THE BACKLOT
By William Kallay
Last summer’s “Collateral” took audiences into the
dark abyss of Los Angeles’ night life. Max (Jamie Foxx) is a taxi
driver who picks up passenger Vincent (Tom Cruise). Max soon finds
out that his passenger is a cold blooded hitman, and has essentially
been taken hostage on his passenger’s melee.
Michael Mann’s film re-affirmed his precise directing-style of character
study and slick action sequences as seen in “Heat” (1995). Using
minimal action, Mann has made a film that is taut and exciting to watch.
There aren’t any car chases or explosions in “Collateral.” Much of
the film takes place in Max’s taxicab, and most of the driving he does
is, well, driving. So where does a stunt driver fit into the
scheme of things?
Robert Nagle is a twelve-year veteran of precision stunt driving, and if
you’ve seen the film, you’ve seen his work in action. At one point
during “Collateral,” Max floors it and takes Vincent on a wild ride
through the streets of downtown L.A. Some of the fast driving was
performed by Jamie Foxx. He couldn’t have done it without the
training from Nagle.
Nagle has worked on numerous television movies, commercials and films,
including “3: The Dale Earnhardt Story” (2004) and the upcoming “Herbie:
Fully Loaded” (2005). His background also includes modifying cars
for film and commercial shoots, and he has competition licenses in the
SCCA, USAC, and IMSA organizations.
Robert and I recently spoke about his work on “Collateral,” precision
stunt driving, and cars.
William Kallay, From Script To DVD: How did you
become involved with “Collateral”?
Robert Nagle: I’ve worked on a couple of other
projects previously with Michael Mann. I also worked directly with
Michael with somes racing by instructing him personally. And we
had also built a car for him, and then took him up to the track and got
him up-to-speed in that car. It became a natural. Anytime
there’s driving involved, he picks up the phone and calls me.
FSTDVD: Have you done any stunts before this?
Nagle: Yes. I do a lot of TV car
commercials, some TV show and some features.
FSTDVD: How did you meet Michael Mann?
Nagle: Actually, he was trying to complete the
car that we built for him. It was a 1970 Chevelle that was just
way “out-of-control.”
[laughter]
It was basically turned into a 1970 Chevelle put on top of a Winston Cup
suspension/chassis with about 700-horsepower.
FSTDVD: Oh my gosh.
Nagle: It’s quite a ride.
FSTDVD: Does he drive this car in competition?
Nagle: No, it’s a street car. We’ve taken
it to the track with him for him to enjoy. He can run it around
Willow Springs and have some fun with it and really open it up.
FSTDVD: 700-horsepower and it’s still street
legal?
Nagle: Yes. It doesn’t get very good gas
mileage.
FSTDVD: Does it take special fuel?
Nagle: It was built pretty conservatively. It
runs on pump gas.
FSTDVD: I would think that a car like that would
require special fuel at a race track.
Nagle: You can make horsepower by increasing the
compression ratio of the motor. In lieu of that, we substituted
cubic inches. It’s 540-cubic inches, but fairly conservative
compression so that you can still run pump gas in it. If you
wanted more power out of this, you can certainly do that, but then you
have to put in exotic fuels and it’s not so fun to drive.
FSTDVD: Most of the driving in the film is
subtle, but there’s a scene in which Jamie Foxx careens around downtown
L.A. Did he perform most of the driving in that sequence?
Nagle: It’s not an easy question to answer.
He did a lot of the driving, but if you look at it, there’s a lot of
dialogue in that sequence. Michael and I spent some time trying to
figure how we would get Jamie to drive at speed and do the dialogue.
There are portions of it where he’s driving. There are portions
where he’s not driving. We shot so much of that, I couldn’t even
tell you at the end of the day what-was-what in the film. So, yes,
there are definitely sections where he is driving. But when the
dialogue becomes really heavy, then his focus has to come back to
acting, which is what he does. In those situations, it’s better
not to have him behind the wheel.
FSTDVD: Was the car on a rig during dialogue
scenes, or was Jamie actually driving?
Nagle: For the high-speed sequence, we couldn’t
really put it on a rig. There’s a section of road that’s too
narrow for the trailer and rig to tow a car around. We put Jamie
in the car with the camera and sent him on his way. That was one
scenario. The other scenario was that we had another car that we
built with a “blind drive” system, where I doubled for Tom Cruise and
sat in the backseat of the car and actually drove the car from that
position. We put Jamie in the front. That was another set-up
we did.
FSTDVD: Did you have a few cars that were rigged
specifically for scenes like that?
Nagle: Yes. The blind drive car was built
specifically for that sequence.
FSTDVD: Watching the movie, I couldn’t even tell
what was going on. It looked like everything was live-action.
In some movies, if you look really closely, there’s a stuntman taking
the place of the actor, and you can tell he’s got the wig on and the
suit and it doesn’t work quite right. But in “Collateral,” it was
seamless.
