as a kind of very strange comedy. I didn't find Railsback's background as a Vietnam vet put on very thickly, by the way. It would be nice if God really were as accessible as Peter O'Toole is in this movie. All you would have to do to find salvation is jump through some well-defined hoops. As it is, though, I for one find myself muddling through from one day to the next simply hoping not to step on too many toes. Gimme a fiery hoop or a dive off a bridge any day.

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10 out of 11 people found the following comment useful :-
Strange film...., 15 September 2006

Author: Camera Obscura from Leiden, The Dutch Mountains

When I first saw THE STUNT MAN, I was very enthusiastic about the film and raved about it to anyone who might be interested. I've watched it twice with some friends since, but they weren't very enthusiastic about it, so I can imagine that for many people it won't pay off. It's an ingeniously constructed film that takes some patience and attention to watch. Made by the erratic Richard Rush, this was his pet project for nine years. Although the direction is fine, it's mostly a virtuoso piece of scripting (credited to Rush and Lawrence B. Marcus, based on Paul Brodeur's novel) that makes this such a special film.

A short plot outline: Fugitive Cameron (Railsback) stumbles onto a movie set where megalomaniac director Eli Cross (O'Toole) promises to hide from the police if he replaces his ace stunt man, who got killed earlier on the set in a freak accident while filming a scene. Is Eli trying to capture Cameron's death on film while he is performing a stunt? Reality and imagination soon blur when Cameron grows increasingly paranoid because Eli Cross doesn't let anything or anybody get in the way of shooting his masterpiece the way he wants. He doesn't seem to care about human life, as long as his movie is shot in the way he wants it.

Railsback is an odd choice for the main role but apparently the makers wanted a "low-key" actor for the main part. Barbara Hershey gives a great performance but without Peter O'Toole's tour-de-force performance, I doubt if the film would have worked as well as it did, especially with such a challenging and multi-layered script. He delivers his lines with such vigor that you cannot look away, a grand performance by perhaps my favorite actor off all time. Such a pity that his (later) career mainly consisted of mediocre films at best and some disastrous ones, sadly... I cannot imagine this kind of film being made in Hollywood today and even back then it might be called a small miracle it got made in the first place, let alone released (in fact, it sat on the shelf for two years before release). Perhaps it's all a little too ambitious at times but with a cast like this and such a dazzling script, it's definitely worth the effort.

The DVD-release by Anchor Bay comes with an extra disc loaded with extra's. Lots of interviews, including one with O'Toole and a very peculiar - almost two-hour (!) - documentary about the making of the film, presented by Rush himself, almost worth seeing in itself.

Camera Obscura - 8/10

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10 out of 11 people found the following comment useful :-
The truth only depends on the angle you're watching from., 12 September 2006

Author: Shawn Watson (gator_macready@yahoo.com) from The Underverse

This was director Richard Rush's dream project and it took him nine years to get it on the screen. And, of course, it would! It's multi-layered, original, funny and packed full of story and circumstance that makes you think.

Why would any studio want to touch it? Fox even sat on it for two years before giving it a limited release. Now, Anchor Bay has created the ultimate DVD and I urge you to buy it. The Stunt Man is a movie you'll never forget and even on its umpteenth viewing, still manages to be as intriguing as the first.

It is a story told from the view of Cameron (Steve Railsback), a Vietnam vet on the run from the law. He stumbles onto the set of a WWI movie and accidentally kills a stunt driver. The director of the movie is the eccentric and megalomaniacal Eli Cross (Peter O'Toole, in one of his best ever performances), who takes Cameron under his wing and protects him from John Law, as long as he keeps his mouth shut about the accident.

Cameron practices to be a stunt artist and takes the place of the man he killed. But as the movie shoot becomes more elaborate and dangerous, he falls in love with the leading lady (Barbara Hershey) and starts to suspect that Eli is trying to capture his death on film.

Although it seems nasty, the movie is wonderfully light-hearted and the outrageous stunt scenes are backed up by a joyous score by Dominic Frontiere. I've been humming that theme since I was 12-years-old. A long scene with Cameron running over a rooftop, as biplanes attack and enemy soldiers give chase, is the stuff of legend. There is a great comic sense of humor in watching them trip over each other, fall off and get blown up.

John Law do not back down on their suspicion of Eli and, through half-heard conversations and eavesdropping, Cameron's paranoia becomes increasingly justified. Because the movie is seen through his eyes we never quite know what is going on with Eli. Is he a madman, or just a crafty director? Would you believe that O'Toole based his performance on his experiences with David Lean? Why he never won an Oscar - it went to Robert DeNiro for Raging Bull - is beyond me. He truly gives the performance of his career, far exceeding even Laurence of Arabia. It also sucks that Rush never won for Director, or Adapted Screenplay. Had he been awarded the golden statuette, maybe he would have received more recognition. He's clearly a better filmmaker than most of today's hack artists.

