Ben Marcus Rules

Malibu Fire is one of many ideas banging around in my Gulliver. This would be good for Netflix maybe, and the Hollywood Math is Entourage X Baywatch X Northern Exposure X Emergency! with notes of Californication and Rescue Me.

The elevator pitch goes like this in under 100 words: Malibu Fire follows the dedicated men and women of (the fictional) City of Malibu Fire Station 00 as they deal with dramas large and small by land, sea and air along the California Riviera: snakes, sharks, crazed celebrities, entitled vagrants, out of control rehabbers, car and motorcycle crashes, balcony collapses, helicopter suicides -  with all of those dramas overshadowed by the lingering threat of the Santa Ana Devil Murder Winds, and the hellish firestorms those winds can bring. 

There is a show bible for Malibu Fire online, and the teasers for the episodes 1, 2 and 3. The citizens and fire-fighters of Malibu live in fear of those Santa Ana Murder Devil winds, and the very first shot follows - to the tune of Los Angeles is Burning by Bad Religion - a gust of Santa Ana winds from “somewhere high in the desert against a curtain of blue,” 8,000 feet over Las Vegas on a winding, breakneck course over Mount Charleston, down through beautiful downtown Pahrump, along I-15 through Barstow and Baker, more desert, up and into the Angeles National Forest, along the slopes of Mount Baldy, down into the density of the Los Angeles basin, through beautiful downtown Burbank, past the Hollywood sign, along the 101, turning left on Malibu Canyon Road, zizzing past cars and motorcycles, through the tunnel, down to Rindge Dam, over the falls, whizzing along the last three miles of Malibu Creek like Luke Skywalker, up through the living room and over the reflecting pool of the New Castle (with Scott Gillen’s permission), over PCH and out to sea to First Point, where Gene Rink or Allen Sarlo or whoever pulls into a tubing wave made crisp by those Santa Ana Devil Murder Winds.

A wild ride and cool establishing shot but is it feasible? With that in my head and while poking around online I saw an Instagram story for Fred North - a renowned helicopter film pilot who has risen to the top of his profession and worked on a lot of shows. On Valentine’s Day, 2023 I cold-emailed a query describing the shot in greater detail than above, and he responded quickly and positively:

Yes 8000 feet no problem but if over Vegas we will need to coordinate with the airport as Inside their airspace.
The helicopter will be an Airbus H125 as it is very powerful and fast
The flight from Vegas to LA is about 2.5 hours in a straight line so if we were to film the whole thing with the right light I will suggest a 2 days shoot.
Between the ferry, the shoot , the camera system, the crew and flight permits I will say around $xxxxK (classified).

Schedule:

- Day 1 : Rig camera system in LA

- Day 2 : Ferry to Vegas

- Day 3 : Shoot

- Day 4: Shoot

- Day 5: Derig 

That would be the plan .

(If David Ellison is reading this - or if anyone has a pipeline to David Ellison - Malibu Fire is a job for Skydance. Call me!)

So I put that quote in the jumble of facts and figures in my head and forgotaboutit. Some time after that  - registering 4.6 on the Synchronicity scale - a book appeared at Malibu Newsstand called Flying Sideways: The Story of the World’s Most Famous Stunt Pilot. A bold subtitle but this book turned out to be by and about that very same quick-quoting Fred North helicopter pilot dude.

And then a few days after that, there he was with entourage at Zinque, doing a book signing. I briefly said hello then ducked out but should have talked more, because like Alan Roderick-Jones, Fred North is an interesting chap with stories to tell. 

Or maybe type interessant is more apropos, because Fred is short for Frédéric with those accent acute or grave or whatever suggesting this guy is French - which he is. 

It’s all there in Flying Sideways: how a rascal kid born to ex-pat French parents survived growing up in Tunisia, then Senegal, then war-torn Addis Ababa - a youth that put the adventure hook in him, as did seeing his first helicopter at eight years old.

