In Leaps and Bounds
Amanda Micheli explains to Kate Barker how Xena stunt double Zoe Bell became the focus of her documentary on Hollywood Stunt Women.
Official Xena Magazine: Issue 23
Mention the name Xena, and most people will picture leather, a chakram, a statuesque figure and the face of Lucy Lawless. However, for one San Francisco filmmaker, the focus is on Zoe Bell, the woman who really does make the Warrior Princess tumble and turn. Amanda Micheli began her journey to Xena after a producer in Los Angeles saw her first film Just For The Ride, which documented the history of women's rodeo in the United States. A little background history: Just for the Ride began while Micheli was attending Harvard University and majoring in filmmaking in their Visual and Environmental Studies Department. The documentary was started when Micheli was still an under-graduate, and was completed five years later in 1996. Then there was the matter of getting it screened.
“The big challenge with documentaries,” Micheli explains, “is to put together a sample of what you have and try to get a pre-sale for television. In the US, cable television is a big buyer of documentaries, and that’s pretty much the way these sorts of films get funded. You make the film out of your own funds and show a sample to HBO or someone like that, and they go, ‘Oh, this is great!’ And then maybe they'll give you enough money to finish shooting! The eventual goal for me is to transfer to film and show in film festivals and things like that. I broke even with Just For The Ride, so I was excited about that.”
Following a screening on US public television station PBS, Just For The Ride went on to win a number of awards, including a Fleishhacker Foundation Grant, the Ray Dean Film Award, and a Student Academy Award.
A producer in Los Angeles viewed Just For The Ride and, as luck would have it, contacted Micheli about an idea to make a documentary about stuntwomen in Hollywood. Spurred on by this new focus plus the success of Just For The Ride, Micheli jumped in with both feet and “started filming with a bunch of stuntwomen in LA.” One of the women featured in the film was Jeannie Epper, who used to double Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman, back in the 1970s; Epper is now president of the Stuntwomen’s Association of America.
There was a problem during early filming of the documentary, however, as Micheli discovered that there really were very few female action shows in the United States, and fewer still female stuntwomen. Luckily; it was Xena who saved the day.
“I had a contact at Renaissance Pictures,” Micheli explains, “who said we might be able to come down and film some Xena stuff. We were lucky enough to go to New Zealand and shoot with Zoe Bell, the stunt double for Xena. We then followed her around on the set, and basically chronicled what she did on a day-to-day basis; it was fascinating!”
Micheli and the team were in New Zealand for two weeks, enabling them to get some great footage and interviews on the set of Xena. She finds it an interesting parallel between rodeo women and stuntwomen, and says that in general, there is a lot of history connecting the two genres.
“A lot of the first stuntwomen doubled cowgirls in westerns,” she says. “There weren’t many women in westerns that got to do action, but those were the few that did. There were a lot of horsewomen that got into the business early on, and there's that same kind of spirit and gusto. They’re doing the hard work and getting banged up and bruised and not complaining; they’re doing what they love.”
Micheli reveals that while talking to Jeannie Epper, she discovered that sometimes actors didn't want the public to know that they had stuntwomen doubling them, and tried to take credit for the stunts themselves. In Xena however, she assures us that this is not the case. “Lucy [Lawless] and Renee [O’Connor] are both very supportive of their stunt doubles, and had a lot of great things to say about them,” she says. “They fully admit that the stunt doubles are there to do the things they can't themselves, and to make them look good! It’s really nice to see actresses giving credit to their doubles.”
So how long will it be before the public gets an up close and personal look at the Xena actresses and their equally talented stunt doubles? With a laugh, Micheli attempts to give some sort of prediction. “This film has already been in progress for about two years, so I would say that hopefully we’d have something within the year."
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