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David Leitch's The Fall Guy is a highly anticipated action comedy starring Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt. Loosely based on the 1980s television show of the same name, The Fall Guy is a tribute to stunt performers, the unsung heroes of action movies. Leitch began his career as a stuntman, doubling for major movie stars such as Brad Pitt and Matt Damon. Over the last decade, Leitch has established himself as a prominent action director, making movies such as John Wick, Deadpool 2, and Bullet Train.

Although not as well known to mainstream audiences, stuntmen such as Yakima Canutt, Dar Robinson, and Vic Armstrong played significant roles in the development of action cinema, inventing many stunt practices used in the moviemaking process. While stunt performers are an invaluable component of action films, some actors throughout history have transcended their craft by performing their own stunts. Movie stars such as Jackie Chan,...

Hollywood stunt people are a breed apart. They look at a skyscraper, and wonder what floor from which they could plummet onto an airbag. They encounter a ravine, and instantly want to hop astride a motorcycle and jump it. They see a fellow stunt performer get blasted with fire extinguishers after being set ablaze, and think to themselves, "I could've stayed on fire longer than that." They're wild folk, and they can make the kind of movie magic you'll savor for a lifetime.

For movie lovers, stunt people like Dar Robinson, Vic Armstrong, and Evelyn Finley are as legendary as the stars they doubled. Among casual moviegoers, however, they aren't nearly as appreciated as they should be. So when films like Richard Rush's "The Stunt Man," Hal Needham's "Hooper," or David Leitch's forthcoming "The Fall Guy" (based on the classic 1980s TV series starring Lee Majors) crash into theaters,...

The "John Wick" movies are a whirring, modern carnival of spectacular stunt work. They're a hyped-up throwback to the old days of Hollywood action filmmaking when audiences were pinned to their seats as Hal Needham launched a car over a ravine or Dar Robinson plummeted 220 feet from a high-rise hotel. Along with the "Mission: Impossible" franchise, these films celebrate the human element of making a blockbuster. Stuntmen are precious cargo, but, my, we sure do love to watch them risk life and limb for the sake of an unforgettable set piece.

Keanu Reeves breathed muscular life into his flagging career when he played FBI Agent Johnny Utah in Kathryn Bigelow's absurdly entertaining, "Point Break." The role of action hero agreed with him, as he proved emphatically three years later in Jan De Bont's masterpiece "Speed." If you've watched these movies semi-closely, you can see Reeves performing a number of his own stunts,...

Article by Jim Batts, Dana Jung, Travis Keune, and Tom Stockman

Burt Reynolds, one of We Are Movie Geeks favorite actors, turns 80 today. Happy Birthday Burt!

On February 11th, 1936, Reynolds was born in Waycross, Georgia, before his family moved to Jupiter Florida, where his father served as Chief of Police. Young Burt excelled at sports and played football at Florida State University. He became an All Star Southern Conference halfback (and was earmarked by the Baltimore Colts) before injuries sidelined his football career. He dropped out of college and headed to New York with dreams of becoming an actor. There he worked in restaurants and clubs while pulling the odd TV job or theater role. Burt was spotted in a New York City stage production of Mister Roberts and signed to a TV contract and eventually had recurring roles in such shows as Gunsmoke (1955), Riverboat (1959) and his own series, Hawk...

The cast and crew of Mark Wahlberg and Kate Hudson's upcoming drama Deepwater Horizon is in mourning. One of the movie's stuntmen, Shawn Robinson, was found dead in his hotel room last week after failing to show up for work on July 28. Deadline reports that the crew member, the son of legendary stuntman Dar Robinson, was 41. "On behalf of the producers, cast, and crew of Deepwater Horizon and the entire Lionsgate family, we want to send our most heartfelt condolences to the family of Shawn [...]...

Odd List Simon Brew 15 Nov 2013 - 07:08

Lots of films are dedicated to, or in memory of someone. But it's not always clear why. We've been finding out...

Back when Breaking Bad returned for its final batch of episodes in August 2013, it had a dedication at the end of it. The card read 'Dedicated to our friend Kevin Cordasco'. As it turned out, Kevin Cordasco was a 16-year old who had been battling cancer for seven years, who had met both Bryan Cranston and Vince Gilligan. Cordasco died before he could ever get to see the episode dedicated to him.

I found this such a moving story, that it got me wondering about the dedications that appear on films, and what the story behind them was. After all, the dedications are there for a reason. What I uncovered was some funny stories, mainly extremely sad ones, and some extremely moving dedications.

Stick

Written by Elmore Leonard and Joseph Stinson

Directed by Burt Reynolds

USA, 1985

Part of the reason that Elmore Leonard’s novels got turned into movies so often is that it was so easy to write the screenplays. Entire scenes full of Leonard’s trademark crackling dialogue would go, verbatim, into films like Get Shorty and Out of Sight. But that wasn’t true for the 1990s only. Leonard’s stellar 1983 novel Stick was turned into a movie as well, a film which served as popular entertainment as much as the films came a decade later. Where Get Shorty was 1995’s Travolta movie, Stick was 1985’s Burt Reynolds movie, and every bit as fun.

Reynolds plays Ernest “Stick” Stickley, a just-out-of-prison car thief who wanders into Miami and finds himself caught between a local drug kingpin (Castulo Guerra) and a bumbling financial planner (George Segal). Also of note: a pre-...

Article by Jim Batts, Dana Jung, Travis Keune, and Tom Stockman

We like to celebrate the movie tough guys of the ’70s here at We Are Movie Geeks and at Super-8 Movie Madness. We’ve posted Top Ten lists to tie into Super-8 shows featuring Charles Bronson (Here), Clint Eastwood (Here), and Lee Marvin (Here). This month we’re going to honor the #1 top money-making star for five consecutive years – 1978 – 1982 – Burt Reynolds. On February 11th, 1936, Reynolds was born in Waycross, Georgia, before his family moved to Jupiter Florida, where his father served as Chief of Police. Young Burt excelled at sports and played football at Florida State University. He became an All Star Southern Conference halfback (and was earmarked by the Baltimore Colts) before injuries sidelined his football career. He dropped out of college and headed to New York with dreams of becoming an actor. There he worked in restaurants...

Hollywood stuntmen don’t get a lot of respect these days. Most of their work is now done by nerdy guys drinking Mountain Dew in front of a computer screen at f/x houses. But there was a time when daredevils routinely put their lives on the line just so we might feel a few goosebumps. Legends like Yakima Canutt, Dar Robinson, and Terry Leonard. But before any of those guys fell from a 4o-story building or lit themselves on fire, there was one man who pushed the envelope on risking his neck on celluloid: silent-movie star Buster Keaton.

Keaton...