Many of the films which are tipped for Oscar glory - Life of Pi, Django Unchained and Skyfall to name a few - have relied on the spectacular work of the stunt team to capture the imagination of the viewing public. There are hundreds of stunt performers who, despite great improvements in safety over the years, still risk life and limb to enhance the cinemagoing experience. Jack Gill has been setting himself on fire and crashing cars in the cause of entertainment since the mid-1970s. He has worked with some of the biggest names in the movie industry. For more than 20 years, Gill has also campaigned for stunt co-ordinators - the head of a film's stunt department - to get the recognition he thinks they deserve from the Academy. The sense of injustice he feels watching Oscar night is clear when he speaks.
Jack Gill at work - he has been campaigning for a stunt co-ordinator Oscar for 21 years
He says: "It's disheartening because you've put your life and blood through it. "You're sitting by yourself watching all the other department heads, and you're not in there with them. "Every single successful stunt co-ordinator I know has been sitting at home watching his film winning an Academy Award and he's not part of it." So every year since 1991 Jack Gill has petitioned the Board of Governors of the Academy to include a new category for Stunt Co-ordinator. A simple majority vote of the board members is needed to add a new award, but every year the same result comes back, despite some high-profile supporters. Gill says: "When I got Steven Spielberg and Jim Cameron and Schwarzenegger and those guys signing a petition; once I took that into the Academy, I thought they would see that all of these eminent people really believe that we deserve this. "It's voted down every year. I'm baffled."
'Sidelined'
So why do the Academy keep saying no to creating a category for stuntmen and women? One suggestion is that most people, even in Hollywood, already believe stuntmen get their own award - one which is not televised in the main ceremony. Another possible reason is internal politics. The Academy is made up of people who work in all the branches of film-making who are honoured - from hair and make-up, to the directors and actors. Those leading the campaign, including Jack Gill, are convinced members are worried that creating a totally new award could lead to their own category being dropped from the live TV awards show - which is often criticised for being too long. Gill says he has told the Academy Board that is not an issue. "We don't even want to be part of the televised show," he said. Gill adds: "You can give us our award the day before in a hotel room banquet hall. Anything, so we at least have some acknowledgement."
'Mystique' of the actor
Ben Bray's work this year is once again within touching distance of a golden statue. He was the stunt co-ordinator on director David O Russell's film Silver Linings Playbook, which has 8 Oscar nominations, and worked on another film in the running for Best Picture, Argo. He has no explanation for the reluctance of the Academy to reward stunt folk. He says: "I always question why. I think simply the Academy still wants middle America to think that their heroes, the actors, are actually doing their own stunts. "It would be a wonderful thing to see the public and moviegoers love their stuntpeople as much as they love their actors. I really think that the public would embrace the stuntmen and women as heroes themselves but then again maybe that's not what the studios really want." That complaint, that actors take all the credit, is not a new one. Even the 1980s American drama series The Fall Guy - where Lee Majors played a crime-solving Hollywood stuntman - had a theme song to that effect.
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BBC News - Why do stuntmen not have an Oscar?
