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Review
"Armstrong's a fascinating guy and a straight shooter. His book is fantastic." --Ain't It Cool News
"A fantastic book!" --Film School Rejects
"The man is a legend in the industry...[A] mind-blowing, must-read biography." --Movies.com
"[Vic has] been this unheralded savior of movie magic for decades, and hearing how he makes the incredible credible is a must for any film fan." --Hollywood.com
"A funny, thrilling, insightful and maddening look into the dirty and dangerous work that makes a movie so damn exciting." --CHUD.com
"If you're a movie buff, action aficionado, or just a fan of genre classics, this is a book absolutely worth your while." --IGN.com
"A Hollywood memoir packed with on-set tidbits as our man jumps from balconies, slides under cars and sets himself on fire." --Loaded
"Armstrong has done it all. He has an Oscar... a BAFTA and a This Is Your Life red book. He is justly proud of his filmography and his legacy." --Empire
"As a collection of Hollywood anecdotes, it's brilliant." --SFX Magazine
"A spills 'n' thrills ride through a fast-forward life in pictures." --The Times
"If you've seen a movie stunt in the last 40 years and thought, 'That f*****g ruled,' it was probably Vic Armstrong." --Vanity Fair
"This is the best and most original behind-the-scenes book I have read in years, gripping and revealing. Vic Armstrong is modest, humorous and wry - altogether brilliant company." --Daily Mail
"[This book] is packed with the kind of stories dads like...What a dude!" --The Independent
"If you've seen a movie stunt in the last 40 years and thought, 'That f*****g ruled,' it was probably Vic Armstrong." --Vanity Fair
"This is the best and most original behind-the-scenes book I have read in years, gripping and revealing. Vic Armstrong is modest, humorous and wry - altogether brilliant company." --Daily Mail
"This book is fun and easy to read, it s written with passion and most noticeably from the perspective a fan of movies, one of the many reasons I couldn t put it down." --City of Films
"This is the best and most original behind-the-scenes book I have read in years, gripping and revealing. Vic Armstrong is modest, humorous and wry - altogether brilliant company." --Daily Mail
You may not know Vic Armstrong s name, but you definitely know his work... After more than four decades in the industry, he s finally gotten around to writing down his incredible story in an autobiography fittingly titled The True Adventures of the World s Greatest Stuntman. --Red Bull
"A wild ride through the death-defying maestro s career." --Flavorwire
"Simply fantastic. The story of Vic Armstrong is an essential read and you'll have no doubt by the time you reach the last page that he truly is The World's Greatest Stuntman." --Comic Book Movie
"Don t miss out on meeting one of Hollywood s most prized possessions... Vic Armstrong." --Killer Aphrodite
"Constantly engaging, it's just as spectacular reading about the elaborate stunts as watching them unfold onscreen." --Cool Ass Cinema
"A wild ride through the death-defying maestro s career." --Flavorwire
"A fantastic book!" --Film School Rejects
"The man is a legend in the industry...[A] mind-blowing, must-read biography." --Movies.com
"[Vic has] been this unheralded savior of movie magic for decades, and hearing how he makes the incredible credible is a must for any film fan." --Hollywood.com
"A funny, thrilling, insightful and maddening look into the dirty and dangerous work that makes a movie so damn exciting." --CHUD.com
"If you're a movie buff, action aficionado, or just a fan of genre classics, this is a book absolutely worth your while." --IGN.com
"A Hollywood memoir packed with on-set tidbits as our man jumps from balconies, slides under cars and sets himself on fire." --Loaded
"Armstrong has done it all. He has an Oscar... a BAFTA and a This Is Your Life red book. He is justly proud of his filmography and his legacy." --Empire
"As a collection of Hollywood anecdotes, it's brilliant." --SFX Magazine
"A spills 'n' thrills ride through a fast-forward life in pictures." --The Times
"If you've seen a movie stunt in the last 40 years and thought, 'That f*****g ruled,' it was probably Vic Armstrong." --Vanity Fair
"This is the best and most original behind-the-scenes book I have read in years, gripping and revealing. Vic Armstrong is modest, humorous and wry - altogether brilliant company." --Daily Mail
"[This book] is packed with the kind of stories dads like...What a dude!" --The Independent
"If you've seen a movie stunt in the last 40 years and thought, 'That f*****g ruled,' it was probably Vic Armstrong." --Vanity Fair
"This is the best and most original behind-the-scenes book I have read in years, gripping and revealing. Vic Armstrong is modest, humorous and wry - altogether brilliant company." --Daily Mail
"This book is fun and easy to read, it s written with passion and most noticeably from the perspective a fan of movies, one of the many reasons I couldn t put it down." --City of Films
"This is the best and most original behind-the-scenes book I have read in years, gripping and revealing. Vic Armstrong is modest, humorous and wry - altogether brilliant company." --Daily Mail
You may not know Vic Armstrong s name, but you definitely know his work... After more than four decades in the industry, he s finally gotten around to writing down his incredible story in an autobiography fittingly titled The True Adventures of the World s Greatest Stuntman. --Red Bull
"A wild ride through the death-defying maestro s career." --Flavorwire
"Simply fantastic. The story of Vic Armstrong is an essential read and you'll have no doubt by the time you reach the last page that he truly is The World's Greatest Stuntman." --Comic Book Movie
"Don t miss out on meeting one of Hollywood s most prized possessions... Vic Armstrong." --Killer Aphrodite
"Constantly engaging, it's just as spectacular reading about the elaborate stunts as watching them unfold onscreen." --Cool Ass Cinema
"A wild ride through the death-defying maestro s career." --Flavorwire
Product Description
Think you don't know Vic Armstrong? Wrong! You've seen his work in countless films. He's been stunt double for James Bond, Indiana Jones and Superman, and he's directed action scenes for 3 Bond movies, "Mission Impossible 3", "I Am Legend" and the upcoming "Thor", to name but a few. He's got a lot of amazing stories to tell, and they're all here in this, the movie memoir of the year.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
I could not put this book down, it is riveting read from cover to cover.
