Pink Raygun Interviews: Monica Staggs

Monica Staggs could kick The Fall Guy’s ass and could probably do it while wearing high heels and fixing her lipstick. You’ve seen Staggs perform stunts in over seventy projects in film and television, including Species II, Sky High and Kill Bill Vol. 2. Her work as Daryl Hannah’s stunt double in Kill Bill Vol. 2 earned her Taurus Awards for Best Overall Stunt by a Stunt Woman and Best Fight for her sword fight inside a tiny trailer. Recently, Staggs took a turn from being the unknown stunt woman for an acting role in Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof, which is a segment of Grindhouse. Here, she talks to Pink Raygun about that role, working as a stunt woman, and the possibility for a re-imagined Fall Guy.

Pink Raygun: How did you get involved with stunt work?

Monica Staggs:I lucked into it. I was working on a film in Arkansas as the stand-in for the lead actress. I was also playing a small part as the maid at the mansion of the bad guy in the film, which means I was a background artist, formally known as an extra, but I was in a several scenes. I had tried out for one of the parts on the film and didn’t get it. Had I gotten the acting part, I would have only worked a couple of days on the film and who knows where I’d be now. But, being the stand-in and the maid, I was on the set every day and I got to know everybody.

When it came time for the stunt, I super-lucked out because there were no stunt women in Arkansas and the coordinator needed to hire a local because of the budget. The stunt didn’t require any skill per se because it was riding passenger as a car went off an embankment down to a lake. All I had to do was be brave. And since I was the same size as the actress, I got the job, and more importantly got into The Screen Actors Guild or S.A.G. And getting your S.A.G. card can be a real bitch starting out. It’s really hard to get.

The coordinator asked me if I wanted to come to L.A. to work about two weeks after the film wrapped to double for another actress. It was perfect fate because the actress and I were the same height and looked alike in the face. And the stunt was an easy stunt, falling backwards into a creek meaning it was something I could actually do. I went to L.A. and I did the film and I fell in instant love with California. When I got back to North Little Rock that night I made my 14 day reservation and the next day, I announced to my family that I was moving to L.A. in two weeks. My family wanted me to wait, but I couldn’t because I just knew in my gut I was supposed to be there.

So I moved to L.A. on the plane with all that I could stuff in three bags….literally a fork, spoon, knife, plate, two towels and clothes.

I was really skinny, so I started getting jobs because, being really skinny, I could double actresses, and they’re usually really skinny. About a month after I moved I crashed an audition for Species II where they were auditioning girls to be the Eve creature. They wanted someone who could move around like a creature, almost like a dance. I went in and did this weird creature movement and after three more auditions I got the job and an agent. It was a great job to land because they paid me to train to walk on the special stilt feet they had made me and I ended up working for about five months on Species II. That gave me a great kick start and I just started training and taking more and more challenging jobs. I think the planets aligned for me in that I got extremely lucky and trained hard to make the most of my lucky opportunities.

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PRG: Tell me about your role in Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof.

MS: I play Lanna Frank, pronounced “Lay-nuh” Frank. I say that because everyone kept pronouncing it wrong during rehearsals with Quentin. He got the name from one of his mother’s friends growing up. My character started off as a pot dealer and then turned into the friend that always is “holding”. So I’m very popular with the other ladies for my weed. Lanna Frank is also a member of the Austin, Texas’ local favorite female roller derby team “Las Puntas Del Fuego”, which translates into “whores from hell”. So Lanna Frank is a bad ass.

I had two other “roller derby girls” that comprised my posse…they were referred to as Bad Ass Chicks #1 and #2. #1 was played by Earlene Epper who is a stuntwoman and an actual bad ass. The “Puntas” are an actual roller derby team in Austin and some of the girls from the team got to work on the movie. If you want spoilers…I die a grizzly death. And that’s about all I knew about Lanna Frank, besides deciding she’d like both men and women.

PRG: Is working as an actor more or less challenging than working as a stunt woman? How so?

MS:I would say working as an actor is less challenging, which will probably get me in trouble with my current acting teacher. I majored in drama at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville in between switching my major back and forth between that and English. I acted in plays during my time there and won the Irene Ryan (Granny from The Beverly Hillbillies) Award at a dramatic competition. Not that means boo-diddly shit in Hollywood, but I have been acting, be it non-professionally for a long time. In fact, in my first play I was cast as Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet when I was in the 5th grade. Mercutio is best bud of Romeo that gets stabbed trying to break up a fight between Romeo and Tybalt. Although at the time I was crushed not to be playing Juliet and freaked out about having to play a boy…because I really looked like a boy…even though Mercutio gets some great lines and gets to die and put curses on both Romeo and Tybalt. I realized later it was just a brilliant casting decision…due of my mother’s complete lack of fashion sense.

