Kevin Cassidy- business is Ninja Nation Charlotte. Book is Falling Down to Find Myself
Bullied kid to Hollywood stuntman to business owner, author and family man
www.kevincass.com
www.marlanasemenza.com
Audio : Ariza Music Productions
Transcription : Vision In Word
Marlana
From Bullied Kid to Hollywood stuntman to business owner, author, and family man; today we learn a few life lessons from Kevin Cassidy. Welcome, Kevin.
Kevin
Thank you, thanks for having me.
Marlana
So, the title of your book is Falling Down to Find Myself. Talk to us about what that title means.
Kevin
Obviously, it's a little bit of a play on words. I was a stuntman for a lot of years, so I quite literally fell down for a living. And then through life going, through failures and falling down figuratively, was very important for me to get to this success and happiness. I had labor in life, so falling down literally and figuratively to kinda making you a whole person. That's kind of where it's going.
Marlana
So, you grew up on Long Island and you said that you became a stunt man. How did you become a stunt man?
Kevin
Crazy long story, but I'll shorten it up for you. So, I moved from Long Island to Charlotte, North Carolina when I was 10 years old, in fifth grade. And I was born in the birth defect in a speech impediment in a heavy long island accent in North Carolina in the late eighties.
Marlana
You had all kinds of things working against you,
Kevin
It was a lot. I remember bringing a bagel to school when the kid thought it was a really bad tasting donut. But anyway, I went to college, and I played baseball, I was an athlete and played minor league baseball, a very low-level minor league. Became a teacher in Baltimore City. My pastor was teaching mentor coaching and that kind of stuff. And there was a sport we used to watch on TV called Slam Ball. It was full contact basketball at trampolines. It was on TV for a couple years. Me and my buddies watched it. It was had a good time. They had a tryout for that in Philadelphia. I was living in Baltimore. One of my good friends is from Philly. Went there for a weekend, kind as a goof. We go this tryout, and I messed around and made it and they shipped me to LA for another round of the tryouts.
And I was a teacher this time just outside of DC in Hyattsville. And I talked to my principal. I said, Hey, here's what's happening. 24, I have a free ride to lab I can get cut tomorrow. I'll be home in two days. I can be there for two weeks, or I could be there for four months. I have no idea. I'm not gonna burn this bridge. I'm not gonna do this unless, and if I lose a job, are you kidding me? You always have a job here. Go have fun. You know, she was awesome, very supportive. Alright! Went to LA and made that sport and lived in LA for about four months. And a guy I met, there was a stuntman who did a lot of sports, movies, football, and baseball movies. And stuck on his couch for a little bit and got a tryout for a movie called The Longest Yard with Adam Sander and Burt Reynolds and all those people. Went to that tryout, made that movie, got into the union learned the whole stunt world and oh, I'll stay here as long as it, you know, until this kiss me back to, you know, Baltimore, to teach and ride this wave. As long as I can do it. And 18 years later I'm looking for an escape from it.
Marlana
I'm gonna show my ignorance a little bit. Is there a school basically that you can go to that will teach you how to fall and all those kinds of things?
Kevin
No, you have to kind of bring that to the interview, for lack of a better word. It's all word of mouth. There's no inter, there's Asians, no managers, no auditions. Every now and then there'll be a big audition, like that football movie. You need a bunch of football players, a very specialty skill. But usually there's none of that. There's no agency managers auditioned this all. You sub immerse yourself in the community. There's a stuntman softball league, a stuntman golf tournament. There's stuntman outings and different guys train at different gyms or different specialties, martial arts or horse riding, or there's Red Bull skydives or searches of people. And there's any, any branch of random athletic endeavor. They're all out there.
So, you get to know these people, you immerse yourself in the community and word of mouth and you get one job, do a good job, get another job, and it takes a long time to build up the reputation where you're working steadily. So, you kind of have to bring enough tools to the table to make you hirable at first, which was football and baseball and all those sports things. I got in and as I was doing those, I was learning how to fight and drive cars and come off buildings and do fire. And you kind of build your repertoire and you know, off you go. So, there's really no school. You just gotta throw yourself in there in the community,
Marlana
Which is kind of crazy to me when you think about it because I mean, these are some serious things if you're falling off buildings and whatnot. So, will somebody else take you under their wing or is it kind of competitive?
