“Actresses play characters, but stuntwoman play actresses playing characters, while driving fast and kicking ass.”
That’s one of the professional movie stuntwomen summing up the business in the documentary Stuntwomen: The Untold Hollywood Story. Stunt performing and stunt coordinating are underappreciated by most of us – and certainly kept in the background by the industry (and the Oscars). It’s hard and dangerous enough to perform movie stunts, but females have also had to battle against persistent gender bias.
Stuntwomen: The Untold Hollywood Story takes us back to the first decade of silent films, when actresses did their own extreme stunts, until they became too valuable in box office terms to be expendable. At that point, women were frozen out of the stunt business for half a century. Michelle Rodriguez, who is currently our most kickass/badass actress, helps introduce us to today’s world of women who specialize in fighting, crashing cars, falling off great heights and getting set on fire.
We meet Jeannie Epper, who doubled Lynda Carter in Wonder Woman and Jadie David, who doubled Pam Grier in all those Blaxploitation action movies. (Epper fell backwards out of tall buildings, and then the film was reversed to create the effect of Wonder Woman zooming upwards.)
We also learn the meaning of “wigging a guy”. And we are reminded that stuntwomen often double actresses who are wearing high heels, and that skimpy outfits don’t allow for much protective padding.
This is solid women’s history and a great inside glimpse at the movie biz. Stuntwomen: The Untold Hollywood Story can be streamed from iTunes and Google Play.