Jamie Caleb, body double to the stars, has a few funny stories from the many sets he has worked on. In an exclusive interview with Tickld, he shared a moment when Tim Burton, in a fit of passion, punched a hole through a prop worth thousands of dollars.
Jamie was working on the set of Tim Burtons Dumbo, body doubling for Colin Farrel. He had already been told, by various other people on the set, that Burton commanded the room. He needed silence, and he needed everyone’s attention. Aware that he would probably be working directly with him, Jamie straightened up.
“When I first started filming on Dumbo, the live action, everybody had warned that he’s a bit of a character,” Jamie recalled. “When he’s on set, everybody’s expected to be completely silent, don’t make a noise.”
The first scene was a complicated one. The elephant, which was an animatronic masterpiece costing thousands of dollars, needed to appear to pull Jamie’s arms off. In the scene, Colin Farrell’s character, who has a prosthetic arm, had it yanked off by the elephant.
So, they had the direction, and Tim Burton had his vision. It was up to the on-set wizards to make it look real. However, Jamie has two arms.
Losing An Arm Ain’t Easy
The move was complex, and the arm only has so many joints. Looking back, Jamie said it took an hour to get the movement right and realistic.
“We were trying to work out different ways he had told them what his vision was, and instead of creating a prosthetic or something like that, they were trying to make me twist my arm and my body around so that it would almost twist 360 degrees to make it look like it was an arm twisting off, which was never going to happen.”
Eventually, Tim Burton is called in to check on how the shot will be performed, and he isn’t happy. Confused at why they were trying to twist Jamie’s arm out of the socket, he asked where the prosthetic prop, designed especially for this purpose, was.
Apparently, it was elsewhere. So, scrapping the scene for the day, the whole team packed it away and moved on to another.
Tim Burton Calms Prop Elephant To Death
So, in the next scene in Dumbo, Jamie has to calm another huge, expensive, animatoronic elephant prop. The scene beforehand has the elephant freaking out. It’s up to Colin Farrell’s character to calm it. He does so by stroking its nose.
“There’s somebody on set for continuity. When it comes to my job specifically, they show me exactly what the person has done, exactly their movements that they’ve done, where the body position is, what they’re expecting from the shot, what the context of the shot is. From there, I can go along and do the thing.”
But nobody showed up.
Unaware of what was expected, Jamie is introduced to the prop. “So they bring out this massive
animatronic elephant’s head, not attached to anything but just this very beautifully made, delicate animatronic elephant’s head. The guys who made it are there, and they’re like, be careful with this because the front of it, it’s not a solid piece. It’s quite soft, so when you put your
hand on it, if you push too hard, you might break it. So, just be careful.”
Jamie didn’t know what he was expected to do. Was he supposed to stroke the nose gently, or was it a more forceful push? Without the continuity specialist, it was a case of winging it.
Tim Burton is on set for this shot, watching Jamie do his thing. “They go all right 3-2-1 action, and I just move my hand, put it on top of the elephant, and he’s like no-no-no that’s wrong.” They try again, and Burton is still unhappy.
Eventually, he finds out Jamie Caleb has no context, so he shows him the scene he needs to be replicating. Feeling a little more confident, he performs his actions. “I’ve got the movement. I’ve got the positioning. Let’s try again. We do it again. And he goes, No, you’re doing it wrong.”
The Deadly Palm of Tim Burton
So, exasperated, Tim Burton approaches the prop to show Jamie exactly how it was meant to be done. Not having been warned about the delicate nature of the pricey machinery, he demonstrates with gusto.
“And, and in that moment he lifts his hand and he smacks it onto the front of this f*****g elephant’s animatronic head and caves this thing’s forehead in. Bang! Big dent in this f*****g thing.” The set goes silent, but it doesn’t faze Tim Burton.
“It’s a close-up on the f*****g elephant’s forehead and he’s just caved the front of it in,” Jamie recalls he was thinking. But the prop department managed to save the day. Resetting the caved-in elephant, Tim gave Jamie some pointers, and the scene finally went off without a hitch.
For Jamie, there were a few learning curves on the Dumbo set that he’s carried with him through his career. For the animatoronic prop, there was only one curve that came from the powerful hand of Tim Burton.