Original subtitles

Generally, the stunt coordinator is responsible for all the action

-oriented footage and sequences in a film.

has a lot to do with babysitting actors and be sure that they do the right thing

and that they don't get hurt, and you try to interject them into the action

sequences as much as possible.

Also, you work with the director, you work with the writers to develop action

sequences, and you try to figure out the director's, what

his... dream is or his look that he wants to have for his action

stuff so there's a lot of input there you spend a lot of time with directors

writers and a lot of times sometimes we're even involved in the editing of

action pieces so that's my favorite part because a lot of time you do this great

action stuff and they'll put it together in a very odd way where they

cut away too soon or they leave it too long and the action stuff doesn't flow

well or you don't get the really cool parts of it.

So there's a lot of involvement, even more now than when I started because

there's all that computer -generated element.

That stuff takes a long time, and you really have to be closely involved with

your director and production design and all of that. So it's pretty heavy

involvement.

In the old days, or when I started, I hate to say old days, but in the

of my career, most of everything we did, you know, there was no computer. You

sat down and figured out, okay, the angle of the ramp, you jump the car at

miles an hour, and it's going to go over there.

You just basically kind of eyeballed it, and you set things up, and you did it.

Fortunately, most of the time it was right, and you would take...

From one film to the other, you would do things and go, okay, well, I remember

we had like a 14 -foot ramp, and it was 3 1⁄2 feet tall, and we went

150 feet. And so, okay, now we need to do this or that.

And it was just pretty much trial and error.

And fortunately, most of it worked out really good.

Sometimes those things can result in some catastrophic problems.

But that's pretty much the way we did it then. Now, with all the computer

-generated film that they're doing now, they take a lot more time.

It's a lot more budget -intensive.

I mean, they spend a lot of money, but the results are great.

The juxtaposition of then and now, I think, hasn't changed all that much. I

think the degree of what we do is about the same.

It hasn't gotten any less or any more.

I think the fear factor is still the same.

I mean, you can get jacked up a lot doing this stuff nowadays.

The way I got involved in it, I had just done a film with one of the producers

of the film.

And he was working on To Live and Die with Billy.

I had never worked with him before. I had never met him, anything.

But I had just done a film with the same producer called Gleaming the Cube.

It was a skateboarding movie, but we had a huge car chase in it.

We had a guy skateboarding underneath 18 wheelers, all this kind of pretty

radical stuff.

So he goes to Billy and said, hey, I got this guy, this guy that

you need to have on this mill.

So I went in and had an interview with Billy, and we kind of hit it off pretty

good.

And they gave me a shot.

So that's how I got involved.

And then after that, I did seven films with Billy.

He's my favorite. He's the coolest guy ever. Brilliant in all kinds of ways.

But the thing about Billy was that working for him, and especially on To

and Die in L .A., he's one of these guys that brought everything that you got.

He brought it out of you. There was no going to him and saying, oh, hey, this

didn't work because, you know. It was like you wanted to do your best and

you better do your best because if you didn't, you were on the hit the

road, you know.

And I kind of knew about his background with, you know, how he didn't.

take to excuses or anything like that. If you came to him and you just said,

hey, Billy, I screwed up.

It's on me.

That worked because then he would say, okay, how do we fix it?

And then we would fix it. So working with Billy, I've done some of probably

best work I've ever done with him.

I respect him as a filmmaker for sure.

You just look at his body of work and you see that he knows what he's doing.

he's very serious about what he does. And so I had an immense amount of

for him going in. In fact, almost to the point of being frightened about it.

You know, here's this guy, you know, I got to go in and talk to him and make

understand that I'm the guy that he needs.

So, anyway, I love him, and we've had a great relationship since then.

Hey, listen, I know you got something going on.

You reading my mail again? The master's, right? Where?

Come on, you ain't going out there alone.

I got three more days on the job. I want to make the most of it.

What's the point of the two of us running down the same league? The point

that we're partners, right?

Sure we are. And when the bus goes down, you're going to be there with me, like

all of us.

