Stuntman!: My Car-Crashing, Plane-Jumping, Bone-Breaking, Death-Defying Hollywood Life

Guy tries to be a movie hero ("Boys like macho. And they like speed") but it is sweaty and selfconscious and then underneath that he's a prick and a villain and then underneath that there is something really weird at work.

Needham, who started as a stuntman and then made pals with Burt Reynolds, who wanted to be a tough guy, and then directed Smokey and the Bandit and bought a NASCAR team and became a typical Hollywood sleaze, presents himself hamhandedly (and heavyhandedly and cackhandedly, every bad kind of handedly you can imagine, which is sad given that he's going for coolhandedly) as a badass, and it is true that if you think people deserve wealth and fame for blowing themselves up and strapping themselves to rockets and the like, show more he earned his keep. But then he constantly undermines it without even meaning to--talking about the way he kept his first wife's kids away from their dad, or the way he drove Burt Reynolds to Utah to get away when he was wanted for questioning in a murder, or how everyone who ever disagreed with him was a moron and an asshole and a couple of choice words from Needham left them pissing in the wind (this narrative structure I always thought of as particular to medical people, but I guess movie people take themselves just as seriously), and it doesn't take much to recognize a stone narcissist psychopath, though given Needham's seeming discomfort with himself I think he was made by Hollywood rather than born that way, kind of even more scary.

And the cracks appear in weird places. This book has so much lowhanging fruit for deconstruction that you almost wonder if Needham placed it there intentionally so that when the pointyheaded intellectuals criticized his rickety lifestory-self-presentation he could eyeroll and dismiss. There's this bit about him and some other stunt dude injecting themselves with this and that so they could work on rolled ankles, and then the other guy wants Hal to inject him and Hal's like "I couldn't do it. I don't know why." Just this little moment of penetration anxiety and then back to tech specs talking tough through gritted teeth (this guy literally got his start doubling John Wayne).

Or when him and his friend rig up a shower with a tarp in the place they're staying in Prague and then he goes with this weird belligerence "They could see our heads and feet. Big deal." What??? Or after he starts up his stuntman agency, the endless parade of stuntmen under his charge who pull something off imperfectly or whatever, and Needham adds a little twist to the "alla buncha morons" story by categorizing them in terms of his ability to offer them continued Hollywood teat: "He made my B team"; "He would never be one of 'Hal's Guys.'" I don't want to dwell on this too long, because not being able to face what you are is heartbreaking and I didn't know the guy anyway so who am I to say, but everything about this book screams "deeply repressed same-sex attraction"; the weird puerility about women; the insecure namedropping of square-jawed friends like Chuck Yeager and the dude who broke the sound barrier on land and the fighter pilot who couldn't keep up with ol' Hal in the sky and the "negritos" who could track every man alive but not ol' Hal; the way him and Burt Reynolds lived together and Burt is constantly calling him cutesy things like "Roomie" and they bring women back to impress them and the women are always duly impressed but somehow never sleep with, and suddenly I realize that the other thing that's never mentioned along with sex is drugs, which come on, you lived with Burt Reynolds in the Seventies and ….? Deeply repressed.)

In light of all this bizarro stuff the run-of-the-mill terribleness of the prose can go without much comment, but allow me to single out two things: First, the constant jolty tense shift when he tries to drop campfree he-man one-liners on us: "They said it couldn't be done. Count me in." "He wanted to know if I could really pull it off. You bet." Second, the guy doesn't know a pronoun from the Hal Needham doll with rockem sockem action: "I tied the rope to a tree. Then I secured the rope and let the rope down into the Canyon. Burt grabbed the rope." This could have been like a two-and-a-half-star movie if they cast someone charming as the main dude and gave us some insight into the weird underlying trauma of blowing yourself up for a living--Pushing Tin partially salvaged by more explosions. But Needham doesn't know thing one about writing and clearly had neuroses that he never really touched (besides the gay thing, he never had a dad, which is sad and makes me glad that at least John Wayne and Burt Reynolds loved him), and there is endless weirdness but mostly this is a trashy Republican bootstraps story that reminds you that celebrities are (seemingly all!) deeply solipsistic and stupid and evil. show less

