be the demise of... "
(Baxley) In the end, I was a bit disappointed.
There's another minute to that sequence
but I was told it was too violent.
In the original cut when the truck blows up,
an adjacent fuel dump goes up.
It was a truly amazing visual:
An area 100 feet by 100 feet filled with fire,
seven stuntmen caught up
as it engulfed them all doing full-burns.
Another cut: Two stuntmen starting
the helicopter, Bobby Bass runs in on fire.
Through the windshield, we see fire
wrapping his entire body and face -
the stuntman had gel on.
He's pounding on the windscreen
"Help me! Help me!"
As he's caught up
in an onslaught of bullet hits.
He's shot and he falls out of frame
and the guys are still trying
to take the helicopter up.
Nobody had ever seen anything like this.
I thought Jim and John
had written an incredible screenplay,
And throughout preproduction, I thought
we were all making the same movie.
War is aawul, horrific,
and I was under the impression
that that was the movie we were making.
John never wanted me
to shoot that sequence.
He stressed we weren't making a war movie.
(Di Sarro) We actually started detonating
fireball explosions on their chests.
Those were very effective. A lot
of partial burns, a lot of full burns.
We had gotten to the point where we were
detonating gas explosions into the people.
That was all through experience
and testing - what size bomb
and how to wrap it.
For the most part, stunt guys,
if they don't know who the effects guy is,
are very protective of their people.
They will apply the stunt gel and
prepare the wardrobe for full burn.
And they'll bring their guy out
ready to be glued.
In a lot of cases, I've seen a lot of stunt guys
even apply the glue, and light them.
I had such a relationship
with all these stunt people
that they came to me for all that stuff.
If I told them "The stunt gel will
be there tomorrow morning. Go home",
that was done, because there would
probably be ten times more stunt gel
than they'd need, in iced coolers.
And all of the wardrobe,
all of the Nomex underwear,
will already have been dipped
in gel and put in ice buckets.
Believe me, when those guys
have that kind of trust in you
they'd just as soon have you do it,
because they have a lot more time to party.
In the type of heat
you'd experience in Mexico,
once you dressed the stuntman up,
you look for certain things.
You want to see that he's shivering.
The bottom jaw needs to shake from cold.
Because an experienced stuntman,
who's cool, won't sweat from nerves.
You can almost rest assured he has
at least five minutes on the air bottle.
They use a seven-minute air bottle,
but I've never found a seven-minute
bottle that's seven minutes.
Everybody breathes differently, OK?
Now, when you get
somebody who's nervous,
you keep him in an air-conditioned area
with an iced Nomex gelled suit on.
You put on everything but the headpiece.
Everybody's got to be ready.
You bring him out,
put the mouthpiece on, the hairpiece on,
put the air on, the headpiece on,
seal it, glue him, go.
Because a nervous guy? Two things:
He will suck that air bottle
in a minute and a half.
Now he's out of air. And he's on fire.
And the first response,
whether you're on fire or not,
is to get the headpiece off to get air.
Now what happens?
You burn.
The other problem is if you don't
keep the body cold, it will sweat.
Sweat causes pockets
of water inside the suit.
The heat from the fire boils the water
in the suit and causes hot-water burns.
When you glue them, you never
glue places like the hinge point
between the thigh
and the knee or the elbows.
The ears are very sensitive,
the feet and hands are very sensitive.
You put a little bit on the shoulders
but you never really need to glue
too much higher than the waist
because the fire will rise.
You want to keep the heat
as cool as possible
and the closer the source