[Editor’s Note: The above still is not specifically from one of Robert Nagle’s stunts in Captain America: The Winter Soldier.]
Late last year we booked an interview with Robert Nagle, co-creator of a driving rig called the Biscuit Jr., for a scoop on Fast & Furious 7 among his other film credits. Unfortunately, tragedy struck the production of Fast 7 when Paul Walker died, and by the time we spoke to Nagle the film was still in flux and we were looking for an appropriate time to post the interview. Since Nagle’s work was utilized in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, that time is this week, even though he couldn’t discuss specifics of the film’s car chases, including I imagine that epic Nick Fury pursuit.
If you’re a fan of action in general, Nagle’s insights will give you more detail on how the great automobile work you’ve seen in the last ten years of cinema evolved from, of all movies, Seabiscuit.
CraveOnline: When we set this up, we were very excited to talk about Fast & Furious 7. Now there are some very difficult questions to ask about that. Were there still some major driving sequences left for you to do?
Robert Nagle: Yeah, there’s still a fair amount of story pieces too. That being said, I don’t know what they’re going to do with it story-wise. I’m sure a lot will change.
Were you working with Paul on the action sequences?
It’s sort of a complicated answer. I don’t know if you know how action movies are shot, but typically there’s two units set up. They’ve got a main unit which incorporates mostly the actors, whether it be dialogue or even some of the physical scenes for them. Then there’s a second unit, or also called an action unit, which is all of the stunt work where you don’t really per se see the actor’s face for those pieces. Typically I’m attached to second unit and then sometimes I’ll go over to first unit and do some work as well. On this particular film I was mostly on second unit. I did do some first unit work and on this particular film I was working with Vin Diesel. However, I did work closely with Paul on Fast Five. I spent a few days with him and got to know him fairly well in those few days. In this particular one, I wasn’t working directly with him up to this point.
Of course I know about second unit and a lot of shots of the actors can be on green screen, when they’re sitting in a stationary car. If you’re working with Vin, does that mean he will be physically in some of the second unit shots?
Yeah, I was brought over to first unit to do some driving with him. So he was driving some of the cars and I was working with him doing that. It’s kind of a back and forth between the two but the majority of my work does take place on second unit.
I’ve been a huge James Wan fan and I loved his action movie Death Sentence. Have the sequences you shot so far for Fast & Furious 7 been noticeably different than the ones under Justin Lin?
It definitely has a different feel to it, I could say that. At the end of the day, it’s hard to say because I’m not seeing the pieces in their final cut version and how it comes out on the screen, but it definitely has a different feel to it.
Is there anything that can top the tank chase or the bank vault chase?
I don’t know about topping it. It’s going to have a different feel to it. I’m certain that his talent and input will play out as such on the screen. I really did enjoy the tank and the vault in 5 and 6. Me personally, I really thought the vault chase was really, really great to the point to where I felt that the vault almost became another character in the film.
What is the Biscuit Jr.?
The Biscuit Jr. is a rig that Allan Padelford and I designed. At its basic level, it’s a platform that we can put cars or car bodies on and run the vehicle at speed and use it as a stunt vehicle with the actors in the car. So we can actually put them in the middle of action safely and really keep you in the story as if the actor is doing the driving. The actor is then freed up to do what they do best and that would be acting. So you let them do their art form, being behind the wheel and acting and that allows me to do what I do, and that’s the driving portion. I think it marries up the two very, very well to the point you really as an audience wouldn’t know what’s going on behind the scenes. More importantly, I think it really keeps you in the story.
This sounds a lot more flexible than towing a car.
Oh, by far. Towing a vehicle is more of a dialogue driven scenario, whereas the Biscuit Jr. is far more dynamic. We can slide the thing around, we can spin it, we can bang it into other cars. It’s really dynamic.
When did you and Allan develop this piece?
The reason for the Jr. first off, is the original rig was an enormous platform that was designed and built for the movie Seabiscuit. They used it to go around the horse racetracks with mechanical horses on the platform, basically the whole film crew on there with them. They had actual racehorses running alongside the vehicle. Now you’re framed up with the actor and you may get just a piece of the mechanical horse moving through frame, but the main focus obviously is the actor’s face. Again, it keeps you in the story and it really sells that they’re out there on the track with the actual race horses. Being such a big piece of equipment, it really wouldn’t lend itself to what we’re doing now.
However, that piece of equipment went onto another film, The Aviator, and they utilized it for the crash sequence with Leo and mounted an aircraft fuselage on it. So you can feel like you’re in the plane with Leo as he’s crashing through the field and at one point, all the equipment was moved to an empty dirt lot with brush and there was a huge brushfire that went through Santa Clarita at the time. Unfortunately, that and a bunch of other equipment was caught up in the brush fire and destroyed. Subsequently years later, Allan and I were collaborating on some things and we saw a need to build a new one and make it smaller and a little more versatile, and design it specifically for car chases.
One of the key points behind it is the driver, what we call a driver pod that I operate it from, can be moved around on a platform, meaning wherever the camera’s looking, I can move the pod to another location so it’s out of frame of camera. So now we open it up so a director has no limitation to where he can put the camera. He can be looking forward, he can be looking back, it can be profile or any combination of that and we can accommodate that to be out of frame so you never know the actor’s not operating the car.
Seabiscuit and Aviator were 2003 and 2004. Has this completely changed the way directors can shoot action scenes?
