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MI6 caught up last month with UK Freediving Champion,
Steve Truglia. In this in depth four part interview
we look at his experience on the "Tomorrow Never
Dies" and "The World Is Not Enough" sets,
his Guinness World record attempts, and much more...
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Interview - Steve Truglia (2)
5th February 2004
MI6 caught up last month with UK Freediving Champion, Steve
Truglia. In this in depth four part interview we look at his
experience on the "Tomorrow Never Dies" and "The
World Is Not Enough" sets, his Guinness World record attempts,
and much more...
Tracking Bond
You were in several scenes in "Tomorrow Never Dies".
One of the more notable was the helicopter chase,
can you
tell
us
how
you were involved?
These were the cuts and fill-ins for the work already
done in Bangkok. We had to made up a Bangkok street and we had
a stunt helicopter pilot with a stunt guy sitting in the front
passenger seat which if your inside it's the same as a car, a
British car; driver on the right, passenger on the left. And
two
guys behind, I was the guy on the right hand side behind the
pilot.
We were standing on the skid of the helicopter a buttock
on the seat, harnessed in the helicopter otherwise we'd
all be on the floor right now. And the helicopter was flying
in and below the building line sometimes.
It was a hairy
scene because sometimes it looked as if the blades were
just yards from banners and bits of washing line and
stuff
that had been thrown up in this street, it was actually
a really hairy scene. Flying along firing our machine
guns
leaning out firing our machine guns whilst flying.
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Above: BMW R 1200
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Advice For Left Handed Goons
A kind of an interesting fact is that because of the way that
most sub machine guns fire - designed for right handed use -
the guy on the left hand side had problems. Most fully automatic
weapons like that are made for right handed use, so if you hold
the weapon in your right hand and fire the weapon the ejected
cartridges come out from the right hand side. They go left to
right and bring the weapon to the right, but if you image if
your leaning out the left of a helicopter and you're firing a
weapon you get really hot empty cases coming in at a really rapid
rate of maybe 600 to 800 rounds per minute coming into the aircraft
hitting the pilot into the side of the face, and you can't do
that because its not safe to do it. So I don't know if it shows
it, but the guy on the left hand side had to hold his machine
gun upside down so that the empty cartridges would go out the
window. One of the weird little things that happen when you're
doing stunts, that you have to think about that for a safety
point of view.
Straight Shooting
So what we were basically doing was across the rooftops as Bond
is escaping, we're swooping down in the helicopters and firing
and the special effects team is synchronizing that. With pyro
on the roof so it looks as if bullet shots are landing on the
roof. In a couple of other scenes, you actually see how many
different
people are in the helicopter, two or three different people have
sat in that seat at different times to get the shots they wanted.
And you see Bond and the girl on the motorbike in a room I think
it's before the jump and the helicopter comes down below the
window
line. If you look at that you see quite clearly that its not
me in the helicopter coming down and it cuts to Bond and the
girl
inside and then it cuts to the helicopter going down below the
window and you'll see that its me, a very short bit, about a
quarter
of a second. But I goes to show that if you look very closely
that you'll see different people, different drivers in the Range
Rovers as well. When you see a film you'd never in a million
years notice that. What they actually had was me doubling a
stunt man,
normally you stunt double an actor, you have a part where you
have a guy doing a scene down in Bangkok, a stuntman playing
villains
actually stunt doubling them, and trying to make it look reasonably
similar. But only reasonably, but that's something in editing
where if you're cutting things fast you don't know.
Where was your portion of the helicopter chase filmed?
Frogmore, several days again on and off. What tends to happen
is they don't always do them back to back, you might do a
couple
of days and then do something else. Then you'll come back and
do something else. Its not always the case that it's a continuous
shoot, so you may do a couple of days in the Range Rover then
a couple of days in the helicopters then back in the Range
Rover's
then backing the helicopters and then a week later doing a helicopter
thing again. I think that's mainly because they get the rushes
back and they say "hmm
. what we could actually do
with this is
"
Full Body Fire Burn
You are preparing for the Guinness World Records Full
Body Fire Burn, can you tell us more about this amazing
feat?
At the moment I'm pending an agreement with Guinness World
Records, it's the 50th Anniversary of Guinness World Records
next year and I may incorporating my stunt into that. But
pending negotiations with them at the moment on how were
going to do it and how its going to be aired and all of
this. I was going to do it next week but its on hold,
I've
given them a bit of time because there talking to Carlton
Television about this show, I don't think it's a great
secret
that their making this show. It's a full body burn, which
means your totally emerged in flame, the Guinness record
is only open to stunt professionals in the business for
very obvious reasons. I'm actually nervous about it even
with that just because its so dangerous and its without
use of oxygen, what they mean by that is breathing apparatus.
On some fire burns you can use concealed breathing apparatus,
so you have to hold your breath. It's two minutes and
under
extreme duress and under extreme temperature because quite
apart from the fire on the outside the suite is designed
to not let the heat transfer quickly but it doesn't let
any heat out either so as soon as you put the suit on
within
5 minutes your heart races up into the 150's 160's and
you feel like you want to collapse because you want to
sweat.
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Above: Steve Truglia in a full body
burn
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That's the fire record, it will be done, it may be this year
it may be next year. Probably next year and it will be quite
well
publicized. It will be dramatic because it is dramatic to see
a man ablaze.
Keep an eye out for the third part of the interview where we
chat about the Stealth Ship in "Tomorrow Never Dies "and Free
Diving...
Many thanks to Steve Truglia.
Related Articles:
Interview
Steve Truglia (Part 1)
Interview
Steve Truglia (Part 3)
Interview
Steve Truglia (Part 4)
Tomorrow Never Dies MI6
Movie Coverage
The World Is Not Enough
MI6 Movie Coverage
Steve
T's Official Website