It cost Richard Rush ten years and two heart attacks to answer them with The Stunt Man, <\/em>the story of an escaped convict hiding out in plain sight on a movie set as the blackmailed plaything of an omnipotent director who travels exclusively by crane-mounted hand of God. The 1973 novel on which it was based, by New Yorker staff writer Paul Brodeur, was enough of a Rorschach test to attract filmmakers as far afield as Arthur Penn and Francois Truffaut. Columbia Pictures wanted a straight-ahead action movie. Rush, a graduate of UCLA\u2019s first film program who cut his teeth on Air Force training films and AIP motorcycle movies, saw more to it than that. As a result, Columbia passed on his script for coloring outside the lines of any definable genre. It would be the first Sisyphean slip on the hill toward production and a forecast of fate already sealed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If the lithe blue devil on the poster didn\u2019t clue you in, The Stunt Man <\/em>is thinly veiled Faust. Peter O\u2019Toole\u2019s Eli Cross, that\u2019s \u201cEli the Terrible\u201d to friends, wears an eyepiece around his neck like a crucifix, though he identifies as an all-powerful being unaffiliated with the divine: \u201cIf God could do the tricks we can do, he\u2019d be a happy man.\u201d His control seems to extend beyond the Kliegs and the cranes. When he offers troubled Vietnam vet \u201cLucky\u201d his heavenly protection, ordinary light through ordinary glass provides Cross with a halo of jewelry-commercial lens flares. He is fate, impure and complicated, the only one on set who knows the script better than the pathetic soul who wrote it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He\u2019s also a laundry list of auteur-grade abuse. Stop me if you\u2019ve heard this one: He insists on live ammunition for the period-accurate rifles. When a twenty-two second shot goes wrong and the assistant director shrugs it off, Cross threatens to break his spine in front of the entire crew. He invites the lead actress\u2019s parents to set, shows them the dailies of her nude scene, tells her about the \u201caccident\u201d right before a take, and rolls camera as she breaks down in front of her family. (He also happens to be sleeping with her.) He knowingly shelters a wanted criminal. He considers a good stuntman \u201ctwo hundred pounds of hamburger in a blonde wig\u201d and only needs a replacement because the last one died filming a car crash on a public bridge over a public river without a single permit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Today, Eli Cross is a parody. In 1980, he was the publicized standard, even borrowing his real director\u2019s wardrobe, as well as the ghost of cinema future. Two years later, an accident on the set of Twilight Zone: The Movie <\/em>killed three actors and put an unofficial end to the Cross type. Forty years of aftershocks and allegations later, The Stunt Man <\/em>carries unusual weight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The metaphysical quandaries that scared Columbia Pictures are as bitterly soulful as ever. Steve Railsback\u2019s \u201cLucky\u201d was already chewed up and spit out by one higher power that left him to face a preordained fate, the same as most Vietnam veterans. When he finally notices familiar writing on the wall, this time with an even bleaker ending, it\u2019s hard not to flinch when Railsback realizes, \u201cI\u2019m not real.\u201d The Stunt Man <\/em>was always about destiny and who gets a writing credit. The answer is still honest, cruel, and hidden in plain sight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The final stunt is not so fatal as it seems. Cross gives away the game, all for the \u201cart\u201d like the rest of his manipulations. Lucky will live to cash his $1000 paycheck. Or $600, as his director argues. The Stunt Man <\/em>ends on a slapstick contract dispute. The orchestra swells, cueing the warm-fuzzies; the movies win again and all the kooky characters who make them live happily ever after in the place \u201cwhere the setting sun bleeds into a million swimming pools a man can hide in.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Stunt Man <\/em>earned three Oscar nominations and six Golden Globes nominations, including one win for Dominic Frontiere\u2019s old-time showbiz score. It found a Rocky Horror <\/em>following just from its test screenings. Then 20th<\/sup> Century Fox cancelled its wide release because they couldn\u2019t figure out how to sell it. His next movie came 14 years later with the erotic thriller Color of Night<\/em>; he hasn\u2019t worked on another project since. The Stunt Man <\/em>remains a curio perpetually at the edge of overdue reappraisal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Eli Cross behind Twilight Zone: The Movie, <\/em>meanwhile, <\/em>is still working today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/stuntman1-1-1024x704.jpg\")
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