A Tribute to the Unknown Stuntmen

Stuntmen Loren Janes and Tony Brubaker have spent a combined total of 80 years working in movies and television. Mostly recently seen in “Spider-Man,” Janes doubled for Steve McQueen for more than 20 years, while Brubaker has been Danny Glover’s double since the first “Lethal Weapon” in 1987. Although they are well-known within the stunt community, each feels his profession should remain anonymous. “I don’t want people to know what I do for a living,” Brubaker said.

Nevertheless, the two emerge from the shadows to talk about their craft in the new Turner Classic Movies documentary “Behind the Action: Stuntmen in Movies,” which premieres Saturday on the cable network and kicks off a monthlong tribute to stuntmen and their craft. Among the films scheduled this month are “The Great Escape,” “Rollerball,” “Bullitt,” “Spartacus” and the 1920 swashbuckler “The Mark of Zorro.”

Janes said he never told anyone that he doubled McQueen while the actor was alive. “I would say, ‘I am the stuntman who works with Steve McQueen. I set up all the stunts, but he does his own stunts,’” he said. “People are paying to see Steve McQueen, not Loren Janes. I like being anonymous. We are making the actors look like they are doing it. That’s our job.”

Brubaker added that while it’s nice to see attention being paid to the feats of stuntmen past and present, he has mixed emotions about the special and tribute. “When you expose yourself too much to the rest of the world about what you do and how you do it, then a kid from Arkansas will say, ‘I can do that,’ and here they come to California and now the market gets flooded,” he said. “There is an overpopulation of stunt people.”

In 1954, when he started doing stunts, Janes was training to be an opera singer and teaching calculus and trigonometry at a San Fernando Valley high school to pay for his studies. Through high school and college he competed in swimming, diving, gymnastics and water polo and later competed in the Olympic trials in 1956 and ’64 in the modern pentathlon.

“I had never heard of a stuntman,” he said. “At the time, MGM was looking for three stuntmen to do an 80-foot dive off a cliff at Catalina for an Esther Williams picture. The stuntmen who were capable of diving that high were away on location.”

Janes had put on water shows and diving exhibitions at the school to raise funds for band uniforms, and one of his students mentioned him to his father, an executive at MGM. The next day, he received a call from the studio. “I went down after work, and they hired me. About a month later, another studio called and said they wanted me do some gymnastics in a film because MGM recommended me. After six months, I had worked in seven movies; the principal called me in and said, ‘You either teach school or work in pictures.’ I said, ‘I’ll see you later.’”

Brubaker grew up around horses and began doing stunts for actor Otis Young in the 1969 ABC western “The Outcasts,” as well as another short-lived series, “The Young Rebels” with Louis Gossett Jr.

His big break involved a high jump on the Henry Fonda film “There Was a Crooked Man,” in which he had to run atop a building, dive 16 feet, tackle a man and then fall off the building. “A thousand guys could do the fall, but to get a guy to run on a 2-by-12-foot plank, there was no one who could do that there,” he said. “I was blessed with really good legs and the ability to jump that far. I got a lot of publicity out of it within the stunt community.”

In the 1970s, he worked with such stars as Jim Brown and Sidney Poitier. Most recently, he doubled Michael Clarke Duncan on “The Scorpion King.”

Janes has been responsible for executing some of film’s most amazing stunts, such as his leap off a train going 30 miles an hour in “How the West Was Won,” hitting the top of a 16-foot cactus and riding it over a cliff. In “Swiss Family Robinson,” he had to wrestle a 28-foot snake.

“Two stuntmen did that and we were rendered unconscious 8 times in three weeks,” Janes said. “It took 19 guys to jump in and pull the snake off of us. The snake would have two or three coils around me and it would just crush us and we would start to pass out.”

In his 48 years in the business, Janes has never broken a bone. Brubaker admits he’s also been pretty lucky, though he suffered a broken leg on “Rollerball” and injured his shoulder while working on the movie “Gone Fishin.’”

Janes has officially retired from performing stunts and now concentrates on working as a stunt coordinator and second unit director. Brubaker is starting to follow in Janes’ footsteps. “You start limiting yourself physically because you get smart and say, ‘I can’t do this too much more,’” Brubaker said.

“Behind the Action” also features interviews with veteran stunt coordinator and director Terry Leonard; Bob Yerkes, the inventor of the airbag for stunt use; and swordsmen Victor Paul and Bobby Hay.

Janes co-founded the Stuntmen’s Assn. 40 years ago, and he and Brubaker say their profession is going through rocky times, especially because so many film and television productions are shot outside the United States to keep costs down.

According to Janes, computerized stunts have also reduced work for stuntmen by about 50%. “They are overdoing it,” he said. “Some of the stars look like Superman, and audiences are smiling and laughing rather than getting frightened or scared. It’s all becoming like a ‘Spider-Man’ comic-book thing.”

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“Behind the Action: Stuntmen in the Movies” premieres today at 5 p.m. on TCM, followed at 5:30 by “The Devil’s Brigade” and “The Great Escape” at 7:45. The festival continues Mondays and Saturdays through June 29.