steely dan
- March 10th, 2010
- Posted in Cool . People
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Almost thirty years ago, stuntman Dar Robinson leapt from the crown of the CN Tower with no parachute, no airbag, and only a thin wire looped around his torso to keep him from splattering on the sidewalk below. Today, we can relive that jump thanks to this excellent documentary video?uploaded by YouTube user Retrontario and posted at 1?T.O.?which, for no apparent reason, is narrated by Chuck Norris.
Robinson jumped from the CN Tower on two separate occasions. The first, in 1979, was for an action movie called Highpoint, in which Robinson was doubling for Christopher Plummer. Robinson wore a parachute for the original jump. It was, at the time, the highest such leap by any stuntman.
The second jump, in 1980, is the one shown in the video above. It was staged not for a movie, but for a documentary on Robinson, that eventually aired on ABC. According to Toronto Star articles from the time, Robinson received $250,000 to do it.
The video above is not from the 1980 documentary itself. It’s a segment on the MAKING OF the original documentary, from a second, completely separate documentary on Robinson, filmed in 1987. The occasion for the second documentary was Dar Robinson’s death, in 1986, after he (unintentionally) rode a motorcycle off a cliff during a routine stunt for another now-obscure eighties action movie.
Here, with more information on Dar Robinson’s untimely demise, is another YouTube clip?which, for no apparent reason, is hosted by Bill O’Reilly:
I vaguely remember watching that Christopher Plummer movie in, Cancun Mexico about 20 years ago. It is a crappy film, but for those that lived in Toronto in the 80s, there is a lot of memorabilia in that film which you don’t see anymore in Toronto today. For instance, there is a scene in the Eaton Centre where Plummer entices a man to rob the First Toronto Bank (or somehting to that name), at the present-day location of an expensive jewelry store by the Sears/Eatons entrance.