Hal Needham Quotes

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Hal Needham

Profession : Director

Birth : March 6, 1931

I have to understand what I'm doing, and action is so simple and easy for me that I'd be foolish to try something different.

Hal Needham

I know what people like, and fortunately they seem to share my sense of humor.

Hal Needham

I never had a burning desire to direct. But Burt and I, on many pictures together, used to watch other directors and we realized that he or I could do a lot better.

Hal Needham

You have to be an athlete. A sense of timing is vital. So is dedication. Being a stuntman calls for qualities usually associated with being a dancer.

Hal Needham

Courage? Well, that's a difficult quality to define. If a man has never known fear can you call him courageous?

Hal Needham

Stunts have to be meticulously arranged. Choreographed. You could take a fight scene and set it to music.

Hal Needham

I could jump out of this window feet first, which would be the safe way. But the way I'd do it would be to use a ramp, get a running start, dive through head first and maybe throw in a little roll at the end. Doing it that way makes it more spectacular.

Hal Needham

The $25,000 stunt was a demonstration of the automobile air bag system for an Allstate Insurance television commercial. I drove a car into a concrete obstacle at 25 m.p.h.

Hal Needham

No actor does all his own stunts, no matter what he says.

Hal Needham

If a producer has 5 million bucks tied up in a picture, he's not about to let a guy like Burt Reynolds wreck a car when he can get a dummy like me to do it. But some stars would make good stuntmen. Reynolds is one of them. Bob Fuller and Doug McClure are strong, tough guys with plenty of courage, too.

Hal Needham

I'd say most stuntmen are injured working with horses. They have a one-celled brain and change their minds right in the middle of a stunt no matter how many times they do it right in rehearsal.

Hal Needham

We try to reduce the danger to a minimum, of course. And then we prepare for accidents with alternate plans. For instance, if I'm turning over a stagecoach, I try to take into consideration what moves I have to make if it flips in the wrong direction. Without those emergency plans you get hurt.

Hal Needham

I have never agreed that stuntmen should have an award. Never.

Hal Needham

A man can abuse his body a lot more than a woman can. And that's a fact.

Hal Needham