It’s little wonder that he’s a man of action

Allan Graf

Football coordinator, stunt coordinator, second-unit director.

Current assignments: “Friday Night Lights,” out on DVD and VHS, and “Man of the House,” which opened last month.

Playbook: “I have done 10 football movies, and I’ve done a lot of other big features -- ‘We Were Soldiers,’ ‘Wayne’s World.’ I love action. I do big action movies, but because I played football at USC and my son played there and I got in the business doubling a football player, it came natural for me to do football movies.”

First and 10: “I read the script and break down the football plays. I draw up the plays and give them a name and describe it in more detail. For ‘Friday Night Lights,’ I was already in Texas, and we did advertising [for players] and had tryouts. I interviewed some 900 football players. I have to interview all the people I am going to pick for my 40-man squad -- the ones who are actually going to play.

“Once they make the team, we give them a playbook and start running the plays in the movie. Along with that, the actors who are going to play football come out and start working with us. We work with doubles with the actors. I have to get doubles to play the actors’ roles because a lot of them have never played football.

“My rule of thumb is we never hit an actor. We can’t afford anyone to get hurt. When we did ‘Any Given Sunday,’ we could do some controlled stuff, but it is very limited how much you can do. On ‘Friday Night Lights,’ there was only one guy who had quarterback experience and that was Lucas Black. He was a great athlete. He did a lot ... but the other guys were doubled a lot.”

The squad that plays together: “Now I have a group of players that just follows me around. After ‘Friday Night Lights,’ I did a movie with Al Pacino up in Canada called ‘Two for the Money’ and they allowed me to bring all my players and camera people and I got to direct the football sequences up there.”

The director’s hat: “Different directors want different things. The one thing I was happy about with Pete Berg with ‘Friday Night Lights’ is that he wanted reality. That’s what I really like. I like to make it very violent and very real. When I did ‘Jerry Maguire,’ Cameron Crowe wanted it to look exactly like ‘Monday Night Football,’ and we did it just like that.

“When I did ‘Any Given Sunday,’ Oliver Stone wanted to be on the field, a lot of up close and personal, a lot of hand-held cameras. On ‘Friday Night Lights,’ Pete Berg wanted it to be a documentary style. I usually use three to four cameras on a second unit.”

Getting into the game: “I played on a national championship team at USC with Coach John McKay and got to play in the College All-Star Game. I had a tryout with the Rams and was the last guy released in my rookie year. That is usually a bad sign because you are not able to be picked up by other teams. So the following year when they started the World Football League, I played for the Portland Storm for two years.

“In between those two years, I doubled for Dick Butkus in the Disney football movie ‘Gus.’ They used to call me ‘Little Butkus’ [in school], and I became his stunt man for 20 years.

“After I did ‘Gus’ I went back to the World Football League and then it collapsed.

“I had a lot of fun on the movie, so when the league collapsed, I started working out with stunt men and I just loved it. It took me five years to learn my craft, and then I became a stunt coordinator. Then Walter Hill gave me my opportunity to direct second unit on ‘Johnny Handsome.’ I have been with Walter over 20 years. I worked with him on the pilot of ‘Deadwood.’ ”

Union or guild: The Screen Actors Guild and the Directors Guild of America

Residence: Agoura Hills

Age: 55

Salary: “You know, I would have said you could make a good living at this 15 years ago, but the way things are going in CGI with action sequences, there are less and less stunt people working. I would hate to be 21 and starting out in this business as a stunt person. They are using computerized people to do falls. But I feel like the audience wants to see the human element [in stunts]. They don’t want to see a cartoon. I think people are tired of all of these comic book movies. That is where the audience has got to say enough is enough.”