Nagle: If you know Michael’s work at all, he’s
very meticulous about being realistic. It can’t look fake.
It can’t look “Hollywood.”
FSTDVD: What kind of driving experience did Foxx
bring to the film? Had he done any high-performance driving
before?
Nagle: He really had not. We worked with
him. I spent two days working with him, getting him to drive at
speed, starting with just basics of how a car handles. What makes it
stick to the road? How your inputs to the car affect it and what the
car tells you; what the car’s about to do and how to control that.
So we spent two solid days working on that. He picked it up really
well. He’s really able to focus himself and really take it in.
I was really impressed by that.
FSTDVD: Where did you train?
Nagle: Up at Willow Springs Racetrack, just north
of Lancaster [outside of Los Angeles].
FSTDVD: Did you practice in a car that was
similar to the taxi?
Nagle: No. We had two [Ford] Crown
Victorias up there that were basically identical to the [camera cars].
And we had them rigged with roll bars in them so they’d be safe.
We just spent two solid days driving these cars. Typically, we’ll
be on the track for half-hour, come off the track, and we’ll talk about
what went on and what the next steps are for the building blocks to
continue on. Then we’ll take a fifteen minute break. It’s a
lot more physical than people realize. And going back to what you
were asking about the car. As far as trying to compress the time
and get the most quality time and training out of it, it’s important to
use the same vehicle, because the characteristics are much different
from vehicle-to-vehicle.
FSTDVD: Did he come out of this wanting to
continue high-performance driving?
Nagle: Yes. He had actually mentioned to me
that when things slowed down for him, he wanted to go out and do this
again. He really enjoyed it.
FSTDVD: Is he a car collector?
Nagle: He’s got some cars. I don’t think
that’s a big focus for him, but he does have some cars.
FSTDVD: How do you go about training somebody
that’s never precision driven?
Nagle: We start at just a basic level of how a
car functions, the vehicle dynamics, what makes it work and how to work
with it. There’s a lot of learning and unlearning your basic
skills. Your brain tells you to do the wrong thing when a car is
at its limit of adhesion. It’s training someone to not do what
their natural reaction is. We slowly build up to that so that you
can see how your inputs affect the vehicle, what to feel for, so you
understand what the vehicle is doing. It’s not going to tell you
everything that’s going on. It’s really working just from little
tiny building blocks of handling characteristics, and building that up
to where you’re up to almost to the level of what the vehicle is capable
of.
FSTDVD: Were the Crown Victorias modified beyond
having safety harnesses and roll bars? Was the suspension changed
to make the car more maneuverable for you?
Nagle: The suspension was left stock. The
only cars that had a roll bar were the ones we used for training, and,
of course, the car that they turned over at the end of the sequence.
Other than that, they just had standard seatbelts and airbags.
FSTDVD: Are the Crown Vics fun to maneuver? Ford
builds those specifically for police forces around the country.
Nagle: They’re big and lethargic.
[laughter]
FSTDVD: It’s not quite like a Mustang, where it’s
a smaller car with tighter suspension and smaller body mass.
Nagle: It’s a lot more work to get these cars
around the corner at any kind of speed. Little cars, like
Mustangs, are much faster through corners.
FSTDVD: How do you adjust when you’re taking a
tight corner?
Nagle: It’s not that simple. One of the
things I’ve always brought to the table is that I’ve got a big racing
background. That allows me to really drive a car fast.
There’s a lot of setting the car up as you’re going into a corner. [If
you don’t] get the right amount of weight on the front wheels, and you
get it to turn too much, the back wheels lose traction. It’s a
fine balance of getting the car entered into a corner, and basically,
it’s sliding all the way through the corner. It may not look like
it, but to really get some speed, all four wheels are drifting through
the corner.
FSTDVD: Are you also working the brakes and the
accelerator at the same time?
Nagle: Yes. Your steering, your throttle
and brake are all involved in that. It’s not quite as simple as
coming up to the corner real fast and turning the wheel. It’s
almost like a ballet of just getting the car balanced right on the edge
of that adhesion.
FSTDVD: Do you take practice runs?
Nagle: Typically, yes. What I’ll do is,
once we have a course laid out, I’ll run the course at, say, 50% of what
I feel the car is capable of. I get a feel for what the road
conditions are like. And I may make one more run at 90%.
Then I can give them some input on where a camera should be, what’s a
safe area, what might happen here, what might happen there. I’m
looking for feedback from the director at that time as far as vehicle
placement and speed. But typically one run through and I’m ready
to go.
FSTDVD: Once you get the script, do you sit down
with the director and coordinate how the stunts are going to go?
Or is it a mixture between the script and what Michael Mann sees?
Nagle: With Michael, it’s all up to him.
[laughter]
He’ll tell me what he’s looking for and look to me for feedback if
that’s possible. But he’ll definitely express exactly what he
wants.
