Entertainment Series 4: Jon Devore / Aerial Stuntman / Coordinator

0:01 Welcome to another episode of Come Together. Thanks, Josh Devore. You got it just in time. Thanks so much for coming. I was like Jon Devore. Jon Devore. Jon Devore, welcome man. I'm so happy that you came. This is so dude, your website may make you look at the coolest person in the entire world. Yeah, I think that was that was great because just a little bit of context for how I found you. I've always loved entertainment world and I've always loved not just consuming it, but understanding how things happen. You know what, what pieces have to fall into place in order to make the magic happen.

0:53 And, and as I started doing the podcast, I started talking to more and more people. I realized how important stuntmen work, stunt stunt work is, you know, And so I've made it. So I, so I asked chat TVT, give me a list of, of, you know, some people that do different types of stunts, whether it's, you know, martial arts or aerial or, you know, whatever it was. And so, so you're one of the, one of the people that popped up and, and thank you so much for making the time. I appreciate it. Nice, good to hear chat knows me. There you go. Well, I mean I think it works in the same thing as Google, right? Yeah, similar. Data, right. So, so John, you're so I wanted, there's a bunch of different topics I wanted to kind of talk to you about your thoughts on. I wanted to start actually with the fact that you're from Alaska, which I feel like is not too common over here, you know, in the.

1:47 Yeah. Domestic quarter million people there, so, yeah. Something like that. How'd you, how'd your family end up there? What, what were you born there? What was that like? I was actually born in Colorado, but as a baby my parents moved to Alaska. So it was a very Long story short on that one. Was my, my grandfather on my mom's side had an early age heart attack. And when he got better, his wife, my grandma asked like, what do you want to do? You know, one of those like, let's change our lives. And he said, I want to go be a commercial fisherman in Alaska because he liked, you know, fishing, but in Colorado. So they packed their bags and they moved to Alaska within a year or two of them being there.

2:28 I'd probably tell the story a little wrong because I was only a baby. But within moments of time, my parents went to visit and they did what what happened to them happens to a lot of people that moved there is when they showed up, it was summertime and they had two weeks of beautiful weather and my dad went out fishing, caught king salmon like life couldn't have been better. So they then went home and they were a young, young couple starting a family. Dad has an engineering company, you know, just starting though. But so they sold all that and followed my mom's parents to Alaska and chased the Alaska dream, which I couldn't be happier than they did because growing up there, you know, I feel like I was born there because that's all I remember because I was a baby. But growing up there, I just feel insanely blessed, you know, it's the opportunities that Alaska gives you everywhere from spiritually, physically, everything you do there is a, it's a really special place compared to most places in the world.

3:24 So I couldn't be happier that I grew up there. That's so cool. So I only spoke to one other gentleman in my life that actually, that's not true. I've done some business in Alaska. I've sold some. I saw, I saw medical equipment. I've sold some equipment in like Anchorage or you know, to veterinary hospitals in the area. But I, I had a buddy of mine that played basketball in Alaska for for a year. He was in Vegas for his profession, his college career, and then transferred to Alaska for a year. And one of the things that he talked about, he goes, he told me that other than the fact obviously that it's Alaska, he said that the that socially and culturally people are far more trusting of one another because it's a much more dangerous and small environment or.

4:08 You know, I guess you have to depend on your neighbor. Yeah. Correct. And he's like, you know, hitchhiking. He's like, if you don't pick up a hitchhiker, that person could be dead, you know, I mean, within hours and you know, and so you know, I but but what spiritually, what did you what, what, what do you feel is different about Alaska than the rest? Of I just mean, you know, it was just a choice of words. But for me, it the way it put me in touch with nature and solidified as a young kid that I knew that I needed to do something different than sit in an office and just do the normal adult life. You know, it's being out and about in Alaska. You either get outside and play in the elements where you stay inside, get cabin fever, go crazy and can't wait to move.

4:51 Yeah. There's really not a middle point. Yeah. And obviously, as a kid, I was the kid that was always outside searching for adventure. And so everywhere from being in touch with, you know, the empathetic parts of the, you know, the human psyche of, you know, caring for animals and nature and the forests and just Mother Earth, you know, I don't feel like, you know, truth be told, I don't really feel like I'm giving that to my kids, raising them in Southern California, where I live now. I was going to ask about that. Yeah. So it's, you know, I have, I have to live where I live for what I do, but sure. But yeah, I feel a little bit like I, you know, gypsy kids out of an experience because of that.

5:32 I totally gotcha. I totally gotcha. I mean, it's funny because I grew up I I'm I'm trying to deviate my mentality. I grew up in with, with, with from the rat race, you know, and I'm trying so hard to find a balance of living a life that's meaningful as as opposed to a life that is material, you know, and searching for things that just pay the bill, you know, like bills need to get paid, you know, but you got to have some kind of sense of spiritual emotional satisfaction, you know, natural satisfaction as well. Yeah. Yeah. Which is actually one of the reasons I moved. I mean, it's funny because it doesn't sound like it, especially coming from Alaska. I lived in Seattle for a little while. That was amazing. Oh yeah, it's saving Northwest.

6:12 It's. Almost. Oh man, oh man. And I went to actually, I'm so happy I did this. My roommate dragged me to the Cascades, the National, the National Park by Lake Diablo area, and I was just like, I didn't even know that this kind of stuff existed in America, you know? I was like, this is incredible. Yeah, no, I love Seattle area, man. That's that's where that's where my family lives now, everybody that retires. Oh yeah. Alaska, they usually they don't get much further than Washington or Oregon. Yeah, they still, they still want that PNW feel, but. Yeah, I told you guys, it's funny because I've, I've spoken to, it's a lot of people, whether it's store owners or Uber drivers or whatever that told me over the course of my time in Seattle. They're like everyone comes, he goes. If you get people at the right time, like what you said about Alaska, the right time of year, you know, for like 4 or five good months.

7:00 There's something about Seattle that just stays with people that actually keeps on calling them back and keeps on bringing them back. And he goes, you wouldn't be, you'd be surprised how many people come for vacation and just end up moving there because it's so beautiful. Yeah. So you grew up in nature. You grew up a little bit, you know, completely separated by, you know, with and, and really in the midst of it. How did you, were you always a risky type of kid? Were you always athletic? Were you always. Yeah, that kind of kid. Yeah, pretty much. You know, especially if you ask my parents or something, It's yeah. Every time. I started skiing as soon as I could. I think I was like 4-4 or five when I started skiing. I was just always outside, you know, as a, as a young kid when I was like, well, I was like 14 or 15.