Legendary stuntman Hal Needham, writing in a straightforward let-me-tell-you-a-story style, tells the story of his rise from rural poverty in Arkansas to fame and fortune in Hollywood. Along the way you learn a great deal about how movie stunts were done in the sixties and seventies, about the famous stars that Needham worked with (Richard Boone, John Wayne, and Burt Reynolds in particular), and about the quality that Needham shares with successful race car drivers and test pilots: an off-the-scale level of confidence in his own skills and his ability to make split-second, life-or-death decisions.

Nobody is going to mistake this book for the likes of Ernest K. Gann's Fate Is The Hunter, Mike Cherry's High Steel, or Dennis Smith's Report show more from Engine Company 82 -- subtle, deeply reflective memoirs about how it feels (and what it means) to do incredibly dangerous things for a living. Needham's worldview is a straightforward one that emphasizes action over reflection, prefers directness to subtlety (this is, after all, the guy who directed "Megaforce") and celebrates the financial rewards of hard work.

Stuntman is akin to listening to a guy who's lived a long, varied, interesting life (paratrooper, tree surgeon, stuntman, movie director, NASCAR team owner) spinning yarns in a bar. Some of the stories go on too long, some of them are more interesting to the teller than the listener, and some of them have no real point. Most of them, though, are funny or gripping or both -- more than enough to leave you glad you bought him a round or three. show less

I couldn't put the book down. I got the book this afternoon, started reading it this evening, and now it is 2 in the mornng.

Hal Needham has a straightforward, understated first-person writing style that brings the reader with him into the middle of terrifying action sequences. But it is told so matter-of-factly that you believe he's willing to do things no sane person even contemplates.

Jump off an airplane to land on another stuntman riding a horse below? He makes it sound difficult, yes, but not impossible, if you know what you are doing, and are not afraid of heights. Or of getting hurt.

Free-climb a sheer cliff, and then use your own body, braced against a couple partly buried rocks to brace the rope for the three people following show more you-- He makes it sound almost reasonable.

He starts his story with his childhood as a sharecropper's son in Arkansas, then to his business trimming trees, which led to his first job as a stuntman. Part of the job of a stuntman is to get hurt - to get the wind knocked out of you, and accumulate scrapes and bruises for a fee. Then there is the possibility of getting really hurt, or not surviving at all, for a higher fee.

Car stunts, cowboy stunts, high falls, fights. He takes us behind the scenes on the movie sets, introduces us to the actors, directors, and stunt coordinators. And he breaks down some of the gags- how they were done, and what he changed to some of them to make them safer, and hurt less. Because yes, they do hurt. He introduced the use of airbags for the landing surface on high falls, after being the first human to try out an automobile airbag.

He got the film crew out of Czechoslovakia when the Russians invaded - I had just read about this same event in Robert Vaughan's autobiography. This had more details of how he made it happen.

And through the book, his no-nonsense approach to stunts and to life make fascinating reading. show less

A fun, easy-to-read book that provides a look at stuntman/director Hal Needham’s life and career. The early part of the book where he first gets into doing stunt work and his work with John Wayne is very good. I also liked the parts describing the making of Smokey and the Bandit and his work with Burt Reynolds. However, then it seemed like the book turned into a he won’t hire me so I won’t hire him or he didn’t do the stunt right so I won’t hire him kind of vendetta. Needham is a talented guy and certainly gave his all to his work. However, it seemed like he had a chip on his shoulder as he even had to start his own stuntman’ s association. I would think cooperation and working together to make the movie a success is better show more overall for the project than one person saying my way or no way. Even if Needham was right, his attitude comes through as uppity and cock-sure of himself. Maybe though that’s what you need in his business. However, in talking with other stuntmen, the goal is to do a good stunt without being injured. Needham seemed like he took on anything, especially if he could name his own price, without regards to his personal safety. The details of the design of the car that broke the land sound barrier got too technical for me but overall, I did enjoy the book and did laugh out loud a few times. I wish there had been more photos, especially of his family and kids as well as a filmography of what he worked on. I also would like to know what he is doing now. show less

I’m going to be completely honest on this one. After putting my name in the hat to receive this book for review, and after being selected, I went into it wondering why I had bothered. I haven’t had that much luck reading autobiographies lately, and the more I thought about the subject, I was just not sure I really cared.