Kevin
Mostly under their wing. Everyone is a very cool community. Like I said, because it's word of mouth you only do the job that you're gonna be good at. So, if you're gonna be a person looking for someone to back flip a motorcycle and you call me, Hey Kevin, I need a guy. Your height and weight to do this back flip on a motorcycle. I'm like, I can't do that. I'm not taking that job. I'll give you $10,000. I don't care. I can't do that cuz tomorrow I'm gonna show up and have to do it and if I lie or didn't do it, then I'm never working again. You found it solely your reputation. It was very reputation based. And you take the job that you know you're pretty good at in the beginning, then you build your reputation. So, everyone kind of likes building people up.
And I think back in the day it was more competitive when I started because there weren't as many shows going on. But now at Netflix, Hulu, Apple, and hbo, there's millions of contents, millions of shows going on. So, there's more work than there are people to perform. 20 years ago there was like, there's 10 movies, you may be really good, get on one of them or you gotta go back to bartending or doing something else. So, I think back then it was a little more cutthroat. But as a person who hires all the stunt people, you need to build a good crew around you. So always wanna give someone a shot cuz you always need people of different specialties and everything. So, it's mostly building up and now it's for sure building up
Marlana
What's your best and worst memory?
Kevin
Man, best memory is, it's kind of like locker room, like I was an athlete. So, you have that, that vibe and you're with like-minded people. You're doing physical outlet stuff and you're also creative. You're doing fight choreography; you're doing camera angles. You learn how to train the actors and what this character should do and how he should move. And you have that creative piece and then you have to just get in there and get, ask her at piece, which it really bonds people. So, kind of most of my best memories are their friendships and relationships and all those things that environment gives you and mean some of the injuries and some of the, I should have done this, or I should've start that job or not, nothing terrible, all like kind of, you know, plants on the road ahead. But all is mostly good.
Marlana
What do you take, that you learned during that whole time that you have brought forward with you?
Kevin
Oh, the big thing I learned was like, your show is about branding and everything. I was always the guy that kept my mouth shut and was a good baseball football player. I played and I started, I got a scholarship, and I didn't ever talk much. And then I went out to LA and I'm on the stuntman softball league and I was a pro baseball player. I look really good out there. I'm like, oh, I'm way more than now. These guys, I'll run this whole world pretty soon. Didn't know that that guy's a world class martial artist and that guy was a world-class rodeo guy and that guy was just a bull skydiving and they don't play baseball. So that humility was great in learning that. And then you have to build your own resume, build your own highlight reel, print your own headshot, and you're your own business and you gotta sell yourself to them, to the people.
And I won't sell myself, they'll call me cuz I'm good. No calls. You have to get yourself out there. And we called hustling sets. You just break onto a movie set, find nothing. The stunt coordinator is, but hey, I'm here, here's my information. And you kind of sneak off without getting arrested. So, there's a whole light says boots on the ground sales technique. You are the product, and you are the business owner, and you are the marketing director and you are all that. So that world was different for me, and I probably got, I ramped slower than I would've. Cause there were times I would get a phone call, Hey, can you do this stunt? Yeah, I can do that. No problem. Something I can very easily do. But I just, yeah, I can do that. Sure, okay, well I'll call you back tomorrow.
I will call him back tomorrow. I found this other guy you can do. He was really excited about it. He really saw himself more. I'm like, those guys terrible. I know that guy. I mean, he's a nice guy, but he's not as good as I am. But he got the job. Oh, I gotta get better at that phone call and I can never be fake. I did it in a slow and steady way, which is truer to who I am. But I could h
Information
- Show
- FrequencyUpdated Weekly
- PublishedNovember 23, 2022 at 12:00 PM UTC
- Length32 min
- Season1
- Episode92
- RatingClean