hey guys adam savage here in my cave uh answering questions about my time as a host of the show
mythbusters uh and today's question comes from tested patron mark bourbon it's a good one mark
says i've always wondered if the mythbuster crew at large i.e cameramen etc ever got to experience
some of the more fun myths being tested i.e giant water slide or water wake boarding
behind heavy machinery seems like the perfect opportunity to set up a barbecue and have some fun
i will tell you we always wanted to set up a barbecue and have some fun with stories like that
safety was usually the biggest problem and time um the wake boarding behind heavy
machinery we totally i think actually a couple of crew members did get to try that that day
but we were planning for more to except that the day got away from us like a shoot they really can
and so crew members getting to experience that stuff was infrequent except for the water slide
except for a water slide wipeout um so to give you some context um waterslide wipeout was an episode
of mythbusters and i think it might have been the very first one to come from a viral video
which basically didn't exist when we started making mythbusters in 2003 2002. um twitter
didn't exist youtube barely existed all the ways we ended up getting tremendously great stories
they they weren't there but then this myth this this viral video showed up it was an ad
campaign when the video seemed to show someone sliding down this long water slide and then
leaving that water slide flying like a hundred feet through the air into a kiddie pool like
this big rolling set of like hills and they do this and land safely in the kiddie pool and
tons of people said this to me and i was like yeah thank you i'm gonna test that like tomorrow
no this looks lethal there's no way i want to try this out and i like commiserated with dan tapster
my co-ep like we can't test the story and then i started thinking what is the essence of this story
the essence is is that it is implying that if you set up a slide correctly
you can reliably hit a target because the only way this would have happened
is if it was actually feasible right like no one would do this for real just to hope it works
i mean at least that's my impression so that made me realize all we need is a proper target
and a safe way to miss that target well that's water so i pitched us doing it at pitt
232 the quarry lake up in uh gold country here in northern california where we shot
all of our underwater explosive myths and sure enough it did that turned out to be exactly
uh the perfect location we built a 225 foot water slide with a beautiful curve at the bottom
reinforced with plywood and one by we laid down oil booms to keep us centered on the
track we had a layer of carpet and then a layer of vinyl and then another layer of a
slippery vinyl we wore wetsuits and then on top of the wetsuits we wore latex fetish jumpsuits
san francisco you really can't find anything that you want um and uh
we replicated the story it took it took several days to do this it took a couple days just to
build the slide and then the the physics of the slide are so sort of unknowable at their extreme
that the permission we had from the insurance company was not to just do the story it was
to build the slide and then start halfway up the slide and seeing how that went which was actually
kind of funny because i started halfway up the slide and i went down oh and then boom right
off the end of the slide everyone thought i was like dead i was like this was gonna like tree
branches stick it up at the bottom of the slack turned out it was fine so then i went a little
higher and i went a little farther and i went a little higher and i went a little farther and then
we went to the top and sure enough whoo flew and landed perfectly feet first barely made a ripple
when i entered the water it was gorgeous it was not to be the type of landing i was regularly
going to have in fact uh uh uh at the end of at the beginning of the next day thinking like oh i
got this down which is like every time i have ever thought i've got this down life has like whack
slapped sense back into me there is no such thing as having this down seriously so the next day
with that confidence i entered the water i slid weird entered the water wrong and got an instant
headache which lasted all day and this was our last shoot day and i had to jump repeatedly
jumping repeatedly was tiring the water was freezing it was like 49 degrees
the motor on our camera boat crapped out and the only thing we had to steer it
was like this little tiny 12-volt putt-putt motor so that after sliding and landing and being
hurt and cold with a headache i gotta wait while the well the camera boat slowly makes
its way over to me it was like i was pissed i was not having i was not having the best day um
but so i explained right we set up the water slide and we worked it out with the insurance
company uh to creep up on this to make sure it was safe and that was a regular
procedure we we executed it mythbusters um our safety guy and stunt coordinator nick cliche
uh normally he and his wife angie did all their work for us remotely from los angeles they would
talk to the insurance company they'd work out safety procedures with us they'd be on hand
while we were filming to help solve problems but in this one really specifically it was so
complex nick actually came up to be part of the shoot and it was invaluable he was phenomenal
