411 Talks w/Actor & Stunt Professional Luke LaFontaine About His New Film Blindsided: The Game

The 411 Interview: Luke LaFontaine

Luke LaFontaine is a noted stunt performer and stunt coordinator who has been working in Hollywood for over thirty years. He’s provided his stunt expertise to movies, TV shows, and video games, including Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie, Martial Law, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Rundown, Serenity, Iron Man, Savage Dog, and countless others (check out his imdb page here). LaFontaine’s latest release is the expanded short film Blindsided: The Game, directed by Clayton J. Barber and starring Eric Jacobus, where he served as the film’s sword fight coordinator and played dog loving thug Luke. In this interview, LaFontaine talks with this writer about making Blindsided: The Game.

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Bryan Kristopowitz: How did you get involved with Blindsided: The Game?

Luke LaFontaine: Clayton and Eric told me they were continuing Blindsided and wanted me to be involved to work sword techniques with Eric and be a part of designing and building Walter’s canesword and to choreograph the swordfight with collaborative input from Eric, Clayton and David.

BK: How did you approach your character Luke? Is it a coincidence that the character’s name is Luke or was that done deliberately?

LLF: The name “Luke” was a deliberate decision made by Clayton. We talked about him being a real guy. I tried stuff, naturally reacted to things and Clayton said “That’s him!” Thus the character was born.

BK: How was it working with that dog? Was the dog as adorable in person as it appears in the movie or is that just movie magic?

LLF: There were actually two dogs that were siblings. They were both adorable, liked hanging out with me and put up with me.

BK: What was the most difficult stunt you had to perform in Blindsided: The Game?

LLF: Ha! The most difficult stunt was negotiating everyone’s schedule when I was choreographing sword stuff. The long and short weapons made distancing in the fight very difficult. My fight with Eric was easy. Eric is so good it’s just fun to fight him.

BK: You also acted as the sword fight coordinator on Blindsided: The Game. How did you approach that job on the movie?

LLF: I discussed Walter’s style with Eric and Clayton and what we wanted the overall style of the end fight stuff to be. I started building the fight and worked with Eric and David. I worked with Eric a lot and we came up with Walter still using the scabbard of his canesword like his blind man’s cane, which made it much harder because one was held in forward grip and one in reverse and Eric had to be cognizant of both for every move in the fight. Eric and David got the fight down because they’re both so talented. We brainstormed over certain moves. It was David’s idea that Ace just disappears from the fight by accidentally falling off the roof. Clayton kept everything in context. He never got caught up or mired down in the choreography. The fight was actually longer, Clayton made the decision to trim it because it wasn’t furthering the story being a longer fight.

BK: How long did it take to come up with each sword fight sequence? Were you able to tweak those sequences when you were filming them or were they planned out and sort of set in stone before filming?

LLF: The fight was planned out and choreographed before shooting. The card cut and Nico at the car was done on set. The fight took about a week. We had moments of collaborating on fight moves but a lot of the time we realized we were overdoing it. Clayton was very clear as the director in sticking to the story and his vision.

BK: What was it like working with director Clayton J. Barber and lead actor Eric Jacobus?

LLF: I’ve known Clayton for 20 plus years. We’re friends who’ve worked in the trenches together as stuntmen. I’ve got tons of love and respect for him. He’s a talented visionary. Eric and I knew each other and wanted to work together. Blindsided gave us the opportunity. We got along so well that it was really like we were long lost brothers, so we eventually adopted calling each other big and little brother. I love working with him! He’s possessed by the spirit of Buster Keaton and Shintaro Katsu and has the drive and physicality of Jackie Chan. Clayton is great to work with as a director. He knows what he wants, stays focused all while keeping a good energy onset. He keeps you laughing until you cry through the long hours. They’re both super talented consummate professionals. We are working together again and that’s a fact.

BK: Any upcoming projects you can tell us about?

LLF: I choreographed a fight for Tiger Chen and Michael Bisping for part of the finale of Triple Threat. Hopefully we’ll get to enjoy it before the end of summer.

BK: If you had the chance would you play Luke again? And what do you think Luke is doing right now?

LLF: I’d love to play “Luke” again. He was originally playing in the card game. Clayton would watch me play and I had no idea what was going on. Then I’d suddenly win a hand and say “Oh sh#! I won??? Clayton was like “That’s in!” but we had to cut it for time in order to keep the game more serious. Luke is probably buying hats and headphones to cover up his van Goughism.

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A very special thanks to Luke LaFontaine for agreeing to participate in this interview and to david j. moore for helping set it up.

Check out the Blindsided: The Game Facebook page here.

Check out my review of Blindsided: The Game here.

Luke LaFontaine profile image courtesy of Luke LaFontaine. All other images courtesy of JB Productions.