Latest / Come Together with Ephraim Herschmann / Entertainment Series 4: Jon Devore / Aerial Stuntman / Coordinator

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Entertainment Series 4: Jon Devore / Aerial Stuntman / Coordinator · Come Together with Ephraim Herschmann

• 0:01
  Welcome to another episode of Come Together.
• 0:14
  Thanks, Josh Devore. You got it just in time.
• 0:17
  Thanks so much for coming. I was like Jon Devore.
• 0:22
  Jon Devore. Jon Devore, welcome man.
• 0:24
  I'm so happy that you came. This is so dude, your website
• 0:28
  may make you look at the coolest person in the entire world.
• 0:32
  Yeah, I think that was that was great because just a little bit
• 0:37
  of context for how I found you. I've always loved entertainment
• 0:42
  world and I've always loved not just consuming it, but
• 0:47
  understanding how things happen. You know what, what pieces have
• 0:50
  to fall into place in order to make the magic happen.
• 0:53
  And, and as I started doing the podcast, I started talking to
• 0:56
  more and more people. I realized how important
• 0:59
  stuntmen work, stunt stunt work is, you know, And so I've made
• 1:04
  it. So I, so I asked chat TVT, give
• 1:07
  me a list of, of, you know, some people that do different types
• 1:11
  of stunts, whether it's, you know, martial arts or aerial or,
• 1:14
  you know, whatever it was. And so, so you're one of the,
• 1:17
  one of the people that popped up and, and thank you so much for
• 1:20
  making the time. I appreciate it.
• 1:21
  Nice, good to hear chat knows me.
• 1:24
  There you go. Well, I mean I think it works in
• 1:26
  the same thing as Google, right? Yeah, similar.
• 1:28
  Data, right. So, so John, you're so I wanted,
• 1:34
  there's a bunch of different topics I wanted to kind of talk
• 1:36
  to you about your thoughts on. I wanted to start actually with
• 1:41
  the fact that you're from Alaska, which I feel like is not
• 1:45
  too common over here, you know, in the.
• 1:47
  Yeah. Domestic quarter million people
• 1:49
  there, so, yeah. Something like that.
• 1:51
  How'd you, how'd your family end up there?
• 1:54
  What, what were you born there? What was that like?
• 1:57
  I was actually born in Colorado, but as a baby my parents moved
• 2:00
  to Alaska. So it was a very Long story
• 2:02
  short on that one. Was my, my grandfather on my
• 2:05
  mom's side had an early age heart attack.
• 2:08
  And when he got better, his wife, my grandma asked like,
• 2:11
  what do you want to do? You know, one of those like,
• 2:14
  let's change our lives. And he said, I want to go be a
• 2:15
  commercial fisherman in Alaska because he liked, you know,
• 2:19
  fishing, but in Colorado. So they packed their bags and
• 2:22
  they moved to Alaska within a year or two of them being there.
• 2:28
  I'd probably tell the story a little wrong because I was only
• 2:30
  a baby. But within moments of time, my
• 2:33
  parents went to visit and they did what what happened to them
• 2:37
  happens to a lot of people that moved there is when they showed
• 2:40
  up, it was summertime and they had two weeks of beautiful
• 2:43
  weather and my dad went out fishing, caught king salmon like
• 2:48
  life couldn't have been better. So they then went home and they
• 2:51
  were a young, young couple starting a family.
• 2:55
  Dad has an engineering company, you know, just starting though.
• 2:58
  But so they sold all that and followed my mom's parents to
• 3:02
  Alaska and chased the Alaska dream, which I couldn't be
• 3:05
  happier than they did because growing up there, you know, I
• 3:08
  feel like I was born there because that's all I remember
• 3:10
  because I was a baby. But growing up there, I just
• 3:13
  feel insanely blessed, you know, it's the opportunities that
• 3:16
  Alaska gives you everywhere from spiritually, physically,
• 3:20
  everything you do there is a, it's a really special place
• 3:23
  compared to most places in the world.
• 3:24
  So I couldn't be happier that I grew up there.
• 3:27
  That's so cool. So I only spoke to one other
• 3:30
  gentleman in my life that actually, that's not true.
• 3:33
  I've done some business in Alaska.
• 3:34
  I've sold some. I saw, I saw medical equipment.
• 3:36
  I've sold some equipment in like Anchorage or you know, to
• 3:39
  veterinary hospitals in the area.
• 3:41
  But I, I had a buddy of mine that played basketball in Alaska
• 3:44
  for for a year. He was in Vegas for his
• 3:48
  profession, his college career, and then transferred to Alaska
• 3:51
  for a year. And one of the things that he
• 3:54
  talked about, he goes, he told me that other than the fact
• 3:56
  obviously that it's Alaska, he said that the that socially and
• 4:00
  culturally people are far more trusting of one another because
• 4:05
  it's a much more dangerous and small environment or.
• 4:08
  You know, I guess you have to depend on your neighbor.
• 4:10
  Yeah. Correct.
• 4:11
  And he's like, you know, hitchhiking.
• 4:13
  He's like, if you don't pick up a hitchhiker, that person could
• 4:16
  be dead, you know, I mean, within hours and you know, and
• 4:19
  so you know, I but but what spiritually, what did you what,
• 4:24
  what, what do you feel is different about Alaska than the
• 4:27
  rest? Of I just mean, you know, it was
• 4:28
  just a choice of words. But for me, it the way it put me
• 4:32
  in touch with nature and solidified as a young kid that I
• 4:36
  knew that I needed to do something different than sit in
• 4:39
  an office and just do the normal adult life.
• 4:42
  You know, it's being out and about in Alaska.
• 4:45
  You either get outside and play in the elements where you stay
• 4:48
  inside, get cabin fever, go crazy and can't wait to move.
• 4:51
  Yeah. There's really not a middle
• 4:53
  point. Yeah.
• 4:53
  And obviously, as a kid, I was the kid that was always outside
• 4:56
  searching for adventure. And so everywhere from being in
• 5:00
  touch with, you know, the empathetic parts of the, you
• 5:03
  know, the human psyche of, you know, caring for animals and
• 5:07
  nature and the forests and just Mother Earth, you know, I don't
• 5:12
  feel like, you know, truth be told, I don't really feel like
• 5:15
  I'm giving that to my kids, raising them in Southern
• 5:18
  California, where I live now. I was going to ask about that.
• 5:21
  Yeah. So it's, you know, I have, I
• 5:23
  have to live where I live for what I do, but sure.
• 5:26
  But yeah, I feel a little bit like I, you know, gypsy kids out
• 5:30
  of an experience because of that.
• 5:32
  I totally gotcha. I totally gotcha.
• 5:33
  I mean, it's funny because I grew up I I'm I'm trying to
• 5:36
  deviate my mentality. I grew up in with, with, with
• 5:40
  from the rat race, you know, and I'm trying so hard to find a
• 5:44
  balance of living a life that's meaningful as as opposed to a
• 5:48
  life that is material, you know, and searching for things that
• 5:52
  just pay the bill, you know, like bills need to get paid, you
• 5:55
  know, but you got to have some kind of sense of spiritual
• 5:58
  emotional satisfaction, you know, natural satisfaction as
• 6:02
  well. Yeah.
• 6:03
  Yeah. Which is actually one of the
• 6:04
  reasons I moved. I mean, it's funny because it
• 6:06
  doesn't sound like it, especially coming from Alaska.
• 6:08
  I lived in Seattle for a little while.
• 6:09
  That was amazing. Oh yeah, it's saving Northwest.
• 6:12
  It's. Almost.
• 6:12
  Oh man, oh man. And I went to actually, I'm so
• 6:16
  happy I did this. My roommate dragged me to the
• 6:18
  Cascades, the National, the National Park by Lake Diablo
• 6:22
  area, and I was just like, I didn't even know that this kind
• 6:26
  of stuff existed in America, you know?
• 6:28
  I was like, this is incredible. Yeah, no, I love Seattle area,
• 6:32
  man. That's that's where that's where
• 6:33
  my family lives now, everybody that retires.
• 6:35
  Oh yeah. Alaska, they usually they don't
• 6:37
  get much further than Washington or Oregon.
• 6:40
  Yeah, they still, they still want that PNW feel, but.
• 6:43
  Yeah, I told you guys, it's funny because I've, I've spoken
• 6:45
  to, it's a lot of people, whether it's store owners or
• 6:48
  Uber drivers or whatever that told me over the course of my
• 6:51
  time in Seattle. They're like everyone comes, he
• 6:53
  goes. If you get people at the right
• 6:55
  time, like what you said about Alaska, the right time of year,
• 6:57
  you know, for like 4 or five good months.
• 7:00
  There's something about Seattle that just stays with people that
• 7:02
  actually keeps on calling them back and keeps on bringing them
• 7:05
  back. And he goes, you wouldn't be,
• 7:06
  you'd be surprised how many people come for vacation and
• 7:09
  just end up moving there because it's so beautiful.
• 7:11
  Yeah. So you grew up in nature.
• 7:15
  You grew up a little bit, you know, completely separated by,
• 7:19
  you know, with and, and really in the midst of it.
• 7:22
  How did you, were you always a risky type of kid?
• 7:26
  Were you always athletic? Were you always.
• 7:28
  Yeah, that kind of kid. Yeah, pretty much.
• 7:31
  You know, especially if you ask my parents or something, It's
• 7:33
  yeah. Every time.
• 7:34
  I started skiing as soon as I could.
• 7:36
  I think I was like 4-4 or five when I started skiing.
• 7:40
  I was just always outside, you know, as a, as a young kid when
• 7:43
  I was like, well, I was like 14 or 15.
• 7:46
  Got certified to scuba dive, ski and rock climbing.
• 7:49
  I was a river raft guy. Do you name?
• 7:51
  It. You know, mountain biking, the
• 7:53
  whole thing, I just love being outdoors and all the way from
• 7:56
  camping to the extreme stuff. It's it's what?
• 7:59
  So how So what? So what?
