The Full Burn: On the Set, at the Bar, Behind the Wheel, and Over the Edge with Hollywood Stuntmen

sometime back in the late 1970s,movie stunt performers started to get the recognition they deserved.TV specials and magazine articles appeared showing their many thrilling 'gags'.and then,they slowly dropped back out of sight as budgets got smaller and computers got bigger(in power,if not size).kevin conley reintroduces us to the world of stunt perfomers(stuntman is a phrase not used much anymore..like mailman).we meet old legends and new 'extreme' up and comers who create newer,bigger,badder(and sometimes cheaper) stunts in a world were CGI effects endanger employment but reduce risk to performers.we have gone from audiances wondering'how'd they do that?' to 'aww..its just a computer' when watching the impossible.my only real complaint of this book is its too short and a book like this cries out for more pictures(but it does have some).you will read about the lives of these remarkable people in front of and behind the camera..the hard life,both emotionally and physically,of a modern stunt performer..shop talk..practical jokes,feuds,etc.of the men and women who thrill us for a few seconds of glory and a few dollars more in their pockets.

In "The Full Burn," Kevin Conley, author of "Stud," examines a different kind of stud: the braver, tougher, and cooler (than you me) men and women who work as professional stuntmen and stuntwomen. Conley spent years visiting the sets of some of the stand-out action movies of recent years (the third Bourne movie, Tarantino's Grindhouse flick) as well as those of a couple action-heavy stinkers ("The Punisher"), in order to examine the lives and craft of some of the contemporary masters in the field (like the guy who went under the truck in "Raiders of the Lost Ark," sometimes called the most dangerous stunt ever). The result is part biography, part history, part how-to, and even part George Plimpton when Conley himself steps into the line of fire (literally). Once again, Conley demonstrates a great sense of character and an eye for the weird detail and, to name two, his descriptions of shooting car chases in the Tarantino film and alligator wrestling in a B-movie shot in a Louisiana swamp are terrifically fun.