Pag. 148
A DIRTY JOB
In my short career in the
movies, I’d already met a lot of famous actors and directors. I was never very
impressed; they were pretty, or handsome, or (in the case of the directors)
loud and domineering. But none of them could do what I could do: fight, and
fly, and fall, and get up and do it—even if I was broken or hurt. I couldn’t
really understand what made them so great.
But the senior stuntmen
were something else. They were a wild and rugged bunch, living one minute at a
time because they knew that every day they spent in their profession could be
their last. They smoke, drank and gambled, spending every penny of each evening’s
pay by the time the sun rose the next day. Words didn’t mean anything to them;
if you wanted to make a statement, you did it with your body—jumping higher,
tumbling faster, falling farther. With Oh Chang out of my life, I began to hang
out with the senior guys after shooting wrapped. Every night, we’d brush off
the dust of the day’s work and find ways of laughing at the injuries that we or
our brothers had suffered— “we get paid in scars and bruises,” one older
stuntman told me, only half joking. Of course, every small injury was just a
reminder that the next one around the corner could be the big one that might
cripple or kill; and so we drank, and we smoked, and we played, partly to
celebrate surviving one more day, partly to forget that when the sun rose again
we’d be facing the same giant risk for the same small rewards.
The senior stuntmen had a
phrase that described their philosophy, as well as the men who were fearless
and crazy enough to follow it: lung fu mo shi. It literally meant “dragon
tiger” –power on top of power, strength on top of strength, bravery
on top of bravery. If you were lung fu mo shi, you laughed at life,
before swallowing it whole. One way of being lung fu mo shi was to do and
amazing stunt, earning shouts and applause from the sidelines. An even better
way was to try an amazing stunt, fail, and get up smiling, ready to try it
again. “Wah! Lung fu mo shi!” they’d shout, and you’d know that your drinks
would be paid for all night.
For us, especially us
junior guys, to be lung fu mo shi was the highest compliment we could imagine.
And so I threw myself into my work, putting every last bit of energy into
proving that I had the spirit of dragons
Pag.149
One day, we were
working on a scene in which the hero of the film was to tumble over a balcony
railing backward, spin in midair, and land on his feet, alert and ready to
fight. The actor playing the hero was, of course, sitting in the shade,
flirting with one of the supporting actresses and drinking tea. It was our job
to take the fall.
Most falls of
this type were done with the assistance of a thin steel wire, attached to a
cloth harness that went underneath the stuntman’s clothing. The wire would be
run through a pulley tied to a solid anchor—in this case, the railing of the
balcony—then fastened to a stout rope, which two or three stuntmen not in the
scene would hold on to, their feet planted firmly. This would prevent disaster
in case the fall went wrong, allowing them to yank on the wire and stop an
out-of-control plummet to the ground.
Today, we were
working with a director whom we stuntmen universally considered an idiot. He
was a no-talent hack—which didn’t make him any worse than a lot of the
directors working at the time; the problem was that he was a no-talent hack
with pretensions toward art.
We’d learned
pretty quickly that that was a combination that could get stuntmen killed.
“No wires,”
shouted the director, his puffy, bearded face turning red. The stunt
coordinator, a lean, hollow-cheeked man in his mid-forties, crossed his arms in
quiet defiance. My fellow juniors and I thought the coordinator was just about
the coolest guy in the world, partly because he never treated us like kids, and
partly because he’d stood up time and time again to directors with unrealistic
expectations. The night after one epic argument, he treated us to drinks all
night at our usual bar.
“Even if I
wanted to direct, they would never let me, because I have made too many
enemies,” he confided to us. “But I will give you a word of advice, in case any
of you should find yourself in the big chair. If you want the respect of your
stunt people, and that is the only way you will make good movies, never ask
them to do a stunt that you can’t or won’t do yourself. If you learn nothing
else from me, remember this rule,” And then he shouted, “Kam pai,” which means, “Empty cup,” and so of course, we did.
Pag.150
I know that some
people call me a crazy director, saying I demand the impossible—but I know
they’re wrong, because every risk I ask my stuntmen to take is one that I’ve
taken before. Somehow, it didn’t kill me, and so they understand that—with the
luck that stuntmen depend on to survive—it won’t kill them.
The director we
were working with that day was so fat he could barely walk, much less do
stunts. He had no idea how dangerous a fifteen-foot fall could be, even for a
trained professional.
“Do you realize
that one of my men could be killed doing this stunt?” asked our coordinator,
showing remarkable restraint.
