The Stunt Man: The Best Movie You’ve Not Seen Enough Times
I suspect the most frequent (and reasonable) response to the notion that a given movie requires more than a single viewing would be an anguished expression of incredulity with second place going to a begrudging “maybe” attached to multiple qualifiers (for example, “Maybe, if the movie is free and less than an hour long – and has a lot of nudity”).
Being content with watching The Stunt Man only once, however, is equivalent to being satisfied with a single instance of sex; in both cases, one should consider the possibility that he or she missed something rather significant the first time around.
The Stunt Man is chock-full of dandy themes of the sort that start with capital letters: God & Man, War & Peace, The Meaning Of Love, Trust & Paranoia, Power & Narcissism, Chaos & Nonconformity, The Heroic Quest, Life & Death, and Myth Creation (i.e., movie-making). These are, however, small potatoes in comparison to the dynamic that generates the power of The Stunt Man: The Confluence Of Reality & Illusion.
Even a cursory survey of pertinent movie reviews demonstrates a distinct demarcation between those who deride what they view as the movie’s far-fetched plotting, unconvincing love story, continuity issues, and believability in general (let’s call these reviewers, who are all too reminiscent of that petulant 12 year old boy who always seems to sit behind us when a magician performs, sneering that “it’s a trick” and “it’s not really magic,” The Fearful, Convention-Clinging, Soulless Zombies) and those like Pauline Kael (”[The Stunt Man is] a virtuoso piece of kinetic filmmaking”) who are fascinated by the interdependence of and dazzling interplay between fantasy and reality (let’s call these folks The Ones That Get It).
To earn a place in the select Got It group, it is useful to recall that Coleridge wrote about not the “suspension of disbelief,” but the “willing suspension of disbelief.” The cinematography of The Stunt Man is skillful enough and the script intelligent enough to seduce a nonresistant viewer who can tolerate confusion and ambiguity into its funhouse, but it is, after all, only a movie, not a virtual reality experience. Anyone determined to defend against the concomitant threats and charms of the film’s erasure of the distinction between reality and fantasy will be able to maintain a safe psychological distance from such uncertainty – and from recognizing what this film has to offer.
The Stunt Man uses an armamentarium of methods to intermingle reality and fantasy, including switches in point of view between the movie that is The Stunt Man and the movie being filmed within The Stunt Man, smoke and mirrors (literally as well as metaphorically), accidental misunderstandings, deliberately misleading dialogue, jump cuts and deep transitions that disclose a changing reality, misinterpreted reactions (e.g., an expression of apparent terror is revealed to actually be sexual exaltation), disguises (see Barbara Hershey’s changing appearance below), trompe l’oeil, movie stunts, audio and visual puns, and much, much more.
Plot Summary
Loosely based on Paul Brodeur’s novel of the same name, the story line deals with a Messianic director (Eli Cross, played by Peter O’Toole) making a movie in which a Vietnam vet (Cameron, played by Steve Railsback) becomes, by accident, the stunt man.
Escaping from police, Cameron stumbles onto a movie shoot and (maybe/maybe not) causes the death of the stunt man. The director, instead of turning Cameron in, hires him to be the replacement stunt man in return for sanctuary from the law. The leading lady (Nina, played by Barbara Hershey) and Cameron, of course, fall in love.
And there’s the requisite 
big finish featuring Suspense! Love! Life & Death! (AKA thematic resolution with a flourish).
The plot is propelled almost solely through the director’s manipulations of his movie and his actors to produce the effects he wants, even if doing so puts the actors at risk psychologically and physically. Eli directs the film with the fierceness and high-handedness typical of those endowed with divine right, a connection he makes clear 
with proclamations such as this one in which he explains that the sponsoring studio will not interfere “‘because they know that if they touch my film I’ll kill them. I’ll kill them and I’ll eat them.” I’m not sure how to explain it but O’Toole’s recitation of these lines inspires awe, evokes laughter, and is altogether delightful.
In parallel with Eli’s orchestration of his file, The Stunt Man itself pulls the audience’s strings – and more. Some of the characters’ reactions, for example, seem forced or inappropriate, but always by being a few degrees off-center rather than being outlandish.
Other Features
There is a two disc version of The Stunt Man that includes, along with the movie itself, The Sinister Saga Of Making The Stunt Man, which describes, in a rather heavy-handed, redundant manner, the 10 years of travail required to finally get this flick on the screen. The film was completed in 1978 but not released until 1980 when it opened in a few theaters in exactly three cities. It was never a big draw at the theaters although the critics loved it, it won a few awards, and it achieved a cult status. While I am obviously an enthusiast about The Stunt Man, I must advise the first time viewer to defer The Sinister Saga. Until one is possessed of a full-fledged conviction that The Stunt Man is a great movie, The Sinister Saga is more likely to overload than enlighten.
On the other hand, the score by Dominic Frontiere, who was also responsible for the music in Hang ‘em High, Color of Night, Velvet, Who Is the Black Dahlia?, and Cleopatra Jones, is accessible to anyone and is an unalloyed joy, perfectly complementing the movie’s action without overwhelming it. I finally tracked down and purchased the soundtrack (available only on vinyl) and, after playing well over a hundred times, still find it enchanting. At one point, The Prodigal Son’s entire playlist consisted of songs by Insane Clown Posse, Rob Zombie, and The Stunt Man Soundtrack.
Again With The Multiple Viewings
In fact, the movie itself is so saturated with movement, irony, and nuance that it may require two or more viewings to appreciate what is obviously a labor of love. This is that rare movie that can be watched three times with the audience feeling more entertained and interested than they were after the first viewing. The strengths that make The Stunt Man stand up to repeated shows, however, are likely the same reasons it was never a box office hit.
Regardless, The Stunt Man has a wonderfully literate and funny script, good to great actors, and intriguing directing. It is witty, nuanced, and cerebral but also suffused with action.
It is no surprise that the quote that best summarizes the essence of the movie belongs to Peter O’Toole’s Eli Cross:
Do you not know that King Kong was just three foot six inches tall? He only came up to Faye Wray’s belly button! If God could do the tricks that we can do he’d be a happy man!
I saw the Stunt Man when it was in theaters the first time. I’m still in re-hab.
Comment by Mrs. Linklater — March 28, 2006 @ 10:55 am