Themes: Mind Games, Assumed Identities, Fish Out of Water
Main Cast: Peter O'Toole, Steve Railsback, Barbara Hershey, Allen Garfield, Alex Rocco
Release Year: 1980
Country: US
Run Time: 135 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
Adapted from Paul Brodeur's novel, Richard Rush's story of a Machiavellian movie director and his accidental employee takes a darkly comic look at movie reality vs. "real" reality. Running from the law, Vietnam vet Cameron (Steve Railsback) stumbles on a movie shoot just in time to interfere with a staged accident, causing (perhaps) the stunt man's death. Rather than turn Cameron in, director Eli Cross (Oscar nominee Peter O'Toole) makes him an offer he can't refuse: replace the dead stunt man in return for safe harbor. Despite objections about Cameron's inexperience, Eli keeps him on, figuring that a vet will add an extra charge of realism to the World War I opus that he's filming. As leading lady Nina (Barbara Hershey) returns Cameron's affections, and Eli becomes ever more inscrutably mercurial, Cameron begins to wonder how far Eli will go to get the screen effects he wants, and if he would think twice about killing the stunt man. Placing a Vietnam vet in the midst of movie-making chaos, Rush adds a pointedly contemporary spin to Cameron's confusion; the war experience that makes Cameron a good stunt man wreaks havoc on his life. Rush in turn disorients the audience by seamlessly interweaving scenes from Eli's movie with scenes of its being made. Made two years before Rush found a studio to release it, The Stunt Man opened to raves for its wily narrative and O'Toole's messianic director. Its sly commentary on the blurred boundaries between movies and life became all the more striking at the dawn of the Reagan '80s. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
Review
Vibrating with energy, the incessantly entertaining The Stunt Man is puzzle-master's delight. The clever script and ambiguous direction toy with the audience, almost in the same way that Peter O'Toole's directorial maestro (who anticipates The Truman Show's Christof by nearly two decades) plays with Steve Railsback's baffled fugitive. Not exactly subtle in its confrontation of the captivating nature of movie machinations versus the questionable quality of real life, The Stunt Man is nonetheless a wonder of sound, light and magic. Movie-making as a metaphor for life is a bit of a stretch (though many may identify with the paranoid and confounded Cameron), but O'Toole as a capricious and slightly malevolent God is a constant delight. Railsback's trademark intensity serves his Vietnam veteran character's confusion well, while Barbara Hershey is brimming with sensuality as the love interest. A crackerjack combination of action, comedy and romance, it is interesting that Twentieth-Century Fox Studios, sensing that the film wouldn't be able to find an audience, held the film back from release for two years before slipping it out with little fanfare. While not a great box office success, it certainly was a critical one, and it has quietly built a cult status among movie fans. ~ Dan Jardine, All Movie Guide
Sharon Farrell - Denise; Adam Roarke - Raymond Bailey; Philip Bruns - Ace; Chuck Bail - Chuck Barton; John Alderman - Carlbinarri; James Avery; Gregg Berger; Whitey Hughes - Eli's A.D.; Don Kennedy - Lineman; Stafford Morgan - Thompson F.B.I.; John Pearce - Garage Guard; Michael Railsback - Burt; Walter Robles - Eli's A.D.; George D. Wallace - Father; John Garwood - Gabe; Nelson Tyler - Eli's Crane Cameraman; Dee Carroll - Mother
Credit
James L. Schoppe - Art Director, Paul Lewis - Associate Producer, Rosanna Norton - Costume Designer, Frank Beetson - First Assistant Director, Richard Rush - Director, Caroline Biggerstaff - Editor, Jack Hofstra - Editor, Caroline Ferriol - Editor, Melvin Simon - Executive Producer, Dominic Frontiere - Composer (Music Score), Dominic Frontiere - Songwriter, Norman Gimbel - Songwriter, C. Frank Beetson, Jr. - Production Designer, Joel King - Cinematographer, Mario Tosi - Cinematographer, Richard Rush - Producer, Richard Spero - Set Designer, Milt Rice - Special Effects, Jim Tanenbaum - Sound/Sound Designer, Gray Johnson - Stunts, Lawrence B. Marcus - Screenwriter, Richard Rush - Screenwriter, Paul Brodeur - Book Author, Marc Rocco - Assistant to the Director
Cameron (Steve Railsback) is a young veteran running from the police. He stumbles onto the set of a World War I movie and accidentally causes the death of one of the film's stunt men. The eccentric and autocratic director, Eli Cross (Peter O'Toole), agrees to hide Cameron from the police if he will take the dead man's place. Cameron soon begins to suspect that Cross is putting him in excessive danger. The boundaries between reality and fiction become increasingly blurred as Cross exercises godlike control over the production.
Of The Stunt Man, Roger Ebert wrote "there was a great deal in it that I admired... [but] there were times when I felt cheated."[3] He gave the film only two stars, but nonetheless said it "comes highly recommended." In an October 17, 1980 review in The New York Times, Janet Maslin noted "the film's cleverness is aggressive and cool," but concluded that although "the gamesmanship of The Stunt Man is fast and furious... gamesmanship is almost all it manages to be."[4] However, influential critic Pauline Kael considered it "a virtuoso piece of kinetic moviemaking" and rated it one of year's best films.[5] She called O'Toole's comic performance "peerless."
The film plays with the audience's perceptions by constantly switching between events occurring in the "real world" and those happening in Cross's movie, usually with no clear transition. Thus it is often cited as a key example of metafiction and postmodernism.
Peter O'Toole mentions in his DVD commentary that he based his character on David Lean, who had directed him in Lawrence of Arabia.
DVD releases
The Stunt Man was released on DVD on November 20, 2001 in two versions by Anchor Bay Entertainment. The first version is a standard release featuring two deleted scenes and a commentary by director Richard Rush and stars Peter O'Toole, Steve Railsback, Barbara Hershey, Alex Rocco, Sharon Farrell and Chuck Bail. The second version is a limited edition (100,000 copies) containing everything from the standard release as well as including the 2001 documentary The Sinister Saga of Making "The Stunt Man".
