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If you’ve ever dreamed of pulling into a theater parking lot with BMX bikers doing half-pipe flips and a man preparing to be set on fire; ActionFest, Asheville’s annual “Film Festival with a Body Count” might be the cinematic event you’ve been waiting for. On a recent sunny weekend, I attended the second annual festival and took in a few films coming soon to Triangle theaters and/or video; over three days, I’ll witness everything from a pipe wrench to the skull to a hobo with a shotgun.
The festival offers a wide variety of new blood ’n’ guts cinema on display along with a few older films such as the Japanese bloodbath Battle Royale (Kinji Fukasaku, 2000) and the 1978 Burt Reynolds vehicle Hooper, based on the life of the festival’s guest of honor, legendary stuntman Buddy Joe Hooker.
Hooker, whose long and extraordinary career includes a wildly eclectic list of major films and TV series from the 1960s to the present (you can check out his list of credits here), is in attendance at the festival; on-screen, his work is invisible, but here he’s a rock star with a standing ovation during a tribute panel. Though I missed it, he apparently took some time out from the Festival on Friday to answer a few questions about a decidedly non-action classic he did stunts for that’s screening at the same theater: Harold and Maude.
A clip is shown of Hooker from 1971’s Clay Pigeon, where he’s in a car tumbling down a hillside for a three-minute continuous shot. When asked how many times it flipped over, he answers “22,” almost casually, as though he’d been asked how many dogs he owns.
He’s equally blasé when describing his worst stunt experience, an incident from TV’s Airwolf in the 1980s: “I tore some ribs off my sternum and stuff.” From his tone, he might as well be describing a mosquito bite.
Here’s a tribute to Buddy Joe Hooker presented at ActionFest by director Mark Hartley, introduced by Quentin Tarantino.
Hooker gets the honors of lighting a stuntman in a fireproof suit for Sunday’s free stunt show, the renowned “full burn” that requires a flameproof suit filled with a cooling agent and no oxygen. I chat with him briefly afterward, where he notes with pride of the stunt, “No CGI!”
Festival co-founder Aaron Norris (brother of Chuck, who was last year’s lifetime achievement award recipient), quips to young aspiring stuntmen in the audience that, “There’s only one time a stuntman should smoke—after they’ve put him out! So stay away from tobacco!” I try reconciling this with the act of setting a man on fire, but decide it’s best not to parse this warning. The world of ActionFest is, after all, one you shouldn’t try at home.
Lee Majors sings an ode to “The Unknown Stuntman” on the theme to TV’s The Fall Guy:
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