I think yeah, I think it’s really changed how we can shoot a car chase and convincingly put an actor in the middle of it. I think one of the best examples is if you go back and look at the film Drive with Ryan Gosling, all the car chases were shot with that rig, with Ryan in the car. I would go back and mimic all the stunts that we did practically with the real cars, the cameras being on Ryan as it intercuts back and forth between a wide shot of the cars doing whatever they’re doing. Even the low speed chase we did in the beginning of that film was on that rig. Like I said, it really allows the actors to be able to focus on acting and not have to worry about hitting marks or getting the car where it needs to be. It works out really, really well.
When you think of some of the classic car chases like The French Connection or Bullitt, do you imagine how different they might be if they’d had the Biscuit Jr. back then?
Yeah, I think we could have certainly brought it to another level, but that being said those are still some really great classics you look back on. Obviously growing up as a kid, I was completely in awe of watching those.
Is there a lot of driving in Captain America: The Winter Soldier?
There was a fair amount. There’s some great car sequences in that.
Is it very different because it’s super heroes driving cars?
I don’t want to give too much away. I wouldn’t say so much driving. More there’s an interaction of good guys and bad guys with the cars. Without giving too much, there’s some really great sequences with cars. Spiro Razators, the second unit director, did some great pieces.
I was surprised Jupiter Ascending is on your credit list. Is there car stuff in that?
There is some small car stuff but it was more utilizing the rig as a filming platform to get the actor in traffic. I don’t know how much you know about the storyline but it’ll make sense once you see it.
The Wachowskis invented a new way to film things with Bullet Time, so did they find new applications of the Biscuit Jr. than you imagined?
They did and I really enjoy that. It’s really great to be able to show up with something like this and see the creative process and watch it evolve. They certainly designed and redesigned some of the shots because of how versatile the rig is and it opened up some freedom for them to get the actor into some areas that normally you wouldn’t be able to do and maybe be forced to do it on a green screen. Now we can do it really practically, safely and get the physics and everything correct.
That’s interesting, because the Wachowskis have done green screen movies too. So they opted for as much practical as they could on Jupiter Ascending?
Yeah, I think they really enjoyed being able to get out there and do it practically. That being said, there’s still a fair amount of green screen. It just opened the door for them to play around and get some really interesting stuff.
Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day is a book I remember as a child. What was your work on the movie version?
It was actually just a really small piece, nothing I would say all that noteworthy. Just the fact that the rig again gave us the freedom of the actors being able to be in a car and focus on their artistic endeavor.
So they didn’t turn it into a car chase movie?
No, no, no.
Did you work on the car chase in the middle of Jack Reacher?
I didn’t unfortunately. Surprisingly it was a really small piece and it was only because the rig, being as complex and versatile and maneuverable, they utilized it just for the sequence where Tom is standing on a bridge, a guy’s driving and he just turns around and is looking at Tom. There’s a short piece of an interaction there, but because of where they were shooting it, they really wanted to shoot this on a bridge and the only way to really get it was to be able to use this vehicle. This was more where you would use a standard process trailer to tow a car, but unfortunately because of the constraints where it would not fit, they really needed this rig to get that shot. It worked out beautifully.
For A Good Day to Die Hard, were you involved with the Russia car chase sequence?
I was. We used it for some of the pieces with Bruce Willis. We wound up not using it a bunch in there but we used it with Bruce when he drives off of the bridge onto the traffic. I’m trying to think where else we used it on that.
That director opted for a lot of handheld photography. Does the Biscuit Jr. still work with handheld?
Absolutely. We’ve used it anywhere from cameras hard mounted to the rig or to the car, we’ve had operators handheld looking back at the actor or even inside the car. For Drive we had several cameras set up and we would have the operator handheld in the car with Ryan as they’re throwing the thing around. So it gives it a great feel to do that.
There is a movement to try to get the Academy Awards to recognize stunts as a category. Would you like to see a stunt Oscar category?
Absolutely. We put a lot of time and effort into that and obviously risk our safety doing so. I think story-wise, I think if done properly, it really lends itself to keep a story moving in the direction the directors and the writers want it to go. You’ve got several other categories that are recognize. I fail to see why a stunt category would not be recognized.
They seem to have a hard time seeing it as an art. Is there more of an art to stunts than they’re recognizing?
Yeah, there certainly is. It’s really talented people who bring a lot to the table. Whether it be car work or wirework, martial arts, all of that, there’s a real specialized talent behind that. More so in that doing it as its own art form is one thing, but then to portray it on film, it doesn’t necessarily play out the way you think it does, so you have to change things to really get it to play for camera properly. There’s many levels or layers to that.
What will be the next level of the Biscuit Jr.?
I think it goes back to what I said earlier. The director and directors of photography come up with ideas and concepts with it that I haven’t thought of. Just being able to have a platform that’s that versatile for them to be able to accommodate that I think is really where it’s at. We just try and keep it as versatile as we can so that we can give them the vision that they have.
It’s already been about 10 years with the Biscuit Jr. Do you think there will come a time when we need another new piece of technology?
I wouldn’t say new technology. It’s an ever evolving piece of equipment for us. Every show we walk away from, we try and figure out how can we make it better? How can we make it more versatile? How can we accommodate your idea and vision better? It’s an evolutionary process for us so I wouldn’t say it’s a set goal in what we’re trying to achieve other than constantly trying to make it better.
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