Okay, partner.

Oh, yeah.

Thanks.

You give me a call when you get back.

When you work with someone like William Friedkin, I'm going to call him Billy

because he's cool with that, is when you work with Billy, here's the guy.

that is probably one of the best action directors ever. And he comes to you with

a vision. So pretty much my job when I first started working with Billy was to

be sure that the vision he had got on screen.

And that we had the footage and everything. He is such a...

you know a genius at editing that you give him the footage and he's going to

make it right so that's kind of like the real the heavy asset that i had with to

live and die in la is that we did some things that had never been done before

uh i think came up with uh a chase at that period that was probably the best

one that had ever been done i mean

in all due respect to French Connection and Bullet and all that. They were cool,

but, you know, when you look at them, basically the French Connection was

editing. They didn't have big stunts or a lot of stuff in there. It's how

he edited the film that made it so exciting.

So when we did To Live and Die in L .A., you know, he...

He came, there wasn't really a chase when the film was put together.

So Billy came up with this idea that he wanted to put a chase in it. So at

lunchtime, we'd sit around while we're having lunch, and we would come up with

these ideas about, hey, Billy came up with this thing about, hey, when they're

chasing them, why don't we get on the freeway and go the opposite way against

traffic?

Cool. Yeah, no problem. We can do that. And I'm just talking out my

ass, really, because nobody had ever done that, and I'd

never seen it done, but I just figured, hey, Billy's going to give you the

resource to do it. He's going to give you the time to figure it out. So

definitely, whatever Billy comes up with, my answer was, yeah.

He goes, yeah, and we'll...

We'll have a bunch of trucks down there on the freeway because it's in that Long

Beach area, and we'll jackknife a truck and squish some cars. And I go, yeah,

that's fantastic.

Well, all of a sudden, after, you know, putting all of this together and all of

our conversations, he puts this car chase in the movie.

And right before we do it, he says, you know, we're going to shoot this for, I

think it was three or four weeks or something.

And if it isn't as good as The French Connection, it won't be in the movie.

I don't care if we shot it or not. So I just want to tell you, it better be

better than The French Connection. So, Billy, no problem.

Well, looking in retrospect, again,

due respect to the French Connection, this chase at the time, and still

holds up pretty good, was one of the best things that was ever done because

was so innovative with, I don't want to take too much credit, but I had some

pretty good ideas, but Billy had this vision of what he wanted to be

subjective and objective with the way he shot it and all that.

is that we came up with something that had never been done.

There was never any jackknifing trucks before that.

After we did that, every movie that you saw was having these trucks jackknifed

and all this kind of stuff.

They even made a rig that had these little

wheels on it so you could go down the road. You hit a hydraulic thing.

The trailer of the truck automatically went around to the side, and the tires

smoked and all that.

So it became something that was classic in movies.

We came up with this thing against traffic, which we've all seen it a

times now. So looking back on it, we were really, we had a chase that had

never been done before.

I think that Billy was really, really excited about it, and it made the movie.

So, there you have it.

Look okay?

You're beautiful.

One of our producers got an okay for us to do all of that stuff on the train

tracks. Never before were you allowed to like chase a train down and jump over

the tracks in front of it and all that kind of stuff.

So, you know, they pulled a lot of, you know,

favors or however they did it. But we got to do a lot of stuff.

All of the freeway stuff on the Long Beach Freeway, which wasn't actually a

freeway, but it resembles one. It's like four lanes both ways, but it's not a

freeway. They did run into some problems about getting the CHP and all those

kind of permits to work at that time on a freeway. But it worked perfect for us.

We had complete control of it.

Everything that we did was all set up with stunt people, nothing in live

traffic.

The reason, I mean, some of that kind of stuff is cool to do it in live traffic,

but to really have control of the situation and doing the kind of high

things that we were doing wouldn't be ethical, it would be dangerous, and the

liabilities would be...

So we did most of it down there in Long Beach.

