By Garry Maddox
Guy Norris has strapped people to 10 metre-high swinging poles on moving vehicles so they could land on another moving vehicle, helped Margot Robbie fight her way through rooms full of villains and guided Anya Taylor-Joy as she crawled from beneath a racing truck while under attack.
“We’ve been able to travel the world doing films and exporting great Australian talent”: Guy Norris on the set of Mad Max: Fury Road.Credit:
On Friday morning, he woke to the news that stunt performers were finally being recognised at the Academy Awards.
“It’s a really positive thing,” the Australian stunt designer said from the Mumbai set of the lavish Indian epic Ramayana. “It’s great to see the recognition.”
After a long campaign by the stunt community, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced the first Oscar for stunt design will be presented at the 100th awards in 2028.
“Since the early days of cinema, stunt design has been an integral part of filmmaking,” Academy chief executive Bill Kramer and president Janet Yang said in a statement. “We are proud to honour the innovative work of these technical and creative artists.”
Norris, who started performing stunts on Mad Max 2, became one of the country’s best stunt co-ordinators then moved into action design, developing a computerised system called Proxi so that complicated action sequences could be planned in three dimensions.
Anya Taylor-Joy in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures via AP
Just how integral stunts have become in Hollywood movies is shown by his hectic schedule since he designed 300 stunts for George Miller’s masterful Mad Max: Fury Road. They were all performed on set in a Namibian desert rather than simulated in a studio with digital effects.
Some of the most memorable sequences in an action film that won six Oscars had swinging “pole cats” attacking the runaway War Rig.
Norris and his team of 20 Australians and New Zealanders have since shot the likes of Suicide Squad in Canada, Ghost In The Shell in New Zealand, Triple Frontier in Hawaii and Panama, The Suicide Squad in Atlanta, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga in Australia, Mercy in Los Angeles and now Ramayana in India.
“What we were able to achieve with George on Fury Road really shone the spotlight [on us],” he said. “We’ve been able to travel the world doing films and exporting great Australian talent.”
Guy Norris (right) with director George Miller when they filmed the climactic truck roll at the end of Mad Max: Fury Road at Penrith Lakes, NSW.Credit: Jasin Boland
While the Taurus awards already recognise best fight, best high work, hardest hit and other individual stunts, Norris hoped the new Oscar would recognise how action design was as crucial to storytelling as costume and production design.
“It’s a collaborative process of getting the director’s vision on screen,” he said. “Most ‘blockbusters’ are spectacle films and action is clearly a driving force in that genre.”
While stunts have been an important part of cinema since silent film stars Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd, such stunt performers as David Leitch (Bullet Train, The Fall Guy), Chad Stahelski (John Wick), Sam Hargrave (Extraction) and Australia’s Nash Edgerton (Gringo, Mr Inbetween) have brought their action talents to directing in recent years.
Tom Hardy as Max and Charlize Theron as Imperator Furiosa in the War Rig in Mad Max: Fury Road. Credit: Warner Bros
It has not hurt the stunt community’s visibility that Brad Pitt played a stunt double in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood and Ryan Gosling was a stuntman in The Fall Guy.
Miller said the Oscars recognition was long overdue.
“Stunts now have all the complexity and all the creativity that any other field has,” he said. “Stunt actors have special skills and quite often they play characters. There’s a lot of technical complexity and a lot of engineering in what they do.”
Miller said the action scenes in the Mad Max films were an integral part of the story, with the late Grant Page and Norris key contributors to their impact.
The Fall Guy, which was shot in Sydney, starred Ryan Gosling as a stunt man.
Edgerton called the Academy’s decision “wonderful news”.
“Growing up in Australia and getting into films and stunts, the Mad Max films were a huge influence and were a big part of pushing action cinema forward,” he said. “My favourite kind of action has always been very story-driven - action sequences that move the story forward and aren’t just about the spectacle.
“Films like Mad Max, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Die Hard etc where the characters feel like they are in real peril.”
GUY NORRIS’ THREE FAVOURITE STUNT SCENES
POLE CAT CHASE IN MAD MAX: FURY ROAD (2015)
Norris said the sequences that had so-called pole cats attacking the War Rig, driven by Furiosa (Charlize Theron), were designed to be like “a moving stage play” that was then shot in the Namibian desert.
“It was all live in real time as a continued piece of action,” he said. “We worked on it for several months and, in that one sequence alone, there were probably 50 stunt performers. Their timing had to be totally correct.”
HARLEY QUINN’S ESCAPE IN THE SUICIDE SQUAD (2021)
Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) escapes from a cell and fights her way to freedom. “People at this level of filmmaking always try and use a double,” Norris said. “But I always try to design the action so that the actors can be involved and can drive the story forward really well. As well as being a fabulous actress, [Robbie] is also an athlete so we were able to have her on cables running across walls and leaping and doing great weapons work.”
STOWAWAY CHASE IN FURIOSA: A MAD MAX SAGA (2024)
With Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke) driving and Furiosa (Anya Taylor-Joy) hiding underneath, the War Rig is chased through the desert in a scene shot mostly in Hay, NSW. “There’s an enormous amount of moving parts and storytelling,” Norris said. “You have to put your homework into planning it really well and looking at all the possible problems then try to mitigate them.”