.jpg)
Indiana Jones and Superman have one thing in common: they were both Vic Armstrong, arguably the world's greatest stuntman. That's what his book says, and after reading it you'd be hard-pressed to dispute that statement. From 100 foot falls to flying into Marlboro trucks to leaping onto Word War I tanks, Armstrong's career as a stuntman goes back almost 50 years. He performed mindboggling feats on everything from Raiders of the Lost Ark to Superman 2 to On Her Majesty's Secret Service to Barry Lyndon to A Bridge Too Far to An American Werewolf in London to Return of the Jedi and dang, this list just goes on and on. Let's move on to his illustrious career as a 2nd Unit Director, contributing all the great action sequences from such films as Dune, Henry V, Total Recall, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Universal Soldier, Starship Troopers, Tomorrow Never Dies, Charlie's Angels, Gangs of New York, War of the Worlds, Mission: Impossible III, The Green Hornet, Thor and the upcoming Amazing Spider-Man.
His new book - The True Adventures of the World's Greatest Stuntman: My Life as Indiana Jones, James Bond, Superman and Other Movie Heroes, co-written by Robert Sellers, on sale this week - details the history, stunts and behind-the-scenes shenanigans behind those classic films and many more. Mr. Armstrong was kind enough to give Crave Online an interview just days after completing work on Marc Webb's new Spider-Man reboot, provide exciting anecdotes about his classic films, and give us an inside look at his most recent superhero work.
Crave Online: Hi! My name is William Bibbiani and I am interviewing you… now. How are you today?
Vic Armstrong: Good, good. Very good. I’m just off to London at lunchtime so this is perfect timing.
Crave Online: Fantastic. What are you off to?
Vic Armstrong: I’m just going to do some book signings, and then a bit of publicity, and then hopefully a round or two of golf and then back here.
Crave Online: That’s a good day! I just finished reading your book, maybe half an hour ago. I’ve been pouring through it all weekend. My head is just swimming. It’s just incredible how many of the movies I grew up with were you.
Vic Armstrong: That’s fantastic. I had trepidation about ever writing a book, if people would find it interesting…
Crave Online: What was it that finally made you decide that now was the time to write a book?
Vic Armstrong: Well, people had been asking me… You know, you meet somebody at a party, “Oh gosh, you should write a book.” And then people approached me and I just didn’t like the tack they were going along, about broken bones and all that nonsense… I love the business too much for that. It’s been too good to me. It’s not about broken bones. That’s failure, you know? That’s like asking a golfer, “What was your worst round of golf?” Or asking a racing driver, you know, “What’s the best crash you had?” So then I met Robert Sellers. He phoned me, and somebody had recommended him to me, and he called me. I’d looked at his work, and he’d done a lot of film books. I just liked his honest approach to it all so I said, “We’ll start and see how it goes.” So he spent several years coming around, and we’d [cover] from ’65 to ’70, or from ’73 to ’75 […] and he’s just the saying the name of the film, and I would come to a memory. Nothing was written down, it was all just from memory. And that’s the way it all came out. We just did it like that and it sort of evolved, as it were.
Crave Online: There’s just so much to cover. How long did it take you to put the book together?
Vic Armstrong: Probably four or five years.
Crave Online: Great, and now I’ve got to cover the whole thing in half an hour. [I enjoyed] the positivity of it all; it’s so nice to see that your enthusiasm is still so high after all these years. It’s really infectious.
Vic Armstrong: That’s great. I remember old Pierce Brosnan, one day we were doing a Bond and I’d have my unit and we’d be shooting. I’d shoot a sequence and Pierce would come down, [and] we’d put him into the sequences. I had special moments picked out that I wanted to use him in, and I edit as I go along, on video, so I’d put him in my trailer and I’d show him a video and I’d show him what’s happening, and he looked at me, “Oh Vic, you’re always so enthusiastic!” And I was, “Oh well, that’s just me! If I like something then I’m enthusiastic about it. You just can’t help but be that way, you know?” I guess if you get too jaded then you give up.
Crave Online: The book kind of takes you through your entire career, and it’s really interesting to see you starting out as this sort of hungry stuntman, doing anything. You know, “Vic, jump on that motorcycle. Go.” And now you get to do these huge projects, lots of money thrown down and you’re controlling everything now. Do you have any nostalgia for that time when it was just you risking your life for no particularly good reason?
Vic Armstrong: No, I never figured I was risking my life. Everything was calculated and worked out. I was ambitious. I remember in the 60’s, thinking “Wow, my ambition is to earn 5,000 pounds in a year,” which seemed completely unattainable. That would be a hundred pounds a week, for fifty weeks of the year, which is just… I would only be getting sixty-five, seventy-five pounds a week anyway. So you’d have just do double, triple time to do it. And I’ve never forgot that. (Laughs) – But I was always hungry, but I always knew it was a business. Even in the old days, the silent film stars, they weren’t deathwishing crazies. Everybody values their own lives, even in those days. They might not have had our technology but they had the cunning and the cleverness, and they came up with great ideas. We come up with great ideas, and modern technology helps us […] Hopefully you’ve taken all the risks out of the equation…
Crave Online: Is it different now for young stuntmen getting started? Well, obviously it’s got to be different, but you used to be able to just come in off the street apparently. “I’m a stuntman.”
Vic Armstrong: Yeah, it’s much, much harder for young people now, because of the huge amount of competition. With the reporting on stunt work, and actors talking about it, and programs about it, and the specials on the DVDs that refer to the stunts, people are much more aware of it at the moment. In the old days they never did. So people are much more aware of it, and try to get into the business, and so there are many more people into it. And they’re all very talented people, so it’s a real hard, hard, hard job to get into these days.
Crave Online: I look over your credits and it is absolutely phenomenal. In the book you talk about the stuff that you’re really, really proud of – the James Bond movies, the Indiana Jones movies – what was the movie where you were like, “Oh god, I wish no one had seen that?”
Vic Armstrong: I’ve done a lot of those. (Laughs) – No, none really I’m horribly embarrassed about. I work, I’m always proud of my work on a movie whether it’s a success or not. You don’t know. When somebody phones you up and says, “We want you for a day,” or “We want you for a month,” or six months, that is the most important film you are ever going to do in your life. The one you’re doing at the moment. You’re always taking all these precautions, and you do it as economically and as professionally as you possibly can. When the film doesn’t work out right it’s tough, but you can’t actually tell when it’s going on though. You read the script, and you think, “Wow, what a great story.” Like The Sicilian was a wonderfulscript. Fantastic script. Great actors. John Turturro and Christopher Lambert and people like that. Great cast, great action, and it just didn’t happen… It’s just the way it goes. There’s no way of telling.