You simply have to see The Stunt Man. It's an overlooked gem and, despite the wide praise it received, it has never really reached a large audience. Now is definitely the time to rediscover this forgotten classic.

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10 out of 12 people found the following comment useful :-
a comedy with some ideas, 11 January 2002

Author: hbs from United States

This movie is a slightly surreal comedy about moviemaking. It's told with the perspective (if not always from the point of view) of a young fugitive who wanders onto the set and gets hired due to various complications. The movie people all seem larger than life to the fugitive, and since he's a little paranoid anyway, their motives seem complex and suspect. Peter O'Toole gives his usual performance, and he's perfect here as the flamboyant director (he must have had a great time sending up some blowhards of his past with this role). Steven Railsback does his usual disoriented guy on the edge, and he does it with a rather touchingly naive quality this time. Barbara Hershey is the leading lady love interest, delivers an intelligent and understated performance, and is appropriately bewitchingly beautiful.

Roger Ebert didn't like this movie, but he got confused into thinking that it was something deeper than a comedy. It's about as deep as "Get Shorty", but with a completely different feel.

The movie holds up pretty well, although the special effects look a little clunky sometimes, and I remember thinking they were pretty good when I saw the movie in its initial release. But the clunkiness isn't really distracting, and since the movie's attempts to "deceive" are all firmly tongue-in-cheek, it doesn't hurt.

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7 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
Interesting and entertaining all is not always what it seems, 21 February 2004
Author: Paul Weddell from UK

Peter O'Toole gives a marvellous performance as a film director in this film which looks (to an extent) behind the scenes of movie making. I originally saw this one Sunday afternoon at the cinema and I remember how enthralled I was. There were a few surprises when something turned out to be something else like a model maybe. But it wasn't until I got the DVD that I realised there were many layers to the film.

The director had great difficulty with the studios in various stages of making the movie and although it was originally intended as an anti-Vietnam film, that had to be changed as production got further away from the war years. So although it may have lost something along the way it gained other things in the process. To my mind this makes it a stronger and more intriguing film.

If you watch the documentary that accompanies the DVD a lot is explained which you don't actually realise whilst watching the movie. Watch the film again and you will probably have a renewed interest. You will probably see it a little differently. It's not an Academy Award winner (and I don't think it should have been). But it's a drama, a romance, a comedy and a lot more besides. It has its fans and friends as well as detractors. I liked it and still see it as good fun.

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10 out of 14 people found the following comment useful :-
Remake of "The Tempest"?, 14 June 2004
Author: Travis Yoder from Los Angeles

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

SOME SPOILERS AHEAD!

Though I saw this film--which I highly recommend--projected with its 'Making of…' documentary and enjoyed an in-person Q&A with director Richard Rush (at San Diego's marvelous Museum of Photographic Arts in Balboa Park) a year or so ago, it didn't occur to me till last night that this brilliant entertainment bears striking resemblance to William Shakespeare's last great play, 'The Tempest'. Consider:

Eli Cross (Peter O'Toole in a masterly memorable performance) is Prospero, the victimized yet himself rather cruel sorcerer who commands the spirits, fairies and pixies of a remote island, updated as a flamboyant, eccentric, royal-mannered movie director in charge of many cast and crew members, craftspeople, stuntmen, etc. as they shoot a film on and near Coronado Island. Whereas Prospero was embittered by betrayal and losing his Dukedom, Eli is embattled by studio investors who would squelch his artistic vision. Both Prospero and Eli can be tender or sadistic, by turns. Both can seem to appear from nowhere, Prospero using his magic to become invisible at will and Eli popping in and out on his ubiquitous crane chair (director Richard Rush's most fabulous contrivance).

Nina Franklin (gorgeous Barbara Hershey in perhaps her best role) is Miranda, Prospero's innocent, wide-eyed daughter, updated as an up-and-coming movie actress who is Eli's protégé and former lover. Like Miranda to Prospero, Nina is torn in her relationship to the mercurial director as he vacillates between the behavior of a loving father and that of a treacherous tyrant.

Cameron, the titular stunt man (Steve Railsback, whose performance one can't quite decide is canny underplaying or merely vacuous and weird), is Ferdinand to Nina's Miranda, the handsome mystery man who captivates her imagination, and Caliban to Eli's Prospero, the subhuman slave who is grateful for his master's protection and resentful of his abuse. Like Caliban, Cameron's past is haunted; but we later discover that he's actually much more an innocent like Ferdinand. As Caliban escaped a painful life to arrive at a less painful but more confusing scenario, so does the army deserter Cameron escape the authorities and probable imprisonment only to find himself in Eli's kaleidoscopic clutches.

