Breaking my neck made a man of me

December 16, 2023 3:20 AM

Interview with Daniel Radcliffe's stunt double, who was paralysed on the set of Harry Potter
posted by plonkee (13 comments total)

That's a really interesting read. Thank you for sharing it.
posted by idb at 5:35 AM on December 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

Here's the trailer for the documentary about him and his relationship with Radcliffe.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 6:13 AM on December 16, 2023 [2 favorites]

I'd hoped the piece might have gone into greater depth as to how they thought what they were doing was a good idea in the first place—i work in film and let's just say there are... safety issues—but understandably the stunt coordinator wasn't up to getting into it.
posted by rhooke at 7:17 AM on December 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

Wow. What a remarkable person. As noted - thank you for sharing this.
posted by davidmsc at 8:12 AM on December 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

The documentary is really good!
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 9:44 AM on December 16, 2023

I’m looking forward to watching this - David Holmes is the name of the stunt double.
posted by hilaryjade at 9:46 AM on December 16, 2023 [2 favorites]

The story of Olivia Jackson, mentioned in the interview, is horrific. They shortened by 32m, without telling her, the distance at which an oncoming camera was supposed to lift over her as she rode past on a motorcycle. Partial paralysis, coma, amputation, a facial injury of a type that you do NOT want to Google...

In practice I know wealthy folks associated with these incidents are told not to help because it can look like an admission of responsibility, and many of them appreciate that flimsy excuse. But Paul W.S. Anderson ordered the riskier stunt. Fuck him for letting her get further traumatized by corporate blame-shifting, and relegating her to an inapplicable and unequipped traffic regulatory system in South Africa.
posted by Riki tiki at 11:46 AM on December 16, 2023 [8 favorites]

I see the documentary is available via HBO. I'm very curious to watch it although I'm not really in a good emotional state right now. I'll have to make a note of it for later.
posted by hippybear at 12:17 PM on December 16, 2023

That AI Upscaled photo of Radcliffe and Holmes was a real jumpscare in the middle of this article.
posted by Random_Tangent at 1:12 PM on December 16, 2023

I haven’t finished RTFA yet, but I found the documentary very moving and the story really extraordinary. I felt conflicted, though, about how little it had to say about the broader industry and what change might be called for. Two of the stunt performers close to Holmes discuss how they’ve centered safety very deliberately as a team since the incident, but that speaks to a lot of responsibility falling to individuals rather than larger systems being put in place to keep employees of a lucrative industry safe.

Not every story has to fill a global scope - it’s ok to be a movie about Holmes’ experience - but watching it on HBO, under the same corporate umbrella as WB who made these films, made it hard for me to ignore that particular gap.
posted by modus_pwns at 2:19 PM on December 16, 2023 [3 favorites]

Uma Thurman’s car crash in kill bill and they buried the footage for years.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 5:38 PM on December 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

I watched the documentary last night and agree with the assessment of modus_pwns. It was a moving and sad story, as one might expect from the article. And one would hope that more is being done to keep stunt people safe.
posted by hilaryjade at 6:11 AM on December 17, 2023

So, my understanding based on what I've read is that they don't do these kinds of weight-pulled wire stunts at all anymore? Based on the fall-out from this accident and active campaigning by people involved? I think the industry has greatly reformed itself following this tragedy, and while the individual human cost is horrible and documented in this movie I still am waiting to watch, it seems like they learned the correct lessons from this.

Uma's car crash is why we will never get a Kill Bill 3. And as much as I love Quentin's movies, fuck him for being that guy in this situation.

And honestly, it seems like we need to figure out how to get all these technological tools to work together. Like, computer analysis tools could be trained so they can learn things like cameras and people moving toward each other can mean horrible injuries. Or that adding weights might be bad. And could be used to help plot out shots that look much more intense in camera than they are to actually film, because honest to god, they didn't really melt people's heads at the end of Raiders.

Anyway, I do think stunt work is markedly safer after the lessons learned from this. Just like it is after every other horrible accident.
posted by hippybear at 12:20 PM on December 17, 2023