Stuntman Gary Kent at HELLS ANGELS ON WHEELS

Gary Kent's autobiography, Shadows and Lights: Journeys with Outlaws in Revolutionary Hollywood, is now in its second printing. You can find it at BookPeople, Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com.


Gary Kent, Biker Stuntman
Alamo Drafthouse Downtown
May 17th, 2006
--------by Anne Heller (for WHOOPSY magazine)

Gary Kent, stuntman extraordinaire and stunt coordinator for many biker and action films of the late 1960’s and 1970’s, was on hand to answer questions and impart knowledge upon the Weird Wednesday midnight crowd for the screening of Hells Angels on Wheels ( dir: Richard Rush, cinematographer: Laszlo Kovacs, starring Jack Nicholson and Adam Roarke) on May 17th.
“Gary Kent is the legendary stunt coordinator, who did the stunt co-ordination on this movie (Hells Angles on Wheels), who set those guys on fire in Werewolves on Wheels -- which is one of my favorite moments in the cinema. He was second unit director in Dracula vs. Frankenstein which we’ve shown here before. In Peter Bogdanovich’s Targets, he rigged the bullet squibs, in Brian De Palma’s Phantom of the Paradise, he led the Dallas unit crew filming in what was supposed to be the Fillmore Auditorium… it’s amazing the stuff Gary Kent has done,” Weird Wednesday host Lars said by way of introduction.
“I doubled Jack Nicholson on 4 different films,” Gary Kent told the crowd. “I had just worked a couple westerns with him up in Utah, where I lied to get the job. I said I was a stuntman but I wasn’t. I didn’t know what to do but Jack hired me nonetheless. Then he got this biker film (Hells Angels on Wheels). He called me up and said, ‘Do you want to go up to Bakersfield and double me again and stage some fights and I said sure!
“So I worked on this picture with Chuck Bail, one of the best stuntmen in Hollywood. Bud Cardos, a friend of mine, he and I were bucking broncs for $15 bucks a day in L.A. when we got this picture.”
“This was the crème de la crème of the independent group at the time,” Kent told the audience. “Richard Rush as director,… Laszlo Kovacs, probably a lot of you know his works – he escaped from Hungary during the revolution. He and Willie Zsigmond filmed their escape. They had to hide their film in haystacks during the day and pretend they were peasants. When they finally got out, they started getting work in Hollywood. This was one of Kovacs’ first American films.”
“Jack Starrett, a fine director in his own right, makes an appearance as Officer Bingham in this movie, reprising his role from the biker movie Angels from Hell,” Lars pointed out to the audience. “You’ve got Bud Cardos, who does fights with Gary and who has a great sequence as a menacing guy at this hotel, along with doing the great fight scene in the pool. Gary has directed a couple of films. There’s also Bruno VeSota who’s a great director and directed Daughter of Horror. It speaks well of Richard Rush that he could get along so well with so many strong-willed actors and directors.”
“Also, this was one of the first films Sonny Barger ever did,” Kent continued. “As you know, Sonny Barger was the real leader of the Hells Angels Oakland chapter.
Shortly after the start of this film, two motorcycle groups come together in the town. Adam Roarke and Sonny Barger play the two leaders and they kiss each other. Adam told me that it took him about two weeks to get the taste of Sonny Barger out of his mouth. It was great working with Sonny. He had a great sense of humor. A lot of the Oakland Angels played extras in this film.”
“Oh, here’s another story about working with Nicholson,” Kent said. “Jack used to always step off his horse while looking down at the ground. I said, ‘Jack, you look like you’re afraid you’re going to step in some horseshit every time you do that. Step off like you know where you’re going, Look straight ahead.’ Jack said, ‘Good idea.’
“You’ll notice there’s a fight in a deserted swimming pool in this picture and Jack walks to the lip of the pool and jumps right into the fight without looking down. It’s about a 15 foot drop straight down on concrete. I said, ‘Jack, that’s not what I meant when I said look straight ahead!’”
Look for more stories of his stunt work in legendary biker and action movies in Gary Kent’s autobiography, which is almost complete and should be on bookshelves by this winter.
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