7:46 Got certified to scuba dive, ski and rock climbing. I was a river raft guy. Do you name? It. You know, mountain biking, the whole thing, I just love being outdoors and all the way from camping to the extreme stuff. It's it's what? So how So what? So what? How'd you make that transition? Did you always know that you were going to do something like this? Or how did you start getting involved in professional stunt and and you know, and aerial work? Yeah, it's a it's a funny story, I guess. But so when I was a senior in high school, I basically wrote a paper. I had a dream that I wanted to invent my own. I'll back up. I worked for a river raft company in the summer and I saw, you know, there's so many cruise ships that come in every day.

8:28 And I watch people get very successful financially by figuring out how to tap into tourism. So I knowing that I wanted to be outside, I wanted to open my own adventure tourism company. I wanted to call it Choose Your Own adventure. Kind of like the books you read as a kid or you get to the end of a chapter and you have to decide where to go. I was going to build a company that people really didn't know what was coming at them and they had to choose their next. That's so cool. That's so much fun. So as a senior in high school, a guy randomly came through our town offering tandem skydiving and it was the first time it was ever in our town. And I was this first guy that signed up. My funny story is I had a fake ID, the only way I could jump because I was too young to jump. OK, so I did a jump, realized I loved skydiving. It had no idea like how to get into it. It didn't exist in Alaska.

9:14 But I knew that I wanted to offer a tandem skydiving as part of my adventure tourism package. So I quickly, you know, was skipping a little bit of the story. I realized that OK, I need 500 skydives to get my tandem license and then I can come back home and take care of the rest of this stuff. I can't, I can't imagine it's very cheap to do 500 dives right? No, I mean there's a lot cheaper back then when I did it in the early 90s compared to today, it's a lot more. But but skydiving is not cheap. But it's like any sport, it's once you get through the certification and once you buy the gear, then it's not too bad. Like a day of skydiving without breaking down the numbers would be like a day of skiing. OK, gotcha. Once you buy your ski gear and you got your lift ticket, you know it's you go.

9:58 So it's it is expensive, but I worked really hard. I worked at a million different jobs, got paid pretty well as a kid because Alaska has a lot of great opportunities. So I'd saved up a lot of money that I thought I was going to use towards college. But I chased a girlfriend out of high school to a small little Community College in Texas just knowing that I needed to get my basic business associates at a minimum. Sure. So during that time. Was that a culture shock going from Alaska to Texas? Yeah, especially where I went, I could go into. Which part of Texas were you in? It was like 2 hours out of Dallas and a little town Navarro, Texas. She went there because of some cheerleading program. I went there just to follow my girlfriend and of. Course, yeah.

10:41 Not not go to school. Yeah. But that first semester there was also a skydive center somewhat close at Texas A&M. And so I went and learned to skydive. And then I realized by talking to people there, like, holy crap, there's a there's a whole life in an industry here. So semester one, I went back, I broke up with my girlfriend. I packed my car and I went back to Alaska with the idea of working one more stint at a big I had a job at a big silver mine there that paid, you know, at the time I'm 18. So when I call it paid adult money, it it paid really well. Sure. So I worked there for like half a year, saved up a a ton of money and then packed my bags again and moved down to the largest skydiving center in the world, which is in Eloyd, Arizona. It's kind of little at Phoenix and Tucson. And when I rolled into the drop zone, I'd kind of I within one or two weeks of being there, I realized one, I was at the right spot.

11:36 I kind of landed there on accident, just knowing that it was a place that I could jump in the winter sunny and it looked, it looked big in the magazines, but I didn't know that I was going to the biggest place. That was where the entire world went to train for all the nationals and world meets. So it was a crazy scene for me. And I quickly realized what was going on. And that was there was in my view, what I saw, what I saw the snowboarding world do to skiing when it came into the ski world in the beginning, something like that was happening in skydiving. There was this whole new discipline being talked about. People were trying to invent it but couldn't really figure out how to do it yet. But there was this big momentum and luckily.

12:18 What was it leading up to? What today is called free flying. So vertical skydiving, It didn't exist then. It was just people on your bellies falling and building formations. Gotcha. Yeah. But there was this artistic kind of, you know, group of people from all around the world, only about 10 people that were pooled together trying to figure out how to get off their bellies, get vertical and stay together. Yeah. Is that something that you figure out how to do eventually? Yeah. Well, I joined that group within that year of being there. I quickly was in that group. And so I became, you know, I'm rushing through a little bit of the story, But within the first year I was already recognized because I spent so much money jumping compared to most people.

13:00 I was just, people thought I had a trust fund or something because I was just there throwing hundreds of dollars down a day just jumping. Yeah. But it got me to a skill level that I caught up to people that had been doing it for years within a year because I did like 1200 jumps my first year and. That got. Going fast, yeah. I quickly became one of that group that is considered to be The Pioneers of free flying. We invented a whole new discipline and especially in that time of the sport before there was vertical wind tunnels and things, people had to come to drop zones and hire coaches to get good. Right. What goes into that, if you don't mind me asking? So can you break down, let's say form when you're when you're jumping, right, when you have a coach and you're and you're and you're and you're skydiving, you're free or free flying which or either what what are the things that people do that would be wrong or right or and. Why?

13:54 Well, really depends on what skill level you're at. I mean, I, I've trained everybody from super beginner skydivers that are barely jumping out on their bellies, getting stable and like, Oh my God, I'm overwhelmed, to world champion people that are just trying to get a little bit better to go with the art. Yeah. So it really depends on where you're at. So somebody like me as a coach, I would meet you and assess where you're at. And then it says me, I'm brand new, I've never done it before. I'm just a huge. I wouldn't start with you because I would go go to your drop zone, go through the course to get certified, OK. And so within depending on how aggressive you are, but it could be like a long four day weekend if at a big drop zone.

14:34 But if once you get 25 jumps under your belt, the 1st 12 of which are with a coach and they're holding you and really hands on the last 12 or you're doing solos, but you're kind of getting comfortable. But then after 25 jumps, you have an A license which allows you to be a skydiver anywhere in the world. You have a little license. You're still a very new and regulated skydiver. But sure. So once you get to that stage, I would then probably not try to like, you know, you have so much to learn still. I could if you just really want to hire me, I'd be like, I'll take your money. But what you really should do is go out and do a couple 100 jumps and just go explore, jump with random people, learn how to fly. But once you get to a sticking point, you'd come to me.

15:16 I would evaluate where you're at skill wise. What's going good, what's going bad, what are your bad habits. Just like racing a car ski. So what would be? Yeah. So what would be some examples of us say bad habits, for example, like, you know, something, I, I just started rolling jiu jitsu recently, you know, and one terrible habit that I have is that I keep my, my, my defaults is to have my feet flat on the floor, my legs flat on the floor. And my, and every 30 seconds the, the, the coach is the audience. Like pick your legs up, pick your legs up, pick your, you know, and it's a natural bad habit that I have to like re have to rewire and retrain my, my muscle memory to kind of. So what are some things that I, that people would do wrong or do do wrong? And what would be the potential consequences or unless it's more of a form in an art and a perfection kind of thing where you're just like, this is just the most. It's really all the above, but yeah, it's kind of all the above.