To live and die in LA, one of Billy's, you know, his aims was

to...

show L .A. and to film L .A. and to, you know, he's one of those guys who wants

to immerse himself in it and wants you to feel the grit and the heat and the

sweat and all that when you're watching the film. So that area was really

kind of what he wanted to, you know, see in his movie

and to capture all of that on film and it was perfect in fact here's one little

thing is if you've seen the film and you see at one point the the traffic in

lanes instead of going this way and the traffic on the other side going this way

they're reversed the traffic is coming this way on the freeway and this

side's going that way

There's just a couple of cuts in there that you see that.

And if you watch the film again, it's kind of cool. You go, oh, wait a minute,

the traffic's going the wrong way. The reason he wanted to do that was because

there were these beautiful oil refineries with all the lights and it

shot. And he wanted to see that in the background with the cars going.

And the only way he could do that was to reverse the flow of the traffic.

And later on, I said to him, I said, Billy, you know, isn't, aren't people

to really know what's happening here? He goes, no, it's just to, he goes, I

don't know if this is true. He goes, it's just to throw them off and make

think, like, what happened?

So anyway, Billy did all kinds of stuff like that. We did stuff where we would

have cars.

and we'd be doing run -bys with the actors in one lane and just the cars

stationary and the camera car in the other lane going, which I'm going,

we've got to have these cars moving.

Nobody will ever know.

I'm going, are you sure?

Yeah, trust me, Hook.

We would do it, and it was like strobing. You couldn't tell if the cars

moving or not.

Through all of this kind of filming that we did on this car chase, I learned so

much that I employed the rest of my career. I'm still doing stuff that we

learned back then.

So it was a wonderful learning experience aside of

having a great car chase sequence when we were finished.

We did something that was really cool. We invented... I told Billy we

were talking about how we were going to shoot it and we were going to tow the

actors on the back of an insert camera car with the cameras on the back.

And I said, I got this great special effects guy. Why don't we build a car

that we can put on this trailer that's the same height and everything that we

can have...

hydraulics on so when they're going down the freeway when when they go around

the car or a car uh or they slide or whatever we'll just do this with the car

the hydraulics will make the car go this way and these guys are in it and

everything and it comes back and the cameras are set on the camera car so if

you're the camera you're looking at this car

and it's doing this or that, and we had it where one time they went around the

car, and the car tagged them in the back and kind of knocked them back around.

So we added that into the mix where the effects guy could hit a button, and they

would go like this, and whack, the car would go like that and then come back.

So what we were doing, we were pulling their car and feeding all of this

reverse.

action with the cars, the head -on cars, going by them. So you really got the

feeling that these guys were in it.

I mean, their car was doing this, and you got the whaling.

All these cars are like hauling ass by you.

And so it was like one of those inventive little mechanisms that

when I brought it up to Billy, I said, you know, this would be cool. Do it.

So it was like all of a sudden I had all of these elements that I could go to my

effects guy and say, hey, we've got the okay to build this thing. Well, it's a

pretty expensive deal. It doesn't matter.

Build it. So in that case, we probably used it maybe

once or twice there and one time in some other stuff, but it was well worth.

the expense because it put the audience, I mean, you were in the chase with

these guys.

I mean, there was no doubt in your mind. And this wasn't CGI or any computer or

anything. This was like the real thing.

Or you thought it was.

I mean, it was like brilliant.

Here's the thing is that, you know, generally when they put a car in a

and everything, You know, they put the car on there and it's on the tires and

all that kind of stuff. So you always get the feeling that something isn't

right. The car is too high.

But what we did is we took the tires off and everything.

The car was on a low bed trailer where it was the exact height.

This is all stuff we thought about. The exact height of the car if it were on

the asphalt.

So, you know, you never got that feeling that it was on a trailer. And the

cameras being set was, they never moved. It was this car moved

back and forth and everything. So it was, you know, it was something that I

really proud of.

And I haven't, and consequently, years later, there's a lot of people that have

all these rigs that do all that kind of stuff.

We were the forerunner, and all this stuff is in that chase.

