 |
David L. Boushey (born 1942), is an American stuntman, stunt coordinator, stage fight director and stunt trainer. He is the founder of the United Stuntmen's Association, the International Stunt School, the Society of American Fight Directors, and is a member of The Hollywood Stuntmen's Hall of Fame. [1]
Boushey was born in 1942 in the city of Everett, Washington where he spent his first 15 years. At age 16 he moved with his family to Seattle where he graduated in the first graduating class from Ingraham High School in 1961. Boushey graduated from Central Washington University in 1969. After two years as an account executive with the Seattle Post Intelligencer he decided to fulfil his dream of becoming an actor. Boushey went to England where he trained at the prestigious East 15 Acting School founded by the legendary Joan Littlewood ( A Taste of Honey , and Oh What a Lovely War ). It was at EAST 15 where he met fight master Ian McKay who introduced him to the art of stage combat. After two and a half years working with the likes of William Hobbs (The Three/Four Musketeers...1974) he returned home to Seattle where he founded the Society of American Fight Directors in 1977. In 1985 he founded the United Stuntmen's Association and in 1991 he founded the International Stunt School.
Boushey's professional career spans forty years with over 400 theatre credits and 45 films. Boushey's film credits include Blue Velvet , Twin Peaks , The Hand That Rocks The Cradle, Drugstore Cowboy, Mad Love , and Northern Exposure . Moreover, he has trained well over 2000 students and taught master classes in over 100 universities and colleges throughout North America.
Boushey has worked with eight Academy Award-winning actors including Denzel Washington, William Hurt, Tommy Lee Jones, and Chris Cooper.
Boushey's first professional production was at the Seattle Repertory Theatre in 1974 under Duncan Ross. The production was Hamlet starring Christopher Walken (Academy Award winner for the Deer Hunter). Boushey soon joined the prestigious theatre complex, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival where he was both actor and fight director for two seasons. Boushey returned to Seattle to play Valvert in the production of Cyrano de Bergerac as well as choreograph the fight scene. Boushey's career from this point took him all over North America where he worked with George Abbott, Jon Jory, Milton Katsales, Daniel Sullivan, Duncan Ross and Meg Booker amongst others. Theatres he choreographed action for include: Actors Theatre Louisville, San Diego Globe, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Intiman Theatre, San Francisco ACT, Utah Shakespeare Festival, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Empty Space Theatre, Folger Theatre, Pioneer Theatre, Mark Taper Forum, Cincinnati Playhouse, Illinois Shakespeare Festival, Dallas Theatre Center and Seattle ACT. He choreographed the action in nearly all of the LORT theatres in North America as well as several ballet and opera companies.
In 1981, Boushey moved into film where he eventually became a stunt coordinator and stunt performer. He was a stunt double for Tom Skerrit, Harvey Keitel, Rutger Hauer, Timothy Busfield and Meg Ryan. He was stunt coordinator for the television series Northern Exposure , Under Suspicion , Under One Roof (starring James Earl Jones) and Medicine Ball . Some of the actors he worked with and coordinated are Drew Barrymore, Elijah Wood, Denzel Washington, Kyle MacLachlan, Brad Dourif, Dennis Hopper, Matt Dillon, Kiefer Sutherland, Annette Bening, William Hurt, Chris Cooper, Linda Evans, River Phoenix, Tommy Lee Jones, Jobeth Williams, Danny Glover, Mary Tyler Moore, Brendan Fraser and Heather Graham to name a few.
As of 2015, Boushey still works in the film industry as a stunt coordinator as well as co-administrating the International Stunt School.
Timothy Blake Nelson is an American actor, director and writer. His most noted roles include Delmar O'Donnell in O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), Dr. Pendanski in Holes (2003), Daniel "Danny" Dalton Jr. in Syriana (2005), Dr. Samuel Sterns in The Incredible Hulk (2008), Richard Schell in Lincoln (2012), Buster Scruggs in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018), and Wade Tillman / Looking Glass in the HBO series Watchmen (2019) for which he was nominated for a Critics' Choice Television Award.
Denzel Hayes Washington Jr. is an American actor, director, and producer. Known for his performances on the screen and stage, he has been described as an actor who reconfigured "the concept of classic movie stardom", associating with characters defined by their grace, dignity, humanity, and inner strength. He has frequently collaborated with directors Spike Lee, Antoine Fuqua, and Tony Scott. He has earned various awards including two Academy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and a Tony Award. In 2016, he received the Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2020, The New York Times ranked him as the greatest actor of the twenty-first century.