I was a tomboy, had really short hair, wore jeans and t-shirts all the time, except for “picture day” and my nickname was “Ostrich” because I could run fast and was kinda homely. But, it cracks me up now because one of my favorite thing to do is play dudes. I love going in drag as a dude in my comedy sketches. So maybe that was a sign back in the day.

Since I write comedy sketches, I feel most comfortable acting-wise doing comedy. Stunts on the other hand, I lucked into. My athletic background was dance. Ballet, tap and jazz, and I clarify that because sometimes in L.A. people assume that “dancing” means stripping. You gotta love L.A.

Basically, acting seems less challenging to me because it’s “acting”. And that’s probably going to sound shitty, but all human beings are natural “actors” when we need to be. Then it comes down to how good you are at acting and whether you can find your niche and whether you nail auditions and a lot of the time, unfortunately, on how hot you are (I classify myself as “medium spicy”). Stunts, on the other hand, can get you killed or maimed. So stunts kick acting’s ass as far as being challenging. But then again it’s not like I’ve been asked to play a really challenging role yet, while I’ve had some gnarly stunt experiences. Plus with actors, they get a lot more takes to get it right than stunts. Sometimes in stunts they want to see you do it perfect on the first take. One director on the first take actually yelled at me and this other stunt girl right before we had to tumble down a steep, rocky hill all over each other, he yells out “Stuntgirls! I don’t want to do this again, so don’t fuck it up!” That should sum it all up…You might suck as an actor but you can actually die as a stunt woman.

PRG: Once you started working, were there other stunt women you looked up to or who may have been mentors for you?MS:I met Glory Fioramonte about six years ago and rode passenger with her during a stunt and realized I’d love to be a kick-ass driver like she is, but I didn’t get to really know her right off the bat…however, now we’re close friends and I get to pick her brain for all kinds of female stunt advice. But my biggest mentor is my fiance Gary. He taught me most everything I know about stunts. He taught me how to fight, do high falls, overcome my fear.PRG: What kind of training did you have to get to work as a stunt woman?

MS:My dance background helped out like gangbusters because it gave me timing and physical coordination. I had to learn to throw a punch that didn’t look like a girl, although the irony being I am a girl. So I trained in boxing and martial arts. I also took a stunt driving course were you learn how to slide 90′s and all kinds of other car stuff. And I learned how to do high falls.

PRG: What was the scariest thing that happened to you while performing a stunt?

MS:There’s been a couple…Once I when I was driving I started sliding backwards in this Trans-Am towards the edge of this steep cliff up in La Tuna Canyon. We were doing a car chase and my action was to speed off the main road up this steep, winding dirt “road” as fast as I could and stop at the top. But after I stopped, the car started sliding kinda sideways and backwards towards the edge. My tires weren’t grabbing the lose dirt and they locked up as I was braking and when I hit the gas to go forward, the tires just spun. I thought for sure I was going to slide right the cliff. I let off the brakes for a second and then hit them again and then pulled the emergency brake and luckily the car stopped…about three feet before the edge. But that shook me up because I didn’t anticipate that happening and I hadn’t come up with an escape plan. In retrospect, I should have been ready to jump out of the car if it kept on sliding instead of going over the cliff in it. You always want to think of all the potential things that could go wrong like that when you’re doing stunts so that if you have to, you can bail and protect yourself.

But the scariest stunt was what I call my “death jump,” on “Four Dogs Playing Poker” where I had to jump 14 feet from one roof top to another 70 feet up with no wires. We had built a catch pad in between the building out of boxes. We use folded empty cardboard boxes and stack them up about ten high and tie them together with ropes. They are really great to land in for high falls, but on this stunt if I didn’t make it to the other roof I and fell I would have smacked into the other building and then fallen down into the boxes and that could have been really bad. I knew about the stunt a week out and we had been practicing jumping the distance on the ground and then we went of the roof of my house into boxes. My fiance was the stunt coordinator, so I was joking around with him that he was trying to kill me. But he set it up great and we rehearsed it all week and I was making it. There was a three feet height difference between the roofs, so that helped and we also set up that way in our rehearsal off the roof at our home. I only did one take and I made it by six inches. My fiance had to do the jump after me and he made it, too. I didn’t tell my family about the stunt until it was over because they would have freaked out and they did freak out when they found out about it. My mother started sobbing and said the next time she’d just pay me the salary I would have made to NOT do the stunt. But ultimately the money was not why I was doing the stunt. Plus, I have always trusted my fiance that I could do it, but, oh yeah, I was scared as shit about that one.

