Southern California Careers / Dream Jobs : Stunt Drivers Need the Mettle of Racers, the Cool of Top Guns

Roger Richman’s job doesn’t drive him up the wall, but it has driven him into one.

Five years ago, Richman buckled himself into a Plymouth Acclaim and rammed head-on into a concrete-and-steel wall at 21 m.p.h. As six cameras filmed the scene for a television commercial, Richman’s air bag deployed on impact, leaving him shaken but unhurt.

“You have to be a little crazy,” Richman, 42, said from his Laurel Canyon home. “But more importantly, you have to know exactly what you’re doing.”

The stunt, which brought him a modicum of fame and an undisclosed amount of money, has never been tried again for a commercial, drivers say. But it does serve as an illustration of the guts, mental discipline and calculated risk-taking required for on-camera stunt driving.

“You’ve got to be level-headed and rock-steady,” said Dick Ziker, a 55-year-old Studio City resident who broke into stunt driving in the 1960s with the TV series “The Rat Patrol,” “Mannix” and “Mission: Impossible.” “You can’t let your mind wander.”

The ability to focus on the task at hand--often referred to by drivers as “tunnel vision”--is said to be just as important as being able to handle cars and motorcycles at high speeds and on surfaces ranging from icy or oil-slicked roads to deep desert sand.

Driving academies like the Bondurant School near Phoenix can show would-be stunt people how to do flips, skids and spin-outs; some performers come from racing backgrounds.

“There are many parallels between stunt work and racing: the tunnel vision you have, the butterflies before the action or the race starts, the adrenaline rush,” said Kelly Brown, an Agoura stuntman who drives primarily in automobile commercials and who won the 1978 world drag-racing championship.

“It’s different from racing in that you may be asked to do the same thing 25 times on a single shoot,” said Brown, 50, who helped form Van Nuys-based Drivers Inc., a group that specializes in car stunts. “But the enjoyment I get is the same, because I’m doing something that not everybody can do or would feel comfortable doing.”

Unlike racers, stunt drivers rarely become famous. Indeed, most of their work involves doubling for actors or showing off the attributes of cars in commercials.

“If you’re doing this to be a star, you’re in the wrong business,” Ziker said.

Breaking into stunt work is difficult for a variety of reasons.

“It’s a very buddy-buddy business,” said Shane Dixon, 40, a former mechanical engineer and native of Ponca City, Okla., who came to Hollywood in 1980. “One of the first questions they ask you is, ‘Who do you know? Who have you worked with before?’ “When you start, you have to figure on four to five years of starving,” Dixon said. “And even then you’re lucky if you make it.”

In addition, the “old boys” network has made it difficult for women and minorities to enter the field, drivers say, despite efforts by some Hollywood organizations and stunt coordinators to recruit from underrepresented groups.

“There are more beefy parts in movies and TV for men than there are for women, and that translates into fewer opportunities,” said Michele Slate, one of the top female stunt drivers. Of the estimated several hundred to 1,000 stunt people who call themselves stunt drivers, only a small percentage is women, Slate said, and fewer still are minorities.

Bias “is something you constantly have to fight,” Slate said. “Even for nondescript work, producers will ask for, say, five guys. You have to ask, ‘Is it all right if one is a woman?’ And often, the answer is no.”

But for those lucky enough to have a chance to prove themselves on a regular basis, the rewards can be substantial.

Pay is determined by a number of factors. Each driver, who must belong to the Screen Actors Guild, starts out earning a standard $504 a day for theatrical work. For each trick performed, drivers receive a premium determined by the production’s stunt coordinator and based on ballpark figures.

Rolling a car over, for instance, typically is worth a couple thousand dollars; more complex projects bring higher earnings. Stunt drivers in their prime say they can earn $300,000 or more annually.

(Interestingly enough, finding insurance is generally not a problem: Health coverage is provided by the guild, and stunt drivers say they are considered good life-insurance risks because of their driving expertise and numerous on-set safety precautions, including fire equipment and ambulances.)

Travel, variety and, somewhat surprisingly, job longevity are other reasons stunt-car drivers say they enjoy their jobs.

“The thrill keeps me going,” said Ziker, who has performed stunts for more than 30 years and hopes to stay in the business another 20. “Each job is different, every single day is a new challenge. You never get bored.”

One reason personal relationships are so important in the business, Brown and other stunt people said, is because of the high level of trust that must exist among them, directors, camera operators and actors.

“If I’m driving down a road at 100 m.p.h. with the director and cameraman lying in the middle of the street filming me, they have to have absolute confidence in what I’m doing, and I have to have absolute trust in them,” Brown said. “You gotta be right on the money.”

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Although stunt people usually thrive off the high pressure of their work, physical and mental stresses can take their toll. Weeks or months of working away from home in a succession of 12- to 14-hour days--and often in grueling settings such as dry-lake beds, where the temperature can hit 120 degrees--drain even the hardiest.

“It’s difficult not to be a workaholic in this business,” said Richman, who estimates he worked more than 250 days last year. “If you turn down a job, you know someone is more than willing to take it.”

Ailments such as bruises, soreness and headaches from jumps and collisions are common in stunt driving; serious injuries and deaths are rare, but many drivers say the fear of dying on the job never goes away for them or their loved ones.

“You’d be crazy if you weren’t afraid,” Ziker said. “A little bit of fear helps remind you that if you get hurt, you’ll be out of a job.”

“There are times you wish you had become a CPA,” Richman said. “But then there are times you’re driving a one-of-a-kind car along the coast in Hawaii, and it makes it all worthwhile.”