• 8:00
  How'd you make that transition? Did you always know that you
• 8:02
  were going to do something like this?
• 8:04
  Or how did you start getting involved in professional stunt
• 8:07
  and and you know, and aerial work?
• 8:10
  Yeah, it's a it's a funny story, I guess.
• 8:12
  But so when I was a senior in high school, I basically wrote a
• 8:18
  paper. I had a dream that I wanted to
• 8:19
  invent my own. I'll back up.
• 8:23
  I worked for a river raft company in the summer and I saw,
• 8:25
  you know, there's so many cruise ships that come in every day.
• 8:28
  And I watch people get very successful financially by
• 8:31
  figuring out how to tap into tourism.
• 8:34
  So I knowing that I wanted to be outside, I wanted to open my own
• 8:38
  adventure tourism company. I wanted to call it Choose Your
• 8:41
  Own adventure. Kind of like the books you read
• 8:42
  as a kid or you get to the end of a chapter and you have to
• 8:45
  decide where to go. I was going to build a company
• 8:47
  that people really didn't know what was coming at them and they
• 8:50
  had to choose their next. That's so cool.
• 8:52
  That's so much fun. So as a senior in high school, a
• 8:55
  guy randomly came through our town offering tandem skydiving
• 8:58
  and it was the first time it was ever in our town.
• 9:01
  And I was this first guy that signed up.
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  My funny story is I had a fake ID, the only way I could jump
• 9:06
  because I was too young to jump. OK, so I did a jump, realized I
• 9:10
  loved skydiving. It had no idea like how to get
• 9:12
  into it. It didn't exist in Alaska.
• 9:14
  But I knew that I wanted to offer a tandem skydiving as part
• 9:17
  of my adventure tourism package. So I quickly, you know, was
• 9:22
  skipping a little bit of the story.
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  I realized that OK, I need 500 skydives to get my tandem
• 9:27
  license and then I can come back home and take care of the rest
• 9:31
  of this stuff. I can't, I can't imagine it's
• 9:33
  very cheap to do 500 dives right?
• 9:36
  No, I mean there's a lot cheaper back then when I did it in the
• 9:39
  early 90s compared to today, it's a lot more.
• 9:41
  But but skydiving is not cheap. But it's like any sport, it's
• 9:44
  once you get through the certification and once you buy
• 9:47
  the gear, then it's not too bad. Like a day of skydiving without
• 9:50
  breaking down the numbers would be like a day of skiing.
• 9:53
  OK, gotcha. Once you buy your ski gear and
• 9:55
  you got your lift ticket, you know it's you go.
• 9:58
  So it's it is expensive, but I worked really hard.
• 10:01
  I worked at a million different jobs, got paid pretty well as a
• 10:04
  kid because Alaska has a lot of great opportunities.
• 10:08
  So I'd saved up a lot of money that I thought I was going to
• 10:10
  use towards college. But I chased a girlfriend out of
• 10:14
  high school to a small little Community College in Texas just
• 10:17
  knowing that I needed to get my basic business associates at a
• 10:21
  minimum. Sure.
• 10:23
  So during that time. Was that a culture shock going
• 10:25
  from Alaska to Texas? Yeah, especially where I went, I
• 10:28
  could go into. Which part of Texas were you in?
• 10:31
  It was like 2 hours out of Dallas and a little town
• 10:34
  Navarro, Texas. She went there because of some
• 10:36
  cheerleading program. I went there just to follow my
• 10:39
  girlfriend and of. Course, yeah.
• 10:41
  Not not go to school. Yeah.
• 10:43
  But that first semester there was also a skydive center
• 10:46
  somewhat close at Texas A&M. And so I went and learned to
• 10:50
  skydive. And then I realized by talking
• 10:52
  to people there, like, holy crap, there's a there's a whole
• 10:55
  life in an industry here. So semester one, I went back, I
• 10:59
  broke up with my girlfriend. I packed my car and I went back
• 11:02
  to Alaska with the idea of working one more stint at a big
• 11:07
  I had a job at a big silver mine there that paid, you know, at
• 11:10
  the time I'm 18. So when I call it paid adult
• 11:12
  money, it it paid really well. Sure.
• 11:15
  So I worked there for like half a year, saved up a a ton of
• 11:18
  money and then packed my bags again and moved down to the
• 11:22
  largest skydiving center in the world, which is in Eloyd,
• 11:25
  Arizona. It's kind of little at Phoenix
• 11:27
  and Tucson. And when I rolled into the drop
• 11:31
  zone, I'd kind of I within one or two weeks of being there, I
• 11:35
  realized one, I was at the right spot.
• 11:36
  I kind of landed there on accident, just knowing that it
• 11:39
  was a place that I could jump in the winter sunny and it looked,
• 11:42
  it looked big in the magazines, but I didn't know that I was
• 11:45
  going to the biggest place. That was where the entire world
• 11:48
  went to train for all the nationals and world meets.
• 11:51
  So it was a crazy scene for me. And I quickly realized what was
• 11:57
  going on. And that was there was in my
• 12:00
  view, what I saw, what I saw the snowboarding world do to skiing
• 12:04
  when it came into the ski world in the beginning, something like
• 12:08
  that was happening in skydiving. There was this whole new
• 12:10
  discipline being talked about. People were trying to invent it
• 12:14
  but couldn't really figure out how to do it yet.
• 12:15
  But there was this big momentum and luckily.
• 12:18
  What was it leading up to? What today is called free
• 12:22
  flying. So vertical skydiving, It didn't
• 12:24
  exist then. It was just people on your
• 12:26
  bellies falling and building formations.
• 12:29
  Gotcha. Yeah.
• 12:30
  But there was this artistic kind of, you know, group of people
• 12:34
  from all around the world, only about 10 people that were pooled
• 12:37
  together trying to figure out how to get off their bellies,
• 12:40
  get vertical and stay together. Yeah.
• 12:42
  Is that something that you figure out how to do eventually?
• 12:45
  Yeah. Well, I joined that group within
• 12:46
  that year of being there. I quickly was in that group.
• 12:50
  And so I became, you know, I'm rushing through a little bit of
• 12:53
  the story, But within the first year I was already recognized
• 12:57
  because I spent so much money jumping compared to most people.
• 13:00
  I was just, people thought I had a trust fund or something
• 13:02
  because I was just there throwing hundreds of dollars
• 13:04
  down a day just jumping. Yeah.
• 13:06
  But it got me to a skill level that I caught up to people that
• 13:09
  had been doing it for years within a year because I did like
• 13:13
  1200 jumps my first year and. That got.
• 13:16
  Going fast, yeah. I quickly became one of that
• 13:20
  group that is considered to be The Pioneers of free flying.
• 13:23
  We invented a whole new discipline and especially in
• 13:27
  that time of the sport before there was vertical wind tunnels
• 13:29
  and things, people had to come to drop zones and hire coaches
• 13:33
  to get good. Right.
• 13:36
  What goes into that, if you don't mind me asking?
• 13:39
  So can you break down, let's say form when you're when you're
• 13:43
  jumping, right, when you have a coach and you're and you're and
• 13:46
  you're and you're skydiving, you're free or free flying which
• 13:49
  or either what what are the things that people do that would
• 13:52
  be wrong or right or and. Why?
• 13:54
  Well, really depends on what skill level you're at.
• 13:56
  I mean, I, I've trained everybody from super beginner
• 14:00
  skydivers that are barely jumping out on their bellies,
• 14:03
  getting stable and like, Oh my God, I'm overwhelmed, to world
• 14:06
  champion people that are just trying to get a little bit
• 14:10
  better to go with the art. Yeah.
• 14:12
  So it really depends on where you're at.
• 14:15
  So somebody like me as a coach, I would meet you and assess
• 14:18
  where you're at. And then it says me, I'm brand
• 14:21
  new, I've never done it before. I'm just a huge.
• 14:23
  I wouldn't start with you because I would go go to your
• 14:25
  drop zone, go through the course to get certified, OK.
• 14:29
  And so within depending on how aggressive you are, but it could
• 14:32
  be like a long four day weekend if at a big drop zone.
• 14:34
  But if once you get 25 jumps under your belt, the 1st 12 of
• 14:38
  which are with a coach and they're holding you and really
• 14:42
  hands on the last 12 or you're doing solos, but you're kind of
• 14:45
  getting comfortable. But then after 25 jumps, you
• 14:48
  have an A license which allows you to be a skydiver anywhere in
• 14:51
  the world. You have a little license.
• 14:53
  You're still a very new and regulated skydiver.
• 14:55
  But sure. So once you get to that stage, I
• 14:58
  would then probably not try to like, you know, you have so much
• 15:01
  to learn still. I could if you just really want
• 15:04
  to hire me, I'd be like, I'll take your money.
• 15:05
  But what you really should do is go out and do a couple 100 jumps
• 15:09
  and just go explore, jump with random people, learn how to fly.
• 15:13
  But once you get to a sticking point, you'd come to me.
• 15:16
  I would evaluate where you're at skill wise.
• 15:19
  What's going good, what's going bad, what are your bad habits.
• 15:22
  Just like racing a car ski. So what would be?
• 15:24
  Yeah. So what would be some examples
• 15:25
  of us say bad habits, for example, like, you know,
• 15:28
  something, I, I just started rolling jiu jitsu recently, you
• 15:32
  know, and one terrible habit that I have is that I keep my,
• 15:35
  my, my defaults is to have my feet flat on the floor, my legs
• 15:38
  flat on the floor. And my, and every 30 seconds
• 15:41
  the, the, the coach is the audience.
• 15:42
  Like pick your legs up, pick your legs up, pick your, you
• 15:44
  know, and it's a natural bad habit that I have to like re
• 15:47
  have to rewire and retrain my, my muscle memory to kind of.
• 15:51
  So what are some things that I, that people would do wrong or do
• 15:54
  do wrong? And what would be the potential
• 15:55
  consequences or unless it's more of a form in an art and a
• 15:59
  perfection kind of thing where you're just like, this is just
• 16:01
  the most. It's really all the above, but
• 16:03
  yeah, it's kind of all the above.
