Skateboarding
From live shows to the big screen, William Spencer is skateboarding’s lead professional stuntman.
William Spencer is from Colorado via Texas and really started skateboarding – “playing with it,” he says – at the end of high school. He got to a point in his life where’d he’d reached a lot of goals, video parts and solid sponsorships, so he took what he did skateboarding and added memories of his older brother doing flips in the woods when they were young, and put it all together.
From doing live action shows for places like Six Flags Magic Mountain, the 28-year-old stuntman made it all the way to being Spider-Man. Now he’s trying to emulate Jackie Chan.
In a new series from Red Bull, we bring you some of skateboarding’s most unique characters, those who have paved their own road.
We present you with Out of Frame, the William Spencer story.
You’ve got a distinctive thing going on. How did you start skating the way you do?
I got that style just because I remember watching skateboarding and thinking, 'This is really cool, but this isn’t what I would make if I wanted to film a video part.' So when I started filming, I did stuff that I wanted to see, even if it didn’t exist yet, and I remember that kind of being a big deal. It kind of worked out.
I met the actor Andrew Garfield, and he’s like, 'hey dude, listen, I used to skateboard as a kid... I want Peter Parker to skateboard'
Film gigs, doing stunts: How did that all come about?
I always loved movies, and in some of those early videos, I guess you look back and it looks like you watched Mission Impossible movies or Jackie Chan. People were like, 'Maybe you can do stunts, it seems like your skateboarding is a little stunty.' I kind of passed over it the first couple of times I got comments about it, then I started thinking about it and realised I didn’t have a better plan than that. I like skateboarding, but it doesn’t feel like my whole world. So I showed up in LA, knew no-one, and I did the whole live in your car, go to California because that seemed like a good idea. I got into a live show somehow. I knew nothing about real stunts.The years went by and I trained as hard as I could at stunts and just kind of switched over.
What’s the scariest thing about stunts, or the hardest to wrap your head around?
I remember doing high-falls was terrifying. 30 feet is not a big deal for people who do high-falls, they do 50, 70 or whatever… It’s mind-boggling when you first get up there. I remember the first time I did it, they told me to keep my feet on the ledge, and basically fall off there without jumping. It was just outside my realm. It was super- intimidating, and I felt super-accomplished.
At one point you got the call about The Amazing Spider-Man.
I get this call one day, and the stunt coordinator is like, 'hey dude this is so-and-so from the new Spider-Man movie. You need to come in and audition for us.' I go in there and I meet the actor Andrew Garfield, and he’s like, 'hey dude, listen, I used to skateboard as a kid... I want Peter Parker to skateboard. I wanted to bring you in here and see if you were down to skateboard in this movie for me.' I jumped on late and I just started stunt doubling a lot of the sequences because I fit the body type of that dude a lot.
What’s it like when you do a sequel? Is it just like you’re filming another video part? You know what you’re doing at that point.
Yeah, I would say so. The only difference is, when you do those movies, I got to do some stuff I consider super-scary. Stunt-wise, they had me jump off a six-storey building at Sony… there was a lot of stuff like that where by the second one it felt like more standard fare. But it is a huge leap for me from skateboarding to that, even though going to the second movie it came back to itself like, 'holy crap, really when I do my best stuff I’m out with my friends.' Then they want, like, easier stuff than I’d normally be up to. It may be scarier, but it’s not, like, as technically hard, as filming a video part.
Do you ever trip out at where you’re at in life, like did you make it somewhere, are you accomplished?
From where I’m at and being inside those huge movies and really seeing what makes a movie and what doesn’t make a movie, which part of that is worth your time, it’s crazy because my things that I’m most proud of have nothing to do with those movies, believe it or not. The point is that the work you put in on the stuff you’re psyched on is the only work that matters.
What’s next for you? Are you working on anything you can talk about?
Yeah, doing all the stunt work, I didn’t realise that in my heart, I liked performing. I switched over to making little action, short films. I’m just kind of doing the Jackie Chan because I feel like that’s the best use of your time.
I’m doing a big project with JW Marriott. We’re doing action comedy shorts for this big hotel chain in downtown LA. From there, I’m supposed to film a Fiat commercial. From there, I’ll just get some money, maybe go to China or to Thailand and just make a basic, but good action movie, and just be the dude.
