Cast:
Peter O'Toole (Eli Cross), Steve Railsback (Cameron), Barbara Hershey (Nina Franklin), Allen Goorwitz (Sam), Alex Rocco (Jake), Sharon Farrell (Denise), Adam Roarke (Raymond Bailey), Philip Bruns (Ace), Charles Bail (Chuck Barton), and John Garwood (Gabe) Directed by Richard Rush.
Review:
"The idea of a fugitive hiding his identity by posing as a stuntman and falling under the dominance of a director seemed like a marvelous way to examine our universal panic and paranoia over controlling our own destinies. And it offered a chance to do it inside the structure of a big screen big action picture, which would be entertaining at the same time.”
It does help to look outside the box with someone who directed a total of twelve films. Richard Rush liked films from a young age, once stating in an interview that he saw Mildred Pierce (1945) fifteen times while working as a theater usher. He attended the UCLA Film School and stated with clear honesty that the Theater Department was wonderful while not learning anything about film, with his real education coming with making propaganda (his word) TV programs about the Korean War. He had a production company to produce commercials and industrial films before selling it so he could make what became his first film: Too Soon to Love (1960), which he ended up selling to Universal Pictures for $250,000 (of note is one of Rush's co-writers was a young Francis Ford Coppola) that was described once as "the first American New Wave film". Other highlights include some work for AIP such as The Savage Seven, studio work for Columbia with Getting Straight (1970), a "love it or hate it" film that served as an early example of the buddy cop movie with Freebie and the Bean (1974). Rush could not get as much work after The Stunt Man: he was paid to walk away from Air America [1990] and the production of Color of Night [1994] had a publicized disagreement about the best cut that gave him a heart attack, although Rush's version on DVD apparently was better than the theatrical version. At any rate, save for a DVD documentary about the making of The Stunt Man, Rush mostly retreated to his Bel Air residence for the rest of his life*; he died in 2021 at the age of 92.
In 1970, Paul Brodeur's novel The Stunt Man was published. Almost immediately, there were ideas of making a film adaptation, which actually started with Brodeur's Harvard classmate Frederick Wiseman. Francois Truffaut and Arthur Penn apparently were considered for the film but instead ended up doing films that have been said to have story elements from the book (with Day for Night [1973] and Night Moves [1975], respectively). At any rate, with the relative hit of Getting Straight (1970), Rush came into the picture in 1971 that originally was to have William Castle as producer. Columbia Pictures had the film rights and Rush wrote a treatment that apparently was described as one the executives were too confused about what genre it was (asking if it was a comedy, drama, social satire, or action adventure and getting "yes, all" as an answer does tend to make things a bit weird). Having decided to buy the film rights from the studio to work on a screenplay with Lawrence B. Marcus, Rush tried to shop for a studio to fund it to no avail (it did not help when the movie that ended up being called Hooper [1978]* was originally in development as "The Stuntman"). Eventually, the funding for the film came by way of Melvin Simon*, who actually was a prominent real estate investor before he tried his hand at producing in what he later called a "big mistake" (likely the most noted film with financing from Simon was Porky's [1982]) and was distributed by 20th Century Fox to little release.
I really wanted to like this movie. It is fascinating, sure, because this is a film that Peter O'Toole said was not so much released but "escaped". But I can't help but feel like most of the movie is a smoke and mirrors show to hide what is basically a shaggy dog story more than some sort of mixture of adventure-comedy-drama. Oh but certain stuff in the movie is just part of a movie- that only works if you are absorbed into the idea that the film is actually going to fool you, and, well, I didn't. It's not nearly as fun as, say, Hooper, and it is not nearly as compelling to answer the question of "is that it?" beyond presenting a mish-mash between Railsback and O'Toole-well okay there is Hershey, but eventually one starts to roll their eyes at the perceived free spirit (the first time you see her is in makeup trying to look like an old woman, which might actually be a bit funny in the punchline). Honestly, the most interesting part of the film is the exchange between Railsback and Bail (actual stuntman playing himself) in the art of the stunt, since it actually goes into something meaningful: selling the stunt with natural dialogue that is amusing in what it says about people with the stones to go through with a jump. Of course, O'Toole is basically doing an imitation of Rush (complete with clothes given by Rush to O'Toole) that has an amusing ego within wily maneuverings that extends to doing scenes on a crane. By the time the movie maneuvers through 131 minutes of semi-interesting moments involving stunts and moments meant to make one understand the PTSD-haze* of the lead focus, you just wish the conceit was funnier. It is one of those movies you might encounter in the middle of the night and possibly find something really curious within its game of conceit in movieland that is sometimes entertaining and other times is somewhere in the middle.
Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.
*Incidentally, Rush wanted to do a film about Barry Seal for many years, as evidenced here - MONEY INTO LIGHT: AN INTERVIEW WITH RICHARD RUSH (PART 4 OF 4)
*Call it a hot take, but I think I enjoyed Hooper more than I enjoyed The Stunt Man.
*You might recognize Simon because he and his younger brother Herb bought the Indiana Pacers in 1983 and Herb still owns the team.
*I imagine that if my father had lived long enough to talk to me as an adult, it would've been something to talk to him as an adult, given that he served in Vietnam.
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