The Amazon description synopsized nicely nicely:

As a young, misunderstood boy, Fred North was never a fan of the rules. Then, on an unremarkable day in 1969, a helicopter touched down in his hometown of Saint-Louis, Senegal, and turned his world upside down. Fifty years later, he's Hollywood's go-to stunt pilot with a world altitude record and over two hundred film credits to his name, including Inception, James Bond: Spectre, and Fast X. But a lot of incredible things happened in between.

Flying Sideways tells the thrilling but heartfelt story of how a misfit boy with nothing but a dream breaks the rules, beats the odds, and learns to bet on himself. Against a vibrant global backdrop that touches down everywhere from New York City to Mongolia to Madagascar, we follow Fred as he deserts the French Army (in roller skates), talks his way into flight school, becomes chief pilot for the world's greatest rally car and adventure races, gets mixed up with DEA in Miami, dodges death (many times), and―perhaps most improbably―falls in love.

Flying Sideways is a nonstop thrill ride, reminding us that the most dangerous thing we can do with life is give up on it.

And that is true. “How interesting could a helicopter pilot be?” you ask yourself, Well the answer is tres interesantes, as “Flying Sideways” details the evolution of a wild kid who felt he wasn’t good for much, until he climbed into the seat of a helicopter and put his hand on the collective and his feet on the rudders.

Bill Graham, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Kobe Bryant and Vic Morrow are the more famous names who have died in helicopter crashes. Helicopters are dangerous in the best of conditions but during his long apprenticeship, North often found himself flying in the worst of conditions: The Paris-Dakar rally, Raid Gauloises around the world. He had more than a few very close calls with high voltage wires, bad gas, bad weather, bad men and ill-timed explosions, but he survived them all and saw his skills improve.

These paragraphs on the www.fred-north.com website sum up his early career:

“In 1985, Fred began his career as a Camera Helicopter Pilot flying for desert rally car races, working in very difficult and dangerous conditions. He served as Chief Helicopter Pilot for “Paris-Dakar” and “Paris-Moscow-Beijing” rallies spanning the Morocco, Sahara and Namibia deserts, and crossing Russia and China. He also coordinated helicopters for the famous sport trek, “Raid Gauloises,” crossing the jungles of Costa Rica, Madagascar and Malaysia, and the desert and mountain regions of Argentina.

The whole time, flying hard and easy, boring and challenging in Central and South America, the African desert, the Riviera and a hundred other gigs, North had his eye on Hollywood, but was made all too aware that there wasn’t a whole lot of egalité or opportunité in the Hollywood aerial filming fraternité.

But that didn’t stop him. Working in Europe he started to make a name for himself flying for commercials and shows like “Seven Years in Tibet” with Brad Pitt. And then he made a move to Los Angeles where he found that the shop was indeed closed, but he put a foot in the door, then busted down the door by being Fiable, sûr et créatif.

Since the mid-90s has racked up a long list of credits: Fantastic Four, Extraction I and II, Transformers, X-Men and dozens of others.

North is clearly proud of his work - as he should be - and this book is loaded with stories, like North persuading Steve Wynn to stand on the roof of his Wynn Casino as North hovered a few feet in front of him. He got the shot and didn’t blow Wynn off the roof 614’ to his death.

In South Africa he set an altitude record, flying to 42,500’ in 2002 and making a remarkable recovery on the way down, when his auto rotating chopper restarted at around 10,000 feet and saved his bacon. 

For Extraction 2, North scared the bejeezers out of Chris Hemsworth and everyone else when he landed his helicopter on a moving train.

He got the shot, and didn’t get himself or anyone killed to death.

Anyone interested in the movie business, or cinematography, or to anyone facing the slamming doors of Hollywood and needing motivation and inspiration, Flying Sideways is a study in perseverance, believing in yourself, living your dream.

Getting the shot.

Let’s hope Malibu Fire becomes a reality and Fred North gets to do that long shot from Las Vegas to First Point. That will be cool.