Vic Armstrong is best known as the double for Harrison Ford in the Indiana Jones Movies (The three that are good!). this book charts his whole career and you will be amazed at the amount of films he worked on, as a stuntman and later on action director.
The stories are written simply, without technical jargon or gorey additions, they entertain, enlighten and make you wince with pain! All of the stories are truthfully told and so matter of fact, even if they involve deaths of helicopter pilots, friends and animals, but all with the utmost respect.
There is a lot of name dropping, Vic has met tons of director and actors and gives a brief opinion on them all!
I think it is a wonderful book and all film fans should get a copy.
Vic Armstrong is best known as the double for Harrison Ford in the Indiana Jones Movies (The three that are good!). this book charts his whole career and you will be amazed at the amount of films he worked on, as a stuntman and later on action director.
The stories are written simply, without technical jargon or gorey additions, they entertain, enlighten and make you wince with pain! All of the stories are truthfully told and so matter of fact, even if they involve deaths of helicopter pilots, friends and animals, but all with the utmost respect.
There is a lot of name dropping, Vic has met tons of director and actors and gives a brief opinion on them all!
I think it is a wonderful book and all film fans should get a copy.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I suspect Vic Armstrong is not a fan of English winters.He's broken several bones,torn ligaments and carries around with him pieces of metal that set off airport alarms.Still, he has other pieces of metal,an Oscar and a Bafta,that may go some way to ease the pain.
He has his memories too and in his book he is only too pleased to share them with us.
His anecdotes make you wince,smile and his tribute to Roy Alon will touch you.
It's nice to read about a man,not from a privileged background who
'stumbled' on a career,found he had a gift for it,and eventually became the best in the world.
He has his memories too and in his book he is only too pleased to share them with us.
His anecdotes make you wince,smile and his tribute to Roy Alon will touch you.
It's nice to read about a man,not from a privileged background who
'stumbled' on a career,found he had a gift for it,and eventually became the best in the world.
9 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I think adventure was implanted into Vic Armstrong's unique DNA cell structure from birth; a man who would quickly prove himself as a one of a kind master of his particular craft, and widely regarded as perhaps the finest Stunt Coordinator and Second Unit Director in the world by his peers within the elite British and Hollywood film industries in general, of whose projects have all greatly benefited from his talents.
He's also one of the very elite few to have jumped from a horse onto a tank, led a huge cavalry charge, dropped from a collapsing rope bridge, thrown himself off of a helicopter onto a mountain peak, gone up, up and away as the ultimate purveyor of Truth, Justice and the American Way, and slid downwards into a volcanic rocket base hideaway! Its all been a regular days work for this particular action hero gentleman over the years, working with the best of the business in the stunt field. Assisted by Robert Sellers, this incredible film history of adrenaline is presented by Vic in a fun, easy to read and very personable style, and is a fascinating and informative look at the wild, crazy, adrenaline rush universe of the Stuntman and director of mega-budget action, and, to its credit, also charts the success and failures you can have in the job, and how luck- of being in the right time and the right place- would play a great part within his career, especially in his early years within the always struggling British film industry of the early seventies.
And its all pretty much thanks to Bond...James Bond that Armstrong gets that memorable first foothold into the entertainment business, starting off on the classic Sean Connery vehicle YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE, playing a Ninja, which would eventually lead to an even more successful road directing explosion strewn action and physical character drama in three further Bonds, followed in the early eighties by the world beloved classic INDIANA JONES trilogy, where his talents shone through as the perfect stunt double for Harrison Ford (the pair having a brilliant off-screen relationship that has many fun moments in the book) and as an inventive action creator/spotter for Steven Spielberg (who provides the books affectionate foreword) on RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK onwards (intriguingly, with regards to the classic Indy shooting the swordsman scene in this breakthrough movie, Vic reveals a slightly different version of events as to how that sequence actually happened, in comparison to what has been historically said by Spielberg and Ford over the years). He'd also then save the day several years later when the gang were all-reunited on THE TEMPLE OF DOOM, rescuing the film from a possible shut-down, and the loss of time and money, when star Ford had a serious back operation that had to be quickly sorted out. All of these great memories are, for me personally, the best sections of the book as he covers his one-of-a-kind experiences working on the epic franchise movies, with Armstrong surely being a critical talent to their success with regards to the believable filmic reality of the action/adventure scenes.