“That’s what
they’re paid for,” retorted the director. “If you use wires in this scene, the
fall will look like a puppet dropping to the ground. Unacceptable!”
The director
even refused to lay out a padded mat or a stack of cardboard boxes to cushion
the fall, wanting to shoot the scene from a wide angle in a single cut.
“Ridiculous,” said
coordinator. “You want this stunt done that way, you do it yourself. None of my
men will volunteer to take that kind of risk.”
Throughout this
dialogue, I was considering the setup for the stunt. The main problem with the
fall was that it took place backward. You couldn’t see where you would land, or
figure out how far you were from the ground. But it was all a matter of
timing—counting out the moments in your head before twisting your body to avoid
a messy impact.
I could do this
stunt, I decided. I could, and I would.
“Excuse me,” I
blurted. “I’d like to try the fall.”
The stunt coordinator
looked at me with a stony expression, then pulled me aside.
“Are you trying
to make me look foolish?” he said angrily.
“No,” I said,
sticking out my chin. “You’re right. The director is an idiot. You don’t want
to risk any of your experienced people on this stunt, because you need them.
But I’m nobody, and if I don’t do something like this, I’ll always be nobody.
If I fail, then the director knows you were right. If I succeed, I’ll say that
it was because you told me exactly what to do—and he’ll know better than to
challenge you again.”
Then he turned
back to the director and threw up his hands. “All right,” he said. “There’s
actually someone stupid enough to try this stunt your way. I’ve just done my
best to tell him how to do it without killing himself. Maybe if he’s lucky,
he’ll just be crippled for life.”
And then he
walked up to the director until his face was just inches
Pag.151
away, close
enough to feel the heat of his breath. “And you,” he said, his voice flat and
dangerous. “You cross me up again, and all of us walk off this set. I don’t give
a damn about your reputation, your big ideas, or your ego. We risk our lives
because we are stuntmen, and that is what we do. Not because you piss in our
direction.”
The director
turned purple, and then pale. Not a single stuntman moved or made a noise.
Finally, he nodded, and waved his flabby hand at the cameraman.
I felt the
coordinator’s touch on my shoulder. “Good luck,” he said. “Keep your body
loose, be ready to roll as soon as you hit the ground. And whatever you do,
don’t land on your head or back. I don’t mind taking you to the hospital, but I
don’t want to take you to the cemetery.”
And then I was
pulling on my costume, while a makeup girl dabbed rouge on my cheeks and
streaks of fake blood across my brow. I climbed the stairs to the balcony and
looked down at the crowd below. Every eye was on me, and the camera was ready
to roll. But at that moment, the only eyes I cared about were the eyes of my fellow
stuntmen, watching me do something foolish and fantastic.
Lung fu mo shi, I thought. It was time to prove myself. The actor
playing the villain who would knock me over the railing joined me, staring at me
and shaking his head in disbelief. I shrugged and smiled at him, then raised my
hand to show I was ready.
“Action!”
shouted the director.
“Rolling!”
answered the cameraman.
And then, as the
fake kick from the villain nearly brushed my nose, I vaulted backward over the
railing, counted quickly in my head, and arched my back, twisting my body
smoothly through the air. I saw a flash of ground as my head came up and I got
my legs underneath me, just in time to catch the ground with my feet. I
stumbled a bit, giving a small stutter step as I pulled myself upright.
Success! The director cut the camera and actually pulled himself up and out of
his chair. The stunt coordinator trotted over to where I was standing, as my
brothers shouted my name. He slapped me on the back, grinning broadly. “You’ll
be stuntman yet,” he said.
Maybe it was
cocky, but cocky was what being a stuntman was all about. “I almost lost my
footing on the landing,” I said. “Let me try it again—I’ll get it perfect this
time.”
He laughed,
squeezing my arms until they ached. “Try it again?” he bellowed. “Did you hear
that, men? Once is not enough for the boy. Lung fu mo shi!”
And my stunt
brothers echoed the phrase: “Lung fu mo
shi!”
That night, the
stuntmen gave me a new nickname: Double Boy. “Once ain’t enough for Double!
Better try again!” they laughed.
Pag. 152
“He wants to
work twice as hard, he has to drink twice as much, right?” said the stunt
coordinator. “One more round, Double. Kam
Pai!”
That night, for
the first time since I left the school, and the first time since I’d lost Oh
Chang, I felt like I’d found a place where I belonged. I was with family.
I was home.
O início do dragao
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