Hooper is a loving tribute to the great Hollywood stuntmen, starring the Lawrence Olivier of his day, Burt Reynolds. As the titular character, he’s an aging and physically busted up stuntman on his way out of the biz, as a new breed of cockier, younger and quicker guys make their way in. But before Hooper takes his final bow, he’s going to go out in a blaze of glory in one last super-stunt involving a collapsed bridge and a rocket car.
Stuntmen are a hard living breed. I should know, I was a stuntman once. Well, not actually a real stuntman, more of a drunken loon pretending to be a stuntman to impress the chicks at a party long ago. It was a good party, the music was happening, the beer was flowing and the place was jumping.
My friends and I had decided to shake off the tired "we're in a band" shtick to get a foot in the door babe-wise, and try a refreshing new angle. Naturally, with my lightning wit and stunning good looks, and the fact that I was the soberest of all the guys at that point, I came up with the new “We’re stuntmen” angle.
Now, somewhere between "Hey, that's a cool idea" and my new opening line of "Hey, babe, wanna see my scars?", I had somehow managed to acquired a three foot long wooden spoon carved with an intricate Polynesian design. Not knowing what to do with the spoon, and not being of sound enough mind to simply put it back on the wall in the kitchen from where I stole it, I stuck it in my pocket hoping no-one would notice and went in search of women.
At this point, the more clued in of you out there will be saying to yourself "Hang on a second, Vince, how did you put a three foot long Polynesian spoon in your pocket?" Okay, so a bit of information about my clothing is needed. Now this way back in the late '80s-early '90s, and trendy designer style jeans were all the rage. This particular pair was made of thick denim and had just the single pocket which ran nearly the entire length of the right leg. Therefore, I was able to spirit away the spoon into this pocket, except for the forked head, which stuck out above my waistline and stabbed me in the kidney every time I bent over into the beer barrel to grab another ice cold can of VB.
So, as I was about to leave the house and move into the yard to unleash my new found opening gambit upon an unsuspecting female who would undoubtedly be overcome by the prospect of being hit on by such a studly example of manhood claiming to have the world's studliest profession, I was stopped by some guy who wanted to know why I had a large wooden spoon in my pocket.
"What spoon?" I said.
"That really big one you have sticking out of your pocket." He replied.
I was having considerable trouble dealing with this line of questioning, and decided that a stuntman can carry any damn thing he wants in his pockets, and I told him as much.
"So you're a stuntman, ya reckon? Riiight... so what movie ya been in then, eh?" he asked.
At this point, I wanted to jam the spoon into his larynx and be done with him, but the idiot-force in me was strong that night, and I was determined to prove that I was in fact a stuntman, regardless of what he thought. Besides, I figured, stuntmen didn't have to take shit from anyone, especially drunken idiots at parties, so I spent the next 45 minutes arguing with this guy that I was a stuntman, I had just come back from doing some stuntwork on a big Hollywood film, and my cousin was also a stuntman, and he was the guy coming towards us right now with a beer carton over his head while carrying a cricket bat.
I don't know if the guy was just scared or if I’d finally convinced him, but from that point on he went along with our story and enthusiastically introduced us to everyone as really cool Hollywood stuntmen.
On the downside, we never scored that night, and I don't think we ever used the stuntman ploy again at parties, but it was a good night nonetheless. However, for the life of me, I can't recall what happened to the big spoon.
One day I’ll tell you about the time I went to a party with handcuffs on. My friends pretended they were cops and I was a criminal they were letting out to get drunk before going to prison. The girls loved that one. They felt so sorry for me, the kinky little devils.
Dear Loyal Australian DVD Consumer,
We wish to thank you for so eagerly supporting the Australian Region 4 DVD industry.
We know that in the past, many of you have purchased your DVDs from overseas markets, possibly believing that the product you have bought over the internet from U.S. based retailers to be of better quality and available much sooner than local releases.
We have worked hard to stop this occurring, and to make you see that the local product is of a high quality with the added benefits of supporting local industry and businesses. Further, we’ve tried to make you see that our local efforts consist of superior PAL formatting to match our local standard, rather than the inferior NTSC system used in region 1.
Now that we have turned the tide, and that we also feel that DVD is firmly entrenched as the medium of choice for quality home cinema entertainment for all levels of consumers, not just early adopters, we wish to reward you, the people who have supported us through this, by releasing selected titles in the NTSC format so you don’t have to worry about importing them yourself. Further, as an added bonus, these titles will be released as either full frame or pan and scan, not their original aspect ratio.
To all of you who have supported the local industry in the past by purchasing only Region 4 DVDs and have refused to import internationally released DVDs, all we can say is “tough shit”.