• 16:04
  But to answer some of those questions, it's basically like
• 16:08
  somebody that's coming to me. Some of the initial bad habits
• 16:12
  that people go with was they think that because you're in 120
• 16:16
  plus mile an hour winds, you need to control the air and be
• 16:19
  strong. So everybody's super stiff and
• 16:22
  rigid. Where really skydiving is more
• 16:25
  like yoga. You want to be really flexible
• 16:27
  and fluid. You want to be strong enough to
• 16:29
  put your body where it needs to be to deflect the wind and move
• 16:32
  where you want to move. But if you're using muscle,
• 16:35
  you're doing it wrong and you're going to be like a 2 by 4 in the
• 16:38
  wind. That's just like flipping
• 16:40
  everywhere compared to being fluid and absorbing.
• 16:43
  So a habit of being like not breathing enough, being super
• 16:46
  stiff and strong. And then a lot of it is form of
• 16:49
  body. Everybody finds a natural way
• 16:52
  where they think they need to because they feel comfortable.
• 16:54
  Like my arms, I feel good here. I feel good with my legs like
• 16:58
  this. But it might be making a move
• 17:00
  around the sky. Sure.
• 17:01
  So kind of just like what you're saying in in martial arts,
• 17:04
  breaking out the muscle memory that is probably wrong in them.
• 17:08
  Yeah. And retraining the muscle memory
• 17:11
  of what's right and why it's right.
• 17:13
  So that's very beginner stuff. And then as you get advanced,
• 17:16
  it's much more of form, technique and things of that
• 17:19
  nature. It's hard to explain if you're
• 17:21
  not jumping. I gotcha.
• 17:22
  Yeah, but that's I think that's that's clear enough.
• 17:24
  So so you're so you're young, you're you dropped out of
• 17:28
  college. You're probably in your late
• 17:30
  late teens, early 20s I imagine right at this.
• 17:32
  Point I moved to you like when I was 19, so.
• 17:35
  That's crazy. So were you, Are you at this
• 17:38
  point? First of all, when you said that
• 17:39
  you packed your car, you drove from Texas to Alaska.
• 17:43
  Well, I drove from Alaska to Texas, drove back from Texas to
• 17:46
  Alaska to work again, and then I drove back from Alaska to
• 17:49
  Arizona. Yeah.
• 17:51
  I did because I did the drive from New York to Seattle when I
• 17:54
  moved. And then I was thinking about
• 17:56
  driving to Alaska when I was from there and I was like,
• 17:58
  that's a whole another trip from New York.
• 17:59
  That's a that's a whole other country that you have to drive
• 18:01
  up and down. Alaska's way bigger than people
• 18:03
  think. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 18:05
  Wow. So you and what'd your parents
• 18:08
  say about all this? Or if did they have a say or
• 18:09
  they didn't? I know they were super
• 18:12
  supportive. I, you know, my parents, they
• 18:15
  weren't adventurous sports people at all like me, but
• 18:18
  obviously they had a sense of adventure in their spirit to
• 18:22
  pack their bags as young parents and move to Alaska.
• 18:25
  Sure. So they, and they also, you
• 18:27
  know, grew up in the 60s. They, you know, call them like a
• 18:29
  hippie mindset. Gotcha.
• 18:31
  Where their biggest thing was they just, they wanted to have a
• 18:34
  sister. They wanted us to just pursue
• 18:36
  whatever we were happy doing. It wasn't about chasing like you
• 18:40
  need to be a lawyer, a doctor, you know, you don't have to
• 18:42
  chase the money. You got to chase happiness
• 18:44
  because that's in the end what it's all about.
• 18:47
  So they, they saw I was happy. They saw I was doing what I was
• 18:49
  loving to do. So they were scared of what I
• 18:53
  was doing. But.
• 18:55
  It sounds great. It sounds scary like and I guess
• 18:58
  and very, very few accidents happen or or or serious accident
• 19:01
  injuries happen relatively speaking while I'm skydiving,
• 19:05
  right? That's pretty.
• 19:06
  Much. Yeah.
• 19:06
  I mean, it's it's insane how little true skydive accidents
• 19:10
  happen. I would say, and I'm making up a
• 19:13
  number, but I know I'm really close to like 90% of all
• 19:15
  accidents skydiving. Or when you're under a perfectly
• 19:18
  good parachute and you do a pilot error, like you fly a bat
• 19:21
  into the ground or something like that.
• 19:24
  But in free fall and stuff, the gear we have everywhere from
• 19:27
  little computers that pull for you, you have say for some
• 19:30
  reason you were either being an airhead and you didn't even know
• 19:32
  what altitude you're at or you're.
• 19:34
  On coaches or. Everywhere.
• 19:36
  So it doesn't even need us to do that that that manual, that
• 19:38
  manual. I mean you really need to, but
• 19:40
  there is a automatic opening device that will save your life
• 19:43
  if you're about to go in for sure.
• 19:46
  Gotcha. OK, so you're young and you're
• 19:48
  getting and you're doing this now.
• 19:52
  Are you into Did you get into the stunt world because you're a
• 19:58
  film fan or because you're. Sports fan like you know.
• 20:02
  A little bit of both, yeah. Yeah, a little bit of both.
• 20:05
  So when I say like year one ish, 2:00-ish on the drop zone, when
• 20:10
  I really realized I wanted to try to figure out how to do this
• 20:12
  with my life, I kind of surveyed the landscape of professional
• 20:16
  skydivers. And I realized there's only a
• 20:18
  few people that like I said, OK, who's fifty 60s and has been
• 20:22
  doing this. And I realized it was either the
• 20:25
  world champion type skydivers that had all the coaching and
• 20:29
  festivals and people booking their time and it was
• 20:33
  professional camera Flyers that could put stills or cameras on
• 20:36
  their head and get hired to do that work.
• 20:38
  Yeah. Yeah, or it was people that
• 20:42
  figured out how to break into the stunt world, which was
• 20:45
  obviously the most guarded because there was really like 3
• 20:48
  or 4 people and they got all the jobs and it never went anywhere
• 20:51
  else, right? So I kind of had a goal and I
• 20:53
  did it in stair stepping, Become a world champion, learn how to
• 20:56
  fly cameras and look for opportunities to break into the
• 21:00
  stunt world. Once my skill and, you know,
• 21:03
  expertise was to that level. And so I was just kind of always
• 21:06
  having that in my mind that that was a goal of mine and chasing
• 21:09
  it. That's really cool.
• 21:10
  And it's really cool how you thought of that plan because I
• 21:13
  feel like I would have thought of it backwards.
• 21:14
  I would have figured out like I would have wanted to, wanted to
• 21:17
  do the stunts and like, how do I get there?
• 21:19
  But it sounds like, I mean, but it seems like you were going
• 21:21
  more about the perfection of the art, or at least trying to
• 21:23
  really get to know the. Art yeah, the first decade of my
• 21:26
  career was I was wow cool and at.
• 21:29
  That point, you were living in Arizona the whole time.
• 21:33
  No, I did a couple years in Arizona and then I moved out to
• 21:36
  Florida to open the IT was called the first school of
• 21:39
  modern sky flying, but the first free fly school on the East
• 21:42
  Coast. So far it was just the West
• 21:44
  Coast. So I moved out to Florida for a
• 21:47
  few years and eventually moved back to help some buddies open a
• 21:50
  drop zone in Lake Tahoe, California.
• 21:53
  Wow, given some about here. Oh yeah, yes.
• 21:58
  There's these are these are these are fun places to hang
• 22:00
  out. These are outside.
• 22:01
  You know, it's funny when I whenever I travel to anywhere, I
• 22:04
  asked Google ChatGPT what the least touristy places for me to
• 22:08
  go find that or feel like the most authentic to have their own
• 22:11
  kind of like I don't want to go to places that the that where
• 22:15
  the locals are trying to cater to tourists.
• 22:17
  I want to go to the places where the locals are themselves and I
• 22:20
  get to just see what that's like a little bit.
• 22:22
  And I feel like the place that you're going is like America,
• 22:25
  America, you know, like people trying to be what America is
• 22:28
  perceived at. But like, you know, people
• 22:31
  really just mind their own business and doing their own
• 22:32
  things and living their own lives and doing their own
• 22:34
  hobbies and passions, you know, It's really, really cool.
• 22:37
  Yeah. So what was it like?
• 22:39
  So, so opening the flight school in Florida, what's the process
• 22:43
  for that? Did you have, is it crazy
• 22:44
  regulations, crazy insurance? Is it that is it a million
• 22:47
  different, you know, red tapes of bureaucracy?
• 22:49
  None of the above. Really.
• 22:52
  No, I mean it was pretty simple. The Skydive World the.
• 22:54
  Skydive World is a pretty simple place.
• 22:56
  Well, it's just the skydive world period.
• 22:58
  It's you know that to answer that just very matter of fact,
• 23:01
  it's I made a deal with the skydive center that was in
• 23:04
  Florida and they were happy to receive me and my teammates to
• 23:08
  move out there and open a school and create a scene.
• 23:11
  Cool. It's just making a deal with the
• 23:12
  local Scott Ivan place. And yes, the adult me looking
• 23:16
  back should have done those things you said to protect
• 23:18
  myself, but as a young 20 something year old, you don't
• 23:21
  care. You're just like I'm sponsored
• 23:23
  to the drop zone. I'm jumping all day and I'm I'm
• 23:25
  running a school. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 23:28
  Pretty crazy. It's pretty pretty carefree.
• 23:31
  Yeah, yeah. And now and now I I saw that
• 23:34
  this year that stunts are officially, officially on the
• 23:38
  was it the Emmy or the the there's some Oscars.
• 23:42
  The Oscars, Yeah. So people can be can be
• 23:44
  nominated for for stunts now. That's awesome.
