User:Alice fishface/Guy Stunt

Overview:

Guy Stunt (aka Stunt Guy) is a fictional character created by Kempt ltd. G. Stunt is the main character in iOS games ‘Stunt Guy: The Getaway’ and ‘Bar Fight’ (2012).

Childhood & early career:

Closest possible estimates place Guy Stunt’s birth date at February 29th 1912, although this cannot be confirmed. Scientists have speculated that his being born in a leap-year may account for the fact that photographic evidence shows no change in his physical appearance since 1939. As Stunt’s birth certificate has been lost (and no photographic material exists from before this time), work in this field continues. Born in England to the Marquess and Marchioness of Stratford, Stunt’s family took him on holiday to Australia via ocean steam-liner at the age of three. During the voyage the intrepid toddler took it upon himself to inspect the boiler room. A subsequent explosion tragically catapulted the young Stunt three-hundred feet in the air and sent him hurtling towards the Australian coast. Several eyewitness accounts described how the projectile toddler did 26 back-flips as he was blown from the ship’s stack (some accounts put the number at 32, but these cannot be confirmed). The three year-old Stunt landed in the middle of the outback in an inexplicable but conveniently-placed pile of empty cardboard boxes. Fortunately, he was found by hungry dingoes who (after attempting and failing to eat him) adopted the child as one of their own. Stunt remained with the dingo pack throughout his formative years, learning the wild ways of the outback and subsisting largely on a diet of barbequed possum and crispy-fried koala noses. After two years of living with the dingoes, Stunt was found by a wandering backpacker known only as Gail, who remained with the young Stunt to help him improve his grasp of English. It took Stunt just one morning to pick up “Me Guy Stunt; You Gail!” Stunt spent some months wandering the outback with Gail, accompanied by one of his closest dingo friends (whom he seemed to think was a ‘cheetah’ for some reason). Gail later persuaded the young boy to accompany her to Melbourne, where he quickly took up a job as a croc-wrestler to put him through primary school. Whilst performing in the Melbourne travelling circus at the age of six, he was discovered by American talent-scout Jim Dangerass, who later described the scene when he first met the prodigious croc-wrestling ‘child-of-the-outback’:

“…That big ‘gator [the crocodile] thrashed and bared his teeth like he was the very devil himself. But I didn’t see one flicker in that young boy’s [G. Stunt] eye: Stripped to the waist, covered in Vegemite [inedible Australian break-fluid substitute]and with that wild hair all the way down to his knees [big hinge in the legs] I watched as he [still the same one] took that mean ol’ reptile [the other one] by the tail, gripped his [the other one again] nostrils and done plum-tied [meaningless but quaint American colloquialism]him in a perfect[not rubbish] sheep-shank! [sailor’s knot]”

Dangerass took an instant shine to the young Stunt and offered him an eight-month contract then and there to travel to the USA to wrassle ‘gators in a Tallahassee park for the enjoyment of the public. Stunt agreed and was a huge success. Gail accompanied him as his chaperone/accountant/fixer/girl-who-holds-the-boards-up-between-rounds. Two years later though, in 1920, prohibition was introduced across the USA and demand for Stunt & Gail’s beer-fuelled ‘gator-wrasslin’ shows took a downturn. So, freed from his previous contracts, Stunt moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in getting blown up.

Early success:

Little documentary evidence remains of Stunt’s early years in Hollywood, but anecdotal evidence has it that it was he who taught Douglas Fairbanks how to catch a sword in mid-air for the celebrated fight-scene in The Three Musketeers (1921). It seems that Stunt spent much his time during the 1920s-1930s as an instructor and occasional pyro-technician’s assistant. It was only when Gail secured his appearance as Vivian Leigh’s body-double (thanks to the application of makeup and a strategically placed pair of Galia melons) during the burning-of-Atlanta scene in Gone With the Wind in 1939 (incidentally, he also played the part of the dying horse) that he returned to the public eye. From then on Stunt began to enjoy ever greater success, performing death-defying stunts and playing occasional bit-parts in such titles as Casablanca (1942) in which Stunt performed in Humphrey Bogart’s place for the alien invasion scene (the scene was later cut and the originals destroyed). The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953) was another key project for Stunt, who played the policeman who gets eaten by the creature halfway through the film. Of this hitherto unprecedented stunt, Stunt claimed “Yeah, it was tough…and smelly…and we had to do six takes. But, ya know; The monster was trained and so was I, so we both knew we had nothin’ ta worry about.”

Later career:

After a brief lull in stunt work during the late 1960s (during which Stunt took jobs as a stand-in on soap operas and adult films to pay the way), Stunt resumed performing in box office hits such as Where’s My Ass? (1972) and Indecipherable (1981). In interview with David Letterman in 1994, Guy Stunt reminisced: “Yeah, the seventies were really my era. It was the cars, man. So many cool movies were being made back then that were basically just two-hour awesome car-chases all lined up back to back. And I’ll tell you what else: back then I didn’t get no director types telling me to fasten my seatbelt! Oh, and that movie with the shark in it: that was fun too.”

In fact stunt work was so prevalent in the 1970s that from late 1969 through to august 1978 Stunt had a total of four days off. Stunt continued to work throughout the 1980s and 1990s on titles such as Terminator II (1991), Jurassic Park (1993) and Independence Day (1996), but the advent of CGI and elaborate wire techniques gradually changed the nature of the stunt business. On returning to the David Letterman Show in 2001, Stunt mused: “The whole business has had a balls-ectomy, David. I can’t even fly through a windshield anymore without some insurance guy tellin’ me it’s gotta be made of sugar. SUGAR, David! People aren’t paying $7.50 for a theatre ticket to see me fly through a sheet of sugar!” Still, Stunt has continued to adorn movie screens with his particular brand of death-defying dumbfoolery. He notably stood-in for Andy Serkis during the Gollum character’s more adventurous moments in Lord of the Rings (2002-3). And earlier than that it was he who taught the cast of the Matrix films how to hover in mid-air whilst the camera pans around them (whilst most of the cast got it, in the end the decision was made to use camera tricks copied off the British film-maker Tim MacMillan instead). When asked recently if, looking back, he had any regrets about his career thus far, Stunt replied “…Troll 2. That was a bad idea…That and that time I went vegetarian for forty-five minutes. That was hell.”

Ongoing projects:

Guy Stunt continues to get blown to smithereens on camera for the voyeuristic entertainment of lazy theatre audiences. However, with the decline of ‘serious’ stunts in mainstream film, he has recently experienced a desire to ‘branch-out’. He is currently engaged in a collaborative project with UK-based game developer Kempt ltd, starring in a series of games based upon his exploits.

Filmography:

• Gone With The Wind, 1939
• Casablanca, 1942
• Bambi, 1942
• Return To The Wind, 1950
• 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, 1953
• The Wind Shall Not Have Them! 1954
• Ben Hur, 1959
• Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, 1964
• Vanishing Point, 1971
• Where’s My Ass? 1972
• Live and Let Die, 1973
• Jaws, 1975
• Son of The Wind, 1978
• Friday the 13th, 1980
• Indecipherable, 1981
• Escape from New York, 1981
• ET, 1982
• The Wind vs Godzilla, 1984
• Day of the Dead, 1985
• Lethal Weapon, 1987
• Dances with The Wind, 1989
• Troll II, 1990
• Terminator II, 1991
• Jurassic Park, 1993
• Independence Day, 1996
• The Edge, 1997
• The Wind Lives! 1998
• Entrapment, 1999
• The Lord of the Rings, 2002-3
• Requiem for The Wind, 2005
• Giant Triple-Headed Dino-Shark vs Massive Croctopus, 2007