Falls, fights and fires are all in a day's work

SEATTLE – Standing in a gravel parking lot, the students were trying to look stoic — but they all knew that by the end of the day, every one of them was going to be set on fire.

As they burned, they'd be scrutinized by their instructors, professional stunt performers, who could potentially make or break their budding careers.

The students were attending the International Stunt School, a three-week course founded in 1992 by the now-septuagenarian stunt veteran David Boushey. It's a place where students learn how to punch and get punched, fall from frightening heights, dodge explosives, tumble down stairs, drive cars in a way that would get a normal person arrested — and get set on fire.

Lee Gifford, a 29-year-old who spent a few years in the Navy, stood quietly on the burn mat, slathered head to toe in ice-cold protective goop.

"You OK?" asked Michelle Ladd, an instructor who started as a dancer and has worked as a stuntwoman for "The Walking Dead" and as a fight choreographer for "Lord of the Rings." Gifford nodded. "When you're ready," Ladd said, "take a big breath and give us a double thumbs-up! And don't breathe in."

Gifford gave the thumbs-up. An instructor lit the back of Gifford's coat — which had been covered in a special fire accelerant — with a blue blowtorch. The flames and smoke flew upward. "Don't breathe in!" Ladd shouted again.

Gifford waved his arms around, pretending to be in agony — at least, observers hoped he was pretending. After a few seconds, Ladd signaled Gifford to drop to the mat. Instructors jumped forward to put out the flames with a fire extinguisher and cool him down with water from a hose.

Then another student was set on fire. Then another. And another.

There were 50 students in the class, most of them 20-somethings with athletic backgrounds hoping to make a living in the stunt world: movies, TV, live stunt shows, video games. For the past couple of summers, Boushey said, casting directors have been flying up to Seattle and watching the new prospects.

Student Amanda Cook worked as a stunt performer in a haunted house in Denver and now guides river-rafting trips in North Carolina. Gina Kessler is part of a jousting and sword-fighting company that travels the Renaissance fair circuit. Matt Stevens, from the United Kingdom, is a professional circus performer. He said he was attracted more by the physical challenges of stunt life than being in the movies. But, he adds, the classes are giving him "a greater appreciation for the industry — like a chef tasting a meal that's very well done will have a greater appreciation for what went into it than the average person."

As students were being blazed and extinguished, Boushey stood nearby, wearing sunglasses and scratching at his graying mustache. While fires look scary, he said that they're one of the safest bits in the stunt repertoire. Falls are more treacherous because they're harder to control. "But everybody is in awe of the guy who gets set on fire," he shrugged.

He frowned at one of the burn tests.

Boushey stopped the class to give the students a stern lecture. "When I'm on set and see somebody not selling a stunt, it drives me crazy! If you don't sell it and have to do it over again, you're costing the [film] company lots of money."

Tuition is $4,300. The starting rate for a stunt performer is $966 a day. "But that's peanuts," he said. After overtime rates and bonuses for pulling off dangerous stunts, "it's not unusual for a stuntman to make $2,000 to $3,000 a day."

When Boushey entered the stunt world, he said, it was dominated by a few families who passed jobs from father to son and resisted newcomers. "It was a dynasty system," he said. "I've worked with people in those families and respect them, but they ran the show. I got sick and tired of seeing talented people never get a break."

So he started his school, which is licensed by the state as a vocational school. It took Hollywood about 15 years to come around, Boushey said, but now some of them are sending their protégés to him.

"Stunt coordinators have realized that it's better for them if somebody walks onto the set and they're already trained," he said. "My students make them look good. And as a coordinator, you don't have time to train stunt people because you're too busy training the stars on set."

"There's nothing better than seeing the credits for something like 'Game of Thrones,' " Boushey said, "and thinking, 'Hey! Roy Taylor! Class of 1998!' "