• 23:47
  It's it's it's good to get. That, yeah, it's still, it's a
• 23:49
  great, it's a great breakthrough for sure.
• 23:52
  It's not exactly what it sounds like, like a stuntman is not
• 23:55
  going to get an award. OK, but what is it A?
• 23:58
  Coordinator could. Which you could do too I.
• 24:00
  Believe that the way I read it is the What's that?
• 24:03
  Which you can do as well, right? You're a coordinator as well.
• 24:06
  Yeah, yeah. I just meant it's not that
• 24:08
  you're not getting a reward for best stunt or something.
• 24:11
  Gotcha, gotcha. But it's, it's definitely a,
• 24:14
  we've been fighting since, you know, before I was even thinking
• 24:17
  about being a stuntman. They've been fighting to make it
• 24:20
  into the world of Oscars and stuff and finally did it.
• 24:23
  Yeah, yeah, it's cool. And it feels like it's, it
• 24:26
  feels, it feels also like it's kind of breaking a little bit
• 24:28
  into the, into the zeitgeist, you know, into the culture.
• 24:32
  And it feels like, you know, where there's a couple of movies
• 24:35
  recently or just more conversations based on it or or
• 24:37
  stunt people turn to directors or, you know, actors, which I
• 24:41
  feel, which, which is, I feel like I've been reading about
• 24:43
  more and more. Yeah, like.
• 24:47
  A fall guy movie. Yeah, yeah.
• 24:49
  And I believe. That did a lot for it.
• 24:52
  Did you? No, that that did a lot for.
• 24:56
  That did a lot for it. Yes, yes, yes, definitely.
• 24:59
  And I believe that the director of John Wick was also a stuntman
• 25:02
  originally. And and so when he when he was
• 25:06
  bouncing around, you know, doing the promotions for his movies,
• 25:09
  he'll talk about that quite a bit.
• 25:10
  I remember, I remember hearing that and thinking like this is
• 25:12
  really this is, this is, this is awesome.
• 25:15
  What's the difference between? How do you find the difference
• 25:17
  in satisfaction between coordinating and actually being
• 25:19
  part of the part of the stunts? I love both worlds.
• 25:26
  For me, whether it's the world of the Red Bull Air Force that I
• 25:29
  run or the world of Hollywood, I've always been a fan of.
• 25:32
  I kind of, I'm not the only one that's done this, but kind of
• 25:35
  broke the mold a little bit in a lot of times it's either you're
• 25:39
  one or the other. But ever since I started getting
• 25:42
  opportunities, I started kind of pleading the case of because
• 25:46
  it's such a specialty thing that that aerial stunts, that is, I
• 25:52
  always tried to fight to be the aerial stunt coordinator, but
• 25:55
  also a performer at the same time.
• 25:58
  That way I didn't have to get feedback from my team and just
• 26:01
  kind of trust what they're saying.
• 26:03
  I would have first hand experience and knowledge of what
• 26:05
  was going on in the scene. So then as a coordinator, I
• 26:08
  could make changes from, you know, first hand POV, not just
• 26:13
  talking to my team. So for me, though, it's a the
• 26:18
  big picture of coordinating and seeing the, the very beginning
• 26:22
  conversation, some random phone call from a director all the way
• 26:24
  to seeing it on the big screen. It's an amazing feeling.
• 26:28
  So I love the coordinating part of it and all the way down to
• 26:31
  the Red Bull world and a simple sorry do.
• 26:34
  You get input from the. Do you work with the director as
• 26:37
  a coordinator for for with editor on different scenes?
• 26:40
  Yeah. Yeah, every movie is different.
• 26:44
  Most of the time you're working directly with the second unit
• 26:46
  director, not the first unit director.
• 26:50
  But it depends on what movie it is.
• 26:52
  You know, say like the Mission Impossible and I just did, you
• 26:55
  know, I'm, I'm right next to McHugh, the director, and, you
• 26:59
  know, Tom and Wade Eastwood, the second unit director.
• 27:03
  So that's one where it's like everybody's always collaborating
• 27:06
  together. Other ones, I've never even seen
• 27:09
  an actor or a director. And we just go on a skeleton
• 27:12
  unit and they're like, here's the scene, here's the
• 27:14
  storyboards. Yeah.
• 27:15
  So everyone is very different. It depends on, I think, how
• 27:18
  involved the scene is in the movie.
• 27:21
  Gotcha. Yeah, I really, I was going to
• 27:23
  say, I feel like the premise of a lot of the, you know, Mission
• 27:25
  Impossible type movies, the premise is the action.
• 27:28
  So I feel like you're, you know, especially a lot of the big
• 27:31
  aerial stunts that that they're famous for.
• 27:34
  I feel like you. I feel like they would almost
• 27:36
  need, you know, you know, at least some kind.
• 27:39
  Of they do for those, Yeah, you're right, yeah.
• 27:41
  Definitely. What's What's that set?
• 27:42
  What's that? What's it like going to that
• 27:44
  set? It's, it's overwhelmingly
• 27:48
  awesome. You know, it's a there's a lot
• 27:51
  going, there's a lot going on, a lot of a lot of moving parts.
• 27:56
  Does it feel like a? City.
• 27:57
  Does it feel like a town? Does it feel like I mean like?
• 28:00
  I mean every sets. Yeah, go ahead.
• 28:04
  Oh, does every sets very different?
• 28:05
  You know, you, you might go film a scene that might even be a
• 28:08
  massive scene in a movie and it's just 20 people because
• 28:11
  you're just trying to film a thing.
• 28:13
  Or you might show up and there's 250 people on set and it's, it's
• 28:18
  a mini city, you know, like you said.
• 28:20
  So it's every, every time it's different, but it's always,
• 28:24
  that's what I like about it is a diversity.
• 28:26
  It's never rinse, repeat. Yeah, every day is something
• 28:29
  new, different. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 28:31
  I saw from I saw from the credits that I saw from your
• 28:34
  credits that there was a pretty cool variety in terms of
• 28:38
  different size productions or budgets or studios or even, you
• 28:41
  know, the type of movies that you know how, how, how stunt
• 28:44
  focused they were going to be. Right.
• 28:48
  The unrideables did you What? What, what is that?
• 28:52
  That was so cool. I I watched the trailer.
• 28:55
  I didn't watch. I didn't watch the movie.
• 28:57
  I have to. I have to watch it.
• 28:58
  I didn't have time since last night, but I watched the trailer
• 29:01
  for it and I was like, I absolutely need to sit on my
• 29:04
  couch and, and and and and watch this all the way through.
• 29:06
  It looks remarkable. Yeah.
• 29:09
  Can you ask one too? So what?
• 29:12
  Yeah. So what the Unrideables, the
• 29:13
  Alaska Range is, it's a documentary that was with Red
• 29:18
  Bull Media House. And so basically to back up
• 29:21
  before getting into the movie, what the sport is, is somewhere
• 29:25
  back in the early days, skydivers started finding out
• 29:29
  that if they jumped over mountains and flew their faster
• 29:32
  parachutes down mountains, it was a lot of fun.
• 29:35
  Paragliders were realizing instead of just running off a
• 29:38
  mountain and soaring on thermals, that if they flew
• 29:41
  smaller wings and flew down terrain, that was fun.
• 29:45
  And so eventually the two sports both kind of the same time start
• 29:49
  figuring out, hey, in the winter, if we put skis on, we
• 29:53
  can easily like, get enough speed to get a parachute over
• 29:57
  our head and then start flying. And so it was basically a
• 30:01
  combination of big mountain skiing meets skydiving meets
• 30:04
  paragliding. And it was a really small group
• 30:07
  of people, just like the small group that invented free flying
• 30:10
  when I started that had a vision of like, hey, there's something
• 30:13
  more than just like the Yahoo backyard thing.
• 30:17
  And so the sport started developing.
• 30:19
  And I was one of the early people that started on the
• 30:23
  skydive side that started going to mountains because I grew up
• 30:26
  skiing, so I love skiing. So a group of us would go out
• 30:30
  and explore, you know, flying parachutes down mountains with
• 30:32
  skis on or with skis off in the summer where you're running.
• 30:37
  And so I pitched a Red Bull, pitched a Red Bull years before
• 30:40
  the movie. Hey, I want to go to a project.
• 30:42
  I want to go to Alaska, back to my home and go fly some of the
• 30:46
  biggest mountains that I used to stare at as a kid.
• 30:49
  But we're never skiable because they closed in, like kuwars or
• 30:53
  glaciers or cliffs. So nobody's ever skied them.
• 30:56
  But there's sections that look amazing.
• 30:58
  Yeah. But now we have a sport that I
• 31:00
  can go ski this area and in any given moment, slide away from
• 31:04
  it. Yeah.
• 31:05
  So at first, Red Bull's like, what is this sport?
• 31:08
  What? Just kind of like what you're
• 31:09
  doing. Like I never even heard of this.
• 31:11
  So at first they said no, love the passion.
• 31:13
  When they come back to it, no, years later, I get a a phone
• 31:17
  call from a marketing manager at Red Bull that was in the that
• 31:20
  Alaska regions. Like, hey, I came across this
• 31:22
  old proposal you pitched. Do you still want to do this?
• 31:25
  And to skip through a bunch of that conversation, I was like,
• 31:27
  hell yes, I do. And so his vision was to blow it
• 31:31
  up way bigger. I just wanted to go on an
• 31:32
  athlete project, but he wanted to make a documentary about it
• 31:35
  because by that time the sport was getting traction.
• 31:38
  There's people in Europe starting to do it, America, all
• 31:41
  around the world, small little groups were doing it.
• 31:44
  So what the film really is is it's me and a few of my
• 31:48
  teammates, But and it's the story is told through my eyes,
• 31:52
  but it's not about me at all. It's kind of a quick summary of
• 31:56
  the history of speed riding and how it came to be.
• 32:00
  And they follow us on a fun journey in Alaska to kind of
• 32:03
  tell the story. But we also go to Shamani,
• 32:06
  France, because that's where some of the real innovators were
• 32:09
  pushing the limits and things of that nature.
