Avenging Angel

DOWNLOAD (pdf)

A conversation with “Avenging Angel” director David S. Cass Sr.

One thing stands out about “Avenging Angel” director David Cass’s credit listing on IMDB – it’s. . . . long.  Since the early 60s, he’s acted, worked as a stuntman – often in westerns – doubling for the likes of Robert Mitchum and others, and is still highly regarded as one of the industry’s master stunt coordinators.  He began sitting behind the camera by the late 60s, though the gruff but humble Cass is quick to brush off any compliments.  “I’ve been called a lot of things in my life, from a b*****d to a son of a b****, but nobody’s ever accused me of being a director.  I’m a student of film because I’ve worked in it.”

How did you get your start in the movie business?

It was in 1961, when I was 20, not long after high school, I started working extra doing western gunfights for the tourists on the streets of Old Tucson for Robert Shelton.  When the movies would come to town, we’d work extra in those movies.  I worked in Sam Peckinpah’s very first feature, “The Deadly Companions” (1961).  NBC had taken “The Westerner” off the air, which Sam had produced and directed, because it was too violent.  So he made that film with Brian Keith, Maureen O’Hara and Chill Wills, and that was the very first film I ever worked on.

You also performed stunts in John Wayne’s “McClintock!” (1963), as well.

Yeah.  Wayne came to town to do the film, and I’d always had aspirations to go to Hollywood, but I was stuck in Tucson.  Shelton introduced me to Wayne, and he gave me a part.  After that, I had a choice:  have Shelton send me to the University of Arizona to learn to run Old Tucson, or go to Hollywood.  He knew the answer.

Who were some of your mentors as stuntmen?

There was a fellow named John “Bear” Hudkins, who doubled for Robert Taylor and Dean Martin when they’d do westerns.  And Henry Wills was a real mentor.  He was the 2^nd Unit Director and Stunt Coordinator on shows like “Major Dundee” for Peckinpah, and he doubled Yul Brynner in “Magnificent Seven.”  I met him on “The High Chaparral” when they did the pilot in 1967.  It’s the 40^th anniversary of that show coming up, we’re having a party.  We got invited, but I said, “I’m not going – I don’t even look like me.”  I look at myself in the mirror and I say, “Who is that old guy?”

How did you make the move from stunt acting to directing?

Well, one of my director mentors was a man named Virgil Vogel, who had been an editor – he cut “Touch of Evil” for Orson Welles, and he became a director.  He did 150 “Big Valleys.”  I was doing a show at Columbia called “Here Come the Brides,” doing stunts, and Virgil sent me out to shoot some stuff for him, put me behind my first camera in 1969.

My other mentor was Burt Kennedy.  He wrote and directed “The Train Robbers” with Ann-Margret and John Wayne, wrote a lot of Wayne’s stuff, and did a lot of television.  I ended up directing 2^nd Unit for him.  I’d ask him what he wanted me to shoot, and he’d say, “You got the script, go shoot it.”  Then he’d see the dailies, and he’d sit me down and tell me what I did right or wrong.  Mostly it was what I did wrong.  Both those felllas are gone; I ask God some days, “Send ‘em on down – I need them down here!”

You were working pretty regularly in the 1960s, in some of TV’s prime series.  What was that like?

Well, I remember I was doing “Gunsmoke” at the same time Robert Conrad was doing “The Wild Wild West,” at CBS Studio Center, the old Republic Studios in Studio City.  At lunch time, it was like a movie about a movie – people with cowboy hats, Indians, everything.  At the same time we were doing those shows, they were also shooting “The Big Valley” there with Barbara Stanwyck, as well as “Gilligan’s Island!”  We’d all meet across Radford Street at a place called The Backstage and eat and drink our lunch, and then we’d meet there after work.  It’s a sushi place now, I think.

“Avenging Angel” has some very rich characters, not the least of which is Kevin Sorbo’s “Preacher.”

I think Kevin Sorbo is a wonderful actor.  He’s so underrated, because people always pigeonhole him as Hercules.  He can really reach down and get to the emotion of this character, while still keeping that toughness there.

There’s a great scene with the little girl where he gives her this little rag doll that was his dead daughter’s favorite – he carries it with him everywhere he goes.  Well, she can’t sleep, because something scared her, and he gives her this doll.  The tenderness in Kevin Sorbo’s eyes – this bounty hunter – is unbelievable.  He has three small children of his own, and I truly believe that only a father, with three small kids, could really play it the way he played it.

Like you, he also brings a history of stunt performing to the film.

Oh, he’s great.  He’s got a good sense of timing.  Kevin knows where the camera is, and he knows how to sell punches.  And he absolutely knows he can get hurt doing it.  A stunt man opened his head up and gave him a concussion with a sword on “Hercules,” so he’s very aware, very cautious.  Kevin has good moves.  It takes special timing and natural instinct to do them, and he’s got it.

Wings Hauser plays an unusual bad guy, Cusack, in this film.  What’s he like?

We have some wonderful characters, yeah, one of whom Wings plays beautifully.  Now, Cusack isn’t mean – he’s just evil.  He’s studying humanity by doing the things he does.  He’s taken over this entire town.  And to him, it’s a game.  He’s got more money than he’ll ever need.  But it’s a game, to see how far the settlers will go, knowing they’re right.  And if they go far enough, he kills them.

Does “Avenging Angel” have a message?

Let me tell you –I worked in a film with Robert Mitchum, who I had doubled before, on a show for Burt Kennedy, called “The Good Guys and The Bad Guy,” which was shot in Chama, New Mexico.  A young lady from The New York Times was interviewing Mitchum, and asked him, “What social impact do you believe your films have had on society?”  He asked her where she lived, and she told him New York.  He said, “What do you do with your garbage?”  She explained that she gives it to the doorman, who takes it down to the curb and it’s picked up every Tuesday.  He asked her, “What would happen if they didn’t pick up the trash in your part of New York City on Tuesday morning?” She said, “It would be a disaster.”  He said, “Young lady – that’s social impact.  There are people who have never seen a Robert Mitchum picture in their lives, and they will be just fine.”

We’re here to entertain, not send messages.  We get enough messages watching the news.  That’s what I like about The Hallmark Channel – we turn out stories.  “Avenging Angel” isn’t all a nice show.  This film’s like a cross between Sam Peckinpah and John Ford, in style.  There are violent things that happen to Kevin Sorbo’s character, and he overcomes them.  He does a complete arc in his character, where he starts, he finishes.  But it’s everything that happens in between that tells a story.

-- HALLMARK CHANNEL --