The Point Radio: Zoe Bell On Top Of A Risky Business

Even if her name isn’t familiar, her moves certainly are.  Zoe Bell has been at the top of her game as a stunt person in roles that ranged from XENA WARRIOR PRINCESS to any number of Quintin Tarantino films. Now she produces and stars in RAZE (with CONTINUUM’S Rachel Nichols). Zoe talks about the new film and a few of her favorite moments living on the edge. Plus DC loses market share (but not to Marvel) and the networks drop the axe. Did your favorite show get cancelled?

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Transcript

The Point Radio Hey it's Mike Raub. I'm pretty sure she's taking your breath away at least more than once. She's Zoe Bell, stunt woman supreme and now acting and producing as well with a new movie and we get the details right here.

Plus the network staged their own red wedding, what happened to your favorite show and what publisher is eating at DC's market share. Let's get to The Point. This is The Point, The Point Radio, get The Point Radio. Everybody may not know the name but you sure do know the moves.

She's Zoe Bell, accomplished stunt woman who's been doing it well since the days of Xena Warrior Princess all the way through that and into some great roles in Gwyn and Taryn Geno movies among dozens of others. Zoe's also acting and producing as well but I was curious as to how it all got started. Was she a rough and tumble kind of kid?

I've been asked that question quite a few times though, like was I a tough little kid and I have conflicting memories. I remember I always liked being up high, I liked going fast, I kind of liked getting dirty and disappearing into the forest for days on end, well I probably like how. But I also remember like loving my Barbie dolls and having a Midnrew Princess strawberry

friends and having my favorite Christmas tree. So I think I was probably a bit of a mixture. Then I just got a gymnastics and I think that's pretty much where it all started. I was watching people flip just like made my heart soar and I figured I should probably try and do it.

And so I got into gymnastics and I think from there it was sort of, it's less about the adrenaline rush and more about the sort of, I don't know, conquering something, you know, learning something, breaking it down and seeing if my body can make that happen. And yeah, I'm sure I was a bit of a rough end at some point though. It took a bump on somebody's head to move Zoe into the business.

So I did do gymnastics and then when I got too old, you know, when you're 16, you're too old to do gymnastics, you know, too old and too tall, I started martial arts because it sort of seemed like it wasn't hiatus and it was still using your legs and jumping around and doing cool fun stuff. And through that, through gymnastics and martial arts, I met a couple of guys that turned

out to be stuntmen and I honestly didn't know that the career of a stunt person really existed until I met these guys and they became friends of mine and they started talking about what their work consisted of and it just seemed ludicrous to me that I am not be doing it. Subconsciously I think I was just putting it out in the cosmos everywhere I could. I was talking about it, you couldn't shut me up about it and I'd read articles about

it and see stuff on TV about it and it just sort of ended up that my dad, he's a doctor and a guy came in with a pump on his head and turned out to be a stuntman and my dad was like, right, I need to shut my daughter up. You need to give me a phone number so she can call this guy and maybe become a stunt girl. Since she's done it all, I had to ask, is there a difference between TV and movie stunt

work? I mean, in terms of the skill set required for TV and movie, it's pretty much the same thing, especially these days with TV being sort of the film type quality it is, but the main difference I would say is just sort of the speed and rehearsal time. Like on a movie, everyone knows exactly what the action's going to be ahead of time, totally.

And if the budget's big enough, you've got rehearsal time, you've got time to choreograph fights, you've got time to reverse dags, you've got time to work with the actresses and actors and the stunt people. And then when you're on set, you need to shoot again. The reset, you can take time with the reset.

It does take time. TV's a little bit more fast turn over, it's far more fast turn over, so it's sort of, you usually don't get as much rehearsal time. There's a lot of sort of like, we need a fight tomorrow, let's make it up now and let's have the learner this evening and then shoot it first thing in the morning.

But I think it's not often you come across a stunt person who owns a specialised film or TV. As much as much in a film. Ray's is a new movie starring Zoe and Rachel Nichols from Continuum as well. Zoe not only acts in the film as a star, but she also produces it.

It's basically, you follow one woman's story, but the premise is that there's a society that every other many years kind of has a sick and twisted ritual of kidnapping 50 women and supporting them to fight to the death. And so that's basically. You're in that world for a lot of the movies, which is a pretty harrowing world.

My part is I play a character by the name of Sabrina and I'm also one of the producers. So this movie is sort of my little baby in a lot of different ways. I feel pretty personally towards it. I'm really proud of it. It's really weird, you know, you're basically watching an hour and a half of people kind

of dying and killing and crying and being miserable. And every time I watch it, I grow more and more fond of it. I'm not sure what that says about me. So now having done action, acting and producing, what's next? Directing or writing?