um until one story from this from this shoot which is um like i said on the final shoot day i've got
to do a bunch of jumps to figure out where the pool should be in the water so that if i miss it i
don't die uh i mean the target is on the water so i can land anywhere but hopefully i'll land in the
middle of our target but i'm getting more and more cranky as the day goes on i'm tired i'm cold every
jump is hurting more and i'm on the final jump and this is either the end of the story or it means we
got to come back for another day and i'm like i climb back to the top of this muddy hill in muddy
wetsuit i'm either cold in the water or overheating outside and i'm just not feeling good
and i'm standing there at the top of the water slide i'm just kind of waiting for everyone to get
into position and really looking forward for this day to be over which is honestly the wrong mindset
and i look over and nick has trumped to the top of the hill nick's position during this story was to
be down at the bottom where the curve was that's where anything bad was going to happen he was
positioned so he could be there to implement the maximal safety but here he is up at the top of the
hill and i see him and he says do i have anything to tell you no i know my impression of nick here
is that he sounds a little like a california surfer and it's because nick sounds a little
like a california surfer do i have anything to tell you no i have a question for you though are
you a freaking stunt man or what because that's what i tell my crew here in l.a tell them adam
and jamie the real thing they can do the work now i know i jamie and i are famous for doing
our own stunts on the show um but among the things i have learned about doing my own stunts is that i
am not a stunt person and i am not an adrenaline junkie i know that those two things seem
impossible given my my career and yet they're true i'm not a stunt person
because i know stunt people and i think i have some beginning understanding of just
how difficult that job is that it involves like an incredible kinesthetic understanding of where
all of the elements are including the camera the storytelling the performance the physical
performance all of the things that some people do just absolutely mind-blowing i am not one of them
so for nick to say you are close to being one of them it's a crazy compliment and i'm
look i'm pissed it's not like i'm feeling all warm about this i've realized he's giving me a
lecture because i'm cranky and he's trying to get my head back into the right space and he's like
that's what i tell my guys adam and jamie are the real thing adam he says
it's not about what's going on here referring to the body that i am traveling around in that
is super uncomfortable and i'm cranky about it he says it's only about what happens up here
and then he says the only thing you should be asking yourself when you get to the bottom
is just my director alice want another take
and then he says i'll see you at the bottom dude and trump's back down to the bottom of the hill
literally i got i got a gipper pep talk from a third generation stuntman uh and it worked that
last jump into the pool into the pool into the target i landed direct center it was a beautiful
jump and i credit nick cliche totally with uh with getting me into the right mental space for that
jump but uh i'm so sorry uh mark i've gone off the rails here you were asking about the crew getting
to try this so yeah we left this is we shot this in ion california uh which is a couple of hours
north of san francisco and we finished this on a thursday and we left uh our key core crew of scots
someone is at the front door no one's at the front door that's that's my house not my cave anyway
will nail scott sorensen don best and a couple of other people were left in ion to take down
the water slide we couldn't leave it up because you know this is a town where there are teenagers
someone's going to hurt themselves on this thing so we had to pull it down as fast as possible
we left those guys to do it and we specifically explained to them that they were not allowed to
go down the slide as their employers we instructed them that they were that it was against the rules
for them to go down the slide and that if they did they would not be covered on workman's comp
that was our that was our threat i'm sure if something happened but
anyway so we said that like don't go down the slide you boys don't do it
of course they all did it every last one of them i think if i remember correctly that don best
went down headfirst like superman like pointing down i couldn't do it i wouldn't do it that was
terrifying apparently made a beautiful arc as he flew 70 feet through the air
i still somewhere have a a dvd with the raw footage terribly shot on some old sony camera
uh of the crew breaking the rules and trying that out no one was hurt which is why i'm telling you
this story uh and i'm very glad for that the fact is that crew did understand i wouldn't
have changed a thing that crew totally understood what safety was about but of course we couldn't
unsupervise tell them that it was okay to do that it was their prerogative i guess and
yes ten years later who cares now but yeah uh mark thank you so much for that awesome
question i really appreciate it uh tested patrons keep submitting your awesome questions
and i'll continue to answer them in this forum thank you guys so much i'll see you next time