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Theres no debate that stunt work is the most dangerous job in the film industry. When Andy Samberg and the rest of the Lonely Island crew set out to make Hot Rod, they knew things had to be dialed up. The reason Hot Rod works so well is because of the commitment by the stunt team. With out a dedicated crew, Hot Rod wouldn't have been the cult classic it is today.
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Oh, sh**
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The Lonely Island's 2007 comedy, Hot Rod, was, among other things, a heartfelt tribute to stuntmen
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the performers whose sole job it is to put their bodies, and sometimes even their lives, on the line to entertain us
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Despite the love, at least one stuntman was badly injured executing a stunt for the movie
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Which actually isn't all that surprising, because although many people don't realize it
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making comedies can be dangerous. And Hot Rod might be the most dangerous comedy ever made
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It sounds wrong when you say it out loud, but when it's presented in the right way
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and under the right circumstances, seeing people get hurt, or at least appear to, makes us laugh
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And since the dawn of cinema, talented filmmakers have been able to exploit that kind of humor
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to make slapstick comedy. Hot Rod, for example, tells the story of Rod Kimball
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Played by Andy Samberg, Rod is a self-styled amateur stuntman who is determined to win the respect of his stepfather
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So when the insurance company refuses to pay for a heart transplant, the old man needs to stay alive
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Rod, who lives in the pre-GoFundMe era, sets out to raise the money himself through performative stunt work
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As you would probably expect based on that plot summary, the movie is filled with stunts of various scales
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We see Rod attempt everything from little tricks like riding on his moped backwards and standing on the seat with one leg up
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two full-fledged Daredevil-style cycle jumps over a pool, or in the climactic scene, 15 school buses
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He's also clocked by a washing machine, blown out of a watchtower, set on fire
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used as a piñata, and hit by a van. Twice. But since Rod isn't all that great at what he does
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He wipes out spectacularly in pretty much all of those sequences. In fact, the first scene of the movie, the one where he tries to jump the mail truck
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tells you pretty much everything you need to know about Rod. He lines his bike up with the takeoff ramp and asks if it been reinforced On finding out that it hasn he shrugs it off and immediately rides toward it Of course it collapses sending Rod into an incredibly painful collision that makes
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him puke. But a moment later, he's fine, riding his moped like nothing happened
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In this sense, Rod is a bit of a cartoon character, and over the course of the movie
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he takes hits about as regularly as Wile E. Coyote. It's the movie's chief source of humor, and in promo interviews, co-star Ian McShane said
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The more Andy gets hurt in this, the more the audience loves it and laughs, which is what it's about
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And Andy, or at least Rod, does get hurt. Nailed it. In addition to all the stunts, this includes frequent competitive slugfests with his rough and tumble stepfather
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and a gag where we see him trip down the side of a mountain and experience what the script literally specified would be
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the longest fall in movie history. And to their credit, it is pretty long
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Viewers often assumed stunts like The Long Fall were achieved using dummies
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But in the words of lowly islander and hot rod director Akiva Schaefer, there are no dummies in the whole movie
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There are wires sometimes because people are getting cranked and pulled around, but it's all real dudes
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And for performers, physical comedy can be dangerous enough to begin with
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In an interview years after the fact, actor Joe Pesci reflected on a serious burn on the top of his head he received
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performing a stunt on the set of Home Alone 2. According to Pesci, that came in addition to the expected bumps
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bruises, and general pains that you would associate with that particular type of physical humor
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but that risk is also exacerbated by the way comedy is usually shot
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Charlie Chaplin once observed, Life is a tragedy when seen in a close-up, but a comedy in long shot
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Of course, Chaplin was being metaphorical, but shooting in wide shots allows the audience to see everything play out in a single lived moment
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It also creates a greater sense of continuity and timing. And of course, timing is so important to comedy
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This especially goes for physical comedy. Buster Keaton was a big believer in the idea that uncut wide shots helped highlight the
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skill involved in physical hijinks. And while filmmaking styles have obviously changed a lot over the last century, more
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often than not comedy still lives in the wide shot You like what you see But the need to show physical gags in wide shots is a complicating factor for stunt comedies
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Big-budget action films often try to avoid showing too much action in unbroken wides