I was wrong.

This is a fun book. Greatest book ever written? Probably not. But fun – you bet. This is probably as close as you can get to sitting with Hal Needham and hearing his stories. No surprise – he has a lot of them.

In case you don’t know, Needham was probably most famous for everything he did with Burt Reynolds – most specifically Smokey and the Bandit. But he was a stuntman for a long time before show more that. And, if the stories can be believed (and there is no reason they shouldn’t be, there are just so many of them you mind starts to be boggled) an instrumental force in the way stunt work evolved over the years. On a personal note, as someone who grew up on John Wayne movies (in fact, grew up on a lot of the movies Needham worked on), I doubly enjoyed the stories of the work he did.

The stories are fun, the life is a life well-lived, and if you just want to hear a guy telling stories that are a good time, then this is the book for you. show less

I should start this review by saying that I've been a huge fan of Hal Needham for years. Sure, his movies aren't masterpieces, but they are fun, they are funny, and they are endearing. His biography is exactly the same. This is a fun read. If you're a fan of film, especially the behind the scenes side of things, the how and why things came together, this is a book you will enjoy. There's a lot of information regarding Hal's life that was new to me. Hal was a trailblazer in almost every field he's entered. He created stunt practices that are still in use today, set trends in directing, NASCAR, and even in new camera equipment. He literally set the land-speed record and broke the sound barrier on land with his rocket car (now in the show more Smithsonian); and these are just a few of his more interesting stories, all of which he tells in a very conversational style in this book.

This is a fun read, and I recommend it to everyone. If you are unsure of your chosen profession, whether it be film or something else, if you feel lost; read this book. I guarantee Hal will make you feel better about the path your on, or make you realize you need to change it. show less

Honestly, I had no idea who Hal Needham was before I read this book (though I did guess that he was some sort of stunt person, I'm just that quick on the uptake). Now, I probably know more than I ever really wanted to. Mr. Needham has had quite the life, from nearly nothing to more than everything and everywhere in between.

The book is mainly one story after another. A lot of the stories concern Burt Reynolds, since Mr. Needham was his stunt double for many movies, so, if you're a fan of Reynolds than this should be an interesting book. But I thought that the most interesting stories in the book were those of the time that he worked as Richard Boone's stunt double on "Have Gun... Will Travel". I've never seen the show before, but from show more the tone of the stories it seems like Mr. Needham had some of his most interesting experiences on that show.

I had seen the documentary "Double Dare" before I started this book, so I knew some of the lingo which I think helped since some of the stories seemed to travel at a million miles per hour, as if Mr. Needham just couldn't wait to get them on the page.

Overall the writing was pretty great, though it seemed as though the stories started to jump around in time and place towards the end and the prose got a lot more choppy than it had been in the beginning.

Also, one of the reasons that I gave it four instead of five stars was that some of it was just so amazingly outrageous that here and there in the book I'd be pulled out of the narrative and sorta think to myself, 'really, c'mon, really, one guy did all of this and is still alive'. But then, I'd get to the passages that concerned Mr. Needham's horses, or times that he worked with other people's horses and those passages are what made me believe the rest of the experiences he says he lived through. When he writes about the horses, the love he has for them just seeps out through the book's pages.

Overall it was a good book, interesting, informative, and in a lot of places hilariously funny. And now, I have also added another half dozen movies to my to watch list (as if it isn't long enough already). Ah well. It was worth it, and I hope he's staying away from rockets these days, can't afford too many more broken backs. show less