16:04 But to answer some of those questions, it's basically like somebody that's coming to me. Some of the initial bad habits that people go with was they think that because you're in 120 plus mile an hour winds, you need to control the air and be strong. So everybody's super stiff and rigid. Where really skydiving is more like yoga. You want to be really flexible and fluid. You want to be strong enough to put your body where it needs to be to deflect the wind and move where you want to move. But if you're using muscle, you're doing it wrong and you're going to be like a 2 by 4 in the wind. That's just like flipping everywhere compared to being fluid and absorbing. So a habit of being like not breathing enough, being super stiff and strong. And then a lot of it is form of body. Everybody finds a natural way where they think they need to because they feel comfortable.

16:54 Like my arms, I feel good here. I feel good with my legs like this. But it might be making a move around the sky. Sure. So kind of just like what you're saying in in martial arts, breaking out the muscle memory that is probably wrong in them. Yeah. And retraining the muscle memory of what's right and why it's right. So that's very beginner stuff. And then as you get advanced, it's much more of form, technique and things of that nature. It's hard to explain if you're not jumping. I gotcha. Yeah, but that's I think that's that's clear enough. So so you're so you're young, you're you dropped out of college. You're probably in your late late teens, early 20s I imagine right at this. Point I moved to you like when I was 19, so.

17:35 That's crazy. So were you, Are you at this point? First of all, when you said that you packed your car, you drove from Texas to Alaska. Well, I drove from Alaska to Texas, drove back from Texas to Alaska to work again, and then I drove back from Alaska to Arizona. Yeah. I did because I did the drive from New York to Seattle when I moved. And then I was thinking about driving to Alaska when I was from there and I was like, that's a whole another trip from New York. That's a that's a whole other country that you have to drive up and down. Alaska's way bigger than people think. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow. So you and what'd your parents say about all this? Or if did they have a say or they didn't? I know they were super supportive. I, you know, my parents, they weren't adventurous sports people at all like me, but obviously they had a sense of adventure in their spirit to pack their bags as young parents and move to Alaska.

18:25 Sure. So they, and they also, you know, grew up in the 60s. They, you know, call them like a hippie mindset. Gotcha. Where their biggest thing was they just, they wanted to have a sister. They wanted us to just pursue whatever we were happy doing. It wasn't about chasing like you need to be a lawyer, a doctor, you know, you don't have to chase the money. You got to chase happiness because that's in the end what it's all about. So they, they saw I was happy. They saw I was doing what I was loving to do. So they were scared of what I was doing. But. It sounds great. It sounds scary like and I guess and very, very few accidents happen or or or serious accident injuries happen relatively speaking while I'm skydiving, right? That's pretty.

19:06 Much. Yeah. I mean, it's it's insane how little true skydive accidents happen. I would say, and I'm making up a number, but I know I'm really close to like 90% of all accidents skydiving. Or when you're under a perfectly good parachute and you do a pilot error, like you fly a bat into the ground or something like that. But in free fall and stuff, the gear we have everywhere from little computers that pull for you, you have say for some reason you were either being an airhead and you didn't even know what altitude you're at or you're. On coaches or. Everywhere. So it doesn't even need us to do that that that manual, that manual. I mean you really need to, but there is a automatic opening device that will save your life if you're about to go in for sure. Gotcha. OK, so you're young and you're getting and you're doing this now.

19:52 Are you into Did you get into the stunt world because you're a film fan or because you're. Sports fan like you know. A little bit of both, yeah. Yeah, a little bit of both. So when I say like year one ish, 2:00-ish on the drop zone, when I really realized I wanted to try to figure out how to do this with my life, I kind of surveyed the landscape of professional skydivers. And I realized there's only a few people that like I said, OK, who's fifty 60s and has been doing this. And I realized it was either the world champion type skydivers that had all the coaching and festivals and people booking their time and it was professional camera Flyers that could put stills or cameras on their head and get hired to do that work.

20:38 Yeah. Yeah, or it was people that figured out how to break into the stunt world, which was obviously the most guarded because there was really like 3 or 4 people and they got all the jobs and it never went anywhere else, right? So I kind of had a goal and I did it in stair stepping, Become a world champion, learn how to fly cameras and look for opportunities to break into the stunt world. Once my skill and, you know, expertise was to that level. And so I was just kind of always having that in my mind that that was a goal of mine and chasing it. That's really cool. And it's really cool how you thought of that plan because I feel like I would have thought of it backwards. I would have figured out like I would have wanted to, wanted to do the stunts and like, how do I get there?

21:19 But it sounds like, I mean, but it seems like you were going more about the perfection of the art, or at least trying to really get to know the. Art yeah, the first decade of my career was I was wow cool and at. That point, you were living in Arizona the whole time. No, I did a couple years in Arizona and then I moved out to Florida to open the IT was called the first school of modern sky flying, but the first free fly school on the East Coast. So far it was just the West Coast. So I moved out to Florida for a few years and eventually moved back to help some buddies open a drop zone in Lake Tahoe, California. Wow, given some about here. Oh yeah, yes. There's these are these are these are fun places to hang out. These are outside.

22:01 You know, it's funny when I whenever I travel to anywhere, I asked Google ChatGPT what the least touristy places for me to go find that or feel like the most authentic to have their own kind of like I don't want to go to places that the that where the locals are trying to cater to tourists. I want to go to the places where the locals are themselves and I get to just see what that's like a little bit. And I feel like the place that you're going is like America, America, you know, like people trying to be what America is perceived at. But like, you know, people really just mind their own business and doing their own things and living their own lives and doing their own hobbies and passions, you know, It's really, really cool. Yeah. So what was it like? So, so opening the flight school in Florida, what's the process for that? Did you have, is it crazy regulations, crazy insurance? Is it that is it a million different, you know, red tapes of bureaucracy?

22:49 None of the above. Really. No, I mean it was pretty simple. The Skydive World the. Skydive World is a pretty simple place. Well, it's just the skydive world period. It's you know that to answer that just very matter of fact, it's I made a deal with the skydive center that was in Florida and they were happy to receive me and my teammates to move out there and open a school and create a scene. Cool. It's just making a deal with the local Scott Ivan place. And yes, the adult me looking back should have done those things you said to protect myself, but as a young 20 something year old, you don't care. You're just like I'm sponsored to the drop zone. I'm jumping all day and I'm I'm running a school. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Pretty crazy. It's pretty pretty carefree.

