Originally Published in the January-February 2018 issue of Film Comment
By R. Emmet Sweeney
The stunt studio 87Eleven has transformed the way action is produced in Hollywood. Formed in 2004 by future John Wick filmmakers and former stuntmen Chad Stahelski and David Leitch, it has become a one-stop shop that combines choreography, physical training, stuntwork, and second-unit filming. For them stunts are storytelling by other means, so they emphasize learning cinematography along with jiujitsu (they are now also a production company). It is something they took from working for choreographer Yuen Woo-ping on The Matrix, bringing the Hong Kong style to Hollywood in a more systematic way–an influence made clear in their celebrated gun-fu nightclub shootout in the first John Wick. Heidi Moneymaker is the only female member of the 87Eleven team, a gymnast who parlayed her athleticism–and some study of Tony Jaa movies–into a career as a stuntwoman. She has been Scarlett Johansson’s stunt double since Iron Man 2, and she spoke to Film Comment about her life of haymakers, lucha libre, and car crashes.
Can you take us through the process for working on an action sequence in a film?
Generally you come in early on with the fight coordinators. Sometimes we spend months designing a sequence [only] to have it changed last minute. It is hard to throw two months of work out the window and create something just as good on the fly, unless you are already prepared. Luckily, a lot of times I’ve worked with people for a long time, and they give me a lot of leeway to give my input and to help with the character, because I have a background and set of talents that fight coordinators who aren’t gymnasts don’t have.
With the Marvel movies I’m usually brought in months in advance, and we read the script and go over the fights and collaborate for weeks and weeks and weeks until they’re perfect. With John Wick 2, I originally came in earlier in the movie for a different squence, and then that sequence got cut, and we moved to reshoots to do that whole sequence at the end with the violin fight. I was there for a week, worked with Keanu a bit, running the choreography back and forth. Pretty straightforward stuff. Keanu is so trained and well-prepared that he can pick things up really fast.
How much do you have to study the actor you are performing stunts for?
You definitely adapt to the way that the actor moves. I’ve been working with Scarlett Johannson since 2009, so I have had a lot of chances to be with her and watch how she talks and how she moves, walks, and runs, and how she stands. With Ruby Rose [in John Wick: Chapter 2] I didn’t have much time, only a few weeks, and luckily she had a pretty good boxing background, so she had strong movements which were easier for me to copy. Every time we’re on set standing around, or you see the actor moving around inside a scene, you really do want to pay attention and become one with their character too.
For Iron Man 2, I was hired by Tom Harper, the stunt coordinator, to come in and double Scarlett. He brought in me and another really good stuntwoman and gave Scarlett the choice: “Who do you think would be a better double? They’re both great, they both can handle it.” She decided I would work for her. We had a great relationship on that film, and we moved onto The Avengers. Now it’s just seamless.
What skills have you learned specifically for a film?
When I first started doubling Scarlett, the style of fighting we were doing there was definitely new. Some of it was based off of Mexican wrestling, lucha libre stuff, and after that, I got into judo and jiujitsu, something very similar to what we were doing with Black Widow. There are a lot of moves where she is running and swinging around people and throwing them down on the ground. Like a jungle gym basically, if you go on YouTube and type in “lucha libre” and you watch Mexican wrestling, they’re doing a lot of those moves. We’d go take a look at them and then alter them for the fight, and do stuff that’s inspired by some of those moves. They became the “Widow moves.” Usually we have at least one or two perfight or per movie. On Captain America: Civil War I have a couple of those moves at the beginning of the opening sequence in Lagos. I jump onto one guy and squeeze him with my legs and I swing around upside down and grab the other guy and throw them both.
If there’s a different style of martial arts or fighting, it’s something you should be working on. When a film comes up like The Hunger Games, for example, which 87Eleven did, Katniss has a bow and arrow so we all got bows and arrows and started shooting with them. For The Lone Ranger I did a sequence in a hoop, like an acro hoop that’s hanging from the ceiling.
Have any stunts made you nervous?
You get a little adrenaline. Mostly I want to make sure I make the stunt look amazing and I don’t want to ruin the shot. And not all directors do a lot of takes on things, so you might only get one or two tries. I definitely had nerves in the days building up to the stunt where I flipped a car with a cannon in it, for The Host with Saoirse Ronan. It was the first time I’d ever done it. It was a big deal. There was the potential for myself and for others to get hurt seriously. Luckily we had a lot of rehearsal time, and I felt confident in the roll cage and the cannon.
I am really proud of the car flip. One of my favorite stunts I’ve ever done. Basically she’s driving down the road in the middle of the desert. In the movie it’s like she’s schizophrenic–whoever is talking to her inside her head is telling her to turn around. She’s pulling the steering wheel back and forth and back and forth, and at the end she veers off the road and flips the car four times in the desert. That’s the actual storyline. I basically drove down the road and I threw a 45 [-degree turn] at my mark and hit a button, and there’s a cannon down at my back and it flipped my car up in the air. I flipped four times. And I came out of it OK and we got the shot and no one got hurt.
What about working with CGI? Is it hard to fight something that’s not there in front of you?
It’s fine. If you’re fighting somebody that’s not there, it’s like doing a martial arts kata [movement practice], so it’s not the worst thing in the world. Usually when you have someone in front of you, you’re feeding off their energy. Sometimes when I’m jumping on people and swinging around them, the things I do in the Marvel stuff, it’s harder, because you really do need someone physically there.
Growing up, did you admire certain action scenes, or was this something you came to later in life?
One of my favorite characters ever is the character Linda Hamilton played in Terminator 2. I remember watching that movie and just thinking, “Wow, this woman is a badass.” You felt it. I saw a woman doing pull-ups. I don’t know how old I was back then, I was young, but I did pull-ups, I was a gymnast, and I didn’t know any other women who could do pull-ups and were that physically strong. I just remember thinking, “She’s amazing, I want to be like her.” I liked action films for sure. When I was really little, I remember watching The Bionic Woman, Wonder Woman–I remember gravitating toward those women who were really strong physically.
How would you describe your style?
I like to think of it as grace meets strength.. I like the idea of women being strong but also graceful, like a ballerina, having that rhythm and flow. Not just the brute strength.
R. Emmet Sweeney 