• 32:12
  So it's the story of how this weird sport speed line riding
• 32:15
  came to life. Wow, yeah, I remember watching
• 32:19
  it. I was watching it and I was just
• 32:21
  like, I'm trying to comprehend what's going on, what's going on
• 32:25
  at one time and how like the sport makes sense because I was
• 32:30
  trying to figure out, is the emphasis going to be on the, on
• 32:32
  the, on the skiing or on the, on the gliding, you know?
• 32:36
  Flying, yeah. And the flying, Yeah, and.
• 32:40
  That's a little bit of both. Everybody takes a different like
• 32:42
  somebody like me that loves skiing and I'm pretty good at
• 32:45
  it. The goal, the hardest part of
• 32:47
  the sport is to stay on the ground skiing.
• 32:50
  But at the same time, while you're skiing, you're flying a
• 32:52
  wing that wants to screw up and mess with you if you're not
• 32:55
  paying attention to it. So the hardest part is the
• 32:59
  riding, the speed riding part. But a lot of people that aren't
• 33:02
  that good at skiers want to go fly big mountains and they
• 33:05
  touchdown sometimes, but they're mainly flying, then they touch
• 33:08
  back down. And so there's no exact recipe
• 33:11
  of what's wrong or right, but it allows people to explore big
• 33:15
  mountain terrain with the safety net of a parachute.
• 33:20
  You know, So step one is you got to know how to fly a parachute,
• 33:22
  whether you're a skydiver or a paraglider.
• 33:25
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I guess so I guess the amount
• 33:28
  of people that that that have access to this sport is pretty
• 33:31
  limited. But I feel like, I feel like
• 33:34
  it's also it's like it's exploratory.
• 33:36
  Like you could totally I I like you like you mentioned earlier,
• 33:39
  like these are places that you never had any like no one ever
• 33:43
  thought could be skeet, you know, And so to kind of break
• 33:46
  those grounds is is really awesome.
• 33:49
  Where else have you Where else have you travelled to?
• 33:51
  For for either purpose, for skiing or for or for jumping.
• 33:54
  Like globally? I mean all over.
• 33:57
  I've done a whole bunch of all the different Alps in Europe,
• 34:00
  you know, Italy, Switzerland, France, Norway, New Zealand.
• 34:07
  Any of these places stick out for any particular reasons?
• 34:13
  Well, this is 1 ski resort called Valfres Juice France,
• 34:17
  which is about an hour and a half out of Tour in Italy, but
• 34:19
  it's in France. It's the Mecca for it because
• 34:23
  that ski resort has adopted it to the point where they've
• 34:27
  designated a massive part of their mountain for speed riding
• 34:31
  only. So there's a a great speed
• 34:33
  riding, actually a couple, but a great speed riding school there.
• 34:37
  So whether you're somebody that's never flown a wing in
• 34:39
  your life or never skied, you'll see people like that show up all
• 34:42
  the way to people like professional skydivers that want
• 34:45
  to learn to do it better. So it's a place you can go to
• 34:48
  and learn how to do it and get really good because you can just
• 34:52
  do laps because this ski resort allows you to do it.
• 34:54
  So you can go up a chairlift, right when you get off the
• 34:56
  chairlift, you launch your wing, fly down, put it in a bag, get
• 35:00
  back on the chairlift. So just like skiing, so you can
• 35:02
  really do a lot. The eruption.
• 35:05
  And every place. What's that?
• 35:07
  You. Get your reps in.
• 35:10
  Yeah, and yeah, when it comes to learning any sport, reps is
• 35:13
  important. So to get good at it, that's the
• 35:15
  place that really stands out. But then it when it comes to
• 35:17
  pure thrills and what I really love is there's nowhere like
• 35:20
  Alaska. It's some of the biggest terrain
• 35:23
  in the world and it's just really unique features and a
• 35:26
  special place in my heart, you know?
• 35:28
  But Norway was some of the craziest, most dynamic big, you
• 35:33
  know, in the fjords, the big rock walls and stuff to fly
• 35:35
  down. You know, I got stories, stories
• 35:39
  for days. But it's a I've been.
• 35:40
  Amazing, It's so cool. It's so cool that you got it's
• 35:43
  what's so cool to me is just that a couple of these decisions
• 35:46
  to make a couple of out of out-of-the-box choices, you
• 35:49
  know, led to you being it was such it's it's such serendipity.
• 35:54
  You know, as you give you the pre to give you the opportunity
• 35:56
  to even think that this is a lifestyle that, that that you're
• 35:59
  capable of living, You know, is it, it is awesome.
• 36:02
  I want I, I, I, I think, I think about that a lot.
• 36:05
  You know, how guys set my how guys set my kids up in a way
• 36:07
  that they're, they feel encouraged to.
• 36:11
  They got like a 2 1/2 year old and a three month.
• 36:13
  Old their passions. Yeah, and I want them to be able
• 36:15
  to like. Live a life of tricky.
• 36:17
  Folks, yeah, you know, but without being a totally
• 36:20
  irresponsible doofus, you know, I think that there's a middle
• 36:22
  ground. It's a tough one there's.
• 36:25
  Definitely a middle ground, but I mean, it's how I tell people a
• 36:28
  lot that the first handful of years of me chasing my dream, I
• 36:32
  didn't care about the money part.
• 36:34
  I wasn't trying to, I didn't have a family.
• 36:36
  I wasn't trying to like provide. I didn't.
• 36:39
  I just wanted to be able to do what I was doing for free and
• 36:41
  make enough to eat. And my only goal was to do more
• 36:46
  of what I. What you were doing, Yeah.
• 36:48
  And not everybody can do that. A lot of people roll into life
• 36:51
  and you have to pay rent, pay bills, do all these things and
• 36:54
  it's hard to be like, well, I don't care if I make money or
• 36:57
  not, you know, So it's, it's not easy for sure.
• 36:59
  And I, there's definitely moments in my young career where
• 37:03
  I'm in an airplane climbing at altitude and it's a beautiful
• 37:05
  thing. But I found myself thinking
• 37:07
  like, Oh shit, what did I do with my life?
• 37:09
  Like I'm not making much money. Like I'm having fun, but Oh my
• 37:14
  God, like I'm getting all like, what am I doing?
• 37:17
  And then every time I kind of luckily had those kind of
• 37:20
  thoughts, some opportunities would come my way within a few
• 37:23
  weeks or months and kind of remind myself why I'm doing it.
• 37:27
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think a lot of life is like
• 37:30
  that. I think a lot of things, it's
• 37:31
  almost like, you know when you buy a car and then and then you
• 37:33
  start seeing it everywhere on the road and you never noticed
• 37:35
  them beforehand. Right.
• 37:37
  You know. Exactly.
• 37:39
  So I feel like also, you know, there's been times in my life
• 37:42
  where I'm like waiting for the where's something, I realize
• 37:45
  that something I, I either something I'm looking for
• 37:47
  something deeper or more, or, you know, you know, there's a
• 37:51
  better opportunity or something. And by the time that thought
• 37:55
  actually, actually like, starts settling in my head and like
• 37:58
  with me, and it's to the front of my consciousness, you know,
• 38:02
  you keep an eye out for whatever opportunity to kind of let that
• 38:05
  let that happen. Does technology and AI and stuff
• 38:09
  like that scare you in terms of the future of stunt work in
• 38:15
  general, especially with studios, you know?
• 38:18
  Yeah, being able to implement it.
• 38:22
  You have an accountant. I see it a lot already.
• 38:26
  Yeah. I mean, I already see it a lot
• 38:27
  already where, you know, like in the stunt world they call it
• 38:32
  doing it practical, like doing it for real, you know, so you
• 38:37
  find it, it's having a comeback that doing stunts practical is
• 38:40
  having a comeback. There was definitely an era of
• 38:43
  like way too much CGI going on and you know, AI and all the all
• 38:47
  the computer graphics. There's definitely a happy
• 38:49
  medium. Like any movie needs a little
• 38:51
  bit of everything. But you know, it's a, you know,
• 38:54
  like say I did a movie, I did a few rock movies, like just to
• 38:58
  name one, like Rampage or San Andreas, both of them.
• 39:02
  I had to get a guy that was the right size and shape, but it
• 39:06
  didn't look anything like the Rock.
• 39:07
  So they did face replacement and that's a really simple example,
• 39:11
  but already they really didn't need a certain, you know,
• 39:14
  person. They just needed a six foot four
• 39:17
  guy, you know, stuff like that. And then all the way to like the
• 39:21
  Transformers movie I did was with Michael Bay way back in the
• 39:24
  day. That was one of the early ones
• 39:25
  where the first half of our wingsuit scene flying through
• 39:28
  Chicago was practical. OK, you see in a in an instant,
• 39:32
  the second CGI kicked in, you can tell.
• 39:35
  And it made the stunt feel like OK with.
• 39:37
  The Iron Man suit fake. A lot of the Iron Man stuff, I
• 39:43
  mean, a majority of that was practical.
• 39:46
  We shot almost everything practical.
• 39:48
  The CGI that was added on was like making the suit look like
• 39:52
  we even had a suit, but it didn't look anything like the
• 39:54
  one you see in a movie in the sense of shiny and this and
• 39:57
  that. So they went in and dressed that
• 39:59
  up, make it look good. Put in boosters like that, that
• 40:02
  kind of look. But you know the the guy I had
• 40:05
  the Iron Man was in an Iron Man suit.
• 40:08
  All the free fall stuff was real like that.
• 40:11
  Everybody getting dropped into the water and stuff was all
• 40:14
  practical, like on zip lines and things getting slammed into the
• 40:17
  water. So that, but that was a good one
• 40:19
  where it was a healthy combo was like, yeah, everything was
• 40:23
  practical enough that everybody knew it was shot for real.
• 40:25
  The Foo Foo E FX stuff was needed because it's a Marvel
• 40:28
  movie, but it didn't. There was no fakery and like the
• 40:32
  jumping and stuff. That was all real deal.
