![]() ![]() ![]() So I had a lot of work to do to bring it up to date. Because there are so many more, with the Marvel Universe, and Wonder Woman, and a lot of big action stuff as features but also on television and streaming. I also brought the idea of really bringing the book to life, because the book only went up to films from 2007, so I had to bring it up to the present day, and do additional research, and find out who are the top stunt people right now. I had a stuntwoman, and I had a female DP, and they wanted to film this book, so I kind of brought a team with me. Then a couple of weeks after that one of the producers, Mary Rosenberg, had optioned the book Stuntwomen, so all these pieces just sort of lined up. I also had a director of photography, Svetlana Cvetko, and she was known for doing documentaries - she had DPed Inside Job, which had won the Oscar - so I had lunch with her and we talked about doing a project together. I had met stuntwoman Amy Johnston because I was working with her boyfriend, and we were interested in doing a project together. For me, as a woman trying to break into the Hollywood system - which is still heavily male dominated, especially in the director category - we can look at stuntwomen, and their story represents the whole industry and that ongoing struggle for women and people of color to have careers.ĪC: How did focusing on stuntwomen become the way you approached that story of inequality?ĪW: A combination of factors happened. And not just in stunts: writing, producing, directing, all the things that they were doing at the beginning. "That was Janet Brady," said Wright, "and everyone believes that was the first car flip that a stuntwoman did."Īustin Chronicle: The early days of cinema were marked by stars who were prepared to do their own stunts because that was just "the thing you did." When Hollywood moved away from that, it seems like women were affected the heaviest.Īpril Wright: That's the story of Hollywood - that there were more women involved in the industry in the beginning, and then once the studio system came about a lot of the women got pushed out. Wait for the clip from Burt Reynolds' madcap car wreck classic Hooper of a car flip. So never presume that you know who did what stunt, as shown in the opening montage of daredevil history in Stuntwoman. Yet even while the industry seemed disinterested in stuntwomen, they were always there, doubling for stars, making moves better, adding action - and always under the same mask of anonymity that is the stunt performer's signature. So it was pretty widespread, even a hundred years ago." When she got injured, Helen Gibson took over. "Helen Holmes, she did some of the stunts herself but she also had a stunt double, so they had doubles even back then. "It was the first female-driven action franchise," said Wright, with women stars who were just as willing to risk life and limb as the men of the time. Stuntwomen includes clips from The Hazards of Helen, a series that ran for 119 thrilling episodes from 1914 to 1917. But looking at how drive-ins figured into that, or looking at how the movie palaces came to be, Stuntwomen is just another aspect of how they have figured into the films we have loved over the years without really being aware of it."Īnd women were making action films from the very birth of cinema. "Because we're cinephiles, we've all paid attention to the history of cinema and we know it. "They're all similar in that they're all aspects of cinema history from different points of view that you may not think about," she explained about her films. Now she's in the passenger seat with the daredevils of the movies, as she explores and celebrates the often-overlooked history of women stunt performers. Under the Going Attractions title, her two films - The Definitive Story of the American Drive-in Movie and The Definitive Story of the Movie Palace) - sat in the stalls with the audience experience. Stuntwomen is Wright's third documentary about the history of cinema, but it's a change of direction from her opening volley. "It depends who tells the history," said director and documentarian April Wright, who is adding some missing pages back into the archives with her new documentary, Stuntwomen: The Untold Hollywood Story. The tale of Hollywood is just like any other narrative. Jen Caputo, one of the performers risking live and limb on-screen, who finally gets the chance to rewrite history in Stuntwomen: The Untold Hollywood Story
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