Hollywood's Unsung Hero

They say behind every great fortune is a great crime. In the case of Hollywood, for every Bruce Willis, there is a Charlie Picerni. Who's Charlie Picerni, you might ask?

Yeah, that's the way the game is played in Hollywood. The red carpet hooplas might pretend to make a show of recognizing non-actors for the part they play in making the movie, but really...aside from the more well-known directors and filmmakers (Scorcese, Speilberg) the rest are virtually unknown among mainstream audiences.

Indeed, to whom would successful actors attribute their fortune to if not to the stunstmen and women (and post-production film editors) who make them look good? That's right, behind every Mel Gibson falling off burning buildings is a ballsy, no-name stuntman whose name most moviegoers will never know.

Often going uncredited in such blockbuster hits as "Indiana Jones" and "Diehard", the stuntman has even more reason to be down on his luck in today's 3-D, CGI, James Cameron-ified world of movies. Green screen is the name of the game today, and many able-bodied stuntsmen are finding that their services are no longer needed.


Of course, there are actors who famously insist on doing their own stunts, including Jackie Chan and Viggo Mortensen from the LOTR trilogy.
While residual income for actors
are still growing, we can see the rise of filmmakers getting in to the industry. While filming a fight scene for Peter Jackson's famous adaptation of Tolkien's fantasy book series, Mortensen's tooth was knocked out by his opponent, after which he famously asked for superglue for the tooth so that he could continue filming the scene. Talk about staying in character.


These days, films try to incorporate both CGI/motion capture and physical stunt design to maximize the impact using both kinds of effects. If done well, the effect is a seamlessly edited, completely escapist movie-going experience. If done poorly, well, you've just paid 15 bones for a glitchy, makes-you-aware-that-you're-watching-a-movie movie. Ah well, you can always Netflix it when it comes out on DVD. Just make sure you read through the credits and have a moment of silence for the stunt guys and gals after the film ends.