It’s not only unusual to discover that the Emmys have three categories devoted to stunt work (your move, Oscars!) but even more of a kick to realize that the comedy entries are here to play, pushing their genre trappings even further, and HBO’s “The Righteous Gemstones” is no exception. One wouldn’t expect a comic series concentrating on a huckster family of evangelists to contain unleashed hand grenades, people jumping through glass windows, men running around on fire or the omnipresence of motorcycle ninjas, but welcome to fertile imagination of creator and star Danny McBride.
“Danny [and everyone] really love to jump in,” Emmy-nominated John Copeman says. “Adam [DeVine] was incredible with the wire work in his scenes [in the human pyramid sequence]. He must have done it before because when we told him it would take a few hours to set up, he said, ‘If we’re not done in 30 minutes, there’s something wrong with the rigging.’ And he dialed it in in, like, 15 minutes.”
Even veteran cast members like John Goodman, who plays the Gemstone patriarch, are down to give their all in this regard, even despite the potential for unexpected outcomes. “It was around 2 a.m., and Mr. Goodman had already had kind of a long day, and he wasn’t padded in his big fight scene because he was doing most of the beating”, Copeman says. “But he took a head snap, and just reacted so heavily that his feet slipped. So, it was really kind of an odd accident to happen. It wasn’t like he got hit or there was a rigging involved, he literally just slipped and head-butted the back of an F-250.”
But Copeman indicates that safety is always key on his sets, and sometimes even used storyboards for the much-more elaborate second season, particularly for the addition of the “cycle ninjas” who terrorize the Gemstones via their ever-multiplying rivals for the cash-grab spiritual enterprise everyone wants a piece of.
“We used some stuff from ‘Mad Max,’ especially because they were originally meant to be street bikes instead of dirt bikes “, says Copeman, a 35-year veteran who’s worked on everything from teen comedies to horror pics to Oscar winners, not to mention McBride’s earlier HBO comedies “Eastbound & Down” and “Vice Principals.” “We also had a couple of car hits on a few episodes, and some of the networks just don’t want us doing that, because of the potential for a head or spinal injury. So, there’s always a workaround, like showing the inside of a car’s windshield getting hit at 5 mph instead of the usual 12-15 mph.”
And it’s also important that the stuntwork be true to character, as in a beachside hand-to-hand fight scene between McBride’s Jesse and his eventual nemesis Lyle (played by Eric Andre). “The backstory on Jesse is that he probably can’t fight”, Copeman elaborates. “But he’s probably watched UFC, same for Lyle. So, it’s like, do you want these guys to fight in a way that they really don’t know what they’re doing, but they’re trying to maybe mimic something they’ve seen? We figured they’re just gonna try and butcher the hell out of it, and it may end up look like they’re having sex. I’ve always been about not doing a stunt just to do a stunt, make sure it serves the story.”
Copeman, a Wilmington, North Carolina, native, got his break on the 1984 film “Firestarter,” which happened to be produced by the De Laurentiis Entertainment Group, which happened to have a facility in his hometown. But he never really cared growing up what he worked on, despite a fondness for everything from “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” to Cannon Films-era action pictures. Says Copeman: “I just wanted to work. I watched all of the stuff, anything, read the credits, and then would try to find out who the stunt guys where, since there wasn’t an internet then. So, it was either trade papers or libraries for me just taking in all the info I could about the industry.”
“I would have loved to work on something like “The Abyss”, waterworks are always fun, though I’ve heard James Cameron is a bit of a screamer”, he says with a laugh. “But I remember seeing “Terminator 2” in the theater, saying, ‘I don’t know that I’ll ever be a good stunt man, if that’s what you have to do’. As an audience member, I was completely fooled.”
Copeman is grateful that the Emmys recognize stunt work, and though it would be gratifying for Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to also get on board, he believes the old guard has a little resistance to the idea (“they believe stunts should be in the background, but times really are changinc,” he adds). For now, he’s just “super nervous” to attend the ceremony, even with a god luck charm in tow. “When I told my daughter I was submitting [for “Gemstones”], she automatically assumed that by submitting it we were going, so she told her friends, ‘Hey, I’m going to the Emmys this summer!’ I was, like, ummm, it doesn’t work like that,” he says laughing. “You have to get the nomination first!”
“The Righteous Gemstones” is now streaming on HBO Max.