23:31 Yeah, yeah. And now and now I I saw that this year that stunts are officially, officially on the was it the Emmy or the the there's some Oscars. The Oscars, Yeah. So people can be can be nominated for for stunts now. That's awesome. It's it's it's good to get. That, yeah, it's still, it's a great, it's a great breakthrough for sure. It's not exactly what it sounds like, like a stuntman is not going to get an award. OK, but what is it A? Coordinator could. Which you could do too I. Believe that the way I read it is the What's that? Which you can do as well, right? You're a coordinator as well. Yeah, yeah. I just meant it's not that you're not getting a reward for best stunt or something.

24:11 Gotcha, gotcha. But it's, it's definitely a, we've been fighting since, you know, before I was even thinking about being a stuntman. They've been fighting to make it into the world of Oscars and stuff and finally did it. Yeah, yeah, it's cool. And it feels like it's, it feels, it feels also like it's kind of breaking a little bit into the, into the zeitgeist, you know, into the culture. And it feels like, you know, where there's a couple of movies recently or just more conversations based on it or or stunt people turn to directors or, you know, actors, which I feel, which, which is, I feel like I've been reading about more and more. Yeah, like. A fall guy movie. Yeah, yeah. And I believe. That did a lot for it.

24:52 Did you? No, that that did a lot for. That did a lot for it. Yes, yes, yes, definitely. And I believe that the director of John Wick was also a stuntman originally. And and so when he when he was bouncing around, you know, doing the promotions for his movies, he'll talk about that quite a bit. I remember, I remember hearing that and thinking like this is really this is, this is, this is awesome. What's the difference between? How do you find the difference in satisfaction between coordinating and actually being part of the part of the stunts? I love both worlds. For me, whether it's the world of the Red Bull Air Force that I run or the world of Hollywood, I've always been a fan of.

25:32 I kind of, I'm not the only one that's done this, but kind of broke the mold a little bit in a lot of times it's either you're one or the other. But ever since I started getting opportunities, I started kind of pleading the case of because it's such a specialty thing that that aerial stunts, that is, I always tried to fight to be the aerial stunt coordinator, but also a performer at the same time. That way I didn't have to get feedback from my team and just kind of trust what they're saying. I would have first hand experience and knowledge of what was going on in the scene. So then as a coordinator, I could make changes from, you know, first hand POV, not just talking to my team. So for me, though, it's a the big picture of coordinating and seeing the, the very beginning conversation, some random phone call from a director all the way to seeing it on the big screen. It's an amazing feeling.

26:28 So I love the coordinating part of it and all the way down to the Red Bull world and a simple sorry do. You get input from the. Do you work with the director as a coordinator for for with editor on different scenes? Yeah. Yeah, every movie is different. Most of the time you're working directly with the second unit director, not the first unit director. But it depends on what movie it is. You know, say like the Mission Impossible and I just did, you know, I'm, I'm right next to McHugh, the director, and, you know, Tom and Wade Eastwood, the second unit director. So that's one where it's like everybody's always collaborating together. Other ones, I've never even seen an actor or a director. And we just go on a skeleton unit and they're like, here's the scene, here's the storyboards. Yeah.

27:15 So everyone is very different. It depends on, I think, how involved the scene is in the movie. Gotcha. Yeah, I really, I was going to say, I feel like the premise of a lot of the, you know, Mission Impossible type movies, the premise is the action. So I feel like you're, you know, especially a lot of the big aerial stunts that that they're famous for. I feel like you. I feel like they would almost need, you know, you know, at least some kind. Of they do for those, Yeah, you're right, yeah. Definitely. What's What's that set? What's that? What's it like going to that set? It's, it's overwhelmingly awesome. You know, it's a there's a lot going, there's a lot going on, a lot of a lot of moving parts.

27:56 Does it feel like a? City. Does it feel like a town? Does it feel like I mean like? I mean every sets. Yeah, go ahead. Oh, does every sets very different? You know, you, you might go film a scene that might even be a massive scene in a movie and it's just 20 people because you're just trying to film a thing. Or you might show up and there's 250 people on set and it's, it's a mini city, you know, like you said. So it's every, every time it's different, but it's always, that's what I like about it is a diversity. It's never rinse, repeat. Yeah, every day is something new, different. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I saw from I saw from the credits that I saw from your credits that there was a pretty cool variety in terms of different size productions or budgets or studios or even, you know, the type of movies that you know how, how, how stunt focused they were going to be. Right.

28:48 The unrideables did you What? What, what is that? That was so cool. I I watched the trailer. I didn't watch. I didn't watch the movie. I have to. I have to watch it. I didn't have time since last night, but I watched the trailer for it and I was like, I absolutely need to sit on my couch and, and and and and watch this all the way through. It looks remarkable. Yeah. Can you ask one too? So what? Yeah. So what the Unrideables, the Alaska Range is, it's a documentary that was with Red Bull Media House. And so basically to back up before getting into the movie, what the sport is, is somewhere back in the early days, skydivers started finding out that if they jumped over mountains and flew their faster parachutes down mountains, it was a lot of fun.

29:35 Paragliders were realizing instead of just running off a mountain and soaring on thermals, that if they flew smaller wings and flew down terrain, that was fun. And so eventually the two sports both kind of the same time start figuring out, hey, in the winter, if we put skis on, we can easily like, get enough speed to get a parachute over our head and then start flying. And so it was basically a combination of big mountain skiing meets skydiving meets paragliding. And it was a really small group of people, just like the small group that invented free flying when I started that had a vision of like, hey, there's something more than just like the Yahoo backyard thing.

30:17 And so the sport started developing. And I was one of the early people that started on the skydive side that started going to mountains because I grew up skiing, so I love skiing. So a group of us would go out and explore, you know, flying parachutes down mountains with skis on or with skis off in the summer where you're running. And so I pitched a Red Bull, pitched a Red Bull years before the movie. Hey, I want to go to a project. I want to go to Alaska, back to my home and go fly some of the biggest mountains that I used to stare at as a kid. But we're never skiable because they closed in, like kuwars or glaciers or cliffs. So nobody's ever skied them. But there's sections that look amazing.

30:58 Yeah. But now we have a sport that I can go ski this area and in any given moment, slide away from it. Yeah. So at first, Red Bull's like, what is this sport? What? Just kind of like what you're doing. Like I never even heard of this. So at first they said no, love the passion. When they come back to it, no, years later, I get a a phone call from a marketing manager at Red Bull that was in the that Alaska regions. Like, hey, I came across this old proposal you pitched. Do you still want to do this? And to skip through a bunch of that conversation, I was like, hell yes, I do. And so his vision was to blow it up way bigger. I just wanted to go on an athlete project, but he wanted to make a documentary about it because by that time the sport was getting traction.