Chuck Barton, the stunt coordinator (Chuck Bail, an actual stunt coordinator), would seem to be Ariel, the foreperson of spirits and Prospero's right hand, updated as the 'go-to guy' who can arrange for Eli's every whim. As Ariel will be set free of service at the end of Prospero's scheme, Chuck will further his career elsewhere when this production wraps.

Sam, the screenwriter (Allen Garfield as one of his signature sensitive 'everyman' roles) could, I suppose, be seen as Stephano, the comic-relief character who befriended Caliban in hopes of exploiting him, updated as an insecure fellow who knows his contribution is considered to be bottom-of-the-totem-pole by Hollywood tradition and yearns for greater income and respect. Yet, as a salient observer of human nature, he can be Gonzalo also, the wise and well intentioned but ponderous and powerless adviser.

Jake, the smiling studio representative (Alex Rocco in another small part requiring someone with a memorable look to make some impression) is, I think, the castaway King of Naples, a figure of power who is out of his realm and consequently clueless.

Just as 'The Tempest' began with an ostensibly ship-wrecking storm called forth by Prospero to deposit the balance of the dramatis personae on his island, 'The Stunt Man' begins with a harrowing wartime conflagration on a rocky shore except that it's really a movie scene created by Eli and observed by Cameron. But, ironically, as Prospero called forth more wind, rain, thunder and lighting later on, Eli mounts a bridge to brashly proclaim that the elements shall not dare to interfere with their day's shooting schedule.

Just as Shakespeare's play cluttered the stage with colorful pixies flitting about, Rush's compositions are filled with visual invention, like the gloriously tumbling roof-top stunt sequence, his famous 'rack focus', and Hershey's beauty framed in an ornate glass window (which Rush had installed for that purpose and is still at the Hotel Del Coronado today).

Both Shakespeare and Rush are concerned with a preoccupying question: What is real? And, therefore, what can one trust? Miranda is unsure if Ferdinand is a man, Stephano and Trinculo suspect Caliban is a fish, and on this mysterious island, a mystical being may be a tree one moment and quasi-human the next. Eli likes to keep his actors and new stunt man guessing so as to goose their performances (and probably to savor his manipulative power), creating an atmosphere wherein Nina must question her loyalty and Cameron his own sanity.

Some may say I'm being deterministic in my analysis, but certain dramatic templates are indeed endlessly recycled and reconfigured. We know that 'Forbidden Planet' is a direct lift of 'The Tempest', but we can see the prototypical eccentric, exiled, visionary in Jules Verne's Captain Nemo and H.G. Wells' Dr. Moreau as well. Television's original 'Dr. Who', as portrayed by William Hartnell (1963-1966), was somewhat Prospero-like himself: brilliant and powerful but self-interested and dismissive (not the bold hero of later incarnations). His time machine was a treasure trove of sci-fi wonders, and he even had a sweet granddaughter in his charge.

Interestingly, whereas the harsh and oppressive Prospero restores himself to the nobility, ending Shakespeare's tale 'happily' for an early 17th-century audience devoted to a social hierarchy and the Christian injunction that they subjugate all things of nature (one imagines), most of his 'mad scientist' progeny must meet bad ends. It offends our modern egalitarian sense that such a martinet should achieve rewards while his slave Caliban suffered so. So Dr. Morbius perishes while his slave, Robby the Robot, lands a new gig on the Earth-bound spaceship. In progressive times, the aristocrat may still be offended, but the commonweal is soothed. But where does Eli Cross fit into this spectrum of just/unjust desserts? The darkly comic 'Stunt Man' ends with the movie director--indeed a Duke-like figure of artistic, social and financial reverence in our day--flying high above worldly concerns in a helicopter as his star stunt man--a literal underling in that shot--shouts epithets to the sky. Rush's complex, layered exploration of reality doesn't cop out-and in contrast perhaps Shakespeare's play does. Cameron, like Caliban, survives and may advance. But Eli, unlike Prospero ('this rough magic I here abjure'), will likely carry on creating emotional chaos throughout his sphere of influence. Simply stated, 20th-century reality hadn't fully changed: fairness is still fleeting and s*** continues to roll downhill. The modern twist is that it's harder to know when you're getting screwed.

Well, I wished I'd thought of this when I had Rush in front of me. Anyone know how to contact the guy so I can ask him if my take is at all warm?

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