Safety comes last.

To start off Stunt Week we wanted to begin with one of the forefathers of stunts, Harold Lloyd.

March 20, 2023

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Safety Last! (1923)

To start off Stunt Week we wanted to begin with one of the forefathers of stunts, Harold Lloyd.

One of the great comedians of the silent era, Lloyd was a technician above all else. While Buster Keaton liked pushing the boundaries of what he could do, Lloyd was always pushing the boundaries of film itself.

An early pioneer of animation, color, and 3D technology, Lloyd was always fascinated with what we could do with the medium.

An innovator if ever there was one and today’s clip is a perfect example of this.

Cinematography

What’s so incredible about this stunt is not how daring it is, but how clever. To perform this stunt, Lloyd built a fake wall on top of a skyscraper.

That way when you look through the camera it blends in with the New York backdrop.

It feels truly death-defying.

Performance

As we said before, Lloyd was a technician more than a filmmaker.

So why didn’t he stay behind the camera where he felt the most comfortable?

He never had the charm of Chaplin and he wasn't a daredevil like Keaton, but he did have something in common with them. He knew what he wanted and he only trusted himself to do it.

One of the most underappreciated aspects of acting is a performer's ability to hit their mark.

When you’re doing stunts the margin for error is even smaller.

Especially shooting on film in the 1920s, you’ve only got a limited amount of takes to get it right.

It’s a miracle they got it at all.

Influence

Lloyd has inspired many Hollywood greats, from Robert Zemeckis' Back to the Future to George Lucas using him as a model for Jar Jar Binks.

Hell, even the John Wick 2 poster is a direct reference to Lloyd's Two Gun Gussie.

Today’s Scene

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If you would like to watch Safty Last! you can find it streaming here.

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