• 40:35
  Yeah, and. Then like I said, the point
• 40:37
  break movie was a little dis go. Ahead, please, the Point Break
• 40:39
  movie. There's a little bit more.
• 40:42
  Oh just the last example is like the point Break movie is a funny
• 40:44
  one to me because our sequence is 100% was practical.
• 40:49
  No CGI in it. But because of a few lens
• 40:52
  choices and editing styles like they put shake in it.
• 40:56
  They did like make the background get blurry and things
• 40:59
  but all the flying not one part of it was faked or green
• 41:02
  screened but nobody thought that it was real all the way to the
• 41:06
  point of like the Taurus stunt awards where the stunt guys get
• 41:09
  awards. It's our one like award show of
• 41:12
  the year. The board that votes on
• 41:14
  everything didn't want to consider it as a stunt because
• 41:17
  they didn't believe it was shot for real.
• 41:20
  I was going to ask how you even know how there's too much.
• 41:22
  Going in. How do you tell?
• 41:24
  How can you tell? Can I tell if I'm watching a
• 41:26
  movie? Whether a movie, Whether stunts
• 41:28
  are practical or not. Sometimes, yeah, sometimes, no.
• 41:33
  I mean, it's it really. There's no direct answer to
• 41:36
  that. There's so much that goes into
• 41:37
  it. Yeah.
• 41:38
  I mean, it could easily tell when things are fake, that's for
• 41:40
  sure. Yeah, you could, you could.
• 41:43
  The reason I asked about Iron Man in particular because I have
• 41:45
  a good friend of mine and we were talking and we we've been
• 41:47
  talking for years about how how we feel, how it feels that that
• 41:52
  the CGI is being a little overdone in in the big
• 41:54
  cinematic, you know, worlds, whether it's Marvel, DC,
• 41:57
  whatever it was. And we're and we're saying how
• 42:00
  we missed the Iron Man days where it feels just real enough
• 42:03
  to like that. It's like potentially could be
• 42:05
  true, you know, like this big, you know, bulky suit could exist
• 42:09
  to like this stupid nanotechnology where it just
• 42:11
  like, you know, pops pops on his head and you're like, OK, well,
• 42:15
  I guess we're really checking reality at the door over there.
• 42:17
  So it's cool that you got to that.
• 42:19
  You got to be part of that, that that leg of of authenticity.
• 42:24
  It's a lot of fun. And what about I read about your
• 42:27
  accident and your site 100 a hundred mile an hour crash.
• 42:31
  What? What happened?
• 42:34
  Would you rather tax on it? Oh yeah.
• 42:37
  Oh no, I said which? Which accent?
• 42:40
  The one The most recent one like on my Instagram.
• 42:43
  I don't bad one. No, no, I thought, I thought on
• 42:46
  your website, I was while I was reading through about about, I
• 42:49
  said that it was 100. So.
• 42:51
  Yeah, go ahead. Yep, I know you're talking
• 42:55
  about. Yeah, so a long time ago that
• 42:57
  was in, God, I'm going to guess a little bit 2001, 2002,
• 43:01
  something like that. One of my first ever stunt jobs
• 43:03
  was for a Disney movie that never even made it to to the
• 43:07
  screen. So they cancelled the movie.
• 43:08
  But but yeah, Long story short on that, I was jumping out of a
• 43:11
  helicopter at like skydive altitudes with skis on.
• 43:16
  And the idea was to freefall with skis, eventually pull a
• 43:19
  parachute, land on the mountain, ski away.
• 43:21
  And we'd been doing it for a couple weeks and it wasn't, I
• 43:24
  mean, it was, it's challenging, but it wasn't that.
• 43:26
  It was like a one and done thing.
• 43:27
  It was pretty easy, but without getting technical, I basically
• 43:31
  when you pull your parachute, you pull a little, what's a
• 43:33
  little round pilot chute that actually pulls your parachute
• 43:36
  out. So when I went to pull that, it
• 43:38
  didn't do what it was supposed to do.
• 43:39
  So I was fiddling with it. By the time I got it out, the
• 43:43
  lines came out and wrapped around my skis and boots and
• 43:45
  bindings and everything and basically a hog tied me up and I
• 43:49
  took that into the ground from 6000 feet without a parachute
• 43:53
  open. A little bit of a parachute came
• 43:55
  out. So I had like trash above me,
• 43:57
  but there was no deployed parachute.
• 44:00
  So I took that basically and really close to free fall speeds
• 44:04
  straight into the ground. And strangely and, you know,
• 44:09
  miraculously, I didn't break a bone.
• 44:11
  I didn't get hurt at all. I was like, I was kind of like
• 44:14
  laying there for a little bit thinking I was dead, but I was
• 44:17
  able to get up and walk away from it, which was a miracle.
• 44:21
  That sounds crazy. What was go?
• 44:25
  Do you remember? You remember.
• 44:26
  It is crazy. That train of thought while that
• 44:29
  was happening, give me a train of thought like, Oh no, Oh no,
• 44:32
  Oh no. And then like going black or you
• 44:34
  remember, like what? What was the What was the
• 44:36
  thought process like? No, I remember everything.
• 44:41
  Most of my thought, I was pretty newly married and most of my
• 44:44
  thought process was being worried about my wife and
• 44:48
  largely about that. And then it would flash to it
• 44:50
  like, Oh my God, what are my parents going to think?
• 44:52
  And then worried about my wife. And that was almost while I was
• 44:55
  dealing with the malfunction. That's almost where my thought
• 44:58
  was. The dealing with the malfunction
• 44:59
  was pretty muscle memory, even though it wasn't working because
• 45:02
  I was all tied up. Yeah.
• 45:06
  And then and then the did you black out the crash?
• 45:09
  Do you? You don't.
• 45:10
  You don't remember it or. No, no.
• 45:13
  That's why I kind of feel like I live in a parallel universe
• 45:15
  right now, because it was all black.
• 45:18
  I remember hitting and then everything was black, but I had
• 45:22
  the like the dialogue going on in my mind.
• 45:25
  So I was still talking to myself.
• 45:27
  And that's where I remember having feelings, you know,
• 45:30
  without getting deep into it, I was having feelings of
• 45:32
  excitement of going. Like I remember thinking to
• 45:35
  myself, oh, there is more, something's coming because I
• 45:37
  know I'm dead, but I'm still having a conversation with
• 45:40
  myself. And I remember getting excited
• 45:43
  of like, OK, what's coming? What's next?
• 45:45
  What is it? But then eventually the other
• 45:47
  stunt guy about two minutes later, because his parachute
• 45:50
  actually worked. So it took a while to get to me.
• 45:52
  He landed next to me and the sound of him landing I will open
• 45:57
  my eyes and then I realized I was alive and I did the whole
• 46:01
  wiggle your toes your everything and didn't feel any pain so I
• 46:04
  set up and realized I was fine. That's crazy.
• 46:07
  That's a miracle. That's like, I mean, that's
• 46:11
  great percent. It's so funny.
• 46:12
  I, you know, I mean, I don't, I don't know, you know, what, what
• 46:18
  your religious, you know, belief is or not.
• 46:21
  But you know, I feel like there have been moments in my life
• 46:24
  where God is just like yelled at me or like I've just had like an
• 46:27
  experience that's just been like God being like, yo, like snap
• 46:31
  out of it for a minute, dude. And like, whoa, like, yeah, I
• 46:34
  need to snap out of that, you know, And I even something
• 46:37
  stupid, like there's one time I was pushing myself way too much.
• 46:40
  I was biting off more than I could handle, I think, in my
• 46:44
  life and responsibilities, and I was driving from one place to
• 46:47
  the next. And I'm doing a podcast and I
• 46:48
  have three in one day and I have my sales job and I'm going to
• 46:51
  teach and I miss I'm running late for class and and and I'm
• 46:55
  pulling out of a parking lot while like doing all this and a
• 46:59
  car and while I'm pulling out a car pulls out two and like, you
• 47:06
  know, nips my car. I guess give me a little Fender
• 47:08
  Bender. Wasn't there, wasn't bad damage,
• 47:10
  wasn't, you know, a big deal, but like it just like hold me
• 47:14
  out of it for a second, you know, we like you just feel
• 47:16
  like, you know, there's like a mask over your head and like you
• 47:19
  can't breathe and then you just like pull it off and whoa, like
• 47:23
  I got to balance, you know, I got to figure something out.
• 47:25
  I feel like, you know, I've had, I've had.
• 47:27
  Moments now back to reality. Yeah.
• 47:29
  And we're God. And I think that is God being.
• 47:31
  And I don't know what God is or who or what or anything like
• 47:34
  that, you know, but I think there's something that I don't
• 47:37
  know what it is, but but whatever it is, it's spoken to
• 47:39
  me, you. Know I feel like yeah, I agree,
• 47:45
  man, there's there's higher power for sure.
• 47:47
  Yeah. And the human meteor flight, the
• 47:51
  thing where I don't know if I understood that properly was
• 47:55
  that that people thought that people were seeing people do
• 47:57
  stunts and thought they were Uaps or thought they were UFOs
• 48:00
  or anything like that. Yeah.
• 48:02
  Is that what it was? Yeah, it's kind of.
• 48:05
  It's funny, every time we do a night jump, we have pyrotechnics
• 48:08
  on our feet, OK. And because the way we're, we're
• 48:11
  so high up and because the way we fly, it's kind of
• 48:14
  unexplainable. No aircraft would be maneuvering
• 48:16
  like we are. So anybody that is hoping for
• 48:20
  UFO type sightings, the second they see that it almost every
• 48:24
  town we ever do it in, there's the news gets called, the 911
• 48:28
  gets called, people are like there's no way.
• 48:31
  There's no airplane, there's no helicopter, there's nothing that
• 48:33
  could maneuver like that. You know that.
• 48:36
  Does that make you more skeptical about the whole UIP
• 48:38
  thing? No being in the background like
• 48:41
  that. Oh yeah, for sure.