31:38 There's people in Europe starting to do it, America, all around the world, small little groups were doing it. So what the film really is is it's me and a few of my teammates, But and it's the story is told through my eyes, but it's not about me at all. It's kind of a quick summary of the history of speed riding and how it came to be. And they follow us on a fun journey in Alaska to kind of tell the story. But we also go to Shamani, France, because that's where some of the real innovators were pushing the limits and things of that nature. So it's the story of how this weird sport speed line riding came to life. Wow, yeah, I remember watching it. I was watching it and I was just like, I'm trying to comprehend what's going on, what's going on at one time and how like the sport makes sense because I was trying to figure out, is the emphasis going to be on the, on the, on the skiing or on the, on the gliding, you know?

32:36 Flying, yeah. And the flying, Yeah, and. That's a little bit of both. Everybody takes a different like somebody like me that loves skiing and I'm pretty good at it. The goal, the hardest part of the sport is to stay on the ground skiing. But at the same time, while you're skiing, you're flying a wing that wants to screw up and mess with you if you're not paying attention to it. So the hardest part is the riding, the speed riding part. But a lot of people that aren't that good at skiers want to go fly big mountains and they touchdown sometimes, but they're mainly flying, then they touch back down. And so there's no exact recipe of what's wrong or right, but it allows people to explore big mountain terrain with the safety net of a parachute.

33:20 You know, So step one is you got to know how to fly a parachute, whether you're a skydiver or a paraglider. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I guess so I guess the amount of people that that that have access to this sport is pretty limited. But I feel like, I feel like it's also it's like it's exploratory. Like you could totally I I like you like you mentioned earlier, like these are places that you never had any like no one ever thought could be skeet, you know, And so to kind of break those grounds is is really awesome. Where else have you Where else have you travelled to? For for either purpose, for skiing or for or for jumping. Like globally? I mean all over. I've done a whole bunch of all the different Alps in Europe, you know, Italy, Switzerland, France, Norway, New Zealand.

34:07 Any of these places stick out for any particular reasons? Well, this is 1 ski resort called Valfres Juice France, which is about an hour and a half out of Tour in Italy, but it's in France. It's the Mecca for it because that ski resort has adopted it to the point where they've designated a massive part of their mountain for speed riding only. So there's a a great speed riding, actually a couple, but a great speed riding school there. So whether you're somebody that's never flown a wing in your life or never skied, you'll see people like that show up all the way to people like professional skydivers that want to learn to do it better. So it's a place you can go to and learn how to do it and get really good because you can just do laps because this ski resort allows you to do it.

34:54 So you can go up a chairlift, right when you get off the chairlift, you launch your wing, fly down, put it in a bag, get back on the chairlift. So just like skiing, so you can really do a lot. The eruption. And every place. What's that? You. Get your reps in. Yeah, and yeah, when it comes to learning any sport, reps is important. So to get good at it, that's the place that really stands out. But then it when it comes to pure thrills and what I really love is there's nowhere like Alaska. It's some of the biggest terrain in the world and it's just really unique features and a special place in my heart, you know? But Norway was some of the craziest, most dynamic big, you know, in the fjords, the big rock walls and stuff to fly down. You know, I got stories, stories for days. But it's a I've been.

35:40 Amazing, It's so cool. It's so cool that you got it's what's so cool to me is just that a couple of these decisions to make a couple of out of out-of-the-box choices, you know, led to you being it was such it's it's such serendipity. You know, as you give you the pre to give you the opportunity to even think that this is a lifestyle that, that that you're capable of living, You know, is it, it is awesome. I want I, I, I, I think, I think about that a lot. You know, how guys set my how guys set my kids up in a way that they're, they feel encouraged to. They got like a 2 1/2 year old and a three month. Old their passions. Yeah, and I want them to be able to like. Live a life of tricky. Folks, yeah, you know, but without being a totally irresponsible doofus, you know, I think that there's a middle ground. It's a tough one there's.

36:25 Definitely a middle ground, but I mean, it's how I tell people a lot that the first handful of years of me chasing my dream, I didn't care about the money part. I wasn't trying to, I didn't have a family. I wasn't trying to like provide. I didn't. I just wanted to be able to do what I was doing for free and make enough to eat. And my only goal was to do more of what I. What you were doing, Yeah. And not everybody can do that. A lot of people roll into life and you have to pay rent, pay bills, do all these things and it's hard to be like, well, I don't care if I make money or not, you know, So it's, it's not easy for sure. And I, there's definitely moments in my young career where I'm in an airplane climbing at altitude and it's a beautiful thing. But I found myself thinking like, Oh shit, what did I do with my life?

37:09 Like I'm not making much money. Like I'm having fun, but Oh my God, like I'm getting all like, what am I doing? And then every time I kind of luckily had those kind of thoughts, some opportunities would come my way within a few weeks or months and kind of remind myself why I'm doing it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think a lot of life is like that. I think a lot of things, it's almost like, you know when you buy a car and then and then you start seeing it everywhere on the road and you never noticed them beforehand. Right. You know. Exactly. So I feel like also, you know, there's been times in my life where I'm like waiting for the where's something, I realize that something I, I either something I'm looking for something deeper or more, or, you know, you know, there's a better opportunity or something. And by the time that thought actually, actually like, starts settling in my head and like with me, and it's to the front of my consciousness, you know, you keep an eye out for whatever opportunity to kind of let that let that happen. Does technology and AI and stuff like that scare you in terms of the future of stunt work in general, especially with studios, you know?

38:18 Yeah, being able to implement it. You have an accountant. I see it a lot already. Yeah. I mean, I already see it a lot already where, you know, like in the stunt world they call it doing it practical, like doing it for real, you know, so you find it, it's having a comeback that doing stunts practical is having a comeback. There was definitely an era of like way too much CGI going on and you know, AI and all the all the computer graphics. There's definitely a happy medium. Like any movie needs a little bit of everything. But you know, it's a, you know, like say I did a movie, I did a few rock movies, like just to name one, like Rampage or San Andreas, both of them.

39:02 I had to get a guy that was the right size and shape, but it didn't look anything like the Rock. So they did face replacement and that's a really simple example, but already they really didn't need a certain, you know, person. They just needed a six foot four guy, you know, stuff like that. And then all the way to like the Transformers movie I did was with Michael Bay way back in the day. That was one of the early ones where the first half of our wingsuit scene flying through Chicago was practical. OK, you see in a in an instant, the second CGI kicked in, you can tell. And it made the stunt feel like OK with. The Iron Man suit fake. A lot of the Iron Man stuff, I mean, a majority of that was practical.

39:46 We shot almost everything practical. The CGI that was added on was like making the suit look like we even had a suit, but it didn't look anything like the one you see in a movie in the sense of shiny and this and that. So they went in and dressed that up, make it look good. Put in boosters like that, that kind of look. But you know the the guy I had the Iron Man was in an Iron Man suit. All the free fall stuff was real like that. Everybody getting dropped into the water and stuff was all practical, like on zip lines and things getting slammed into the water. So that, but that was a good one where it was a healthy combo was like, yeah, everything was practical enough that everybody knew it was shot for real. The Foo Foo E FX stuff was needed because it's a Marvel movie, but it didn't. There was no fakery and like the jumping and stuff. That was all real deal.

