He’s where the action is

Vic Armstrong is a long way from being a household name, yet he’s a legendary figure to thousands of action film aficionados -- the kind of folks who think Bond films go straight downhill after the spectacular jumps, stunts, falls and chases of their opening sequence.

As second unit director of the last three Bond films, “Die Another Day,” “The World Is Not Enough” and “Tomorrow Never Dies,” Armstrong is responsible for devising those sequences, heading a team that constantly tries to outdo itself in portraying thrills and spills aimed at making audiences clutch the sides of their seats, pulses racing and hearts pumping.

Bond films are the brand leaders for this kind of action, and ex-stuntman Armstrong (he has in the past doubled for Bond, Superman and Indiana Jones) is regarded by his peers as the best in the world at what he does. But he’s a perfectionist, and like so many people in the film business he harbors bigger ambitions, which in his case include directing more entire movies. Even his respectful tag within the industry -- he is known as the “king of the second unit directors” -- is not a phrase he likes anymore.

“I prefer the term ‘action unit director,’ ” he explained. “The phrase ‘second unit’ goes back to days when they would do a few inserts here or there. They used to be two people and a dog, essentially, and they might wait around two days to shoot the perfect sunrise. What I do is more than that.”

Indeed. His action work on Paul Verhoeven’s “Starship Troopers” (1997) lasted 116 days. Then he went straight on to “Tomorrow Never Dies” and worked 124 days. “Our unit shoots huge lumps of these movies,” he said. “We shoot entire sequences, and we’re quite independent. On ‘Starship Troopers’ I’d be in Wyoming, while Paul was in South Dakota or vice versa. Sometimes we’re on different continents. On ‘Tomorrow Never Dies’ I was in Thailand, and the main unit was in London.”

You wouldn’t imagine an action unit director like Armstrong, 56, would be Martin Scorsese’s kind of guy. But you’d be wrong. Armstrong and his team worked for almost 100 days on Scorsese’s “Gangs of New York,” mainly filming the pitched battle near the start of the film and the draft riots near its end. It was, Armstrong says, maybe the most rewarding collaboration of his 38-year career in movies.

“I had great trepidation going over there,” he said. Miramax boss Harvey Weinstein had dispatched him to the “Gangs” set in Rome to control costs: “Two units can shoot a lot more than one can,” Armstrong said. “And when I got there, Marty said to me: ‘I have never in my life had anybody do this [shoot scenes in his films].’ But I told him I understood completely, that my job there was to be his second set of eyes.

“My whole thing with action is making it fit the story line. I think that’s why maybe I’ve lasted this long. My stuff dovetails into the whole movie. It doesn’t look as if it’s stuck in on its own as a separate entity. You couldn’t get a more particular director than Scorsese. He’s a real perfectionist. But we got on like a house on fire.”

A Scorsese collaborator

Before Armstrong arrived on the set at the Cinecitta Studios near Rome, he had been working in the Moroccan desert on enormous battle sequences for the 19th century action drama “The Four Feathers,” much of it set in the Middle East. “That involved 200 horses, 80 camels and 1,500 extras just on my unit,” he said. “It was epic by any standards.”

On his return home to England, Armstrong had a few days’ break over Christmas before traveling to Rome. On arriving, he found Scorsese had sent him a stack of Sergei Eisenstein videos -- “Battleship Potemkin,” “Mother Earth,” “The Deserter.” “These were my homework, so I could understand his stylistic approach to ‘Gangs.’ He was treating me as a collaborator, as an equal,” Armstrong noted. “But thank goodness he did send them. When I got there, he’d say, ‘Remember that scene in “Potemkin”? Or that scene in “The Deserter” when the guy goes into the house? That’s the mood I want.’ ”

Armstrong’s affection and admiration for Scorsese is reciprocated. The director wrote a glowing letter to the motion picture academy, urging that Armstrong be elected; he is now a member of the miscellaneous “at large” branch. And Scorsese also found time to record a video tribute, which was played when Armstrong received the Michael Balcon Award for lifetime achievement at last year’s British film industry BAFTA awards.

“I’m proud of my career,” Armstrong said. “When I look at where I started from, it’s hard to realize I’m now responsible for $15 million to $20 million of the budgets on big films.”

Clearly, Armstrong has been rewarded handsomely along the way. (He has Hollywood representation and, unusually, has had only one agent, David Gersh.) He lives in this idyllic village 25 miles west of London on an estate protected by electronic security gates; it includes a large house, stables for horses and polo ponies, and a field for them to gallop. One approaches his pretty, rustic house up a long gravel drive; other buildings include a large luxurious screening room complete with leather armchairs, and a barn-like structure in which Armstrong keeps his collection of 20 saddles from around the world.

He is also a memorabilia nut: Pictures, posters and artifacts from the dozens of productions on which he has worked adorn every space. In his screening room can be found Indiana Jones’ original hat and whip. On the wall of his games room is a “Starship Troopers” poster signed by Verhoeven, with a long message: “What you do is more than second unit ... you were a wonderful co-director! You did 30% of all the shots ... we were a great team.” An Indiana Jones poster signed by Harrison Ford reads: “For Vic Armstrong, who is the ‘real Indy.’ ” Elsewhere in the house, photos of him with Christopher Reeve, Brosnan and Scorsese can be seen.