FSTDVD: Have you worked with other directors who
may not have as much experience with stunts?
Nagle: Yes. If they’re not as familiar with
vehicles, we try and work with them and explain to them that this is
possible, that is not possible. We can do X. We can do Y,
and give them some options and just guide them through it. At the
end of the day, it’s their vision and we try and accommodate that.
FSTDVD: Do you have a crew that directly works
with you?
Director Michael Mann
Nagle: We have a fabrication shop we build cars
like this for. There are a handful of drivers that I work with.
FSTDVD: Do you occasionally pass the stunt on to
one of your drivers, or do you handle them mostly on your own?
Nagle: I try to do as much as I can. If
there’s a chase scene involved where we have multiple drivers, then I’d
certainly bring them on, because they’re guys I’ve worked with closely
and we know what each other driver is capable of and what they’re going
to do. Because when you’re running at speeds that close, you
really need to trust the other guy.
FSTDVD: You had mentioned that you have a
fabrication shop. Do you actually rig up the cars that are in the
movie you’re working on? Or are those handled by somebody else?
Nagle: We do a lot of car preparation for film.
For “Collateral,” we built the car with the blind drive system.
FSTDVD: How long would it take to build a car
like that?
Nagle: We probably have 50 man-hours in it.
FSTDVD: What kind of safety equipment would you
put into a car?
Nagle: On a basic level, we want a good safety
restraint system/seatbelt system. If the factory one isn’t
sufficient enough, then we go to a racecar harness system, which is a
five-point harness. The next level above that would be a simple
roll hoop, or roll bar that just goes up over the driver to protect the
roof from coming in on him. And the next step beyond that would be
a roll cage, which is more of an enclosure inside the vehicle.
FSTDVD: Do you still have the standard air bags
inside the car, or would you have to disable them?
Nagle: If we know that we’re going to crash the
car, we typically disable them.
FSTDVD: Why is that?
Nagle: Once we have our restraint systems in there, the airbags can
become a little bit more of a hazard. They’re designed to catch an
occupant in a frontal impact, but we don’t want it. We don’t need
added things going off in the car. The restraint systems that we
put in are more than adequate to restrain somebody. It keeps them
safe.
FSTDVD: You’re basically building a modified race
car when you’re doing this, aren’t you?
Nagle: In a sense, yes.
FSTDVD: During a stunt, is it easier for you to
maneuver a smaller car, like a Mustang Cobra, or a larger vehicle like
the taxicab in “Collateral”? What are some of the limitations of
each car?
Nagle: The bigger cars, like the Crown Victoria,
are just really cumbersome. They’re really slow to respond to your
inputs with steering and braking and throttle, versus a Mustang Cobra
which is a lot crisper. The feedback from the car is more precise.
It handles way better than the Crown Victoria
does. We’re able to carry a lot more speed with a bigger margin of
safety with a car that already handles better.
FSTDVD: Can you tell me about your involvement in
the Sports Car Club Of America [SCCA]?
Nagle: I still race periodically through SCCA.
I have a national and professional racing license. I was heavily
involved with SCCA in the mid-1990s. Prior to that, I was learning
how to road race. It’s a good organization. It’s a great
place to get your feet wet. There are so many different kinds of
car classes to race in. You kind of pick and choose based on your
budget where it fits in for you. And they have competitive racing
from regional levels in Southern California to a national level where
you can compete all over the U.S.
FSTDVD: Have you raced mostly in modified
(Mustang) Cobras?
Nagle: A good part of it has been that. I’ve raced different
Formula cars. Some “spec racing Fords.” It’s a purpose-built
car with a stock motor in them. It’s more or less a level playing
field and it’s more up to the driver and less about the car. I’ve
run some of their pro endurance races. Endurance racing is really
enjoyable, where you’re running six hours, four hours or twelve hours.
FSTDVD: How has stunt driving changed with use of
digital technology?
Nagle: It’s changing.
[laughter]
There’s a lot of work now where they’re using plate shots and CGI, where
normally we would have a stunt driver in the car. They’re
beginning to manipulate things where unfortunately, it may not be
necessary. It’s an issue. It really is.
FSTDVD: I know someone who does stunts, and he
says it’s been kind of hard lately because of the fact that either
reality shows are cutting into action shows on TV, or computerized
stuntmen are getting into the picture.
Nagle: There have been some car commercials I’ve
done, one of which featured Winston Cup cars. We only had three
cars on the track, and lo and behold, there were six or seven!
FSTDVD: How did you become involved in racing
cars?
Nagle: On a whim, a friend of mine said, “Hey,
why don’t take this car around the track and see what you think.”
It’s been “downhill” since. It was really addictive to me. I
really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed the level of focus required
and the competitiveness. It really fed into what I’m about.
I love it.
Special Thanks to Robert Nagle and Dorrit Ragosine
Artwork & Images © DreamWorks, LLC. All rights reserved.
Originally posted here on December 6, 2004