40:35 Yeah, and. Then like I said, the point break movie was a little dis go. Ahead, please, the Point Break movie. There's a little bit more. Oh just the last example is like the point Break movie is a funny one to me because our sequence is 100% was practical. No CGI in it. But because of a few lens choices and editing styles like they put shake in it. They did like make the background get blurry and things but all the flying not one part of it was faked or green screened but nobody thought that it was real all the way to the point of like the Taurus stunt awards where the stunt guys get awards. It's our one like award show of the year. The board that votes on everything didn't want to consider it as a stunt because they didn't believe it was shot for real.

41:20 I was going to ask how you even know how there's too much. Going in. How do you tell? How can you tell? Can I tell if I'm watching a movie? Whether a movie, Whether stunts are practical or not. Sometimes, yeah, sometimes, no. I mean, it's it really. There's no direct answer to that. There's so much that goes into it. Yeah. I mean, it could easily tell when things are fake, that's for sure. Yeah, you could, you could. The reason I asked about Iron Man in particular because I have a good friend of mine and we were talking and we we've been talking for years about how how we feel, how it feels that that the CGI is being a little overdone in in the big cinematic, you know, worlds, whether it's Marvel, DC, whatever it was. And we're and we're saying how we missed the Iron Man days where it feels just real enough to like that. It's like potentially could be true, you know, like this big, you know, bulky suit could exist to like this stupid nanotechnology where it just like, you know, pops pops on his head and you're like, OK, well, I guess we're really checking reality at the door over there.

42:17 So it's cool that you got to that. You got to be part of that, that that leg of of authenticity. It's a lot of fun. And what about I read about your accident and your site 100 a hundred mile an hour crash. What? What happened? Would you rather tax on it? Oh yeah. Oh no, I said which? Which accent? The one The most recent one like on my Instagram. I don't bad one. No, no, I thought, I thought on your website, I was while I was reading through about about, I said that it was 100. So. Yeah, go ahead. Yep, I know you're talking about. Yeah, so a long time ago that was in, God, I'm going to guess a little bit 2001, 2002, something like that. One of my first ever stunt jobs was for a Disney movie that never even made it to to the screen. So they cancelled the movie.

43:08 But but yeah, Long story short on that, I was jumping out of a helicopter at like skydive altitudes with skis on. And the idea was to freefall with skis, eventually pull a parachute, land on the mountain, ski away. And we'd been doing it for a couple weeks and it wasn't, I mean, it was, it's challenging, but it wasn't that. It was like a one and done thing. It was pretty easy, but without getting technical, I basically when you pull your parachute, you pull a little, what's a little round pilot chute that actually pulls your parachute out. So when I went to pull that, it didn't do what it was supposed to do. So I was fiddling with it. By the time I got it out, the lines came out and wrapped around my skis and boots and bindings and everything and basically a hog tied me up and I took that into the ground from 6000 feet without a parachute open. A little bit of a parachute came out. So I had like trash above me, but there was no deployed parachute.

44:00 So I took that basically and really close to free fall speeds straight into the ground. And strangely and, you know, miraculously, I didn't break a bone. I didn't get hurt at all. I was like, I was kind of like laying there for a little bit thinking I was dead, but I was able to get up and walk away from it, which was a miracle. That sounds crazy. What was go? Do you remember? You remember. It is crazy. That train of thought while that was happening, give me a train of thought like, Oh no, Oh no, Oh no. And then like going black or you remember, like what? What was the What was the thought process like? No, I remember everything.

44:41 Most of my thought, I was pretty newly married and most of my thought process was being worried about my wife and largely about that. And then it would flash to it like, Oh my God, what are my parents going to think? And then worried about my wife. And that was almost while I was dealing with the malfunction. That's almost where my thought was. The dealing with the malfunction was pretty muscle memory, even though it wasn't working because I was all tied up. Yeah. And then and then the did you black out the crash? Do you? You don't. You don't remember it or. No, no. That's why I kind of feel like I live in a parallel universe right now, because it was all black. I remember hitting and then everything was black, but I had the like the dialogue going on in my mind.

45:25 So I was still talking to myself. And that's where I remember having feelings, you know, without getting deep into it, I was having feelings of excitement of going. Like I remember thinking to myself, oh, there is more, something's coming because I know I'm dead, but I'm still having a conversation with myself. And I remember getting excited of like, OK, what's coming? What's next? What is it? But then eventually the other stunt guy about two minutes later, because his parachute actually worked. So it took a while to get to me. He landed next to me and the sound of him landing I will open my eyes and then I realized I was alive and I did the whole wiggle your toes your everything and didn't feel any pain so I set up and realized I was fine. That's crazy.

46:07 That's a miracle. That's like, I mean, that's great percent. It's so funny. I, you know, I mean, I don't, I don't know, you know, what, what your religious, you know, belief is or not. But you know, I feel like there have been moments in my life where God is just like yelled at me or like I've just had like an experience that's just been like God being like, yo, like snap out of it for a minute, dude. And like, whoa, like, yeah, I need to snap out of that, you know, And I even something stupid, like there's one time I was pushing myself way too much. I was biting off more than I could handle, I think, in my life and responsibilities, and I was driving from one place to the next. And I'm doing a podcast and I have three in one day and I have my sales job and I'm going to teach and I miss I'm running late for class and and and I'm pulling out of a parking lot while like doing all this and a car and while I'm pulling out a car pulls out two and like, you know, nips my car. I guess give me a little Fender Bender. Wasn't there, wasn't bad damage, wasn't, you know, a big deal, but like it just like hold me out of it for a second, you know, we like you just feel like, you know, there's like a mask over your head and like you can't breathe and then you just like pull it off and whoa, like I got to balance, you know, I got to figure something out.

47:25 I feel like, you know, I've had, I've had. Moments now back to reality. Yeah. And we're God. And I think that is God being. And I don't know what God is or who or what or anything like that, you know, but I think there's something that I don't know what it is, but but whatever it is, it's spoken to me, you. Know I feel like yeah, I agree, man, there's there's higher power for sure. Yeah. And the human meteor flight, the thing where I don't know if I understood that properly was that that people thought that people were seeing people do stunts and thought they were Uaps or thought they were UFOs or anything like that. Yeah. Is that what it was? Yeah, it's kind of. It's funny, every time we do a night jump, we have pyrotechnics on our feet, OK. And because the way we're, we're so high up and because the way we fly, it's kind of unexplainable. No aircraft would be maneuvering like we are. So anybody that is hoping for UFO type sightings, the second they see that it almost every town we ever do it in, there's the news gets called, the 911 gets called, people are like there's no way.