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because of how dangerous it can be to stage such scenes. It's one of the reasons the hallway fights
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from Park Chan-wook's 2003 actioner Oldboy and 2013's Daredevil series on Netflix were so memorable
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Instead, many action movies often try to sell stunt work using fancy cutting techniques and camera tricks
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Stunt-heavy comedies, however, can't always benefit from those same techniques and tricks
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which makes things more dangerous for the stunt performers. Exacerbating the problem is that, even today
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the comparatively lower budgets of most comedies limits the extent to which CGI or face replacement technology
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can be used to create stunt sequences. That means every stunt in Hot Rod represents a risk
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a stunt performer took to get laughs. And to give credit where credit is due
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star Andy Samberg took a few of those risks himself, including performing the hilarious pool jump sequence
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Don't worry, Denise. I've done this before. But while Samberg didn't get hurt
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not everyone was quite so lucky. The stuntman who performed the jump in the opening sequence
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when Rod attempts to clear the mail truck but winds up gruesomely smacking himself on the opposite ramp
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actually hit that ramp for real and broke his leg. According to Schaefer, that stunt was supposed to go wrong, but it was supposed to go wrong in a
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different way. He wasn't supposed to break his leg, clearly. Lonely Islander and Hot Rod co-star
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Jorma Taccone would later recall the broken femur made the stuntman look like a ragdoll dummy
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But Schaefer, for his part, just remembers the stuntman being loaded into the ambulance and
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asking through gritted teeth if the take was usable. It was. It ended up in the movie
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and the stunt performer won a 2008 Taurus Stunt Award for his trouble. Now, just to be clear, we're not saying the producers of the movie were reckless
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or ran a dangerous set or anything like that. Accidents can happen, even on well-run sets
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In fact, that stunt performer's workmanlike attitude about the whole thing comes from the fact that as a class of professionals
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they used to taking abuse in the name of bringing action to life for the silver screen And the stunt personnel on Hot Rod certainly got put through the ringer but it comes with a job specifically in comedy
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where everything is played bigger and crazier to get laughs. There have been some incredibly
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serious injuries on the sets of comedies. Stuntwoman Cheryl Wheeler was nearly killed
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while shooting a hoverboard crash in Back to the Future 2, and while filming The Hangover 2
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Australian stunt driver Scott McLean was injured in a near-fatal car accident while doubling for
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Ed Helms. The footage wound up in the finished movie, but McLean wound up in a coma, and he was
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lucky to survive. Thankfully, they're unusual, but there have been some stunt performer fatalities
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on the sets of comedies. Revered stuntman Dar Robinson died while shooting a stunt for the
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little-known 1987 comedy Million Dollar Mystery. And more recently, stuntwoman Joy Harris died
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shooting a stunt for the superhero comedy Deadpool 2, which admittedly may fall a little more to the
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action movie side of the spectrum. Finally, you can't have a discussion about comedy movies that
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were dangerous to make without mentioning Jackie Chan. Although most of his films are more explicitly
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action comedies, Chan's work clearly shows he was heavily influenced by early physical comedy
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masters like Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton. Not surprisingly, then Chan, because he also loves to
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get laughs through physical comedy, also loves to shoot action in wides
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Steady. It's not moving. Let the camera, let the audience see what I'm fighting
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Coupled with the fact that he famously does many of his own stunts, it means Jackie Chan has taken a whole lot of punishment over the course of his career
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including broken teeth, dislocated shoulders, spinal damage, and no less than 20 broken bones
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And he did it all in the name of bringing us thrills and laughs
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When I do a boom, boom, boom, I always turn around. That's Jackie Chan
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So Hot Rod might not literally be the most dangerous comedy ever made
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but as a movie that repeatedly uses good old-fashioned practical stunt work to get laughs
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it is the most dangerous kind of comedy that can be made. And that has to at least make us think about why stunt performers find those risks worth taking
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The ultimate point of Hot Rod is that Rod's talent isn't being the guy who lands safely on the other side
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It's being the guy who throws himself into danger, takes the hits and gets back up again for everyone else
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