He’s done a lot of TV and can be seen most frequently as PAT in the Toyota Commercials and at times on the ABC sitcom, The Middle. He’s also a founding member of LA’s Comedy Improv Troupe, Beer Shark Mice. Brothers’ Ink had him come to Phoenix last year to take part in a video series of interviews with comedy greats for a show currently titled, Inside the Laughter Studio for our upcoming Laugh University website. We also had him headlining at the Jester’Z Improv Comedy at the Mesa Riverview.
Pat’s Toyota Commercials are directed by the fantastic Jordan Brady of Superlounge. Both of them work magic together as they both come from a background in comedy. Jordan was a stand-up comedian before finding his passion for directing national TV spots. Pat grew his funnybone in Chicago’s ImprovOlympic Theatre alongside comedian’s Chris Farley, Ian Gomez, Jon Favreau, Tim Meadows and Rachel Dratch and with Second City of Chicago. When he came out to LA he eventually continued with Improv by forming the Troupe, Beer Shark Mice alongside David Koechner, Neil Flynn, Michael Coleman, and Peter A. Hulne.
His partner in Beer Shark Mice, Neil Flynn, is a series regular and Patricia Heaton’s husband on The Middle, featured on ABC. Pat plays a neighbor of theirs and husband to comedian Julie Brown, but can be seen over the years in TV Shows; Ed, Seinfeld, Murphy Brown, 3rd Rock From the Sun, Friends, That 70’s Show, The Drew Carey Show, The King of Queens and so, so much more! His movies include, Dude, Where’s My Car?, The Bachelor, Space Buddies and It’s Complicated. He’s an incredibly talented and hilarious guy and we sure hope we get the chance to work with him again.
100 Years of the Best Movie Stunts goes back over the last 100 years and picks 1 movie every year to recognize for their stunt achievements and to tell the stories, incredible trivia, and interviews from the people that were there behind and in front of the camera. Unsung heroes. Stunt Men and Women, along with Stunt Coordinators and Second Unit / Action Directors have created some of the most thrilling moments ever seen in the movies. 100 Years of the Best Movie Stunts celebrates those moments and the Stunt Teams behind them. To be truly effective in creating this movie magic, these people have been risking their lives and serious injury and have virtually remained unknown, and unrecognized for over a century.
Lists are very popular today. This is a list of the top movie stunts, highlighting 1 movie every year from 1913 to 2016. The book is perfect for today’s multimedia world where photos and short chapters resonate with the modern reading public. The chapters are short and feature fascinating trivia, great lobby cards, posters and film stills and interesting stories behind the scenes. Anyone who loves movies and have ever wondered who were the people behind some of the most exciting stunts ever performed in them would find this book fun and informative.
From Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd in the early days of cinema through the exciting westerns with Yakima Canutt and John Wayne to the silver screen of the swashbucklers of Douglas Fairbanks and Errol Flynn through the golden years and the thrilling cliff hanger serials like Spy Smasher, Captain Marvel and the grand epics like Ben Hur and Spartacus to Hal Needham, Vic Armstrong, and Terry Leonard and fantastic car chases to James Bond, Indiana Jones and Mission Impossible with stars like Tom Cruise and Jackie Chan, modern hair-raising thrill-rides we see on the big screen today.
371 Pages, full of over 300 color and black and white photos!
What Will Be The Best Movie Stunt of 2015?
George Miller has brought Mad Max back to the big screen and it’s incredible! It’s a visual action feast! In this day and age of technology, most movies like this made today would be done so with millions and millions of dollars in special effects. Over 80% of the effects seen in the film are real practical effects, stunts, make-up and sets. CGI was used sparingly mainly to enhance the Namibian landscape, remove stunt rigging and for Charlize Theron’s left hand which in the film is a prosthetic arm. As an example of some practical effects, the flame-shooting guitarist is Australian artist/musician Sean Hape, better known as Iota. In an interview on Vice (2013), he said the guitar weighed 132 pounds, and shot real gas-powered flames, which he controlled using the whammy bar.
Tom Cruise has done it again with fantastic stunts in this film. At the beginning of the film, Tom Cruise performed the sequence where Ethan Hunt climbs on the outside of a flying airplane (an Airbus A400M) without the use of special effects or a stunt double. At times he was suspended on the aircraft 5000 feet in the air (1.5 kilometers).
Tom Cruise stated in an interview that it was his intention to do the stunt hanging onto the Airbus A400M in a way to outdo himself after the Burj Khalifa climb stunt in Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol. However, his idea raised objections due to safety by the crew. Being a certified pilot himself, he wanted to get the feel of being out on the wing or on the side of the airplane. A major obstacle to filming would be bird strikes and wind resistance on the runaway. To capture the action, a wind-resistant custom frame for the camera was built and mounted onto the left wing of the plane. The other major problem would be keeping Cruise’s eyes open in the presence of fast wind and runway particles, so his eye specialist designed a special lens that can cover the entire eyeball. Eight takes of the stunt were filmed. Christopher McQuarrie was very concerned that the actor might panic suddenly, but was assured by Cruise to not stop filming until the stunt had been finished. It took 10 days to actually film the aeroplane sequence involving Tom Cruise suspended on the plane, however it is only in fact a 90 second scene.