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The Brotherhood of the Fast and Furious

Meet The Men Who Risk Their Lives To Perform Insane Stunts

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Padleford: You had Corey Eubanks driving, and to have it go off like it did, it was executed perfectly. Everybody was in the right place. As far as my team and my camera car, I’m behind the wheel, but I’ve got a crane operator swinging the crane, I’ve got a camera operator that’s aiming the camera, and it all just came together perfectly.

Kelso: Sometimes it’s a little frustrating when you know you’ve done a great stunt, and they don’t put it in the movie for one reason or another. You sometimes wonder, “Well, why am I out there, hanging it all out, and it doesn’t even make into the movie?” It happens from time to time. Normally if it’s a scripted stunt they leave that in, but some of the chasing that we really did a great job with, that stuff will be cut in preference of an actor’s close up.

Padleford: Of all the shots I’ve done in the franchise — including shooting the tankers in Fast 4, which was crazy — being in front of the crashing bus in Fast 5 had to be the highlight of my career. It was just so insane and so amazing looking, and for us to be 15 feet ahead of it when it was happening was pretty amazing.

McCarthy: I love hanging out on set. If there’s something extremely cool about to be shot, then I have to be there to watch it. That’s one of the gratifying parts of the job.

Padleford: The first time it didn’t work, so getting all amped up, and having the cannons not go off, and the bus just rolled over on its side — that was pretty crazy. And then the amazing job of the effects department to rebuild the bus the same day, and then to redo it and have it go off the second time was really amazing.

Kelso: In Fast & Furious 6 we did a road-race scene on the cliffs in Spain. There were four different guys for two cars, but that was a cliffed road, so if there was a mistake there would be no surviving it. It was 2,000 feet up in the air. There was no guardrail, just a cinder block wall that might prevent you from going over, but I doubt it.

“Getting the band back together”

McCarthy: There’s hours and hours of preparation that go into these things, so it can get tense, especially when they’re really dangerous. For instance, one particular stunt, we started prepping at 6:00 a.m. and I don’t think we actually did the jump until 2:00 in the afternoon. That much time went into lining things up, making sure the landing was perfect, doing a whole bunch of run-ups, double checking the truck, the tire pressure, the shock setting. You just do everything you can to make sure it’s perfect because the No. 1 priority is that nobody gets hurt.

Nagle: Things going wrong is always on the back of my mind. It’s part of what forces you to look at it from the perspective of, “How do we do this safely, how do we do it right?” At the end of the day, if sh*t goes wrong, it could get ugly. I’ve had some close calls.

Padleford: There’s never been any safety issues as far as my team goes. The close calls that we usually have are with the camera in proximity to the action. You know, our vehicle, and the crane, and it all being really close to an explosion. In Fast & Furious 6, we had a piece of debris come off the car and hit our car. But we’re all pretty safe inside the cab, so the peril is mainly for the camera itself, because we’re constantly trying to get the camera closer and closer to the action, so it’s the camera that takes the beating.

Kelso: Going through the building on Fast & Furious 6, there was a huge crowd of people, and when that happens you definitely get an applause. Sometimes I don’t hear it because I’m still strapped in the car and I’m trying to get out, and that takes a bit of time, but generally when a stunt goes well, everyone is extremely happy.

Padleford: Hollywood is fickle, but I definitely think there’s room for a couple more. It really comes down to the writing of a good script.

McCarthy: The stunt guys and my guys and the special effects guys, they’re all car guys. That’s their passion and that’s how they got into this world. We’ve done so many of these movies, it’s always in one way or another the same group, the same crowd, so everybody knows each other. It’s like getting the band back together for every movie. It just makes the operation a whole lot smoother.

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