• 48:43
  But I also, I'm not too skeptical because I, I don't
• 48:46
  know if they've come to our planet, but I'm a firm believer
• 48:48
  there has to be other life out there.
• 48:50
  We we can't be alone in this. Yeah, I believe that too.
• 48:54
  I believe that too. I think that I think there's two
• 48:56
  true statements happening concurrently.
• 48:59
  There's other life and then there's what we're perceiving is
• 49:02
  happening, which could be a dude like you, you know, taking off
• 49:06
  from Florida to the middle of the night, you know, and, and me
• 49:08
  not knowing what the heck that is in the sky, you know, And I
• 49:11
  think they're both truths. What's, what do you like?
• 49:13
  Do you like day jumping or night jumping more?
• 49:19
  I mean, in general, day jumping just because it's safer, you
• 49:22
  know, I guess it's more than norm, but night jumps are super
• 49:27
  special. Depends on what you're doing.
• 49:29
  You know, Most of the time a night jump for me in my world is
• 49:33
  I'm doing shows. So it's more about just like the
• 49:35
  performance of what we're doing. Yeah.
• 49:38
  You know, it's a rare day that I go out to a drop zone and just
• 49:40
  do a night jump for fun. What's the show like?
• 49:43
  What's the show? What's the what's the show like?
• 49:49
  They're all they're all a little bit different.
• 49:51
  It depends on what what we're doing it for.
• 49:54
  OK, Like if you go to my Instagram handle, the last one
• 49:58
  of the last ones I posted is we jumped into Sun and Fun, a huge
• 50:01
  air show in Florida, in Lakeland, FL.
• 50:04
  And we did a show where we have an airplane that dives at a
• 50:08
  pretty steep angle and it was shooting fireworks out the side
• 50:12
  of it. And we're flying wingsuits with
• 50:14
  the pyro on us chasing and slaloming through the fireworks.
• 50:18
  So the crowd is seeing all this from the ground.
• 50:21
  So. Cool that that kind of stuff.
• 50:23
  Wearing glow suits. Yeah, yeah.
• 50:26
  What's the coordinating stuff? That's all fun show stuff.
• 50:30
  What's it like to coordinate that?
• 50:32
  It's step by step. I, yeah, it, I mean, air shows
• 50:36
  are a little different animal, but in general, like our, our
• 50:38
  demo team, I'll, I'll coordinate all the FAA stuff.
• 50:40
  So for me it's just plug and play.
• 50:43
  It's just collecting the proper information, filling out forms,
• 50:46
  sending it in, getting it approved in time, that kind of
• 50:50
  stuff and then putting together the right team to go to it, you
• 50:54
  know, so there's a whole stair step process of coordinating it
• 50:57
  to happen. But by now it's I've been doing
• 50:59
  it so long it's. I imagine it's a pretty small
• 51:02
  world, right? It's a pretty small, you know,
• 51:04
  aerial sport world as far as knowing one another and getting
• 51:08
  a team together and whatever. Yeah, for sure.
• 51:13
  I mean, for all the shows I do demo wise, it's all the Red Bull
• 51:16
  Air Force team. So I I've assembled over the
• 51:18
  years that we're a nine man skydiving team.
• 51:21
  So that's what I use for all the shows.
• 51:23
  But but, yeah, the sport's small enough that whether it's the
• 51:26
  stunt world that I need to branch out for my Red Bull team
• 51:29
  or we're doing a demo that's bigger than what we already have
• 51:32
  as a team, it's a small little pool of people.
• 51:35
  Off Like off phone call. Yeah.
• 51:37
  And. Can you tell me about your
• 51:38
  career with Red Bull a little bit?
• 51:40
  How'd that get started? Or what do you what do you do
• 51:42
  with? Them.
• 51:42
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's, it's been a really
• 51:48
  long, amazing, fun ride. So I was lucky enough through
• 51:52
  two of my teammates and friends at the time, Charles Bryan and
• 51:56
  Mike Vale. So Red Bull moved to America
• 51:58
  roughly in 9697 and they went to the Vale, Aspany, World of
• 52:04
  Skiing and Lake Tahoe as kind of their test markets to see if
• 52:09
  their product would even work in America.
• 52:11
  And they started sponsoring a few athletes and luckily Rebel
• 52:15
  gives you wings or we might not have a sponsor, but so they
• 52:20
  picked up some skiers and a couple skydivers and BASE
• 52:23
  jumpers. And then luckily at the time I
• 52:26
  was still super young, but I was already like world champion
• 52:29
  skydive guy with a big name. And so right place, right time
• 52:34
  at the right people. And I officially signed on with
• 52:38
  Red Bull in 99 as a contracted hat wearing athlete.
• 52:42
  There you go. And so in the first few years,
• 52:46
  you know, the team was kind of a mix of some skydivers, BASE
• 52:49
  jumpers, paragliders. It was loosely run by everybody
• 52:53
  in the beginning. But then one of the paragliders,
• 52:55
  Oathar, kind of took the reins to be like, hey, let's get more
• 52:59
  organization behind the team instead of just being
• 53:02
  individuals on their own mission.
• 53:04
  And that lasted a few years. And then he stepped down from
• 53:07
  that role, and I quickly stepped up into it because I was already
• 53:10
  helping him coordinate stuff. So when he stepped down, I fully
• 53:15
  took over managing and team captaining the Red Bull Air
• 53:18
  Force. And one by one I was able to
• 53:21
  bring on kind of my really good friends or slash teammates that
• 53:24
  I'd met in skydiving. As the brand grew, they wanted
• 53:27
  the team to grow. So I was able to kind of grow
• 53:30
  the team into more than just a few people.
• 53:32
  Sure. And now we're one of the most
• 53:34
  heavily used marketing tools for Red Bull.
• 53:36
  So whether it's jumping into an F1 race or a weird party or
• 53:40
  everything in the middle, you know, we do 50 plus shows a year
• 53:44
  all around the world as just demos.
• 53:47
  And then Red Bull also supports, you know, athletes in a really
• 53:50
  unique way where they want athletes to pitch dream projects
• 53:54
  and missions. And a lot of them are no's or we
• 53:57
  don't have time for that or the bandwidth for it.
• 53:59
  But every now and then one's a yes and you get to go fulfill an
• 54:02
  athlete dream and go, go do a project.
• 54:05
  So it's been since 99 till now, you know, 2025, six years of of
• 54:11
  living dreams. Are there So what are some type
• 54:15
  of typically, and I'm not going to ask your personal, but like
• 54:19
  typically speaking in a contract when they sign on an athlete,
• 54:22
  they want minimum amount of events or displays or
• 54:26
  performances a year or is how what how does that work for from
• 54:30
  them? What do they want from you?
• 54:32
  Yeah, there's not a generic, there's not a generic template.
• 54:36
  I can't really speak on how they deal with snowboarders,
• 54:38
  skateboarders, all the other sports.
• 54:40
  They sure they're in every sport on the planet, you know.
• 54:42
  Mm hmm. And so I really don't know how
• 54:45
  those athlete contracts work, right?
• 54:48
  But in general, you know, they, you know, we're a little bit
• 54:50
  different cause a lot of athletes are just sponsored to
• 54:52
  go do what they do as an athlete.
• 54:54
  Yeah. But we're a heavily used
• 54:55
  marketing team as well with all the shows we do.
• 54:58
  So we're a little bit different where, yes, we have a certain
• 55:01
  like athlete contract that, you know, they subsidized
• 55:04
  financially us to some level. But then we also, you know, go
• 55:08
  and do jobs and go do shows and things of that nature.
• 55:12
  So it's it's. It's not a direct answer to just
• 55:16
  there's. No, I got.
• 55:17
  I got to do it. Yeah.
• 55:18
  I was, I was curious about about because I, I didn't, yeah.
• 55:23
  My association I feel with Red Bull is soccer.
• 55:27
  And then the other sports that you were describing like skiing
• 55:30
  and and and aerial sports and stuff like that.
• 55:34
  What who are some who are some of your role models in the
• 55:38
  either film world or sports world that that kind of, you
• 55:42
  know, either motivate you or inspire you?
• 55:50
  That's a good question. I mean, are we?
• 55:51
  Sad or an obvious? Answer is, I don't really, yeah.
• 55:57
  I mean, in the in the stunt world, I have a few second unit
• 56:01
  directors that I super look up to that after working with them,
• 56:04
  I really realized that they both came from the stunt world.
• 56:08
  They were just traditional ground and pound stuntmen,
• 56:11
  worked their way up to being coordinators, turned into really
• 56:15
  successful second unit directors and now we're going into
• 56:18
  directing. You know, I've watched their
• 56:20
  career progressed so amazingly. You know, it's like Wade
• 56:23
  Eastwood and Jeff Haberstadter too.
• 56:26
  They really stand out. You know, they're really big
• 56:29
  famous second unit directors these days, but they also just
• 56:32
  started like any traditional stunt guy that had a vision
• 56:36
  beyond just doing stunts. So to kind of watch their stair
• 56:40
  step is really impressive. And then in the world of like
• 56:44
  sports directly, it's really, I don't have direct names, but
• 56:47
  just anybody that's not afraid, you know, like whether it's in
• 56:50
  the surf world, you know, I've watched, you know, Kai Lenny go
• 56:54
  from being a too young to even be sponsored young serf kid up
• 56:57
  to who he is today. And just always being innovative
• 57:00
  and not being stuck in a rut and doing things different in his
• 57:04
  own way is really impressive to, you know, in the skydive world,
• 57:09
  you know, where it's like, you know, people that have just
• 57:12
  learned how to, to chase their dreams and not just get
• 57:16
  pigeonholed into one corner. So I don't really have a name.
• 57:19
  It's just sure, sure, a long list of people.
• 57:21
  I should probably put you on hold for two seconds because my
• 57:23
  computer's about to die. I need to have my.
• 57:25
  Plug or I'm going to die on you, OK?
