Stunt Love (2011) J P McGowan

Long before 'Brangelina', it was the action-adventure stunt pioneers J.P McGowan and his daredevil wife Helen Holmes, who ruled Hollywood's silver screens.
The story of Australia’s J.P ‘Jack’ McGowan plays like a Hollywood script. An epic romance set against the birth of cinema featuring high adventure, war, fame and great love won and lost. J.P was one of Hollywood’s first stunt directors, who with his wife and on-screen daredevil Helen Holmes, paved the way for the action-adventure blockbusters we know today. Long before ‘Brangelina’ it was Jack and Helen who ruled Hollywood’s silver screens.
Jack McGowan was born in the small railway town of Terowie in South Australia. He had been a sailor, stockman, a Boer war hero and an actor before he stumbled into the embryonic film industry in 1912. Jack was dubbed the ‘Railroad Man’ due to his specialization in producing railway themed films, which set the conventions of the action- blockbuster genre. His career holds a mirror up to a time when the movies were growing- up, when the language and cinema was being written and when rules had yet to be fixed.

At the heart of Stunt Love is of course a love story. Jack’s life in the movies was founded on his relationship with wife and ‘leading lady’ Helen Holmes. Jack’s creative zenith was at its peak during his 13-year relationship with this equally dynamic woman. As Hollywood’s first stuntwoman Helen was brave and tough, a collaborator willing to risk life and limb to get the best stunt scene. The couple formed a creative partnership like no other in film history. It was a relationship based around extreme danger and relentless filmmaking.

As a director Jack was a pioneer of technology, of editing and sequence construction. He forged new rules and created cinema iconography such as the damsel tied to the railway line. And Helen Holmes broke new ground as a modern woman, leaping from trains, fist-fighting bad guys and righting wrongs. She became one of the most famous icons of early-serialized cinema. They were not necessarily ‘artists’, they were experts in a brand new industry that made studio bosses vast sums of money and entertained millions of people around the world.
Stunt Love is told against the backdrop of a colorful social and historical background, spanning the Boer War, the birth of ‘Hollywood’, the Depression, World Wars and the transition from silent to ‘talkie’ cinema. Using silent-era techniques with contemporary film and animation, this film blends Jack’s technical palette with the modern. Featuring interviews with legendary stuntman Grant Page (Mad Max 1 & 3) and modern daredevil Zoe Bell (Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof) Stunt Love tells the story of Jack and Helen, their creative and personal partnership and the birth of an industry and art form that now dominates world culture.

Read more about J.P McGowan @ https://drive.google.com/file/d/1J_ZE...