Mario Tosi

In 1980, The Stunt Man, starring Peter O'Toole and Steve Railsback, became one of the most acclaimed motion pictures of the decade -- an odd mixture of black humor and riveting suspense. But the strange history of the film's embattled development, production and distribution has never been fully revealed ... until now.

Stephen Mitchell narrates footage shot by Peter Helm of Stephen's GTO at Willow Springs Raceway and in the canyons of Los Angeles.

The film is ironic about the lack of actions for transforming city spaces; the few actions undertaken are almost always limited to the positioning of “poles and chains”: the temporary signs of a hypothetical transformation on the city. The film shows sequences of innumerable “pole and chain” barriers, commented on by architects, councillors, members of activity groups… who all underline the impermanence of these objects in view of some “elusive” transformations of the city.