Billy used a thing. I'm not sure if it's even around. It was called a hothead

camera at the time. It was a camera that was remotely controlled on the hood.

So you could be filming your actors, and this is some of the stuff that Billy

Peterson did, was you would film.

Billy Peterson and John Pattencow doing their thing, and they would go in and

out of some traffic, and then the camera would whip back and see what they were

doing, or vice versa. You'd be doing this, and whack, the camera would come

right back to them, which you don't really see that. People use a lot of

screen and all that kind of stuff.

But this was another brilliance of...

Billy Friedkin was this kind of filming element.

So again, I learned a lot still using all that kind of stuff.

So it was great.

There's a minor tie -up on the North Long Beach right near Henry Ford. A

of cars have tangled in traffic there. Shouldn't take too long to get this to

the shoulder. It's a very simple affair. No injuries involved.

Shouldn't cost you more than a couple of minutes, though, if you're heading

northbound on the 710.

I'm Stacey Vinn for Metro Traffic Control.

I think we were

bragging at the end of the film.

that when we were finished, we never used a Band -Aid.

We did a lot of car crashes. We did a lot of stuff.

And nobody was ever injured.

I did this huge fire gag doubling Willem Dafoe in the end of the film where

he dies.

I tell Billy, hey, I want to do this.

And so he let me do that.

That was fine. Nobody got hurt there.

It was great.

He let me do, you know, it was a huge coordinating job.

You know, you had to be boots on the ground, behind the camera, all that. But

lot of the stuff I really wanted to drive and double Billy Peterson doing

because there was some cool stuff. So I did get to do a lot of stuff with the

train.

And I did all that stuff by the side of the train and in front of the train.

And a lot of cool stuff, which was, it was so hard to sit back there and

not get to drive and everything.

So every once in a while, Billy, when I didn't have to organize like 50 people

and all that, he would let me do some stuff.

So it was, I had a great time myself.

My brother doubled John Pankow.

So he's sitting in the back seat telling me, hey, you know, I would say, watch

the train, and if you think that we got, you know, enough room to go around it

when we hit our spot, let me know.

So we'd be hauling ass down there, and we aborted a couple times because I just

wasn't ahead enough.

And so it was all kind of fun. It was kind of a family thing. My father worked

on it. I had all my friends.

We had a lot of stunt people. So it was one of the better experiences in

my film career.

Move the truck!

What the fuck do you do? I'm trying to hurt... Hey, shut up! Whose little truck

that is? Move it out of the way, now!

Back it up, Steve! Back it up!

Actually, there was a few little fights and stuff that Billy had a martial arts

guy, was a fight coordinator who he was there before I came on board. His name

was Pat Johnson.

And, you know, we reviewed the fights and everything that they did.

And to my way of thinking.

and what i saw was great especially for that time period it was all very

believable what they did and basically they were done with the actors so i

all that was very credible and aside from the fire gag and the chase that was

How sure is this thing tomorrow?

You told me you weren't interested in dying. Well, now I am interested, okay?

This is a diagram that one of the ones that I framed after I was finished with

To Live and Die in L .A. This is a diagram of a portion of the car chase

on the freeway where we're going against traffic.

I did this not only for myself to figure out how it would all go.

where the car would go and what the opposing traffic would be doing but i

did it for where i could plug in each stunt person and what their job would be

in a specific portion of the chase um when i when i

did this the uh the rest of this diagram would probably go 20 feet down the road

so i had a bunch of these printed up and again this was back in the days prior

to all the computer -generated everything.

So I think I went to Kinko's or something and had these things printed

But I had two or three sets of these that I gave Billy a set, the

cinematographer a set, and we had a set where prior to doing each one of these

segments, we would lay it down on the street, and I would point out...

who's doing what and where.

Right here, we have where the G car was their car. At the time, we were calling

it the G -man car.

I don't know if that related to the movie or not. They were kind of treasury

agents. So as you can see, they come on the off -ramp. They do all these

different kind of things.

