Geek Syndicate
had to be built and they wanted it filmed from a helicopter. I said ‘Oh, I think that will take me about three or four minutes to think of that one’, I went away and came back with a fan descender, and I got an Academy Award for that. But the kids would listen to these conversations going on you know, and they have obviously been driving cars around the fields here since they were six, seven years old, riding horses and if we cleaned the stunt equipment we would have the air bag outside the window, they would run upstairs and we would say ‘go on you can jump if you want’ and they would jump out of the bedroom window onto the airbag. So they have had a great grounding, and to see them doing what they are doing is fantastic but again that is another double edged sword on Green Hornet, my youngest son Scott who has done fantastic crashes on the bridge of Mission Impossible 3 as well and he did one stunt on Green Hornet where he is in a pick-up truck, the truck’s on fire and he has to go sixty miles per hour head on into a bus then go through the bus, out of the roof and somersault down the street on fire, you know, and I’m directing it and on the set at night in LA and go ok roll camera, action, you know trying to be totally cool you know you don’t want to get people alarmed and my son was probably much cooler than I was, but inside my heart was hammering, it is horrendous, but it is wonderful to see them do it and be successful at it. Talking of directing, which he did on the Green Hornet, Vic has done a lot of Second Unit work on over fifty films but which is harder, directing or running the stunts? VA: Each little area I have sort of evolved through with a great satisfaction to me, you know being a stunt man in the first days was like Wow! This is great, riding a horse better than someone else could or doing things and being very happy with that but you would look at somebody that was employed and think well he is a stunt co-ordinator that is a better job because he is on it all the time, I’m only on it three weeks doing these stunts. I also loved the creativity of it, I was always great at writing stories, and telling stories and essays in English at school and stuf