Trailblazing Stuntmen: Mickey Gilbert & Jack Gill
Jack: my first job was Do It In the Dirt. I ended up being a stunt double and stunt coordinator on the first film I ever did.
Mickey: I started in rodeos. A director came our and wanted me to teach their daughter how to ride. His wife said why don’t you use Mickey in the movies. He said I’m getting ready to do a movie called Warlock and you can double Rchard Widmark.
Mickey: I was knocking on doors and getting maybe one job a month. Then I met this redhead, Yvonne, my wife. Her dad was a big stunt coordinator. One day he took me on a show and showed me off. The gaffers were sitting around saying, “he sure do love that guy” because I was getting all the work.
Mickey: I’ve had a blessing in my life. I’ve always had a blessing to want to do something that’s never been done before.
Mickey: coordinating on a big film is a lot of work, you’re always scouting. We’re in SF and we see a cable car and asked have you ever hadvone of these break away? He said not in a long time. What do you do if it does? He said I have this spike here that goes down into the rail and stops it quick. I said but no one knows about it right? He said no, and I said GOOD!
Mickey: there was this one girl, and she put (the fee) on him. She said I want $100, he said no, and he just BAM and he went down.
Jack: there weren’t attorneys in those days.
Mickey: (my father-in-law) didn’t take shit from anybody. He said you have to be tough with these production guys.
Jack: Fast & Furious 5: we planned a long time to try and do something that had never been done before. You have to look at the safety aspect of it. So we designed a vault with a stuntman inside it. Then we found out it was 185 degrees and you could cook a turkey in there, so I put an A/C in there. Then the guy couldn’t breathe with the carbon monoxide from the A/C, then I added a tube for breathing and the none opulent keep going, so we added 500 pounds of dry ice. It was a mess and eventually we worked it out. … All the action was “real” with no digital effects. There are times we hve to put in backgrounds, but we are going back to real action and real stuntmen.
Jack: now you can hire 20, 30 guys and they digitize then and duplicate them and make an army.
Jack: (tanking about the vault driver) Henry is kind of old for his but we love him so we try to get them.
Jack: Henry said I have to go to the bathroom, and here was only a small pothole so to get him out was a big deal. I said no, we’re shooting. The next day I had a bathroom installed in the passenger seat.
The vault sequence took 2.5 months to shoot.
Jack: I said I can’t this the bag vertically. He said well you’ve got to throw back at the last minute. I said well okay. At the last minute I threw back and then thought oh something’s night right. Turns out I broke my back.
Mickey: I wake up and one of my guys is giving me mouth-to-mouth.
Jack: hah! I wouldn’t want him to give me mouth-to-mouth either!
Jack: I’ve been working on trying to get stunt coordinators a category. This is my 21st year trying to do this. What we found out from the academy is that they recognize we’re part of the process but they don’t want to add another category.
Sadly the films narrative jumped a bit and made some logical leaps in support of the director’s thesis that didn’t seem to be supported by the evidence presented. Still really enjoyed it. 