I'll tell you what, I've thought about all of it. All of it. What I have noticed so far is making the leap from even just from someone into actor has been has required a lot of very conscious, directed energy because people don't. It's hard for people to see you in a box different to the one they originally put

you in, especially if you're well known for that sort of area. So it's taken a long time for me to get people to take me seriously as an actor. It took me a little minute to take my touch seriously as an actor actually, which is probably the first step. But so I kind of feel like I need to master that.

And if I'm going to walk into and I've produced one film, I'm in the post developing a couple of other ideas and stuff. Directing, I would love to do, but I want to walk into that super prepared and super educated. So that'll be a little bit further down the track.

Zoe's Highlight Reel is pretty incredible with some amazing stunt work. And I asked her of all that, which one she's the most proud of. It's so funny because I feel like if it wasn't a slightly more obscure movie or at least people knew about it, it would be kind of somehow less of a cliche answer. It's pretty hard for me to go past the chase sequence in Deathproof.

I mean, that was sort of… And that's a teen effort. Like, I couldn't… If that was me on my own, I would have been on the bonnet of a stationary empty parked car and that would have been very boring.

But I mean, that's one of those sequences. It's one of the few sequences I watched to this day and I've been a long time. I still flinch. You know, I usually don't even flinch the first time watching stuff I've done because that's exactly what happened and I know better than anybody that I've come out the other

side safe. But that particular chase sequence. I just think all the elements… We just got all the elements right. We just had an amazing team.

We had like crazy amounts of speed with a human on the front of a moving vehicle. Kurt Russell driving one of the cars. You know, it just… It was just sort of an epic… It's just an epic squint and it's definitely one that I…

Even when I was watching dailies when we were shooting, I remember vividly having the thought that was, holy crap, I'm so glad that I'm a part of this because if I watched the sequence and I wasn't a part of it, I would just be shooting that I'd not been involved. Zoe Bell along with Rachel Nichols right now in Ray's available on DVD. You can get it on Amazon in both regular DVD and on Blu-ray.

Little shortage here. Lots going on. Here's the latest in pop culture. Over the weekend, Community showrunner Dan Harmon seemed to change his tune. As you probably have already heard, Community was one of the many shows axed by the networks.

NBC dropped a hammer on that one at the end of last week and Harmon pretty much accepted it saying he was ready to move on. Now he said he's interested in talking to other sources who might want to pick up the show. No word on yet of whether those sources do exist, but at least there is some rumors that maybe it is not the end. In the meantime, we'll give you the whole rundown of which shows were given the ax. And there's a bunch on all the networks.

We'll run down the full list for you coming up here in just a bit. Axe Body Spray is one of the folks partnering with X-Men Days of Future Past to offer some movie-themed products. This is kind of interesting though. It's a gift set with the tagline to unlock the superpower of confidence. It includes a body spray shower gel and anti-perspirate in one of the four existing ax fragrances.

Including one called Phoenix, which has absolutely no connection to the character. There's a limited edition free poster also included and the body spray set is available on shelves right now. As the fall schedules for television started to come together, two interesting things at Fox. One is finally a home for the Batman prequel Gotham. That'll be in the Monday at 8 o'clock slot starting in the fall.

More interestingly than that though is a move for the comedy Brooklyn Nine-Nine. It's being moved to Sunday nights to be sandwiched somewhere in the animation block that's been a mainstay at Fox for almost a decade, maybe even longer. No word yet on exactly where it fits in, but it'll be somewhere along the lines of Between Simpsons and Family Guy. Well, the hammer's dropped and we pretty much know what's going as far as television goes this year. NBC, CBS, ABC and The CW have announced the shows they will not be bringing back and some of those are kind of surprising.

NBC canceled Community, Growing Up Fisher, Dracula, BLEVE, Crisis and Revolution. It did pick up Parenthood though for a 13 episode 6 and they say final season as well. And Hannibal will be back for season three on the network. The black list of the biggest success on NBC as far as dramas go this last year will return to their schedule in February of 2015. Parks and Rec was not on the list but they say it will be returning for a seventh season, more than likely plugged in when needed sometime around mid-year.

