Pulling Punches
Kate Barker talks to the men behind the shows’ cunning stunts.
Official Xena Magazine: Issue 02
What would you call a man who, in his career so far, has hung from a plane 4,000 feet above the ground, and driven a car from one rooftop to another, 50 feet across and six stories up?
Some people might call him crazy. His colleagues at Renaissance Pictures call him the stunt co-ordinator.
Peter Bell’s background includes performing in live stunt shows for tourists in Broken Hill, Australia. The work involved lots of high falls and crashes, and provided Bell with a good chance to learn stunt work at what he calls “grass roots level”. More than a few stunts down the track, Bell formed his own company - New Zealand Stunts Limited - and has provided stunt people for many films and series, such as White Water Summer, No Way Out, The Bounty and the fantasy feature, Willow. He has been planning and performing stunts now for over 20 years.
These days. Bell can be found overseeing stunts of mythological proportions. He has been stunt co-ordinator for Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess since the first Hercules TV movies in 1993.
Bell has over 85 stunt people on his books, all with different skills and abilities. The auditions, Bell says, are nothing like those of extras or even guest actors, who also perform a great deal of the stunt work. “[Potential stunt players] send in resumes that say, ‘I’ve had 16 years’ martial arts training’ or ‘I’m on a Grade Six gymnastic ability’.
They have all sorts of backgrounds. As long as they’ve got good body coordination, we'll have a look at them and have workshops and pick from there. When we have workshops, we put a training session together that will show us all the skills that we require, to see if they are going to be any good.
Some of the team work as general extras, while others may move up to become body or stunt doubles for featured or regular characters. For instance, actor Kevin Sorbo had both a body double (Patrick Kake) and stunt double (Sam Williams) who regularly stood in for him as Hercules.
However, playing recognisable characters isn't the only thing these versatile stunt players do.
“We slowly bring them up through the ranks,” Bell explains. “We start them off in background action then slowly move them through, so they start fighting the talent [actors]. Then, as they improve, they'll become doubles. For the experienced ones, we’ll say, ‘He's a good size for that character and a good body shape for him,’ so we’ll use him as a double. That’s generally how the progression works.
“There are actors or characters who come back constantly, time and time again, and the same stunt person will double them. But we don't typecast [stunt people]. If they’re not doubling for somebody, they’ll be out there as a general thug or soldier or warrior in the fights that happen.”
Even Hercules doubles Kake and Williams don't just stand in for that one character. “When they’re not actually doubling,” says Bell, during the filming of a fight scene for Hercules involving Kake and 'guest' double Clint Elvy, “they could be out there just as a general stunt thing in a fight. We don't just say, ‘Well that's all he's going to do.’ They learn all the skills and they know how to do everything.”
Of the stunt people at his disposal, Bell says he has about 30 who work full time, but this number can vary according to the needs of the script. “On average, it's probably about 15 to 20 [stunt players] a day. The most I’ve ever used is 85 in one day - that was just the way the shows panned out, the nature of the episodes. There were big battles on both Hercules and Xena at the same time, so I was moving stunt people from one set to the next. That happened on a regular basis for a while.
“Every time Herc or Xena fights,” Bell points out, “they don’t just fight one person. They maybe fight half a dozen. So that just keeps the stunt people going.”
An average script for Hercules or Xena contains three big battles - teaser (before the opening credits), middle and episode climax - with several small scuffles in between. And Bell is responsible for the design and execution of them all. “It’s not like we write down a fight and go back and use the same one again,” Bell explains. "It never works that way and you never do it that way.
“You’ve got to keep coming up with different looks. Every time you're doing a fight, you're thinking it up in your mind, putting it together with little models…”
Bell utilises a system of his own design, involving drawings of stick figures to choreograph a fight at the most basic stages. He must figure out whether a particular stunt with require a “stuntee” to hit the ground with a resounding crunch, or if one particular actor or double will need to be put into a flying harness or rig, for a seemingly impossible move. (An example of this is the classic Xena move of the warrior princess leaping up and pummelling bad guys in the chest. This is done with a harness connected to a beam, which will be edited out of the picture in post-production.)
Each character has their own fighting style too, which Bell must keep in mind when designing the fights. Where the focus of Hercules was the half-god’s superhuman strength, his sidekick lolaus relied on speed and acrobatics. Xena uses a blend of several martial arts moves that Bell has studied in meticulous detail in order to plan her method of fighting. In contrast, the character of Gabrielle has a more nimble way of moving and dodging, in keeping with the character’s original philosophy of non-violence and not wanting to kill. Also, Hercules used no physical weapons except his body, Xena and lolaus use swords, Gabrielle began with a staff, having now graduated to other weapons, including a dagger and the more Asian-style sais. Bell has been heavily involved in the training of actors using these items, though of course the use of weapons is not the only thing involved in stunt planning.
All the stunts, from fight scenes to someone merely falling over, can take Bell anywhere from a few minutes to a few days to plan. Short sequences take Bell and the crew about six hours to plan, while longer and more complicated scenes may take up to two or three days.
From there, Bell lakes stunt crew and actors through the moves three or four times, though Bell points out that the actors and doubles alike have “been doing it for so long that it doesn’t take much to show them.” Bell must then watch the live action and the camera monitor as the scenes are filmed, often by the 2nd Unit crew, as he has to check the continuity of how all the takes will cut together.
With 120 episodes of Hercules and more than 70 of Xena, this adds up to around 700 action sequences that Bell and his team have already planned and followed through to performance standard. It sounds like a big job, and it is...
“It takes some organising,” Bell admits, “but it works.”
SIDEBAR: Double Dare
So you think there’s only one Hercules? What about Sam Williams?
Sam Williams has been playing stunt double for Kevin Sorbo's Hercules right from the beginning. He was there for the first TV movie Hercules and the Amazon Women in 1993 and in July 1999, he donned the leather pants and chamois shirt for the last time, to film the final Hercules episode, a western entitled Hercules, Tramps and Thieves.
In six years, says Williams, doubles get to know their actor counterparts and their moves extremely well. Apart from the necessity of having a similar body shape, being aware of how the actor moves vital is to the role they play. “Body movement is probably one of the most important things the ‘stuntees’ have to learn, in order to double someone.”
Another important thing for stunt people to learn is that injuries come with the job. According to Williams, it is not unusual for him to incur some sort of bruising every lime a physical skirmish is run through. Other injuries have been known to occur occasionally, including Williams damaging his knee after he landed badly from a flying harness, “busting it on the concrete”. However, Williams says injuries have never stopped him performing a scene. “I’ve always worked. When they get you up there and they say ‘Action!’, you forget about it, you know? Your mind just goes blank and your arm or whatever moves again. Straight after it, when you’ve finished, you sit down and it’s ‘Eowww!’, you’re in pain.
“I have a high pain tolerance,” he says, grinning. “I’ve learned to work with that.” Something else that stunt people have to learn to work with is that actors are not always as well-trained in faking a fight as their stunt doubles have to be. Some of the most difficult stunts, Williams says, have been what he calls “basic fight scenes”; a simple punch-up where a stunt person is actually being fought by the real actor as opposed to another ‘stuntee’.
“We, as stunt doubles, learn to pull back in stunts,” Williams explains, “but some of the actors have never been in that sort of action before, and they don’t pull back! They get really hyped up and love it.
“I’m not blaming them - it’s just that they get carried away. They love it - they can let it all out.”
So when you see Hercules in another brawl, take a close look - it may be Kevin Sorbo deflecting the punch… Or it could be Sam Williams in the role, as Hercules takes it on the chin again.