The reason Anthony Kiedis gets knocked out so early in ‘Point Break’
Kathryn Bigelow’s 1991 iconic action hit Point Break is etched into the very fabric of cinema’s rich history. The movie’s action sequences come thick and fast, crashing through the storyline like the waves that slam the great American West Coast. One action sequence in the movie’s first act features Red Hot Chili Peppers frontman Anthony Kiedis in a classic 1990s beach dust-up. However, Kiedis doesn’t last long in his cameo role, and there is good reason for it.
Fight sequences, like all movie stunts, require careful coordination and rehearsal. Stunt coordinators are trained professionals and like to know that their work is as safe as entertaining. In Point Break, stunt coordinator Glenn Wilder rigorously planned and worked his magic to create some of the ’90s most memorable action scenes, and he, like all good stunt coordinators, demanded effort and respect from his actors and doubles. At the height of his Chili Peppers fame, Kiedis, it seemed, was too cool for school and paid the price for not taking his role in the fight sequence seriously.
Wilder had organised a weekend of fight training for the sequence to help the actors prep for the scene, demanding that everyone involved be in attendance. Kiedis, being the rock star that he is—and being kept busy by the demanding schedule of one of the ’90s biggest musical acts—chose not to attend the training weekend. A choice, it seems, that cost him valuable screen time and an easy KO by Patrick Swayze’s Bodhi.
The Chili’s lead singer cannot say he wasn’t warned. Wilder had told his actors, “If you don’t come and practice, I can’t use you,” and the master coordinator was as good as his word. Kiedis is floored almost instantly as Bodhi enters the fight, hitting the deck harder than Chad Smith hits the skins. The fight was deliberately choreographed this way, and Kiedis may always rue the day he decided he was too busy to turn up to practice. Speaking on the subject, Wilder recalls, “He didn’t like that at all”.
If there’s a lesson to be learnt in this tale, it is surely that no matter how famous and celebrated you are, you are never too important for rehearsals. Movie fights are no laughing matter unless you are Hugh Grant and Colin Firth smashing through the window of a backstreet Greek Taverna, but even then, stunts are stunts, and they have to be learned and perfected before the cameras start rolling.
Kiedis may well be “addicted to the shindig”, but the dig he gets from Bodhi ends his short-lived time on the set of Bigelow’s surfside masterpiece. Perhaps if he had spent as much time practising the sequence as the hair and makeup stylist had braided his barnet, then he would have lasted a few more rounds.
Point Break, of course, remains a classic; its cultural relevance still reverberates in the ears of all those who have, at some time or another, pretended to fire a gun into the air and cry out in moral frustration. However, what sadly lives ‘Under the Bridge’ is Anthony Kiedis’ on-screen fighting abilities. Although, it doesn’t seem to have ever really hindered his career.
Alas, even the fleeting glimpse of the frontman that we get helps to further pronounce the film’s virtue of being perhaps the ultimate Californian caper.
