The Unsung Stuntman: Carl Ciarfalio Takes His Last Bow

  I don't normally re-post old Beverly in Movieland entries.  But I was so saddened to read about the death of ace stuntman (and very good guy) Carl Ciarfalio in November of this year that I decided to honor his memory by  repeating this profile from January 10, 2013. (You might remember Carl for pummeling Tom Cruise in a bare-knuckles boxing scene in Ron Howard's Far and Away--the rare on-screen fight that Cruise ever lost.)  

Now that the list of Oscar nominees is out, I’m pausing to acknowledge Hollywood’s forgotten men (and women). Stunt performers have been around since the movies began. But they rarely get the recognition they deserve. Take Harvey Parry, who used to stunt-double the great silent film star, Harold Lloyd. Parry’s contracts specified he could not admit to doubling for Lloyd until after Lloyd’s death. But wasn’t Lloyd -- an extremely athletic fellow -- capable of doing his own stuntwork? Modern-day stunt actor Carl Ciarfalio admits this was true, mostly. Lloyd in his prime was “much like today’s Tom Cruise. Tom does almost everything, but not everything.”

Carl Ciarfalio knows a great deal about stuntwork. He should, after 38 years in the business. You’ve seen him on-screen in major films like Fight Club, Mission Impossible III, and The Amazing Spider-Man. He’s got a Roger Corman connection too, having worn the “Thing” suit in Concorde’s underground hit, The Fantastic Four. It all began when he and a wrestling-team buddy auditioned for a stunt show at Knott’s Berry Farm. Knott’s was looking for big guys who could fall down and be funny. Carl, then digging ditches for a plumber, figured the Knott’s gig would make a great summer job, before he entered Cal State Fullerton. But “within a couple of months I had a cowboy hat and a gun and I was on stage and people were applauding and laughing, and I told my parents, ‘I’ll go back to school one day.’” Instead, of course, he ended up in the school of hard knocks.

A stuntman’s career requires training, as well as a serious approach to one’s craft. I told Carl I’d been on the set of New World’s Big Bad Mama when stuntmen performed a dangerous car flip. They walked away unhurt, then headed for the nearest bar. Carl agrees this often happens, especially on location, but “at the end of the day . . . I like to go home and take a shower and take a deep breath and think about what the day was about. Because you’re only as good as your last gag.”

In his off-hours, does he do crazy things for fun and recreation? “No, ma’am, I’m exactly the opposite of that. There’s a huge difference between thrillseekers and daredevils and professional stunt people. Professional stunt people need to have that A-type personality to be able to step off the cliff or light themselves on fire, but they also need to be able to do it in front of the camera -- hit their marks and then do it a second, third, fourth, and fifth time. So that makes it different than a daredevil who is trying to beat the odds. Scripted stunts, scripted action is much different than jumpin’ off the roof and hopin’ you make the pool.”

Now that he’s an elder statesman of sorts, Carl increasingly works as a stunt coordinator, facing the pressure of keeping his entire team safe from harm. One big challenge: “Low-budget films want it all, and have no money for anything.” In which case, he’ll demand script changes, because “no piece of film is worth an injury or a death.”

As one of the first governors representing stunt performers at the Television Academy, Carl has helped make sure stunt coordinators now receive Emmy recognition. Oscar, though, has yet to catch up. Given the current popularity of action films, he hopes this will soon change. After all, “a James Bond movie would be nothin’ if it was just walkin’ and talkin.’”

Hail and farewell, Carl!   

Doomed: Teasing Out the Story Behind Roger Corman’s Fantastic Four

 Well, it’s time to start working on your superhero costume for the San Diego Comic-Con. And it’s time to support a super-project that’s just been launched by my buddy, Mark Sikes, along with filmmaker Marty Langford. Back when I was Roger Corman’s story editor at Concorde-New Horizons, Mark served as Roger’s casting honcho. One of his most challenging gigs was finding the cast, on a hurry-up basis, for a little superhero flick called The Fantastic Four, based on the Marvel Comics characters, that was being co-produced on the cheap by Concorde and a German company, Neue Constantin. 

A lot of us know what happened next. The film was shot, the cast and crew were ecstatic, and a big publicity push was under way, much of it funded by the actors themselves. Then came word that Constantin’s Bernd Eichinger had just paid big bucks for Roger’s share of The Fantastic Four. Eichinger promptly shelved the finished movie, presumably to make way for a lavish studio version that finally appeared in 2005. The original prints of the Concorde quickie were supposedly destroyed, but pirated copies have been circulating ever since. Now Mark and Marty are out to satisfy our craving to know exactly what happened. They’re planning a full-length documentary called Doomed! The Untold Story of Roger Corman’s The Fantastic Four.  To finance this labor of love, they’re calling on the film’s many fans to cough up some dough. (This crowdfunding idea is really taking off: I’m told that even Roger – who’s richer than God -- is using it to help pay for a shoestring remake of Munchies. But I digress.)