At ABC, Nashville's back for a third season, Last Man Standing for a fourth in the middle for a sixth season as well. In the meantime, CBS canceled the Robin Williams comedy The Crazy Ones and new shows like Friends with Better Lives and Bad Teacher as well as Hostages and Intelligence. But they renewed the mental list for season seven. Over on TBS, Cougar Town is back for one more time as sixth and final season but they have canceled men at work. Marvel surges ahead, image grabs the graphic novel market and some not so good news for DC.

That's the way it looks as far as comic sales for the month of April. That DC story seems to be the most disturbing. A report shows that some comic book buyers are shifting their dollars from DC titles to smaller publishers. We'll analyze all the sales for comic stores in April coming up in just a little bit. While the Seth MacFarlane TV reboot didn't work but it looks like the Flintstones may be headed back to the big screen,

this time Anna McKay and Will Ferrell are producing and it'll be an animated feature which means that Ferrell will probably do a voice as well. They're looking for directors right now for the project and then scheduling it for some time over the next couple of years. The next DC Universe original movie direct on DVD will be Batman Assault on Arkham set in the world of Batman's Arkham video game. It's a film that takes place somewhere between the Batman Arkham origins and the Batman Arkham Asylum games. Voices include Kevin Conroy returning as Batman, Neil McDonough as Deadshot and also CCH Pounder as Amanda Waller.

It'll be available in Blu-ray combo and regular DVD as well in August. It's funny to keep you going this week in the comic shop starting with the authority you've heard your friends talk about. That Great War and Ellis series with art by Brian Hitch and Paul Neri from back in the early part of the decade. Well now you can get the first 12 issues contained in one pretty nicely priced trade paperback this week from DC. Also from DC, the DC Comics demon driven out series which actually contains the 6 issue mini series from 2003.

And as a JSA omnibus 2 that collects all the work Geoff Johns did with that comic, a ton of stories. A little pricey at a little over a hundred bucks but still a nice volume. Justice League United gets the first issue this week. New 52 Futures In gets a second weekly issue. And Doom continues in Action Comics number 31 and Superman Doom number 1.

From IDW 24 number 1 sold out, got a second printing of that this week. Mars Attacks Firstborn has a different take on that franchise this time by the Max's Sam Keith. The Star Trek Annual gets a second printing and Star Trek New Visions is a photo novel done by John Byrne that looks at the mirror universe of Star Trek and begins a series that starts with number 1 this week. From Image Manifest Destiny number 6 second printing for that, new issue of Walking Dead as well. And for Marvel Original Sin continues in Avengers number 29.

There's a new series of deadly hands that come through that begins with a number 1 this week. Deadpool vs Carnage number 1 gets a second printing. Loki, Agent of Asgard number 3 gets one as well. Just like Magneto number 2. You got someone in your house going to camp this year and you're thinking about getting plans for that in a few weeks.

Well, grab the Archie 1000 page Comic Bonanza this week. A ton of comics all in one package to get them through the summer. And Cryptozoic Man number 2, 3 and 4 all get second printing this week as well. There's some more waiting for you in a comic shop near you. We have a link of cool comic shops on the front of ComicMix dot com.

You can try the comic book locator service at 1-888-comic-book or a website called Find a Comic Shop dot com. Not a very promising picture when you look at the numbers for comic book sales in stores in April. Especially when it comes to an analysis that shows that DC's market share has dropped for the first part of each year when you compare it to those in 2012 and 2013. DC's average market share in 2012 was about a little over 30%. Now it is just over 26% and you can trace those numbers to growth for publishers outside of the big two.

Ones like Dark Horse, Dynamite, IDW and of course Image. All that being said, Marvel had a pretty good April in comic book stores with new issues of Amazing Spider-Man, Original Sin and Superior Spider-Man all making the top 10. The official top 10 best selling comics in comic stores in April starts at number 10 with the weekly Batman Eternal number 4. At number 9, Batman Eternal number 3. Original Sin number 0 came in at number 8.

First issue of the rebooted Hulk comes in at number 7, Batman Eternal number 2 came in at number 6. Number 5 best selling book, Justice League number 29. Number 4 was Batman Eternal number 1. Batman number 30 was at number 3, Superior Spider-Man number 31 was the second best selling title. And the number 1 book of the month, Amazing Spider-Man number 1 for Marvel. That does it for right now but we'll be back before you know it here in a few days.

All easy to find of course on websites like ComicMix.com and MichaelDavidsworld.com and the podcast is also in the iTunes podcast directory as well. Plus there's plenty of pop culture right now 24 hours a day at GetThePointRadio.com. Listen right there or take us on any mobile device, Apple or Android with a free app called iNed Radio. Get that in your app store or at iNedRadio.com. See you back here in a few days. Thanks for watching!