Moviemaker escapes fiery stunt gone wrong
LEBANON, Ore. – A moviemaker doing his own stunts escaped a fiery explosion but was badly burned in the incident.
The camera was rolling when the accident occurred last May. The plan was to have Josh Frazier jump out of a window just before a ball of fire engulfed him; instead, the explosion went off just a few seconds early, engulfing Frazier in flames.
After the explosion he dropped to the ground, flames covering most of his body. He rolled back and forth to quell the fire as someone shouted: “Put him out! Put him out!”
He struggled to strip off his jacket as others from the movie dashed to his rescue, patting him down in an attempt to smother the flames. Moments later, firefighters who were onsite came in with a fire hose and extinguished the fire.
“I remember hitting the ground, still being on fire, and I didn’t want to take a breath. I wasn’t thinking about necessarily inhaling the fire. I didn’t want to take a breath and have all that heat, ‘cause I felt the heat in my face,” Frazier said.
From the incident, Frazier’s hands are covered with scars and skin grafts. He said he has performed stunts in his movies before, but this was the first time one went wrong.
“I mean, I had all the landing gear down, which caught on fire also, but it didn’t go as planned,” he said.
The first person who got to Frazier was cameraman Jeff Hamar. They had been friends since they went to Lebanon High School together.
“It was just instant reaction,” Hamar said. “It was instinct. I saw my friend was in trouble. I needed to be there.”
“I think his being there before everybody else kind of helped save my life,” said Frazier.
Frazier doesn’t plan on letting this incident deter him from stunts in the future. “Once I’m back up into shape again, I definitely plan on doing my own stunts,” he said.
The movie they were shooting that day called “Remnant” has been shelved and a state investigation into the accident is underway.
However, Frazier’s Lebanon-based GTL Media is working on another movie, “The Z Memoirs”, which is a zombie movie.
