Laura Banks

Men This Way!

“Roger Corman exploited all of the young people who worked for him, but he really gave you responsibility and opportunity. So, it was kind of a fair deal.” – Francis Ford Coppola

I have starred in three low-budget action pictures; action adventure, action horror and action comedy. Apparently, I do not make any movies without the word action in the description. They were entitled Wheels of Fire, Demon of Paradise, and Retreads. Star Trek II was an action picture, too.

“Men, this way!” That was my line at the end of my first film with Roger Corman, Wheels of Fire, where I lead a real Filipino army into battle! (Sometimes I’ll yell out, “Men, this way!” in a restaurant just to get service, then sit down and apologize. You really must try it.) In Wheels, I went from being an extra in STII to having a starring role. We filmed in the Philippines[2] and it had me literally running for my life, from exploding cars and burning bridges. I was sucked into the ground by a meandering tribe of albino dwarves. (C’mon, who can say that?) They used me as an actress and as a crash-test dummy. I was not a paid stunt woman, but they enjoyed turning me into one. I don’t like catching on fire. I am not that kind of a thrill seeker. I have trouble getting out of bed in the morning and not stubbing my toe. Most importantly, I was not getting paid good money to risk my life! Forget that! There has to be a monetary value to almost dying. (I am quite sure that the woman who got shot out of a cannon in the circus, made more than the ticket-taker.)

I jumped out of a real armored personnel carrier with a hundred men running behind me, firing off all their guns loaded with real ammunition! I found out later over lunch, that the little general had told his men to shoot off their guns so he could order new bullets! There were bullet shells falling all around me as I was pressed against the wall of a rock quarry when I could run no more. Guns, very loud guns - firing off, for a very long time. It was a genuine Filipino army. The director and cameraman were safely filming about a quarter of a mile away behind a boulder, probably sipping lattes. Am I bitter. Nah. I had shell shock for days. I would not leave my hotel room at the Manila Intercontinental Hotel. Instead, I simply sat on the edge of my bed, staring straight ahead, trembling, and weeping like a homeless Disney character. I was a little bit irritated by this exploitation and I probably still am. And I have tinnitus – thank you very little.

In another take, I’m hiding behind an abandoned-looking car and it suddenly explodes as I awkwardly dash away in my thigh-high boots with slight heels, in 103-degree desert heat. I look back. My car is on fire. WTF? I recalled what the director had told me to do—to get up and run when I saw flames! That was a natural instinct that required no acting talent whatsoever. It was sheer survival. But first I had to remember to rip the grenade off my belt and propel it into the air. We needed multiple takes, so they had to keep lighting the car on fire and I had to keep falling, eating sand, then getting up and throwing a grenade again. Go watch the film and you will see for yourself how stunned I am in the moment. Sometimes survival looks like acting. I am often simply trying not to die. And if you did go back and watch the film, I apologize. It is a horrible film I survived, but it makes for a good story. I wish my first film had been Sophie’s Choice, but I didn’t go to Yale like Meryl Streep. (Cough. Just clearing out the bitterness in my throat.)

Being filmed while your life is in danger is the premise of one of my favorite movies of all time, The Stunt Man, with Peter O’ Toole (1980). The plot? It is a story of a criminal on the lam who gets rescued by a film crew that hides him inside the production. The price for his freedom was to almost get killed repeatedly as a stuntman. That is what Wheels of Fire and my work as the lead character “Stinger” felt like to me. But I was under contract with Roger Corman and New Horizon’s Pictures to finish this sucker of a film. Just another day at the office.

(I guess I should have read the script a little more closely.) The ground would often tremble beneath me from nearby explosions. I breathed air from burning rubber tires. The experience was awful and fabulous at the same time, because I was starring in a movie! But it was mostly awful because I was halfway around the world and in a lot of danger. Check, please? This was not my childhood fantasy of filmmaking. It was a Twilight Zone, but…there was one redeeming piece, the leading man, Gary Watkins. He was cute, and a cute-boy leading man helped to ease my pain. I didn’t actually like him as a person, but I liked the idea of him. He was fun to flirt with when I wasn’t running from things on fire.

In Wheels, they did write me in a death scene, which is what all actors want. I died hitting the ground from a fifteen-foot fall. In fact, I’ve died three times in three different films. I have been blown up in a spaceship, eaten by a monster and thrown off a cliff. I feel like a cinematic cat with six more celluloid cat lives to go. Meow.

I had flown seventeen hours to get to Manila from New York City. I got the role in Los Angeles. Very confusing. Please keep up. I was hip enough to be bicoastal for a few years. In Los Angeles, I had gone through wardrobe and was fitted into my leather, okay, polyester jumpsuit to play a bounty hunter in a post-apocalyptic world. The pants were split up to the top of my thighs, exposing flesh. My first few moments on set, I was sprayed down with fire repellant, which is a regular thing I do in movies and did in STII. Then they chopped off my hair to make me look like David Bowie from his Spiders from Mars, very industrial punk. I was rubbed with dirt all over my face and body. WTF? This was pretty bad, but I was making a movie. That was all that mattered.

Ah, the life of a B-film actress. I always thought coming home from work to my West L.A. apartment after a day on set as an action-adventure heroine was a funny concept for a screenplay: SCENE NOTES: “You see Laura climbing the stairs to her small apartment, covered in sweat and smelling of gasoline, and eventually making her way to the couch to watch an episode of Fantasy Island. After some time of appearing comatose, she peels off her headband, kicks off the boots, squirms out of her skintight pants, puts on her last ex-boyfriend’s t-shirt he left behind and passes out. END SCENE.

I was indeed discovered by the famous movie maker Roger Corman, who also gave Sandra Bullock her first break[3]. Roger also discovered William Shatner, Francis Ford Coppola, Jack Nicholson, Ron Howard, Charles Bronson, Robert De Niro, Sylvester Stallone, Angie Dickenson, James Cameron, James Horner, Martin Scorsese, Barbara Hershey, Joe Dante and David Carradine[4]. How come they are all more successful than me? Did they all know someone in the business? Is it talent? Luck? Timing? I don’t know. They are probably more exceptional than me in every way: more talented, disciplined, and with a better dental plan. That’s not a stretch. FOOTNOTE: There are a lot of men listed here. There are certainly more opportunities for men in Hollywood. Geena Davis is on a rant about that now in her doc: This Changes Everything. Thank you, Geena.

Sure, it helps to be gorgeous and brilliant to be a true success in Hollywood. But to become an action heroine in a low-budget film requires different talents. You simply must be tall, athletic, photogenic (enough) and capable of managing abject terror and complete humiliation, while a film crew gets their giggles watching you run for your life!

[1] https://www.ign.com/articles/2017/01/25/13-hollywood-legends-discovered-by-roger-corman

[2] https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Wheels_of_Fire_(film

[3] https://entertainment.time.com/2013/09/19/scorsese-to-de-niro-10-hollywood-greats-who-got-their-start-with-roger-corman/slide/sandra-bullock

[4] https://www.ign.com/articles/2017/01/25/13-hollywood-legends-discovered-by-roger-corman