51 GREATEST FICTIONAL BAD GUYS

#17. ELI CROSS from THE STUNT MAN

I am a big, big fan of THE STUNT MAN. I saw the poster when I was a kid (an iconic illustration of Peter O’Toole as the Devil manning a camera) and it seared into my brain as an image of mystery and wonder for years after. Only three other posters managed to do that to me: MOTHER’S DAY (a truly awful picture), HEAVY METAL and THE WARRIORS. I finally saw THE STUNT MAN for the first time in the mid-90’s, my pal Rick doing the introduction. I was instantly hooked by its surreality, humor, punchiness, and complexity. The movie has layers, diving in and out of its own rules of fantasy and reality (which is weirder yet when you realize the “real world” the movie depicts is just a movie as well).

It’s about a fugitive on the lam who finds himself posing as a stuntman for an egotistical, maniacal, omnipresent, manipulative director who may or may not be setting him up to die in the film’s final stunt. The fugitive is a Vietnam vet slowly circling the drain of paranoia and fear. At one point, he even questions his existence: he’s sure he’s just a movie character in the director’s narrative. He finds romance with the leading lady, but the core relationship is between him and the director, Peter O’Toole’s Eli Cross — the most likable bastard you can meet on celluloid. Cross’ film world (he calls it “Wonderland” at one point) is otherworldly. There, Cross is God and the Devil combined. He controls everything: the light, his crew’s complicity, he even commands the weather to cooperate. He appears everywhere, floating like an angel in his crane-chair that swoops in to grab helpless mortals to the sky above. And, like God, you never know what his real intentions are. He could be plotting against you one minute, guiding you toward your own salvation the next.

Not many people (that I know anyway) have seen it. But I won’t recommend it. I’ve tried to in the past and am usually met afterward with the same look my dog makes when he hears a strange noise. No one seems to get it. I don’t know why, but that’s the way it is.

I have to admit, I had trouble watching it the last time I put it on. I’m usually very good at separating the real world from a fictional narrative. A narrative is just metaphor; reality, of course, is not. But there was something this time, watching Cross apathetically seeing one of his crew members perish in the first reel, only to make his crew complicit in the death, that hit a nerve this time. A few years back, Slates (later Safety) for Sarah was formed from a horrible tragedy where a camera assistant was killed on a train track while shooting a film. There was no permission to shoot on the tracks, there was no communication with the train company, nor were there PA’s stationed on the other end of the bridge where the train came barreling down to at least communicate the danger was headed their way. The director, Randall Miller (who had bragged in DVD commentaries about stealing dangerous shots before) pleaded guilty of involuntary manslaughter and served time in prison. Here, THE STUNT MAN finds its final divide between Actuality and Illusion. In movies, we can idolize, admire and have fun with Eli Cross. In the really, real world, we’d rightfully spit on him as he’s shown his jail cell.

Eli Cross: “In 22 seconds, I could break your fucking spine. In 22 seconds, I could pinch your head off like a fucking insect and spin it all over the fucking pavement. In 22 seconds, I could put 22 bullets inside your ridiculous gut. What I seem unable to do in 22 seconds is to keep you from fucking up my film!”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-r1XqXyK-E