Rubber cement is used as a fuel because it is highly flammable, burns bright and long, and, like napalm, adheres tenaciously anywhere it is applied. A body suit of flame-resistant mil-spec Nomex is worn under the immolated wardrobe.  To protect exposed skin as thin as the facial epidermis, a generous coating of a clear, viscous substance called Zel Gel is applied—an industry standard mystery goo whose exact composition is a trade secret and sold by only one manufacturer. It must be put everywhere; in every whorl of the ear, up the nose, over the eyelids, on the lips, and into the mouth.  The man beneath the prophylactic slime is Ian McLaughlin, stuntman.

Those who excel at the job—those who keep working without getting themselves maimed or dead—stick around because they have cold skill, unholy luck, and an indefinable quality that allows them to provide all their guts so some precious “action” hero actor can cull all the glory. It’s a hustle and most stuntmen also double as safety riggers and small-business owners whose job it is to perform a threat assessment by parsing a screenplay through the lens of a director’s megalomaniacal intent, then distill it into a dollar amount based on how likely and how badly they could get fucked up.

McLaughlin, like many stuntmen, entered the trade through a combination of skill and luck.  As a fine arts undergrad he studied sculpture at Pratt Institute and Boston University and after graduating worked under art-world luminaries Pat Steir and Martin Puryear. A few years later he escaped the cosmopolitan life and began work as a self-taught woodworker in the sleepy upstate sanctuary of New Paltz, crafting highly technical pieces of furniture based on a Japanese tradition that eschews all glue and nails for pegs, wedges, mortise, and tenon—dry-fit joinery made entirely by hand with wickedly sharp chisels and specialized hand tools.