Armstrong’s father trained racehorses, and at age 14 Vic became an amateur jockey. He began riding for Richard Todd, who in the 1950s was one of the biggest stars in British films: “He’d come along to the stables looking great, with a glamorous woman on his arm,” he recalled. “I was impressed. And even as a kid, I used to gallop my pony and throw myself off. I wanted to be a stuntman even then, I don’t know why.”

When he was 17, he met a real stuntman, who wanted to rent one of his horses for the film “Arabesque,” with Gregory Peck and Sophia Loren. “Then they wanted someone to ride it, and they paid 20 pounds [$32] to me for the day. Most people I knew then weren’t even making 20 pounds a week.”

Then came his first Bond film, “You Only Live Twice,” released in 1967. “I was one of the ninjas. I was paid 90 pounds just for descending 125 feet down a rope. I took that money and I bought my first car with it. I thought to myself, there’s a business here.”

There was, and Armstrong carved out his own niche. He was almost the only young stuntman in Britain in the 1960s: “There were only about 30 altogether, and most of them were middle-aged ex-commandos who had fought in World War II. I think I got work because actors liked the idea of a younger guy being their stunt double.”

Armstrong soon began working abroad, amassing a solid base of experience: “I was lucky that all the big pictures in those days were horse operas.” With a strong entrepreneurial streak, he was soon aiming to become a stunt coordinator, though it was his collaboration with Ford that made him an industry name.

“It used to be taboo even to mention stunt people,” he said. “Harrison was one of the first to say, ‘Vic does this, he’s great.’ At first, I wouldn’t admit to doing the stunts. People didn’t go to Indiana Jones films to see Vic Armstrong. They went to see Harrison Ford. He is Indiana Jones. And I had to fight him half the time in order to do his stunts.”

A stuntman no longer

Armstrong retired from stunt work after the last of the “Indiana Jones” trilogy to concentrate on stunt coordination and action directing. (“I never wanted to be an old stuntman,” he said.) He won a science and technology Academy Award for inventing a device called the fan descender, which allows a stunt worker to fall from any height at any speed on a cable. He has also directed one action feature, “The Joshua Tree” (1993), with Dolph Lundgren and George Segal, and an episode of “Adventures of Young Indiana Jones,” in which, he said proudly, “there was hardly any action at all. George Lucas liked the episode so much he moved it up from sixth to open the second season.”

When Armstrong is hired, he brings along a regular team of some 50 colleagues, including three assistant directors, a production manager, script supervisor, camera operators and grips.

He now presides over a family dynasty of stunt workers. His wife, Wendy Leech, was a stuntwoman (they worked together on the “Indiana Jones” films when she was doubling for Karen Allen and Kate Capshaw and he was doubling for Ford). Their daughter Nina, 22, worked on “Gangs of New York”; Armstrong’s brother Andy got into the business, then became an assistant director on such films as the remake of “Planet of the Apes” and “Galaxy Quest,” and stunt coordinator on “Charlie’s Angels,” and “The Firm.”

Still, there is a sense that he has ambitions as an auteur. He invites a visitor into his screening room to show the full three-minute version of the car chase sequence on the ice lake in “Die Another Day.”

“I shot a beautiful car chase,” he said with a sigh. “Parts of it are almost like a ballet. I was hoping that more of it would end up on screen. But I realize you have to serve the film.”

He is also proud of the pre-credit powerboat sequence in “The World Is Not Enough” that begins on the Thames at Vauxhall Bridge, outside MI6, Britain’s real-life intelligence community headquarters, and ends several miles down river at the Millennium Dome.

“We had to start at MI6, end at the dome, and there had a to be a hot air balloon in there somewhere,” he recalled. “You start with a blank piece of paper. It’s tough, coming up with something original. Everything seems to involve falling off something, a high fall or a parachute. It’s mind-boggling.”

Still, Armstrong also yearns to direct more films himself. There are two possibilities on the horizon -- a werewolf movie and a picture set in medieval times. “I like the thought of simply directing actors, getting scenes right,” he said. “I’m creative. I like to move on.”

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

On location with Armstrong

Every action scene has a story. Vic Armstrong provides this behind-the-camera commentary on three sequences:

The Four Feathers -- “I shot this sequence during Ramadan, a holiday where Muslims cannot eat after sundown. So it was really embarrassing when craft services came out and we had to hide our food and drink from this poor hungry and thirsty crowd of 2,000.”

Starship Troopers -- “We shot this sequence in a place called Hell’s Half Acre [in central Wyoming], and one day I actually saw hell freeze over, because it hailed and snowed and the whole moon-like landscape went white for a day.”

Die Another Day -- “The ice was just thick enough to safely withstand the weight of the crew, cars and equipment, but it was very disconcerting to feel the ice flex like a trampoline whenever the cars raced past, and you knew there was 1,000 feet of water beneath you.”