Grindhouse, but I was distracted by… umm, I’m going to say a naked woman. Riding an ostrich. How does that sound? At any rate, abridged and tweaked from its original run concurrent with the movie’s 2005 theatrical release comes this assessment of Amanda Micheli’s Double
Dare, a fascinating documentary look at the Hollywood stunt industry.
The movie unfolds through the eyes of two of its separate-but-equal participants — 60-plus
year-old Jeannie Epper, who doubled for Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman in the
1970s, and the aforementioned Bell (above right), a neophyte who landed the coveted job of doubling for Lucy
Lawless on Xena: Warrior Princess
when she was only 18. Plenty “insider documentaries” of this ilk
interweave behind-the-scenes footage and multiple interview subjects to
generally illuminating effect. But Double Dare
does so with a rare savvy, and has an extra layer of import in its joint looks
at both the here and now and yesteryear of its trade.
If you think
dwindling options for actresses over 40, try landing stunt work when
approaching senior citizenhood. A grandmother of four (with a husband 20 years
younger, incidentally), Epper details the challenges of working without pads
(though the second season of Wonder Woman
they did finally impress upon producers the need for flat boots instead of the
wedge-heel go-go variety) and talks about how she doesn’t want to leave the
business. “I know my body,” she says simply. Yet even with stunts now
comprising more and more of typical
her gender and age bracket make almost every job a hustle. It’s no better
trying to line up work as a stunt coordinator, where again elements of the
old boys’ club come into play.
We meet
across the world in
and it’s not long before she must deal with the big life change of deciding
whether to leave her native country to continue her professional career in the
wake of the completion of Xena’s run.
(She does, in a little project called Kill
Bill.)
Spanning several years and including interviews with
filmmakers Steven Spielberg and Quentin Tarantino, actresses Lawless and
Carter, President of the Stuntmen’s Association Conrad Palmisano and many more
industry figures, Double Dare doesn’t
always do as crisp of a job of delineating the timeline of the events it
chronicles, but it does capture its pair coming together wonderfully and
naturally (at the World Stunt Awards ceremony in Los Angeles, where Gary Busey
makes a skeevy cameo). It’s there that a rich, casual mentorship between Epper
and Bell develops, and viewers reap the benefit of seeing a torch being passed,
though perhaps not in the way Epper might have envisioned it (we also see her
daughter Eurlyne, a fellow stuntwoman, cope with debilitating surgery).
Double Dare also
assays the lurking familial and relationship tension of its subjects lives
(particularly Epper’s), as well as confronting in a frank but not overly
dramatic or forced fashion what it means to be a woman in such a masculinized
trade (we see Epper and a friend consulting for liposuction and plastic
surgery). Documentaries of this type — a light into a world holding its own
native interest — are often only morsels of entertainment for the more
voyeuristic of cinephiles, but Micheli — who received a Student Academy Award
for her first film, Just for the Ride
— shows a palpable and deft touch with narrative construction that marks her as
a natural born filmmaker and her movie as an engaging, outside-the-box treat.
For more information, visit the film’s still-active web site by clicking here. (Balcony Releasing, unrated, 81 minutes)