Don’t Try This at Home: How Performers Turn Stunts Into Movie Magic

The New York Times: There were stunts in films before there was talking. Long before Tom Cruise dangled from the wing of a plane, the silent film star Harold Lloyd originated an enduring Hollywood image, hanging from a clock face in “Safety Last!” (1923). Though the slapstick and sight gags of Lloyd and his peers Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin once shaped cinema, opportunities in the stunt industry, like many aspects of film production, are now changing because of technologies like CGI, A.I. and robots.