• 57:35
  We're back. Sorry about that.
• 57:39
  Do you? Are you?
• 57:39
  Are you Oh, that's what one of the one of the few things, the
• 57:43
  last couple of things I want to talk about.
• 57:44
  First of all, green screens does that.
• 57:49
  Do you hate them? No, I mean, they serve a great
• 57:53
  purpose. So I don't think there's
• 57:56
  anything negative about them. I think, you know, there's,
• 57:59
  there's some things that it's, it takes away from the being the
• 58:02
  practical stunt performance, but there's some things that's very
• 58:05
  much needed. So I don't have any hate for
• 58:08
  them by any means. Usually when I get hired, you
• 58:11
  know, because I'm a specialty stunt guy, so I'm not just the
• 58:13
  traditional stuntman. So it's usually they're hiring
• 58:17
  me because they want to go do it for real.
• 58:19
  They're not trying to fake it. Yeah.
• 58:21
  So I don't have a even a ton of experience.
• 58:23
  I mean, I've been around it a lot, but.
• 58:25
  I was going to ask whether they ever asked you to do that.
• 58:27
  I feel like it could be kind of a waste of your skills.
• 58:29
  But I feel like, you know, I mean, I must have built some
• 58:31
  really cool chamber, you know, indoor skydiving place that, you
• 58:34
  know, they could, I guess, kind of use a lot of CGI for.
• 58:39
  But I can't imagine they bring you in to have you sit in front
• 58:42
  of a green screen, right? Yeah, I mean, one of the the
• 58:45
  coolest ones, that was the very first Iron Man, when Iron Man
• 58:50
  was learning to fly his suit in his garage and he thrashed all
• 58:53
  his cars. Yeah, sure.
• 58:55
  And when he first flew and he flew by the Ferris wheel and the
• 58:58
  kids were licking the ice cream. Yeah, sure.
• 59:00
  So I, I met with Jon Favreau in the wind tunnel and we green
• 59:05
  screened the all the glass of the tunnel and we, without
• 59:09
  getting into how we did it, but we flew around in the tunnel for
• 59:13
  him to record everything. And then they took that and
• 59:16
  placed it on the Iron Man character.
• 59:19
  So things like my feet were tied to the tunnel wall and I'm in a
• 59:23
  flying tracking position and he would be in my ear and he'd be
• 59:27
  like, OK, now look left. What you're looking at is
• 59:30
  children licking an ice cream. And I had no idea what he's
• 59:32
  talking about. Then when the movie came out,
• 59:34
  I'm like, oh shit, that's exactly this.
• 59:35
  Wow. So cool more.
• 59:38
  Than like I put a a small like or a big long board skateboard
• 59:43
  on my feet in the tunnel because to lift in the air you need to
• 59:47
  grab air. So but he's like Iron Man's
• 59:49
  hands are down and he's shooting.
• 59:51
  So how can we do that but then lift?
• 59:53
  So what we decided was I'd put a board on my feet and we'd slowly
• 59:57
  turn up the wind and eventually the wind strong enough that the
• 1:00:01
  board would just lift me so I could keep my hands down.
• 1:00:04
  So little things like that. So sometimes green screen's
• 1:00:07
  super cool, but. And it's probably crazy watching
• 1:00:11
  that, watching that process back and it'd be like, oh, now I get
• 1:00:13
  it. Yeah, the the coolest thing on
• 1:00:15
  that job, just to wrap that story up is I was like, hey, I'm
• 1:00:19
  going to play around in here. So for like 2 minutes in the one
• 1:00:21
  tunnel, I'm just doing a freestyle routine, flying
• 1:00:23
  around, layout, spinning, whatever.
• 1:00:26
  And then I come out of that and the CGI guy instantly goes, come
• 1:00:30
  here. And he put me in his computer
• 1:00:32
  and what should have just been a video of me flying in the
• 1:00:35
  tunnel, he laid over the Iron Man suit.
• 1:00:39
  And so I saw then it looked like Iron Man.
• 1:00:42
  But everybody that skydives to my level has a certain style.
• 1:00:45
  You could be like, oh, that's so and so because look how his legs
• 1:00:48
  are or whatever. So I'm seeing what's obviously
• 1:00:51
  me doing like helicopters and flips.
• 1:00:54
  But it looked like Iron Man. So to me I was like, Oh my God,
• 1:00:56
  please send me that. And he couldn't but.
• 1:00:59
  Wow, he couldn't send it to you? No, it's totally fine.
• 1:01:02
  Do you think? Do you think what you do is the
• 1:01:04
  coolest thing in the world? I think sometimes yes, sometimes
• 1:01:08
  no, but. Yeah, I hear.
• 1:01:11
  I'm I and the one of the last things I wanted to talk to you a
• 1:01:14
  little bit about is actually circling back to the beginning
• 1:01:18
  in terms of family and you know where you're living in
• 1:01:21
  California is, you know, Southern California.
• 1:01:25
  First of all, do you have plans to leave Southern California?
• 1:01:30
  You or do you have? Ambitions.
• 1:01:32
  Are you asking me or my wife? I'm, I guess, I guess your wife
• 1:01:36
  probably matters more in the in the decision, but I'll ask you
• 1:01:39
  because I'm talking to you. Well, I'll just be honest with
• 1:01:43
  that answer. This is a place I never wanted
• 1:01:45
  to live. It's not who I am mentally, you
• 1:01:48
  know, all that stuff. But the opportunities it
• 1:01:51
  provided me, I wouldn't be where I was at without living here.
• 1:01:53
  So I'm I'm not upset with the thing.
• 1:01:55
  But yeah, I've always had a goal of eventually, once the kids
• 1:01:58
  grow up and move out, I think the real honest answer is we're
• 1:02:02
  going to hope my two daughters live in the same place and we
• 1:02:05
  move to wherever they live because we want to have that
• 1:02:07
  family life. But my desire is to move back to
• 1:02:13
  the mountain type world and be in that environment.
• 1:02:17
  So yeah, I don't want to be here forever, but it's served a great
• 1:02:19
  purpose. I could imagine, yeah.
• 1:02:21
  That's how I was going to. Yeah, because I was talking to
• 1:02:23
  the the previous gentleman that I was talking to.
• 1:02:25
  He he he was in Chicago and he's like, you know, for a couple
• 1:02:29
  years I had to live in LA. He goes into a certain point.
• 1:02:32
  Once I kind of got my name into the rotation, I wonder who I
• 1:02:34
  was. I had a little bit more
• 1:02:35
  flexibility to kind of move around and, you know, and get
• 1:02:38
  out of that, get out of that scene a little bit.
• 1:02:41
  Yeah. But it's really.
• 1:02:43
  Yeah. And I was actually, I was going
• 1:02:45
  to ask about that. Like, I mean, I, I know
• 1:02:49
  practical, I know that it's practical for work, but if don't
• 1:02:51
  you feel like you have a, you know, a reputation, a name, you
• 1:02:55
  know, you've been doing this for long enough that you could
• 1:02:57
  hypothetically live somewhere and travel more?
• 1:02:59
  Or is it the travel that's going?
• 1:03:00
  To be, Oh no, I could be gone years ago, but when I'm raising
• 1:03:04
  kids here, so I don't want to pull them out of school.
• 1:03:07
  And my wife's attorney with a big job and she has her own
• 1:03:11
  career going. On another another do her thing.
• 1:03:13
  Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. Cool, cool, cool, cool.
• 1:03:16
  Well, that's awesome. I John, I really appreciate the
• 1:03:20
  time, man. Thank you so much for taking the
• 1:03:22
  time to talk to me today. This is such a pleasure.
• 1:03:24
  It's so cool to hear about this little world in the background.
• 1:03:27
  And I'm going to text you and I watch that movie, The
• 1:03:30
  Unwritables because nice. I'm really, I'm really excited
• 1:03:33
  about that. But this is this is so cool.
• 1:03:35
  And I really appreciate your time and I love what you've been
• 1:03:37
  working on. I love what your career has
• 1:03:39
  become. And how long does a stunt career
• 1:03:41
  last usually? I would say right about in my
• 1:03:45
  age is where most either stuntmen are slowing down a lot
• 1:03:49
  or trying to transition into coordinating and not taking the
• 1:03:52
  hits. Yeah, you know, but it's a
• 1:03:55
  young, a real ground and pound stuntman career is a young man's
• 1:03:58
  game. You get beat up, whether it's
• 1:04:00
  just taking falls or hits or fight scenes, whatever.
• 1:04:04
  Yeah, you know, so somewhere in the the young 40s you'd you'd
• 1:04:07
  hear most stuntmen trying to figure out either up leveling
• 1:04:12
  the job title or moving on. And you think you'd like to stay
• 1:04:15
  in the If you had to choose between the sports world and the
• 1:04:18
  coordinating or the entertainment world, which which
• 1:04:20
  which do you enjoy more? That's a tricky one.
• 1:04:26
  I would be. Directing movies tomorrow or you
• 1:04:28
  could be, you know, do you know a big part of the sports
• 1:04:32
  coordinating you know and you know for the for the whole sport
• 1:04:35
  and being an ambassador for it is one.
• 1:04:37
  Yeah, probably the answer to that is if I had to pick one.
• 1:04:40
  Yeah. As long as I could still skydive
• 1:04:42
  for fun, I think I would have a dream of being like second unit
• 1:04:47
  directing, you know, some dream movies that I've I have in my
• 1:04:52
  mind that would be a an amazing end of the career.
• 1:04:56
  You know, kind of put out some movies that I've always wanted
• 1:04:58
  to try to pitch to the right people.
• 1:05:01
  Yeah, well, if you ever do, let me know.
• 1:05:02
  I'd love to. I'd love to watch them.
• 1:05:04
  I'd love to see when the film comes out of them.
• 1:05:06
  John, thanks so much for the time, man.
• 1:05:07
  I really appreciate it. Best of luck with everything,
• 1:05:09
  man. Take care.
• 1:05:10
  Have a good one. Bye.