Paul Baxley was a stunt double for William Shatner on Star Trek
To read the article I wrote about him in the early 1970's, click on the image below.
Here is the text from the article above:
Stuntman Fall Down on the Job All The Time, But He's a Good Egg
BY RON BARTHET
COVINGTON — Paul Baxley is a man who falls down for a living, down stairs, off buildings and out windows. For a sideline he wrecks cars.
He is currently coordinating the stuntwork and directing the second camera unit on the MGM motion picture "Blood Song". He has been coordinating such action on the screen for over twenty years.
Baxley is one of the film industry's top professional stunt men, creating and coordinating the stuntwork, both physical and vehicular, for such movies as "Diamonds Are Forever," "The Godfather," "What's Up Doc?" and "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World."
While doing stunts in movies, such as crashing cars and falling off buildings, used to be a recklessly dangerous job, Baxley said that now it's a more intelligently dangerous job.
"Before 1949-50, the average stuntman was a two-fisted tough guy who really threw himself into his work. They were like the bush pilots. Now most stuntmen have college backgrounds and approach each stunt from an angle of deliberation and precision," he said.
Stuntmen aren't in the business to get hurt, he said, and anyone who gets hurt isn't a professional. "You don't have to be tough to be a stuntman," he explained. "I'm not. I am an athlete, though. You have to be in good condition."
Part of that condition calls for going through windows into mid-air. "They use a thin plastic for glass now. That candy glass went out of style years ago. This new plastic is clear, and sometimes you can get cut on it. It's not usual to come up with a few cuts on your face after you fall through a fake window."
He talked of the scientific experimentation with cardboard boxes and how they are used to break a fall. "We were doing all kinds of things to keep the impact soft," he continued, "but we found that by stacking about four layers Of boxes on top of a wooden platform with some give to it, and then covering this with pads and a canvas, we could make some spectacular falls without injury."
Sometimes the precautions in stuntwork don't help. One time, for instance, Baxley did a high fall into a wooden platform piled high with boxes and he hit the pile off to one side. The wind had blown him a couple feet off target in his long fall. Even the rotation of the earth can affect a fall, he said.
"The most dangerous stunts are those with horses," he said. He's seen more than one stuntman killed in westerns. One, where a stuntman was supposed to leap from a wagon turning over, went haywire and the wagon tumbled over on top of the stuntman, killing him.
Baxley does fantastic things with cars, too. His work in "What's Up, Doc?" has been highly praised by critics and movie-goers alike. The chase scene in the film is one in the "classic" tradition, involving high speed, impossible stunts and humorous antics. Baxley studied in detail every film ever made by Buster Keaton to create the techniques for "What's Up Doc?"
"Keaton was a genius," Baxley said with admiration. "I watched some of those films in amazement. Some of the stunts he pulled off, I couldn't even approach. He was really fantastic."
Baxley talks of his trade as an art. On figuring out the chase scenes in "Diamonds Are Forever," he admitted some anxiety.
"We couldn't clear the sidewalks," he said, "the police and casino owners gave us great cooperation, but it was impossible to keep the crowds off the sidewalks in Las Vegas, so we did the high speed car chases in front of them. I kept thinking that just one greasy spot in the street could make a car lose control and go into the crowd but fortunately, it didn't happen."
The coordination of some of the scenes in "Diamond Are Forever" testify to Baxley's ability. In one shot, James Bond speeds into an intersection, swings around 180 degrees and takes off into another direction. Close behind him are three police cars, all three enter at the precise moment, skid in unison, swerve around 180 degrees and take off after Bond's car.
Baxley told of his plans for one scene in an upcoming movie involving the getaway from a bank robbery. His voice takes on a technical quality and his hands enhance his description of the scene.
"I have the getaway car coming down this business street about 60. A police car swings out of a side street about 40, skids 90 degrees and slides into the middle of the street facing the getaway car. The car swerves, strikes the corner of the police car, slamming it backwards into the plate glass window of a storefront. The getaway car angles off, skids back onto the street and moves on out."
"Now for this one scene," he continued, "I have about six cameras. One in the front grill of the getaway car, one in the front grill of the police car, one in the passenger compartment of the getaway car and another in the police car. Then I have one in the store window and one on a rooftop. It should be great, if it works."
Baxley himself will be driving the getaway car.
Asked if directors ever asked for the impossible, Baxley admitted that once in a while they can. "Most of the time, however, they ask me 'can this be done?' Then, that way we can work something out that will satisfy
them."
One director, he said, wanted to film two cars in a head-on collision, both going 100 mph. "That would have disintegrated both cars," Baxley said. "It would have looked unbelievable. So we compromised and I convinced him that two cars going 40 mph hitting head on had more impact visually."
The work in preparing a car for a high speed chase and crash is exacting, according to Baxley. He has a special procedure for bracing the suspension systems of his cars so they will withstand the skidding. Special protective bars have to be installed so the stunt driver won't be killed in the crashes, also.
Baxley has also had experience with explosion stuntwork. In "Diamonds Are Forever," for instance, quite a few stuntmen are blown off their feet by explosions. "Timing is essential," Baxley said. Fireballs are another matter, he said, because they're hard to predict. His own son, now just entering the stunt profession, was burned by a miscalculated fireball in "Diamonds." His son was in one of the towers on the ocean platform while it was exploding and a gust of wind enveloped the tower in flames for a few moments.
Baxley said that stuntmen get paid $138 a day just for showing up on the site of the movie. Any stunts they do raise their income considerably. "Rates vary," Baxley said. "Falling down a flight of stairs, for instance, could get as much as $500 or more, depending on a number of factors such as length of fall, railing, type of wood, etc."
As for the stuntmen he works with, he has the greatest respect. As individuals, he likes them, but sometimes as a group, they're a pain in the neck, he said, chuckling.
Baxley first got into stuntwork after spending some time with the San Francisco 49er's. He says that most stuntmen now are from a college background. What he misses most about the old time westerns is the standard barroom brawl. "There used to be at least one or two barroom fight scenes in every western," he said. "But you hardly ever see them any longer."
Paul Baxley leads a life more dangerous and action-filled than any real life James Bond ever could, and he enjoys it. It makes him feel good to be in a theater viewing one of his scenes, seeing that the audience is reacting to it with excitement and admiration.
He said that when his son used to ask what he did for a living, he'd answer "I fall down." It's that falling down which has entertained audiences across the nation for more than twenty years.
