Hello ladies and gentlemen, Muldoon here with a quick chat with someone I'd consider a legend in their field. Whether you've seen her stunt moves in XENA, KILL BILL, or remember her as the total badass from DEATH PROOF, you know who the lady is. I had the opportunity to chat with her at this past year's Fantastic Fest about a film she stars in, from director Josh C. Waller and writer Daniel Noah. Perhaps it was my lack of sleep, or maybe the film just wasn't for me, but I didn't much care for the movie outside of Bell/the incredible landscapes peppered throughout. I absolutely remember friends coming out singing its praises, totally blown away by the film. Regardless, the opportunity to spend nine minutes picking the brain of one of the best known stunt women turned actors in the world was something I absolutely couldn't pass up. There was a literal line of bloggers outside the door to speak with Ms. Bell, so I have a feeling you'll be seeing her pop up on most of your favorite film sites in the next few days provided CAMINO hits theaters this Friday (3/4/16)! It will also be available on iTunes and VOD March 8th.
Hopefully you enjoy the chat below, though first up is a great clip from the film in the sense that it beautifully describes what type of film you're in for. Featured in the clip are Sheila Vand and Zoë Bell.
Fun stuff, right? Okay - now let's hop on into our quick chat:
Okay, so I’ve got ten minutes, so I’m just going to jump on if that’s cool.
Make the most of it, yeah.
First and foremost, how did you get involved with CAMINO? When did it land on your plate and what exactly about it pulled you into it?
Well both of those answers are “Josh Waller.” It was October last year… no, actually maybe it was September last year and Josh called me as I was driving and he said, “Hey, me and Dan [Noah] are writing this movie. We’ve got this idea…” and he’s, by nature, a pitcher. When Josh speaks, you’re being enrolled; he’s amazing like that and he told me about this. He told me the story of “Avery,” but when he told me the story, Avery was a guy. Avery Taylor was a man and his wife, Sidney, had passed away and I loved the story. One of my catchphrases on set recently has become “Can he be a she?” So I said that to him and he was like “Well, that’s why I’m calling you, because we’ve thought about Avery being you…. You playing Avery.” I was just… It was one of those moments in my career where it’s like “This is what it feels like when you know there’s a role you want to play.” Some times you read a script and you’re kind of like “Well, I can make that work” or “This is good…” I find myself trying to convince myself of reasons why I should do it, because my experience with work is if you’re offered it, you should be grateful and you should do it. This was one of those projects where I was like “Whoa. I love that idea and I think you do anything possible to make sure I get to play Avery,” (Laughs)
There was some ownership involved then and the fact that Waller already had you in mind for this strong character probably didn’t hurt.
Yeah. Josh just pitched it and was talking to me, and just the story of it, too. Like she’s a photographer, she’s a journalist, and she trekking through the jungles of Colombia. I was like “Shit yes! I really want to play this role” and then it was a matter of… I was already committed to HATEFUL EIGHT and when I’m on a Quentin project, I’m his until I’m not.
That’s fair, as opposed to knocking out cameos on the weekend or being a few projects ahead… “Be in the now.”
If the two productions are willing to work where one can work around the other, great, but it’s not my place to try and make them work, because I’d rather just be committed. So we all knew that, because it’d be advantageous for us that I’m doing HATEFUL EIGHT, so we just had to juggle it around then.
Good, so it worked out. So let’s jump to a few broad questions. You are known as one of the most badass females in cinema. As you’ve done a ridiculous amount of stunts in your career, has there ever been a stunt that you’d done and then walking away from it you’re like “Pfft, I’m never doing that again.”
No. I can’t tell you I’ve had that feeling of “and that will never happen again moving forward.” There’ve been a couple that I’ve looked back on and I was really glad I wasn’t considering how impossible the thing was at the time. That’s the thing with this kind of work, the angst that I get or the fear that I get… it has to solely be about performance, because the minute I’m angsty about whether I’m going to die or not, I can’t perform. I did a really high fall on CATWOMAN and I was on a wire and was unraveling. So I was unraveling from this wire and there was one where the wire kind of caught on my… I was wearing high heels, because I was doubling a woman, and heel got stuck on the wire and my leg kind of got whacked up to my face and I felt it hit me and thank god my body has been doing this a long time and knows how to gives itself out of sticky situations without requiring much rational thinking.
More like a knee jerk reaction, almost like falling off a skateboard and just knowing how to fall.
Yeah, you don’t think about falling. I look back at that fall and I’ve watched it in slo-mo and you can see my leg get stuck. Watching it in slo-mo was like “Holy shit, I could have actually… That could have done permanent bodily damage.”
Well I’m glad it didn’t.
That would have been miserable.
So provided you started out in stunts and then began getting casted as a lead, what kind of movies do you see that you would like to do, but you’ve not really had the opportunity yet, when it’s “Oh hey, you know how to take a punch. Let’s put you in this….” and you might be thinking “Well, actually a romantic comedy this time around…”
No joke, I would like to do comedy. I don’t know about romantic comedies, but I would like to do comedies. I remember people asking me about being a stunt person or whatever and I’ve always been like “I didn’t even know it existed.” I got into it really late. I didn’t grow up wanting to be a stunt person. I wanted to be in film, because I just love watching movies and it didn’t occur to me that people made them when I was really young. The only time where I was like “I want to do that when I grow up” was literally watching bloopers. So I would watch bloopers and cry laughing and it was always the bloopers from comedy shows, like sitcoms. I remember thinking “I want to make people laugh for a living and I want to laugh…” “I want to get paid to laugh!” I would love to do comedy.
Getting paid to make people laugh and be shocked… that’s not too terrible.
No! Or “make people laugh by getting shocked,” that works.
Last quick question, what do you have coming up… and not the big stuff that everyone is going to ask, but do you have some projects that you’re hoping to get off the ground?
Yeah, I do actually. I just produced a little short called NO TOUCHING with Heidi Moneymaker, who is literally one of the world’s biggest stuntwomen. It’s she and I kicking a bunch of butt. That’s really awesome… I’m just in the early stages of pre-production of a short… I’m just really about creating my own stuff. We live in a world now where it’s way more possible than its ever been as it’s way more affordable and I’m just becoming really aware of the resources I have, the friends and colleagues that I have. We’re all hungry to make something that’s unique and personal. We all make good money doing what we do, and people want to do favors for each other when it comes to making something personal, you know? So I’m really excited about that… I love that question, because normally it’s “So what’s the next big thing?”
I have a feeling you'll be asked all sorts of questions today, looking at that line of folks outside. Before they start banging on the door, I guess we better wrap up! Thanks again for your time today and good luck with the movie.
Thank you!
Boom! There we have it, an AICN exclusive clip and a quick chat with Zoë Bell. So what did you folks think of that clip?
- Mike McCutchen
"Muldoon"
Mike@aintitcool.com
