Photo: VAI/f-stop Photography Getting sideways with Fred North Noted helicopter movie stunt pilot shares his craft on VERTICON’s Main Stage. By Mark Huber Joseph Gordon-Levitt costars with Eddie Murphy in Netflix’s 2024 Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F. The film features a helicopter–car chase scene filmed on the streets of downtown Los Angeles, California. Gordon-Levitt’s character, a very rusty pilot, steals a Los Angeles Police Department Airbus AS350 AStar and flies it, shall we say, like your flight instructor never taught you. Gordon-Levitt’s impression of the scene: “The real guy who flew the actual helicopter seems like (a) a very skilled pilot and (b) a crazy person.” Gordon-Levitt is talking about Fred North. North has been flying for the movies worldwide for more than 30 years. If you’ve seen blockbuster action films such as Ambulance, Mission Impossible – Rogue Nation, White House Down, Death Race, and The Transporter, you’ve seen the work of Fred North. Speaking from VERTICON’s Main Stage during an afternoon presentation on Day 3 of the show, Mar. 12, North shared a behind-the-scenes look at the months of meticulous planning it takes to pull off brief minutes—or even, sometimes, mere seconds—of aerial action. “Are there any pilots in the room?” he asks. “A lot of them. Great. Anybody from the FAA?” Laughter erupts from the audience. Actually, North wrote the FAA-approved Motion Picture Safety Manual, and as he speaks, it becomes clear that detailed, tedious planning goes into every frame of celluloid action on the big screen. A one-minute action sequence requires a different setup every three to four seconds. The entire scene is carefully choregraphed with the director months in advance. For street scenes on location, such as those filmed in downtown Los Angeles, no on-site practice is allowed by authorities. Everything must be duplicated and practiced at a safe location, often far away, sometimes for weeks before actually shooting occurs. For Axel F, that was “a parking lot in the desert.” The asphalt was taped in different colors to represent the location of ground vehicles for the action. With the cameras rolling, North knows how he’s going to fly the scene. “Every move on the helicopter has been rehearsed. There is no room for improvisation. There is none. Everything we do has been approved and rehearsed.” But mixing it up with ground vehicles that have a lateral separation of just 2 ft. while he’s buzzing down the street at 1 ft. above the ground means he must trust the stunt drivers. Some he knows. Some he doesn’t. When a driver deviates even a little, North must instantly react and correct. “The bigger risk in my business is the other moving parts,” he says. Adding another layer of complexity, North must often fly in costume. For Axel F, that meant spending three hours in makeup donning a hot, long-haired wig to match Gordon-Levitt. (Once, he had to fly dressed like a dreadlocked Rastafarian and couldn’t wear a headset as a result.) Typically, the “talent” doesn’t fly with North. For Axel F, a specially built ground vehicle was constructed that resembled an AStar and could be towed through the street. “It cost $3 million, almost the same as a new H125,” North says. Mark Huber is a an aviation journalist with more than two decades of experience in the vertical flight industry.
