Grant Page, Australia’s most legendary movie stuntman, has passed away age 85. He had a literal and metaphorical explosive impact on our national cinema, his legacy forged in the fires of the Ozploitation movement, his spectacular oeuvre written in tyre streaks and burn marks. If you’ve ever seen somebody in an Ozploitation movie running around on fire or hurtling themselves off a bridge, there’s a good chance it was him.
The most famous film Page worked on – as lead stuntman and stunt coordinator – was 1979’s Mad Max. He performed several of the film’s legendary stunts and, during production, collided with a large semi trailer while riding a motorbike. He ended up in hospital with its leading lady, both of them suffering broken femurs and multiple fractures.
The Adelaide-born daredevil’s long CV includes (among many others): Australia’s first martial arts movie, The Man from Hong Kong; the infamous Mad Dog Morgan, starring Dennis Hopper as the eponymous bushranger; the batshit crazy mockumentary Stunt Rock, starring Page himself in the lead; the Hitchockian thriller Road Games, in which he played the villain; and Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, in which he returned to the wasteland – older, maybe a little wiser, but no less brazen.
From the start of his life, Page showed a knack for surviving against the odds. Born to parents of conflicting blood types, before pre-birth blood transfusions, he was the only survivor of five sons. His career in movie stunts began in the mid-1970s and ran all the way to 2020, spanning very different eras of occupational health and safety.
Aspects of history inevitably get distorted by legend, but the devilishly cheeky and charming Page was the real deal – not just a “don’t try this at home” risk-taker who threw themselves around like a ragdoll, but a thoughtful and highly intelligent person who approached his work strategically and philosophically.
In Mad Max’s legendary opening car chase, which culminates in a spectacular crash that kills two gang members, Page was actually the person driving, awkwardly positioned inside the car but out of frame, tilted right back, his eyes only just seeing over the top of the dashboard. Page once said he decided they didn’t need to practise this (very dangerous) scene because “it’s all in theory … it’s all in action, reaction, inertia, and momentum. The billiard player doesn’t practice it. He just knows from experience what he needs to do to make the black ball finish up in the hole.”
If you hung around Page, you’d hear observations like that. He had a spiritual side to him; he seemed to approach stunt work first by changing the nature of reality.
Page had many credits over the last couple of decades and was a memorable part of Mark Hartley’s sensational 2008 documentary Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation!, which he helped promote – naturally – by setting himself on fire at the world premiere. That film, as well as Page’s autobiography Man on Fire: A Stunt of a Life, recount a time during the production of The Man from Hong Kong when Page and director Brian Trenchard-Smith (a longtime friend and collaborator) convinced star George Lazenby to perform a stunt requiring his arm to seemingly catch on fire.
After much persuasion Lazenby agreed. But, in a coordinated fight preceding the stunt, the actor accidentally wiped the protective thermal gel off the back of his hand, resulting in his arm actually catching on fire. Lazenby panicked and couldn’t remove his suit jacket. “Watching somebody trying to run away from their own flaming arm can be rather comic,” Page wrote in his book, “except when they’re heading straight for you.”
I met Page several years ago, when I interviewed him for my book on George Miller and the making of the Mad Max movies. He was very friendly and personable and a great raconteur, oscillating from stories about his wild career to deep thoughts on the nature of human existence.
When I arrived at his home he drove me to the local RSL. The journey there was terrifying: he drove very fast and took corners very late, clearly putting on a show. My heart was racing, but I was chuffed to be in a car operated by such a legendary fixture of the Australian film industry. Page was wild, bold and brilliant: a true one of a kind. Vale.
