Stunt Performers Are Going All In for Their Own Oscar Category
With a 98% positive Rotten Tomatoes rating from critics and a firm grip on the imaginations of audiences, Mad Max: Fury Road is considered by many to be the best film of the first half of 2015. The fervent fandom for George Miller’s dystopian sequel comes in no small part because of its 300-plus eye-popping action sequences, which were famously made on location in a Namibian desert, not on a computer screen in a post-production facility.
Related: Learn Some ‘Mad Max’ Cosplay Tips Before You See ‘Fury Road’ Again
The film is even getting early Best Picture buzz, which would be bittersweet news for the stunt coordinators and performers who helped create the film, but have been neglected by the Academy that hands out the Oscar trophies. The stunt community has long fought for a stunt category at the Academy Awards, and this year, the tide might be turning, according to a new LA Times piece, thanks to some help from the stars that the Oscars love celebrating.
The Academy currently gives out Oscars in 24 categories, ranging from Best Picture to Best Sound Mixing, an important if largely misunderstood category. The Academy has rejected stunt coordinators’ petition for their own award every year since 1991. The charge has been led by stunt ace Jack Gill (Fast Five, Wild Hogs), who has been collecting support from the likes of Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, and more recently, actors like Vin Diesel and Johnny Depp — the latter of whom wrote a letter to Academy leaders Dawn Hudson and Cheryl Boone Isaacs urging them to change their minds.
“I believe it’s time that the valiant stuntmen and women deserve to be recognized come each and every award season and hence I am happy and proud to support a campaign to create an Academy Award category for Best Stunt Coordinator,” Depp wrote in his letter, which was obtained by the LA Times.
Watch a video about the stunts in ‘Fury Road:’
Guy Norris, the Fury Road stunt coordinator, is very displeased with the ongoing stance. “To say that it’s not an art form is just a misunderstanding of what our craft involves,” he told the Times. “We’ve gone so far beyond the John Wayne days when it was all falling off a barn or getting dragged by a horse. We’re in a whole other realm that I call ‘high-risk illusion.’”
As the Times notes, part of the holdup is the fact that there are so few stunt coordinators in the Academy — only 31 — compared to the membership in the official branches. So efforts are unlikely to get much traction this year, even though the Academy has long honored achievement in visual effects — and even has a whole separate ceremony, the Science and Technical Awards, partly focused on them. Stunts are not included in that increasingly high-profile event either, leaving the workers who perform them out in the cold, without any protective gear.
