Standing on fire, with a car over the head or slipping over a banana peel. For many it sounds nasty, but for stuntman Marco Maas from Roosendaal it is daily cake. He directed with his company Stunts for Flikken Maastricht and Mocromaffia, among others. In a while, Maas can win the highest international film prize with his work: an Oscar.
From 2028, this award will be awarded once more often, in the new category for best film stunts. The Brabant Stuntman is very pleased with that: “Films experience an evolution. The audience sees the value of meaningful action scenes in films.”
And with meaningful action scenes, the stunt coordinator does not mean scenes where you see action for the action. “With meaningful action scenes, it really adds something to the character of the character. So then you not only look at shooting and fighting, but you can better move through the scenes in the character,” says Maas as he walks to the film set.
“Action is the painting around the character.”
“Forest Gump is a good example. You see in the film that he is fighting in Vietnam in the war, that he saves lives and runs through explosions. But the emphasis is not on that. The emphasis is on the main character and his limitation. In such a case, the action is the painting around the character.”
Maas estimates the chance that he himself will win an Oscar too high. “That is unthinkable. If you want to develop very nice big action scenes, you need a lot of money. The American filmmakers are really in front of us. We spend what they are in budget for such a stunt scene in the Netherlands on an entire film.”
“The stunt budget for the Game of Thrones series is a good example of that. They had a budget of one million dollars per episode. Only to spend on stunts! We make a whole film for that and then it is on the expensive side.”
“Which Dutch director makes many action films?”
According to the Brabant Stuntman, directors in our country are also mainly trained with the emphasis on dialogue, drama and depth in films. “Which Dutch director makes many action films?”
An Oscar seems to be far out of sight for the Dutch stunt people, but at least it is possible to be nominated for the price from 2028.
“Stunts have always heard of the magic of films, now they also belong to the Oscars,” writes the organization behind the film prizes. The American director David Leitch is the initiator of the new category. He made the film ‘The Fall Guy’ last year. He is about the life of a stuntman and all the troubles that go with it.
For his career as a director, Leitch himself was a stuntman for Brad Pitt, among others. There are now 23 Oscar categories. The last time one recovered was a long time ago, in 2002, then for the best animation film.
Here you can see more about what it means to be a stuntman:
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