48:31 There's no airplane, there's no helicopter, there's nothing that could maneuver like that. You know that. Does that make you more skeptical about the whole UIP thing? No being in the background like that. Oh yeah, for sure. But I also, I'm not too skeptical because I, I don't know if they've come to our planet, but I'm a firm believer there has to be other life out there. We we can't be alone in this. Yeah, I believe that too. I believe that too. I think that I think there's two true statements happening concurrently. There's other life and then there's what we're perceiving is happening, which could be a dude like you, you know, taking off from Florida to the middle of the night, you know, and, and me not knowing what the heck that is in the sky, you know, And I think they're both truths. What's, what do you like?

49:13 Do you like day jumping or night jumping more? I mean, in general, day jumping just because it's safer, you know, I guess it's more than norm, but night jumps are super special. Depends on what you're doing. You know, Most of the time a night jump for me in my world is I'm doing shows. So it's more about just like the performance of what we're doing. Yeah. You know, it's a rare day that I go out to a drop zone and just do a night jump for fun. What's the show like? What's the show? What's the what's the show like? They're all they're all a little bit different. It depends on what what we're doing it for.

49:54 OK, Like if you go to my Instagram handle, the last one of the last ones I posted is we jumped into Sun and Fun, a huge air show in Florida, in Lakeland, FL. And we did a show where we have an airplane that dives at a pretty steep angle and it was shooting fireworks out the side of it. And we're flying wingsuits with the pyro on us chasing and slaloming through the fireworks. So the crowd is seeing all this from the ground. So. Cool that that kind of stuff. Wearing glow suits. Yeah, yeah. What's the coordinating stuff? That's all fun show stuff. What's it like to coordinate that? It's step by step. I, yeah, it, I mean, air shows are a little different animal, but in general, like our, our demo team, I'll, I'll coordinate all the FAA stuff.

50:40 So for me it's just plug and play. It's just collecting the proper information, filling out forms, sending it in, getting it approved in time, that kind of stuff and then putting together the right team to go to it, you know, so there's a whole stair step process of coordinating it to happen. But by now it's I've been doing it so long it's. I imagine it's a pretty small world, right? It's a pretty small, you know, aerial sport world as far as knowing one another and getting a team together and whatever. Yeah, for sure. I mean, for all the shows I do demo wise, it's all the Red Bull Air Force team. So I I've assembled over the years that we're a nine man skydiving team.

51:21 So that's what I use for all the shows. But but, yeah, the sport's small enough that whether it's the stunt world that I need to branch out for my Red Bull team or we're doing a demo that's bigger than what we already have as a team, it's a small little pool of people. Off Like off phone call. Yeah. And. Can you tell me about your career with Red Bull a little bit? How'd that get started? Or what do you what do you do with? Them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's, it's been a really long, amazing, fun ride. So I was lucky enough through two of my teammates and friends at the time, Charles Bryan and Mike Vale. So Red Bull moved to America roughly in 9697 and they went to the Vale, Aspany, World of Skiing and Lake Tahoe as kind of their test markets to see if their product would even work in America.

52:11 And they started sponsoring a few athletes and luckily Rebel gives you wings or we might not have a sponsor, but so they picked up some skiers and a couple skydivers and BASE jumpers. And then luckily at the time I was still super young, but I was already like world champion skydive guy with a big name. And so right place, right time at the right people. And I officially signed on with Red Bull in 99 as a contracted hat wearing athlete. There you go. And so in the first few years, you know, the team was kind of a mix of some skydivers, BASE jumpers, paragliders. It was loosely run by everybody in the beginning. But then one of the paragliders, Oathar, kind of took the reins to be like, hey, let's get more organization behind the team instead of just being individuals on their own mission.

53:04 And that lasted a few years. And then he stepped down from that role, and I quickly stepped up into it because I was already helping him coordinate stuff. So when he stepped down, I fully took over managing and team captaining the Red Bull Air Force. And one by one I was able to bring on kind of my really good friends or slash teammates that I'd met in skydiving. As the brand grew, they wanted the team to grow. So I was able to kind of grow the team into more than just a few people. Sure. And now we're one of the most heavily used marketing tools for Red Bull. So whether it's jumping into an F1 race or a weird party or everything in the middle, you know, we do 50 plus shows a year all around the world as just demos.

53:47 And then Red Bull also supports, you know, athletes in a really unique way where they want athletes to pitch dream projects and missions. And a lot of them are no's or we don't have time for that or the bandwidth for it. But every now and then one's a yes and you get to go fulfill an athlete dream and go, go do a project. So it's been since 99 till now, you know, 2025, six years of of living dreams. Are there So what are some type of typically, and I'm not going to ask your personal, but like typically speaking in a contract when they sign on an athlete, they want minimum amount of events or displays or performances a year or is how what how does that work for from them? What do they want from you?

54:32 Yeah, there's not a generic, there's not a generic template. I can't really speak on how they deal with snowboarders, skateboarders, all the other sports. They sure they're in every sport on the planet, you know. Mm hmm. And so I really don't know how those athlete contracts work, right? But in general, you know, they, you know, we're a little bit different cause a lot of athletes are just sponsored to go do what they do as an athlete. Yeah. But we're a heavily used marketing team as well with all the shows we do. So we're a little bit different where, yes, we have a certain like athlete contract that, you know, they subsidized financially us to some level. But then we also, you know, go and do jobs and go do shows and things of that nature.

55:12 So it's it's. It's not a direct answer to just there's. No, I got. I got to do it. Yeah. I was, I was curious about about because I, I didn't, yeah. My association I feel with Red Bull is soccer. And then the other sports that you were describing like skiing and and and aerial sports and stuff like that. What who are some who are some of your role models in the either film world or sports world that that kind of, you know, either motivate you or inspire you? That's a good question. I mean, are we? Sad or an obvious? Answer is, I don't really, yeah.

55:57 I mean, in the in the stunt world, I have a few second unit directors that I super look up to that after working with them, I really realized that they both came from the stunt world. They were just traditional ground and pound stuntmen, worked their way up to being coordinators, turned into really successful second unit directors and now we're going into directing. You know, I've watched their career progressed so amazingly. You know, it's like Wade Eastwood and Jeff Haberstadter too. They really stand out. You know, they're really big famous second unit directors these days, but they also just started like any traditional stunt guy that had a vision beyond just doing stunts. So to kind of watch their stair step is really impressive. And then in the world of like sports directly, it's really, I don't have direct names, but just anybody that's not afraid, you know, like whether it's in the surf world, you know, I've watched, you know, Kai Lenny go from being a too young to even be sponsored young serf kid up to who he is today. And just always being innovative and not being stuck in a rut and doing things different in his own way is really impressive to, you know, in the skydive world, you know, where it's like, you know, people that have just learned how to, to chase their dreams and not just get pigeonholed into one corner. So I don't really have a name.

