Honoring Fall Guys and Gals

As a stuntwoman, Jill Gordon is accustomed to being in the shadows. So she quite naturally became nervous when she heard her name announced recently at the first World Stunt Awards as the winner of best “high work” for the Jennifer Lopez thriller, “The Cell.”

“We are not paid to speak,” explains Gordon, who has been a stuntwoman for eight years and Lopez’s stunt double on several films. Gordon won for a complicated dream sequence about halfway through “The Cell,” in which Lopez’s psychiatrist character, in a long red dress, enters the warped, surreal mind of a comatose killer (Vincent D’Onofrio). Gordon not only flips upside down but does a free fall. “It was a wild scene--it took us weeks to do,” says Gordon.

Clutching her award, Gordon said she thanked her chiropractor. “I will probably end up buying his house with all of my business,” she says, laughing. “And I guess I thanked Advil. But I don’t remember.”

Hosted by Alec Baldwin, “The World Stunt Awards” took place last month at the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica and airs tonight on ABC. Nominees for best aerial work included the stunt professionals from “Charlie’s Angels,” for a climactic helicopter sequence. The category of best work with an animal included nominees from sequences in “Gladiator” in which men fought tigers.

Besides Gordon, winners include Michiko Nishiwaki, for her work in an aerial stunt in “Charlie’s Angels.” Nishiwaki, Lucy Liu’s stunt double, is Japan’s first woman’s bodybuilding and power lifting champion and has starred in many movies in her homeland.

Phil Culotta, an 18-year stunt veteran, received the award for best fire work for doubling Kevin Bacon in a critical sequence in “Hollow Man.”

Arnold Schwarzenegger received the Taurus Honorary Award for his contribution to action film. Director John Woo picked up the special action movie director award and Burt Reynolds gave the Taurus lifetime achievement award to stuntman, director and producer Hal Needham.

Nicolas Cage, Jason Biggs, James Cameron, Vin Diesel, Ving Rhames and Pam Grier were among the presenters.

The World Stunt Awards is the brainchild of Austrian Dietrich Mateschitz, founder of Red Bull Energy Drink.

“He was sitting in his airplane three or four years ago and he thought everybody gets an award, but not stuntmen,” says Gernot Friedhuber, executive producer of the show and president and owner of the GRACE Group, an Austrian company that handles entertainment marketing for Red Bull.

“He thought stuntmen perfectly fit the brand because the slogan of his brand is ‘It gives you wings.’ He brought the idea to me and said what do you think of a stuntman award? I said that’s great and he said do it.”

Stuntmen, Friedhuber soon discovered, belong to different organizations. “This whole community is split into so many political associations,” he says. “They have never come together for one goal, for one union.”

So he first needed to bring everyone together. Under his leadership, the Taurus World Stunt Awards Foundation was created to benefit stunt performers in need--mostly as a result of job-related injuries. Then the World Stunt Awards Academy was formed as a nonpolitical umbrella organization for all the worldwide stunt associations.

“We already have 900 stuntmen on board,” says Friedhuber. “The goal is to have this annual awards show. You don’t have to pay for membership.”

ABC got involved in the World Stunt Awards after the William Morris Agency brought the concept to the network. “What made the show interesting for us is it highlighted something you don’t get to see that often--the behind-the-scenes elements focusing on the action part of action movies,” says John Saade, vice president, alternative series and specials for ABC.

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The two-hour special features stunts with stuntman Randy Miller and Tara the tiger from “Gladiator,” as well as a “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”-inspired flying fight sequence above the audience.

“The show is pretty much wall-to-wall, turbocharged action,” enthuses Saade. “You aren’t really watching a horse race, you are celebrating some remarkable achievements. You have the opportunity to focus on these craftsmen.”

And ABC hopes the show will become a franchise for the network. “We certainly had a great experience,” says Saade.

Criteria for nominations in the various categories was simple. A stunt performer who appeared in a film from anywhere around the world in the year 2000 that had a minimum one-week screening in Los Angeles was eligible for consideration. A 15-member, blue-ribbon committee of stunt professionals oversaw each submission. Nominations were announced in mid-April.

Veteran stuntman and second-unit director Andy Armstrong and his brother Vic, who have 70 years of experience between them, were on the committee. Andy Armstrong was nominated for best stunt coordinator for “Charlie’s Angels,” and Vic was nominated for second-unit director for the same film.

Although he’s pleased stuntmen are getting recognition for their work, Andy Armstrong says, “It’s important for a general audience to believe that an actor or an actress does most of their own stunts. It’s becoming more and more difficult all the time to keep that illusion because even 10- or 11-year-old kids are so well-informed on how things are done.”

Armstrong acknowledges a lot of veteran stunt professionals shied away from involvement in the World Stunt Awards. Stunt people, he points out, are “terribly resistant of change and have been very protective of their position. I think it’s ridiculous. There is always going to be someone younger, faster and more innovative. Some of the older guys didn’t want that. But it is something with or without the award you can’t stop and shouldn’t try to stop.”

Gordon says he thinks the World Stunt Awards is going a long way toward bringing the community together. “There is a lot of competition and politics. I have been doing this for eight years and there are probably people who have been doing it for 30 years who probably think we need to remain behind the scenes. But if the actors are going to come forward and say, ‘Hey. My stunt double did this,’ the whole community needs to come forward.”

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“The World Stunt Awards” airs tonight at 9 p.m. on ABC.