At one point here, we have...

the truck 18 wheeler coming that does a jackknife which uh billy

wanted to put in there and can you do it yes of course we can do it never been

done before but i would kind of positive we could do it.

So here's that portion of it and all the way up to where they get off the

freeway.

We had probably 50 stuntmen in this freeway sequence and each one

of them had a job to do with the opposing car coming at him and we're

miles an hour and 50 miles an hour if you hit head -on that equates to a about

100 mile an hour head -on so it was again it was something that billy gave

plenty of time to rehearse we rehearsed it all and it all worked out we

We had a few little things where we tagged a few cars, no injuries or

And the cars, we didn't damage them too much. But it was really, really

exciting. The 18 -wheeler thing was when Billy said, hey, let's

jackknife an 18 -wheeler and we'll crunch some cars in between and all

And I said, sure, yeah, we could do that.

After he walks away, I start calling my friends, my 18 -wheeler stunt guys.

And I go, Gary McLarty, he did Beverly Hills Cop with all that truck stuff in

it. And I call him, I say, Gary, I got this thing to do. I don't know how to do

it, but let's figure it out. And I tell him, we got to do this 18 -wheeler,

jackknifing and everything. And he goes, well...

I've never done that before, but I'm sure we can figure it out. We're going

need a big area, so maybe we can get some of the vacant runway down at LAX

and get an 18 -wheeler in there and start figuring it out. So I go to my

producers and I go, we can figure this out, but I'm going to need probably

or four days of rehearsal.

I need an 18 -wheeler. I need a cab.

quite a bit of stuff the effects guys to help me figure it all out and uh they

go to billy fine do it so now we've got this 18 wheeler out there and we

actually figure out how to do it what we did was we we had another car and in

and when we're doing the uh chase sequence we had a big four by four in in

other lane a big uh four -wheel drive thing so what we would do is we would

up the rear trailer brakes we would shoot we decided that you know we

get it to lose traction enough it would do stuff but it would you couldn't

control where it was going to go so we had these sprayers we had our effects

guys put sprayers on the back wheels with regular dish soap on it

so it would spray on there and it would get really slick So once we got that

where we could lock it up and the trailer would start going, we're going,

how can we guarantee that this big trailer on the back of this thing is

go exactly where we want it every time?

So we came up with this whole thing that we used to use in westerns called an

overshot that you would see in a western where it's going along like this and

there's Indians off here and everything. What we would do is tie a rope from the

big brake pedal or part of the wagon and take it to one of these outriders or

one of these Indians that's chasing this thing. And at a certain time, the

horses would go that way.

and you'd want the wagon to go this way this horse would just pull it and flip

the wagon over so we went that's what we'll do we'll hook a line from the top

this trailer to the back back part of the box and take it over two lanes to

uh big four -wheel drive so

We rehearsed and we locked it up and this four -wheel drive would just pull

right around to exactly where we would want it every time. We rehearsed it

probably ten times and we were never five feet off our mark ever.

So now we still had the ability for the truck to go, two lanes of traffic, plus

the lane where this...

four -wheel drive was the cable was suspended above we never used any uh any

cgi to take the cable out because you really didn't see it so we could like

this thing around squeeze the cars in between in the other two lanes and it

it it was brilliant but it was another one of those things it was very you know

it was nothing um kind of rocket science about it we went back to our roots

of our old Western days and figured out how to do it, how we used to flip

wagons, right?

So, again, it was something that we, Billy gave us the resources

to figure it out, and we did.

And so that's how all this stuff happened.

You're working for me now.

To wrap this all up, just to kind of tell you my experience on To Live and

in L .A., it was one of those films that was a huge learning experience,

a huge moment in my career that I had an opportunity to do

this because after this film came out and this chase has been a lot and...

referred to as the greatest chase in all time up to that point or in years after

that it kind of like enhanced my career quite a bit and I was really pleased

with it everybody that worked on the film was really happy about it and the

that William Friedkin thought it was good means a lot to me and and it did

enable Billy and I to do a lot of films after that that were equally good.

So for me it was a milestone in my career.

Thank you.