Old Stuntmen Just Fade Away

As many of my readers know, in addition to being a writer I am also a bullwhip handler and instructor. There aren't many of us out there, and this week the whip artistry world lost a patriarch, the movie industry lost an artist, and I lost a friend.

Legendary stuntman and whip coach Alex Green passed away at the age of 68 from a long bout with liver cancer. As a movie stuntman Alex spent the last 40 years of his life hiding in plain sight doubling for such stars as Charles Bronson and Sir Anthony Hopkins. He was also the single best bullwhip teacher I have ever met.

His style was smooth and precise. He never needed to show off or prove his skill. All you had to do was watch him with a whip in his hand. It was Alex that I thought of when I coined the term, "whip artist," some years back.

Originally born in Australia, Alex came to America to be in the movies, but he didn't have any ambition to be an actor. He liked the action and that's where he wanted to be, so he became a stuntman.

In movies and television, the term stuntman refers to, someone who performs stunts that are deemed too dangerous or physically difficult for the main actors to attempt. Usually, the idea is to create the illusion that the character in the production is doing something dangerous or heroic. Stunt performers are both male and female, tall, short, all races and backgrounds.

In order to work as a professional stunt performer, these individuals must be well trained and highly skilled. They are a necessity in the entertainment industry. A stunt performer might work on a film or television set, an amusement park stunt show, a theatrical stage production or many other arenas.

Years of extensive training allows them to learn martial arts, how to fall from a 4-story building, walk through fire, fight with swords, jump a car over an open drawbridge or choreograph a bar fight so that no one gets hurt - even the guy who gets thrown through a window. Often, a job will require several of these skills simultaneously.

In the 1998 film, The Mask of Zorro, Alex used two of his many skills serving as both Sir Anthony Hopkins' stunt double and whip coach. If you've ever seen the film, Alex shows up as Zorro early in the movie, using his whip to save a peasant from a firing squad.

"What I always liked was being the action," he once told me. "Acting is fine, but you have to learn all of those lines." Alex was always being blown up, shot, dropped, or run over in some fashion.

If you've ever seen the Kevin Costner film, 3000 Miles to Graceland, Alex played the gun-spinning highway patrolman who stops Costner for speeding only to get blown away for his trouble.

This was one of the few times Alex had a speaking part - two words, "Great day." His Aussie accent tripped things up so, he told me, "they ended up having me say the line through clenched teeth with a toothpick in my mouth."

The talents and skills of the stunt performer are usually overlooked but, if not for the hard work of these energetic men and women, there'd be no action in the movies. In the 1980's Lee Majors had a show about bounty-hunting stuntmen called, The Fall Guy. The theme song of the show, though badly sung by the lead actor himself, tells the tale of the stuntman all too well.

Next to my dad and my brother, Alex Green was one of the few people I ever wanted to emulate. He was a good friend, a straight-shooter, always willing to lend a hand and pass along his skills to the next generation. As he once wrote to me, he was, "just the best."

My friend Alex Green will be missed by more people than he ever even knew and when I think of him, and other stunt players I have worked with over the years, I think of one particular line from the show's theme song. It goes, "I'm the unknown stuntman who made Redford such a star."

Independent columnist Gery L. Deer is based in Jamestown, Ohio. Read more at www.gerydeer.com