August Wilson was an American playwright. He has been referred to as the "theater's poet of Black America". He is best known for a series of ten plays, collectively called The Pittsburgh Cycle, which chronicle the experiences and heritage of the African-American community in the 20th century. Plays in the series include, Jitney (1982), Fences (1984), Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (1984), Joe Turner's Come and Gone (1986), The Piano Lesson (1987), King Hedley II (1999). Two of his plays received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and one the Tony Award for Best Play (Fences). In 2006 Wilson was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.
A stunt is an unusual and difficult physical feat or an act requiring a special skill, performed for artistic purposes usually on television, theaters, or cinema. Stunts are a feature of many action films. Before computer generated imagery special effects, these effects were limited to the use of models, false perspective and other in-camera effects, unless the creator could find someone willing to jump from car to car or hang from the edge of a skyscraper: the stunt performer or stunt double.
Kevin Delaney Kline is an American actor and singer. He is the recipient of an Academy Award and three Tony Awards. In addition, he has received nominations for two British Academy Film Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, and five Golden Globe Awards. In 2003, Kline was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame.
A stunt performer, often referred to as a stuntman or stuntwoman, is a trained professional who performs daring acts, often as a career. Stunt performers usually appear in films or on television, as opposed to a daredevil, who performs for a live audience. When they take the place of another actor, they are known as stunt doubles.
Annette Carol Bening is an American actress. She began her career on stage with the Colorado Shakespeare Festival company in 1980, and played Lady Macbeth in 1984 at the American Conservatory Theater. She was nominated for the 1987 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play for her Broadway debut in Coastal Disturbances and for the 2019 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for All My Sons. She is a four-time Academy Award nominee for the films The Grifters (1990), American Beauty (1999), Being Julia (2004), and The Kids Are All Right (2010). In 2006, she received a film star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Walter Stacy Keach Jr. is an American actor and narrator. He has played mainly dramatic roles throughout his career, often in law enforcement or as a private detective. His most prominent role was as Mickey Spillane's fictional detective Mike Hammer, which he played in numerous stand-alone television films and at least three television series throughout the 1980s and 1990s. The role earned him a Golden Globe Award nomination in 1984.
Enos Edward "Yakima" Canutt was an American champion rodeo rider, actor, stuntman, and action director.
Robert Frederic Schenkkan Jr. is an American playwright, screenwriter, and actor. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1992 for his play The Kentucky Cycle and his play All the Way earned the 2014 Tony Award for Best Play. He has three Emmy nominations and one WGA Award.
George Costello Wolfe is an American playwright and director of theater and film. He won a Tony Award in 1993 for directing Angels in America: Millennium Approaches and another Tony Award in 1996 for his direction of the musical Bring in 'da Noise/Bring in 'da Funk. He served as Artistic Director of The Public Theater from 1993 until 2004.
Melvin Richard "Dakin" Matthews is an American actor, playwright, theatre director, and theatrical scholar.
John David Washington is an American actor, producer, and former American football running back. He played college football at Morehouse College and signed with the St. Louis Rams as an undrafted free agent in 2006. Professionally, Washington spent four years as the running back for the United Football League's Sacramento Mountain Lions.
Kenny Leon is an American director, producer, actor, and author, notable for his work on Broadway, on television, and in regional theater. In 2014, he won the Tony Award for Best Director of a Play for A Raisin in the Sun.
Mel Shapiro is an American theatre director and writer, college professor, and author.
The School of Drama is an undergraduate and graduate theatre school in the Arts Division of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington.
Roberta Brown is an American swordmaster and actress.
Livi Zheng is an Indonesian producer, director, actress, and stuntwoman. She began her career as a stuntwoman at the age of fifteen and has since produced and directed Brush with Danger (2014), Bali: Beats of Paradise (2018), and Insight (2021).
The Black Stuntmen's Association is an organization that was formed in 1967 by CEO and Cofounder Eddie Smith as a result of policies that kept black stuntmen and stuntwomen from getting studio work. Members of the association include CoFounder Eddie smith, Ernie Robinson and its members Alex Brown, Willie Harris, Henry Kingi, Joe Tilque and William Upton.