Some 900 terrific rare photos from Vic's private collection have been well assembled for collection within the book, showing many of the classic stunts he has performed or been linked to, as well as with the stars and his family, accompanied by further mega league remembrances and tributes from the likes of Harrison Ford, Angelina Jolie, and Christopher Lee.
All in all, a terrific book!
He's also one of the very elite few to have jumped from a horse onto a tank, led a huge cavalry charge, dropped from a collapsing rope bridge, thrown himself off of a helicopter onto a mountain peak, gone up, up and away as the ultimate purveyor of Truth, Justice and the American Way, and slid downwards into a volcanic rocket base hideaway! Its all been a regular days work for this particular action hero gentleman over the years, working with the best of the business in the stunt field. Assisted by Robert Sellers, this incredible film history of adrenaline is presented by Vic in a fun, easy to read and very personable style, and is a fascinating and informative look at the wild, crazy, adrenaline rush universe of the Stuntman and director of mega-budget action, and, to its credit, also charts the success and failures you can have in the job, and how luck- of being in the right time and the right place- would play a great part within his career, especially in his early years within the always struggling British film industry of the early seventies.
And its all pretty much thanks to Bond...James Bond that Armstrong gets that memorable first foothold into the entertainment business, starting off on the classic Sean Connery vehicle YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE, playing a Ninja, which would eventually lead to an even more successful road directing explosion strewn action and physical character drama in three further Bonds, followed in the early eighties by the world beloved classic INDIANA JONES trilogy, where his talents shone through as the perfect stunt double for Harrison Ford (the pair having a brilliant off-screen relationship that has many fun moments in the book) and as an inventive action creator/spotter for Steven Spielberg (who provides the books affectionate foreword) on RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK onwards (intriguingly, with regards to the classic Indy shooting the swordsman scene in this breakthrough movie, Vic reveals a slightly different version of events as to how that sequence actually happened, in comparison to what has been historically said by Spielberg and Ford over the years). He'd also then save the day several years later when the gang were all-reunited on THE TEMPLE OF DOOM, rescuing the film from a possible shut-down, and the loss of time and money, when star Ford had a serious back operation that had to be quickly sorted out. All of these great memories are, for me personally, the best sections of the book as he covers his one-of-a-kind experiences working on the epic franchise movies, with Armstrong surely being a critical talent to their success with regards to the believable filmic reality of the action/adventure scenes.
Some 900 terrific rare photos from Vic's private collection have been well assembled for collection within the book, showing many of the classic stunts he has performed or been linked to, as well as with the stars and his family, accompanied by further mega league remembrances and tributes from the likes of Harrison Ford, Angelina Jolie, and Christopher Lee.
All in all, a terrific book!
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
FANTASTIC
I have always been interested in movies, ever since I was young. I enjoyed reading books on how they were made and also watching documentaries any time they appeared on TV, which... Read more
Published 20 days ago by D. Woods
You name them, Vic's worked with them
In an age where behind the scenes books & documentaries are becoming rather repetitive it was a joy to read Vic Armstrong's memoirs, a true icon of the last few generations of... Read more
Published 2 months ago by Captain EO
He worked on Indiana Jones, y'know
There's little doubt that Vic Armstrong is very good at what he does. The list of credits in the back of his autobiography spell this out loud and clear. Read more
Published 2 months ago by CJ
Very Enjoyable
This is a really fun read. As well as being an insight into the world of action movies, it's full of witty little anecdotes, and it's written in a friendly, informal style, as... Read more
Published 4 months ago by RockStrongo
Not as good as I hoped, bit shallow
I was really looking forward to this and found the first bit interesting but it then became a list of films he'd done,what nice people everyone was, and names of stunt people I... Read more
Published 4 months ago by Harmony
It's perfectly readable, but Vic Armstrong does not come across well.
I was very interested in this book, especially since I love most of the movies Armstrong made his name on, but I have to admit that by the time I finished I found him to be a very... Read more
Published 5 months ago by Owain Wilson
Interesting but repetitious
Like an earlier reviewer I was a bit disappointed with this book. I won't take anything away from the author but I did find it somewhat tiresome and repetitive after a time. Read more
Published 5 months ago by keith
He came, he saw, he jumped off a horse (and a bridge, and a truck...)
If you've ever watched an action film the chances are you've seen Vic Armstrong or his work. He's acted as the stunt double for Harrison Ford in the first three "Indiana Jones"... Read more
Published 5 months ago by Peter Lee
Recommended
Not only of interest to film goers , this offers a fascinating insight in the work of one of the worlds most prolific stunt man and directors. Read more
Published 7 months ago by c b
Now you know who this Vic guy is.
Vic Armstrong is probably the most famous, not famous person in Hollywood. When you see his name in the titles for a movie you think to yourself, I have seen that name many times... Read more
Published 10 months ago by Declan
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