Stuntpersons and Academy Awards

[rainee]

Can someone tell me why Stunt Actors aren't given a category in the Academy Awards. I've never seen any reasoning for them being excluded. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong place to find the answer. I just feel they deserve the recognition as much as the "real" actors.

[bansi4]

Rainee,

 

Hollywood's most renowned suntman Yakima Canutt received an honorary Oscar in 1967,

for achievements as a stunt man and for developing safety devices to protect stunt men everywhere.

 

Here is an interesting article regarding the subject:

 

 

 

Stuntmen look for Oscar respect

 

17.02.05 1.00pm

 

 

LOS ANGELES - They jump from skyscrapers, crash cars and set themselves on fire for movies, but when it comes to Oscars, Hollywood?s stuntmen can?t get any respect.

 

Four groups representing film stuntmen plan to press the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for a new Academy Award category next year honoring the highly dangerous work that fills so many modern movies.

 

The effort to create a category for stunt coordinator - the men and women who dream up, then execute the flashy film work - is being pressed by 20-year industry veteran Jack Gill, a former president of one of the groups, Stunts Unlimited.

 

Joining it are the Stuntmen?s Association of Motion Pictures, the International Stunt Association and Brand X, all of which represent hundreds of people who create and perform film stunts.

 

"I can?t tell you why they refuse us a category," said Gill, who has been asking the Motion Picture Academy for a stunt category for 15 years. "At the most, I thought it would take five," he said.

 

The Academy Awards are the US film industry?s top honors given out each year by the Motion Picture Academy.

 

While there is an Oscar category for special effects, called "visual effects," and awards for technology advances, the Motion Picture Academy has never had an Oscar category for the men and women who risk their lives for Hollywood action.

 

Conrad Palmisano, president of the Stuntmen?s Association, said for years there was a tradition among stuntmen to remain in the background, but for decades stunt work has been among the most memorable scenes in movies.

 

Imagine 2003?s Oscar-winning "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" without its hand-to-hand combat or 1969?s Oscar-nominated "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" without Butch and Sundance jumping off a cliff into raging river.

 

"For what we do, why shouldn?t we be acknowledged for the work," said Palmisano.

 

Jon Pavlik, a spokesman for the Motion Picture Academy, acknowledged the work done by the stunt groups, but said the group?s Board of Governors is reluctant to add new categories for several reasons, including that each new honor might diminish the importance of the current awards.

 

The board is very, very, reluctant to add new categories," he said. "You just got to keep trying. and sometimes you will ultimately succeed, and sometimes you won?t."

 

He said the earliest the issue might come up would be at the board?s next meeting in May. In the past, Gill said he has raised the issue a few months before the Academy Awards ceremony. This year?s Oscar telecast takes place on Feb. 27.

 

The most recent addition in the 77-year-old award show was a best animated feature Oscar for 2002, and it took Hollywood?s animators decades to get that approved.

 

Only one stunt man has been recognized for his work in the movies, and that was Yakima Canutt, who was given an honorary Oscar in 1967 for creating such scenes as the legendary chariot race in "Ben Hur."

 

- REUTERS

 

There is also the Taurus World Stunt Awards.

[MattHelm]

I wonder if this is the Actors' Guild's doing, because they might not want to detract any attention away from the main actors' mythos. Even though they list these people near the end of a film's credits, they know that most people either don't stay to read them, or can't connect which stunt person performed which actor's stunts.

 

I think back, and can remember one particular stunt guy that should have won an award ... the stunt man in The Road Warrior that flew and spiraled in the air after his car collided with an oncoming car. This was years before GCI.

 

These people risk their lives, and many have lost them (Ben-Hur and since), to make movies what they are. Not only should they be regular Oscar recipients, there are many deserved retrograde Oscars that need to be given out.

 

Someone should start a petition. If there's already one I'll sign. Years ago, I wrote an article about Miramax's unfairness toward an Asian film called "Hero," and a site called Monkeypeaches.com referred to it and started an online petition against Miramax and the Motion Picture Academy's treatment of Asian films. That same year, without any showing of the movie in this country (this was before the "Tarantino Presents" version), it was nominated for an Oscar in the Foreign Film category. So these online petitions do work. Maybe TCM could be a force in this.

[rainee]

Thanks for the article and other info. I just can not understand the logic of some of the awards that are given, but refusing a group of people that put so much into a movie. I would love to see some of the pretty boys who are "actors" do more than break a sweat.

 

But I do agree that it sounds like a union issue. Maybe someday soon they will get the recognition they so deserve. Maybe when they quit calling Brad Pitt an actor. (I'm living for the day)