When asked about any on-set stuntman injuries, second unit director/stunt coordinator Baxley insists in a new interview with THR that “nobody was ever hurt.” Beau Marks, first assistant director on the film, is more blunt: “Nobody broke their fucking leg.” And then they stopped the film, and they did a new, more safe, outfit.”īut like the others THR spoke with for the oral history, Van Damme’s memories might have partly succumbed to the erosive effects of decades and, also, maybe contemporaneous untreated heat stroke? Van Damme refused, and, according to him, “the guy who did my stunt, something bad happened to him. At one point, he says, Silver asked him to make a jump that he thought was too dangerous: “When Joel asked me to jump, I knew it was gonna be a bad one. It was these not-ideal conditions which, according to Van Damme, ultimately led to his dismissal. Also the suit was rubber and it was 100 degrees and humid. He was being asked to move around - in a fashion that would convince audiences that the Predator possessed superhuman levels of agility and stealth - on stilts, on uneven terrain, in a jungle. It was a disgusting outfit,” he says.Īnd because his vision and breathing were constricted, it was pretty much impossible for him to do the thing that got him hired in the first place: move like Jean-Claude Van Damme. My hands were in the forearms, and there were cables. But for Van Damme it was also a pain in the ass to wear. Van Damme managed to get the casting done without incident, but he confirms that he - like pretty much everyone else in the cast and crew, and Fox once McTiernan sent them the first footage - thought the original Predator design looked dumb as hell. My friend told me, ‘If you cannot breathe, just your finger and I’ll pull that stuff away from you.’ And I did it. I was covered in that cast for at least 20 minutes. “I like to breathe - and they’re gonna do my head and everything,” Van Damme recalls.
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So he was surprised when he showed up at the offices of Boss Film to have his full body cast for the thick rubber suit the effects house would be shipping down to the film set in Puerto Vallarta. “They said I would be in a tight leotard with half-, half-animal makeup on my face,” Van Damme told Starlog magazine in 1989.
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Van Damme left the meeting with the impression that, for his upcoming role opposite the biggest action star in the world, the costume and makeup requirements would be minimal. That, it appears, was the high point for JCVD in his Predator ordeal.
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“, ‘This guy can jump very high.’ ( Laughs.) ‘Yes. “They made me run around the studio and I jumped like a dancer,” Van Damme says. In his new interview, Van Damme recalls coming to Fox to meet with director John McTiernan.
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“So finally I said to Joel, ‘He’d be great as the Predator because no one moves like him.’ I mean he really is quite amazing.” “Jean-Claude Van Damme was someone who used to constantly come into my office, jumping up in the air, showing me his moves, begging me for work,” she told THR in 2017. It was supposed to be agile and stealthy, stalking Arnold Schwarzenegger et al from its perch in the jungle canopy, and casting director Jackie Burch thought she had just the guy. The initial design was more in line with the Xenomorph from the Alien films - an upright digitigrade with a wiry exoskeleton - but with the head of an insect. His only major credit was as the Russian villain - a sort-of Ivan Drago, but with roundhouse kicking - in the 1986 martial arts film No Retreat, No Surrender.Ī bit more: As originally conceived, the Predator was not the imposing, now-iconic mandibled weirdo that appeared in the finished film (designed by four-time Oscar winner Stan Winston and played by seven-foot-three actor Kevin Peter Hall). However, a few weeks ago the man himself visited THR‘s offices to film an episode of Heat Vision Breakdown, and host Patrick Shanley managed to squeeze in a question about the…whole situation.Ī bit of background: When Van Damme was cast in Predator, which hit theaters in June 1987, he was still a virtual unknown. At the time, THR reached out repeatedly to Van Damme’s reps to try and get his version of events but were told he was busy shooting overseas.