Anyone who watches "Hawaii Five-0" knows the show’s high-octane stunts are as common as bad guys. There were so many last season that stunt coordinator Jeff Cadiente figures he could make a 45-minute highlight reel.
But Cadiente needed only two minutes worth of action to secure his third Emmy nomination July 10 for work on the CBS drama.
The stunt sampling represents a change in the way the Television Academy, which oversees the Emmys, approaches judging in the category.
In the past, an entry was a single episode. This year, submissions could include up to 10 minutes worth of different stunts, Cadiente said.
"I just selected about 10 stunts and I mixed it up," he said. "I submitted some water work. Isubmitted some high falls. I submitted some car work. Some fights and different people fighting so it wasn’t always the same thing."
Cadiente had seen enough previous nominees to know what to select.
"I would watch other people’s reels and they would bombard us with so much footage that it got monotonous," he said. "You can have some really great footage, but if you submit too much stuff it is just too overwhelming."
Cadiente’s Emmy nomination is his seventh. He had four nominations for the Fox TV thriller "24." He hasn’t won any, though.
He previously was nominated for work on the first and second seasons of "Five-0," including a sky-diving sequence shot about 14,000 feet above Mokuleia.
This year, he used scenes from the fourth-season premiere, and if Cadiente had to submit a single episode, that episode would have been his choice. It featured explosions, car chases and a dramatic helicopter scene in the final few minutes.
Justin Sundquist, the stunt double for "Five-0" star Alex O’Loughlin, had to jump and grab a helicopter skid as it lifted into the sky above Aloha Stadium. Then Sundquist had to pull himself inside the moving helicopter about 200 feet in the air.
Another stunt Cadiente included was done in the season’s final episode and it was more harrowing than the helicopter ride.
Viewers probably didn’t fully comprehend the danger, he said.
The scene was dubbed "the clown car chase" because Steve McGarrett is driving a three-wheel scooter while sidekick Danno complains. It was written as a funny take on the "carguments" the two characters frequently engage in, but as they zigzag through cars in Waikiki, spitting out one-liners, the scene takes a serious detour when they have to drive under a moving dump truck.
"There was no tricking the audience," Cadiente said. "The guys really drove under a truck and had to duck or else they would have been decapitated. That was one of the most dangerous stunts we have done on the show."
The stuntmen — Sundquist as McGarrett and Noah Johnson as Danno — also needed "immaculate timing," Cadiente said, so they could avoid being crushed by the truck’s wheels.
"Comedy stunts are hard to do," Cadiente said. "There is still danger and you are still taking a risk but that really doesn’t come across as dangerous because you are laughing at the moment."
Cadiente will have to wait until Aug. 25 to learn whether he won, but he’s pretty busy anyway, working on the first episodes of the show’s fifth season, which premieres Sept. 26. He won’t say what he has in store for fans.
"I think this season is going to be good, if not better," said the maestro of mayhem. "The writers have come up with some good action sequences. It’s going to be an action-packed season."
(A good place to see behind-the-scenes photos of the "Five-0" stunts is on Cadiente’s Twitter page. He even laid a punch on executive producer Peter Lenkov. Follow Cadiente at @airjef and you won’t be disappointed.)
AND that’s a wrap …
Mike Gordon is the Star-Advertiser’s film and television writer. Read his Outtakes Online blog at honolulupulse.com. Reach him at 529-4803 or email mgordon@staradvertiser.com.