Here’s the scoop: Mark and Marty have set up an Indiegogo campaign to raise the $52,000 they need to make their movie happen. Naturally, donors get some very cool perks. But the deadline is June 20, so time is flying. (You might also check out the official Doomed Facebook site.)

What makes Doomed sound so promising is that most of the creative forces behind Concorde’s Fantastic Four are already on board. One of them is Carl Ciarfalio, stuntman extraordinaire, who impersonates The Thing in the movie. Carl has been part of some much more elaborate projects, like The Amazing Spider Man. But he relished the chance to work with director Oley Sassone and a talented cast, despite the privations everyone faced on set. For instance, “The suit that they made for me was really spot-on. But they didn’t have the budget to put a cool suit on underneath it. So I was wearing 15 pounds of rubber every day,” without a cooling system to provide basic comfort. Ouch!

Nonetheless, Carl sees the film’s awkward special effects (like Dr. Reed Richards’ impossibly stretchy limbs) as part of its charm. When watching today’s big-budget superhero movies, the audience knows it’s “just a bunch of guys on green-screen, with stuff goin’ on behind ‘em.” By contrast,  Concorde’s Fantastic Four plays like an homage to the mid-twentieth-century world of Marvel Comics. Says Carl, “That’s what makes this film cult-like, because it’s kind of a throwback to the Fifties and Sixties films that they used to make before special effects were a big deal.” 

Even at the time, Carl didn’t assume The Fantastic Four would lead him to fame and fortune. But the movie’s cast thought they were participating in something special. “And it was. It was something special. I knew out of the gate.” That’s why it hurts to have been part of a film that will never officially be seen. Doomed  is guaranteed to bring us a lot of great stories about that.

 Thanks, Carl, for supplying me with some of your own snapshots from the Fantastic Four shoot. 

Far and Away to the Emerald Isle

Sure and begorra, it’s time once again for the wearin’ of the green. Not that I’m Irish, except in the way that we’re all a wee bit Irish on St. Patrick’s Day. My parents were hardly fans of John Wayne , but they adored Wayne in the one John Ford movie set in the pristine Irish countryside. It is of course The Quiet Man (1952), in which Wayne woos a feisty lass played by Maureen O’Hara. To this day, the film’s County Mayo locations still attract tourists with a yen for movie history.

 If The Quiet Man has charm, David Lean’s Ryan’s Daughter (1970) offers high drama. Though I consider it a big-budget weepie, there’s no question that this story of a tragic love affair is gorgeous to look at. Set in the backwaters of County Kerry’s Dingle Peninsula, it won an Oscar for its wide-screen cinematography. Freddie Young, having brilliantly photographed the Sahara Desert (Lawrence of Arabia) and the steppes of Russia (Doctor Zhivago), brought a sense of stark passion to Western Ireland’s jagged cliffs and wave-swept beaches. More recent Irish films have included political thrillers like In the Name of the Father (1993) and whimsical comedies like Waking Ned Devine (1998). The latter, though thoroughly Irish in spirit, was actually shot on the Isle of Man. But it’s fitting to salute the very Irish David Kelly, who died last year, for his unforgettable role as the buck-naked old geezer on the motorbike.

Ron Howard has loved Ireland since 1958, when he flew to Vienna with his parents to play a featured role in The Journey. Crossing the Atlantic in a prop-jet was a frightening ordeal for a four-year-old. As the sun rose on the lush green fields of Ireland, little Ronny felt vastly relieved. The plane set down at Shannon Airport for a welcome refueling stop. Ronny got out to stretch his legs, and a workman ruffled his red hair in friendly fashion. “You look like you belong here,” he said. “Maybe you should stay behind.”

Flash-forward to the 1980s, when Howard attended a Chieftains concert. A traditional ballad about lovers saying farewell because one was bound for America inspired him to blend a romantic Irish saga with a landmark event in his own ancestral history, the 1893 Oklahoma Land Race. The result was Far and Away (1992), which – after he signed Tom Cruise and new wife Nicole Kidman for the leading roles -- somehow swelled from an intimate romantic comedy into an overblown epic. (To capture the wide open spaces in the Land Race sequence, Howard was persuaded by cinematographer Mikael Salomon to shoot the first 70mm film since Ryan’s Daughter two decades before.)

I consider Far and Away overly sentimental, one of Howard’s weaker efforts. But stunt actor Carl Ciarfalio, who pummels Tom Cruise in a bare-knuckles boxing scene, remembers it fondly: “I've had some outstanding opportunities in my career, but this one is way at the top! Ron was very kind and open when directing, and even took a suggestion from me and used it in the scene. He also introduced me at the red-carpet premiere, which was a big thing for a stuntman.” Years later, when filming Mission Impossible 3, Carl reminisced with Cruise: “I told him that I had gotten a lot of mileage out of our scene and that it was the only fight that I had ever won in 30 years. He told me it was the only one he had lost! Then he laughed that big Cruise laugh.”

May the luck of the Irish be with Carl – and you!

A tip of the hat to Beth Phillips, who loves all things Irish.