These our actors,/As I foretold you, were all spirits and/Are melted into air, into thin air.
--William Shakespeare, The Tempest
Did you not know that King Kong the First was just three-foot, six-inches tall?
--from The Stunt Man
Cameron (Steve Railsback), a Vietnam vet on the run from the law, is recruited (or shanghaied) as a stunt man on a movie about a World War I soldier. During the making of the film, Cameron finds himself suspended between reality and illusion, subjected to the manipulations of a megalomaniacal director, Eli Cross (Peter O'Toole), to the point where he doesn't even know which way is up.
Is reality real?
Richard Rush's "The Stunt Man" is a clever and engaging film that begs the question: What is the substance of reality? Or: Does reality even have substance? And if reality is no more substantive than, say, a puff of smoke, what is there to believe in?
Eli constantly insists he can make the audience believe whatever he wants them to believe ("If God could do the tricks that we can do he'd be a happy man"). He can make them laugh or cry at will. He can create different realities from the same basic material--in this case, little snippets of film.
Rush and company often put the audience on the same unstable footing as Cameron. There will be moments when we don't know if what we're watching is a scene in the movie or a scene in the movie-within-the-movie. He'll be performing a stunt and something goes wrong. Oh, no, his life is in danger. Oh, wait, it's okay--it's a part of the stunt!
Is love the answer?
Cameron falls in love with the leading lady (Barbara Hershey) and she appears to return his affections. But even that is called into question. Are her emotions authentic or mere affectation? Is she falling for Cameron or is she playing a role in Eli's constructed universe?
Her love turns out to be genuine and in the end that is the only reality of any substance. It is the only thing that gives weight to the moment.
"The Stunt Man" will air on Turner Classic Movies on Saturday, February 25, at midnight, Pacific Time, and again on Sunday, March 11, at 1 AM.
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