57:19 It's just sure, sure, a long list of people. I should probably put you on hold for two seconds because my computer's about to die. I need to have my. Plug or I'm going to die on you, OK? We're back. Sorry about that. Do you? Are you? Are you Oh, that's what one of the one of the few things, the last couple of things I want to talk about. First of all, green screens does that. Do you hate them? No, I mean, they serve a great purpose. So I don't think there's anything negative about them. I think, you know, there's, there's some things that it's, it takes away from the being the practical stunt performance, but there's some things that's very much needed. So I don't have any hate for them by any means. Usually when I get hired, you know, because I'm a specialty stunt guy, so I'm not just the traditional stuntman. So it's usually they're hiring me because they want to go do it for real.

58:19 They're not trying to fake it. Yeah. So I don't have a even a ton of experience. I mean, I've been around it a lot, but. I was going to ask whether they ever asked you to do that. I feel like it could be kind of a waste of your skills. But I feel like, you know, I mean, I must have built some really cool chamber, you know, indoor skydiving place that, you know, they could, I guess, kind of use a lot of CGI for. But I can't imagine they bring you in to have you sit in front of a green screen, right? Yeah, I mean, one of the the coolest ones, that was the very first Iron Man, when Iron Man was learning to fly his suit in his garage and he thrashed all his cars. Yeah, sure. And when he first flew and he flew by the Ferris wheel and the kids were licking the ice cream. Yeah, sure.

59:00 So I, I met with Jon Favreau in the wind tunnel and we green screened the all the glass of the tunnel and we, without getting into how we did it, but we flew around in the tunnel for him to record everything. And then they took that and placed it on the Iron Man character. So things like my feet were tied to the tunnel wall and I'm in a flying tracking position and he would be in my ear and he'd be like, OK, now look left. What you're looking at is children licking an ice cream. And I had no idea what he's talking about. Then when the movie came out, I'm like, oh shit, that's exactly this. Wow. So cool more. Than like I put a a small like or a big long board skateboard on my feet in the tunnel because to lift in the air you need to grab air. So but he's like Iron Man's hands are down and he's shooting.

59:51 So how can we do that but then lift? So what we decided was I'd put a board on my feet and we'd slowly turn up the wind and eventually the wind strong enough that the board would just lift me so I could keep my hands down. So little things like that. So sometimes green screen's super cool, but. And it's probably crazy watching that, watching that process back and it'd be like, oh, now I get it. Yeah, the the coolest thing on that job, just to wrap that story up is I was like, hey, I'm going to play around in here. So for like 2 minutes in the one tunnel, I'm just doing a freestyle routine, flying around, layout, spinning, whatever. And then I come out of that and the CGI guy instantly goes, come here. And he put me in his computer and what should have just been a video of me flying in the tunnel, he laid over the Iron Man suit.

1:00:39 And so I saw then it looked like Iron Man. But everybody that skydives to my level has a certain style. You could be like, oh, that's so and so because look how his legs are or whatever. So I'm seeing what's obviously me doing like helicopters and flips. But it looked like Iron Man. So to me I was like, Oh my God, please send me that. And he couldn't but. Wow, he couldn't send it to you? No, it's totally fine. Do you think? Do you think what you do is the coolest thing in the world? I think sometimes yes, sometimes no, but. Yeah, I hear. I'm I and the one of the last things I wanted to talk to you a little bit about is actually circling back to the beginning in terms of family and you know where you're living in California is, you know, Southern California.

1:01:25 First of all, do you have plans to leave Southern California? You or do you have? Ambitions. Are you asking me or my wife? I'm, I guess, I guess your wife probably matters more in the in the decision, but I'll ask you because I'm talking to you. Well, I'll just be honest with that answer. This is a place I never wanted to live. It's not who I am mentally, you know, all that stuff. But the opportunities it provided me, I wouldn't be where I was at without living here. So I'm I'm not upset with the thing. But yeah, I've always had a goal of eventually, once the kids grow up and move out, I think the real honest answer is we're going to hope my two daughters live in the same place and we move to wherever they live because we want to have that family life. But my desire is to move back to the mountain type world and be in that environment.

1:02:17 So yeah, I don't want to be here forever, but it's served a great purpose. I could imagine, yeah. That's how I was going to. Yeah, because I was talking to the the previous gentleman that I was talking to. He he he was in Chicago and he's like, you know, for a couple years I had to live in LA. He goes into a certain point. Once I kind of got my name into the rotation, I wonder who I was. I had a little bit more flexibility to kind of move around and, you know, and get out of that, get out of that scene a little bit. Yeah. But it's really. Yeah. And I was actually, I was going to ask about that. Like, I mean, I, I know practical, I know that it's practical for work, but if don't you feel like you have a, you know, a reputation, a name, you know, you've been doing this for long enough that you could hypothetically live somewhere and travel more?

1:02:59 Or is it the travel that's going? To be, Oh no, I could be gone years ago, but when I'm raising kids here, so I don't want to pull them out of school. And my wife's attorney with a big job and she has her own career going. On another another do her thing. Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. Cool, cool, cool, cool. Well, that's awesome. I John, I really appreciate the time, man. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me today. This is such a pleasure. It's so cool to hear about this little world in the background. And I'm going to text you and I watch that movie, The Unwritables because nice. I'm really, I'm really excited about that. But this is this is so cool. And I really appreciate your time and I love what you've been working on. I love what your career has become. And how long does a stunt career last usually? I would say right about in my age is where most either stuntmen are slowing down a lot or trying to transition into coordinating and not taking the hits. Yeah, you know, but it's a young, a real ground and pound stuntman career is a young man's game. You get beat up, whether it's just taking falls or hits or fight scenes, whatever.

1:04:04 Yeah, you know, so somewhere in the the young 40s you'd you'd hear most stuntmen trying to figure out either up leveling the job title or moving on. And you think you'd like to stay in the If you had to choose between the sports world and the coordinating or the entertainment world, which which which do you enjoy more? That's a tricky one. I would be. Directing movies tomorrow or you could be, you know, do you know a big part of the sports coordinating you know and you know for the for the whole sport and being an ambassador for it is one. Yeah, probably the answer to that is if I had to pick one. Yeah. As long as I could still skydive for fun, I think I would have a dream of being like second unit directing, you know, some dream movies that I've I have in my mind that would be a an amazing end of the career.

1:04:56 You know, kind of put out some movies that I've always wanted to try to pitch to the right people. Yeah, well, if you ever do, let me know. I'd love to. I'd love to watch them. I'd love to see when the film comes out of them. John, thanks so much for the time, man. I really appreciate it. Best of luck with everything, man. Take care. Have a good one. Bye.