GRANT PAGE – End of an Era

 

Grantley John Page (1939 – 2024)

Grant Page was Australia’s pioneer stunt performer and my friend for fifty-two years. I will miss him terribly. He was an inspiring man, who lived uncompromisingly. Most people accept that age weighs upon us, gravity holds us down, death awaits us if we dare too much. Not necessarily, said Grant, as he successfully tampered with the laws of physics and probability.  The ‘have a go’ spirit, the ‘think it through, take good aim, and go for it’ quality that has distinguished Australian achievers in all fields of endeavor was clearly present in Grant. He had courage and daring, tempered by a realistic attitude about the risks of his profession in the era before computer generated stunts.

 

 

Grant and I met when I needed someone to perform a rope slide off The Gap in Sydney. As an ex-commando, he was an ideal candidate. This was before Grant was defined as a stuntman; he was doing stunts for fun and the challenge of working them out.

There was a raw masculinity about him and an understated self-confidence, not unlike Errol Flynn. I instantly saw that he had the potential for a career both on the screen and behind the camera, and became his manager for the next five years, creating vehicles for Grant that would demonstrate his expertise: Kung Fu Killers, The Man from Hong Kong, Dangerfreaks, Death Cheaters, and Stunt Rock.

 

As a stunt coordinator and second unit director, he was a charismatic team leader. All those who knew Grant had their spirits lifted by the force of his inimitable personality and “can-do” attitude to the challenges of his work. He was charming, witty and had a forceful intellect. But above all, Grant had a generous life-affirming spirit.

 

He understood the art of illusion, that a stuntman’s role was to make something look dangerous without actual risk to himself and his team. His work on George Miller’s Mad Max firmly established Grant’s international reputation for death-defying images, and showed the world that the fledgling Australian film industry could deliver Hollywood level action and mayhem.

Such eye-popping stunts were a major contribution to the development of our film industry, and got Australian genre films international respect. Grant would go on to forge a distinguished career in film, which continued to the end, including work on the latest addition to the Mad Max canon, Furiosa.  

It would be impossible to express the depth of Grant’s meaning to my life. Grant and I shared the deepest respect for our fathers, veterans of World War II, for their courage and resourcefulness, dedication. We both tried to emulate our fathers, and their examples motivated our respective careers. Grant and I were good and sometimes mischievous influences on one another. We did fire stunts, climbed cliffs and got up to other shenanigans. Here he climbs the London County Council  Building.

We respected each others’ counsel. One piece of Grant’s advice proved fateful.  The night before I first met Margaret, Grant had said, “You should get married, mate.”  The next day, photographed here, it was love at first sight, and I immediately saw the wisdom of his words.

Over the next half century, we three shared a deep personal and professional friendship. Our world will not be the same without him in it.

Vale,  Grant Page.