By Lyonel Doherty

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Ever since watching the General Lee make a slow motion jump over a ‘road closed’ sign on the Dukes of Hazzard, one teenage boy glued to the TV screen knew what path he wanted to follow — the life of a Hollywood stuntman.

Little did he know that he’d be literally rubbing shoulders with the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger and many other film stars like Hugh Jackman in his pursuit of the American, er, Canadian dream.

Justin Sain, whose photography has graced the pages of the Pioneer, recalled where it all began in a little village in southern Austria. He lived on a small farm in a beautiful mountain valley, not unlike the Columbia Valley.

“It was a fantastic childhood . . . playing good guy/bad guy with tree branches for guns in the dirt, trees, and hills with my cousins and friends. It was unbelievably stunning, and I would never change it for the world.”

One day his parents asked him if he wanted to move to Canada. “I said, heck yes! I wanted to see some giant city skyscrapers.”

Fast forward to Ottawa where Justin acquired his first job as a newspaper delivery boy at age 12. He delivered the news on a skateboard in the summer months and slogged through the snow during the harsh winters. To make a little extra money he built and sold custom chopper bicycles that he pieced together from scrap.

His family subsequently moved to Calgary when he was 14, the year he became enthralled by the General Lee — the famed 1969 Dodge Charger that “awakened” him.

“I remember watching my first episode, just by chance (or was it) of the hit TV series The Dukes of Hazzard; I said, ‘I wanna do that.’ The passion stuck and it never let me go after that first realization.”

At age 15 Justin bought his first motorcycle with his paper route savings. He worked at the Calgary Stampede race track during high school, and after graduating he took a job hanging off skyscrapers cleaning windows.

Justin started skydiving at age 19 and worked at several skydiving drop zones in B.C. and California. He stopped after 700 jumps, finishing off with wing suit flying for thrills.

But let’s rewind the film a bit.

“I remember skipping high school when I was 17 when a BMX film called ‘RAD’ came to town. I went down to check it out and, most fortunately, became an unpaid extra in the crowd when they shot the BMX track scenes.”

He met the director and some crew members, which was a magical day and further fuelled his dream to do stunt work for film and television.

Justin subsequently moved to Los Angeles to immerse himself in an intense stunt training camp for two months.

“It was amazing to meet like-minded performers who understood what no one else could: it is possible to accomplish the unbelievable and inconceivable.”

Hollywood stuntman Justin Sain (left) doubles for Hugh Jackman in the film X-Men 2.
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He later found work as a background extra and special skills performer. In the early days, he worked in paid and unpaid cowboy stunt shows in front of live audiences and performed stunt work in low-budget movies. He travelled overseas to Holland for an Indiana Jones stunt show at a big amusement park. Another contract in Taiwan saw him perform in a cowboy western show.

Justin recalled that his involuntary training for stunt work began when he was a child.

“I was accidentally dropped down a set of stairs. I’m unsure who dropped me or if it’s a true story, but my uncle swears by it. Either way, I survived.”

He loved jumping off things, and studied martial arts and gymnastics. “These are the basics and fundamentals of any action performer to be proficient in, even to this day.”

Justin merely followed what his body wanted to learn. “I did anything and everything I could get my hands on to learn. Packing my skills toolkit full of physical, mechanical, and mental skills; you can never know or learn too much.”

After a seven-year stint in Los Angeles, Europe, and Asia, he moved back to Vancouver, where the film industry was booming (in 2000). He was new in town again and needed to prove himself, so he did exactly that by landing his biggest stunt acting job — working as the lead bad guy stunt double in Schwarzenegger’s blockbuster film ‘The 6th Day,’ which gave him two months of ‘unbelievable’ experience.

The next 10 years in the industry were the best he could have wished for, working on all of the biggest blockbusters in Canada and becoming one of the biggest and busiest stunt performers in the country.

One of his most memorable experiences was working on X-Men 2. He had the opportunity to be Hugh Jackman’s stunt double as Wolverine throughout the film. That gig led to more work in X-Men: The Last Stand, where he doubled for Jackman again and also performed as several stunt soldiers and mutants.

“One thrilling sequence involved jumping off, hooked to wires, a mock-up of the San Francisco bridge as Magneto (Ian McKellen) manipulates it. I also drove in some of the car crash sequences.”

Justin poses wearing some amazing burn make-up for a photo shoot. It hurts just looking at it.
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Another standout moment from The Last Stand was doubling for Michael Murphy in a scene where the character Angel swoops in to rescue him as he’s thrown off of a 70-foot building. “It was an intense, wire-heavy stunt performed in the middle of the night.”

According to Justin, there were no risks in his line of work, only ‘calculated actions’.

“I was a professional, and that was my job. I got blown up, jumped off buildings, fought in fights, got gunned down in war battles, and crashed cars and motorcycles.

There was never a moment when I was in doubt; I always confidently knew what I was doing. I never hesitated, but occasionally something out of my control can go amiss, and that’s when you summon all the years of training and experience, take a deep breath, and manage the situation.”

Justin was fortunate to have escaped serious injury during his career. He had a knack for getting himself out of ‘sticky’ situations, but he still ended up with many stitches, sprains, dislocations, concussions, and minor bone fractures.

“Although now, years later, the pain goblins are rearing their ugly heads and reminding me, occasionally, what I put my body through.”

Justin reflected on stunt work today, saying it has become highly corporate, repetitive, and stale, with computer generated imagery dominating a majority of the scenes. Now, artificial intelligence is replacing not only action scenes but actors as well, he pointed out.

“It might just be the end of an era, but you can never completely eliminate the human element.”

At one point, he took a break from his career and moved to Thailand where he toured the country on a motorcycle, thinking this would be the next chapter in his life. He sought out a world adventure motorcycle tour company and ended up in South America leading tours. He quickly realized that his movie stunt career was at an end in 2020. He subse- quently moved to the Columbia Valley where he refers to the people as ‘class one acts.’

Justin believes that people who want to excel in life need to follow their ‘bliss’ with confidence and “stick with it.” But if you think this guy has it all figured out, think again, he’s searching for his next adventure while still wrestling with what it truly means to exist.

Justin defying more gravity on a dirt bike.
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