Saturday, June 18, 2011

Update

To this post.

I was going on yesterday about the actor playing Evel Knievel* Jon Huntsman not looking like he actually knew how to ride a motorcycle and this came to mind this morning and I thought I'd share.

Many years ago I worked for stuntman Bud Ekins**. He told me about stuntmen and I think it applies here as well. He said no stuntman ever turned down a job just because he didn't know how to do the stunt the script called for. If they couldn't learn how to fly while they were in the air, they'd worry about the landing when they got to it. He put it this way:

"If the director asks if he knows how to ride a dinosaur, he'll give a little snort and ask 'how d'ya think I got ta work this morning?'"

Bud rented bikes to the studios as well and he said to always re-negotiate upwards if they were going to let the actors touch the bikes and upward again if they were going to let the dumb sonsabitches actually ride the damn things because it was a given that there was going to be extra expense for parts and labor when they got done with 'em.

Movies are phony and so is politics. Doesn't mean there isn't a lot of work to make 'em look good from a distance.

*Pat Buchanan made a joke today on The McLaughlin Group that Huntsman was gonna end up in the Snake River Canyon of Repug presidential politics. Heh. He ain't been right about anything in the last two or three centuries.

**Fuckin' Wikipedia had his name spelled 'Elkins' more often than not. I went in and changed it wherever I found it. I think I got 'em all. Bud gave me my first job as a motorcycle mechanic and I have too much respect for his memory to have let that slide.

They had a buncha shit wrong. I corrected those too as best as I could.

6 comments:

Fixer said...

Movies are phony and so is politics. Doesn't mean there isn't a lot of work to make 'em look good from a distance.

A truism if I ever heard one.

Anonymous said...

Reminds me of the first cartoon that I saw of the Internet.

Guy is bent over a terminal. Clock on the wall shows 3 or 4 o'clock.

Wife is standing in the door in a night gown.

Caption is "Someone got something wrong on the internet, I've got to fix it."

Gordon said...

Ya gotta do it while you're there or it won't get done.

Spud said...

Least Evil had the balls to strap that rocket to his ass.

BadTux said...

Gordo, I gotta correct you about the notion that Pat Buchanan ain't got nothin' right of the past three decades. He did get two things right -- that internationalization was gonna see our good paying manufacturing jobs sent overseas, and invading Iraq was gonna be a Very Bad Idea. And, err, make that THREE things he got right. He apparently voted for Obama because votin' for Crazy Grampa and Snowbilly was a worse idea than holding up a donut shop across the street from a police station.

So yeah, he's a racist dinosaur, but even a racist dinosaur can be right occasionally. In this case, I think the ole' Paddy got it right.

- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
(Who is surprised to be defending a man he despises, but WTF).

Gordon said...

You're right, of course, Bt. Me'n Fixer actually agreed with him a coupla times. Even a blind pig...

BUT one 'aw shit' wipes out 10,000 'attaboys'.