PRG: The funniest thing?

MS:I met Glory Fioramonte on the set of Diagnosis Murder where we were sharing a dressing room. I knew who she was because she’s had an amazing career and I was really excited to be working with her. I had known her about five minutes when I looked in the closet where they hung our wardrobe and saw this dress hanging there. I dramatically pulled it out and said, “Is this what they have you wearing today? God it’s hideous!” And she said, “That’s my own dress.” And I stood there speechless like the red-faced asshole that I was and then she just starting dying laughing and I started laughing. And we kept laughing about it all day. She now threatens me with the dress…that she’ll wear it to my wedding.

PRG: You’ve also done stand-up comedy. So, what’s scarier: driving a car off an embankment or facing a crowd waiting for you to make them laugh?

MS:Driving a car off an embankment, hands down.

PRG: Which is harder: dying on screen or dying on stage?>

MS:Dying on screen is fun while dying on stage is not.

PRG: You’ve worked as a stunt double, a stunt performer and a stunt coordinator. What is the difference between those three roles? Which do you prefer?

MS:A stunt double means you are doubling an actress as compared to a stunt performer where you are playing a part or you’re in the background, but doing a stunt. When you are the stunt coordinator, you are the boss. So you break down the script and figure out where the stunts are and how you can make them work with the budget you have. You are in charge of hiring the right stunt people for the job and coordinating the action. You hire people who are talented which will make your job easy. You keep your stunt people and actors safe while getting the most dynamic shot you can.

I’m not sure which I prefer. I prefer stunt coordinating over doing some stunt where you’re going to get really busted up, like a no-brainer where you have to just sell out and hit the ground hard. Then again, I really enjoy doing a great fight scene or driving because you can’t beat the adrenaline rush and the exhilaration. My least favorite is being a stunt double because your face is never seen and then later the actress always claims she did all her own stunts. Not that I blame them. One of the best jobs would be playing a part where you were acting and doing your own stunts, like Zoe Bell is doing for Quentin in Death Proof. And the best job would be to direct a movie that you wrote and watching the stunts you’ve dreamed about come to life. That would be a real kick.

PRG: What projects are you working on now, or have coming up?

MS:I’m doing my first horror convention in two weeks in New Jersey and I’m really excited about that. I love horror and sci-fi and, more importantly, I dig the type of people who love horror and sci-fi. It’s called Chiller. I’m working on a pilot called Skip Tracer. More importantly, I’m writing a script and so far it’s gangbusters. I’m really excited about it. Quentin had told me that if anybody should write a women’s prison movie, it should be me. So, I took that as an assignment and that’s what I’m doing. And of course, I’m still working on my stand-up and my sketches.

PRG: What advice would you give a girl who wants to work as a stunt woman?

MS:There’s some basic things just to get started. You’ll need head shots, a resume and reel of yourself. Keep your reel under three minutes. It doesn’t have to be from a film because you’re just starting out, but it should show your talent. You need those things when you “hustle” sets to meet the stunt coordinator. It helps to come from a background of gymnastics or high diving or martial arts, etc. And then train and get into the best shape you can. Become great at one thing and really, really good at everything else. More importantly, as told to me by my friend Glory, hold your head high and don’t take things personally.

PRG: How many times have you “died” on screen?

MS:I’m not really sure, around five times, but the best death was when I got hit by a car in The Settlement.

PRG: Do you know all the lyrics to The Fall Guy theme song? I have a bet.

MS:Sadly, I did not know any of the lyrics to The Fall Guy. Growing up, my mom would only allow my sister and me to watch things that were educational. We had to beg to watch Charlie’s Angels and Fantasy Island. We got stuck watching a lot of Cosmos by Carl Sagan and anything else on PBS. So I’ve never even seen an episode of The Fall Guy. But, I checked out the lyrics on the Internet and they cracked me up. I love how it’s all about him being a super-stud ladies man as well as a stunt man. That’s classic.

PRG: Is the world ready for a remake of The Fall Guy starring a female lead (The Fall Girl!)?

MS:Of course it is, but it needs to be done right. It deserves to be coordinated by a woman and co-written by an actual stunt woman who can write. That way you get the real cool stuff that happens, not just some writer’s idea of the real cool things that happen. I just happen to know someone that fits that bill. You can contact me though my service.

Death Proof is a segment of Quentin Tarantino’s and Robert Rodriguez’s Grindhouse, which hits theaters this Friday, April 6th. Monica Staggs will appear at the Chiller Convention in Parsippany, NJ on the weekend of April 13th.