Rick New Years Eve

Rick Sylvester (born April 3, 1942 ) is an American mountaineer, art ski jumper and stuntman . New Year's Eve was best known for a stunt scene in the 1977 James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me , in which he skied from a mountain cliff to free fall as the stunt double of lead actor Roger Moore Open the parachute in the colors of the Union Jack .

Life

Sylvester, who has lived in the village of Olympic Valley since the 1960s, where he was part of the Ski Patrol, a kind of voluntary (?) Mountain rescue service with skis, began to attract attention as a skier and mountaineer at a young age . In particular in the latter discipline, in which he was trained in Switzerland, among other places, he achieved great artistry. The mountains he climbed as a climber include Mount Kenya , the second highest peak in Africa.

New Year's Eve caused a public sensation when, in 1971, he performed a so-called object jump with the help of skis . H. a parachute jump that has a solid object such as a high-rise or a mountain as a jumping-off point from which the monolith El Capitan , located in Yosemite National Park in California , graduated. In doing so, he first made a prepared ski jump from the edge of the approximately 1,000-meter-high rock, in order to open a parachute in free fall and glide safely to the ground. The jump from El Capitan, which Sylvester had prepared through supplementary skydiving training and which he was to repeat twice, attracted Sylvester the attention of an advertising agency who hired him to direct a similar stunt for a Canadian Club commercial .

This promotional film, in which Sylvester's parachute mimicked the name and color of the product, was made on New Year's Eve by the producers of the film The Spy Who Loved Me - a part of the famous series about British secret agent James Bond - which was in its preproduction at the time attentive.

They hired New Year's Eve to do a very similar stunt for their film: In a shot taken on Mount Asgard on Baffin Island in Canada, which was later used as the opening scene of The Spy Who Loved Me , Sylvester jumps as a double of Bond actor Roger Moore after a rapid chase on skis at full speed with his skis from a mountain cliff into a gaping abyss to open his parachute in free fall, which is in the colors of the Union Jack .

The scene, which was recorded with four cameras, including a helicopter camera, and which is still considered one of the most spectacular stunts in the series, cost the production company Metro Goldwyn Mayer in an interview, according to Sylvester, $ 500,000, making it “the most expensive Stunt in film history ”; of which US $ 30,000 went directly as a fee on New Year's Eve. At the same time, Sylvester set a new world record in base jumping with his jump from a height of 3300 feet, almost 1100 meters.

In the 1981 Bond film In A Deadly Mission , Sylvester Moore doubled again, this time in a mountaineering scene.

Web links

• Rick Sylvester in the Internet Movie Database (English)