Rémy Julienne (17 April 1930 - 21 January 2021) was a French rallycross and motorcross champion, stuntman, stunt coordinator and second unit director.
During World War II, he was dared by children evacuated from Paris to ride a bicycle across the local canal in his birth town of Cepoy. This event inspired him to start riding motocross, a sport in which he became a national championship winner in 1957. This brought him to the attention of film stunt coordinator Gil Delamare, who hired him as a motocycle stuntman in 1964's Fantômas.
Following Delamare's tragic death while filming The Saint Lies in Wait in 1966, Julienne became a stunt coordinator. The craziest chases and vehicular stunts of French cinema in The '60s, The '70s, The '80s and The '90s were pretty much all conceived and/or performed by him, from Le Gendarme de Saint-Tropez and the action films of Jean-Paul Belmondo to the Taxi film series. He totalized over 1400 productions, from films (about 400) to television and adverts, making him one of, if not the, most prolific vehicular stuntmen and stunt coordinators in the history of entertainment.
Hollywood quickly noticed him, and he famously wound up working on six of Eon Productions' James Bond films, five of which were directed by John Glen. In particular, he made ordinary vehicles do extraordinary things, such as the Citroen 2CV in For Your Eyes Only, the splitting Renault 11 in A View to a Kill, and the Kenworth tanker truck in Licence to Kill. The last film he worked on was 2005's The Da Vinci Code, he retired afterwards.
Julienne passed away on January 21, 2021 from COVID-19 at age 90.
Tropes in his works:
- The Alleged Car: He was fond of using ordinary, not-very-powerful cars to do crazy things, particularly in the James Bond films, and such cars usually fell apart and still kept going, such as the Citroën 2CV of the nun who Drives Like Crazy in the Le Gendarme et les Gendarmettes or the Renault 11 driven by James Bond that gets split in half in A View to a Kill.
- Car Skiing: The tanker truck "skiing" in Licence to Kill is one of the most difficult stunts that Julienne ever worked on. He was particularly proud of it.
- Chase Scene: He performed a lot of motorcycle chase scenes such as in La Grande Vadrouille, in which he got pumpkins thrown at him (which he reproduced in Ace of Aces with tires). And he coordinated a lot of them, of course.
- Ramp Jump: The tuk-tuk jump during the chase in India from Octopussy, the Fiat Panda jump in Joyeuses Pâques (1984, with Jean-Paul Belmondo), the firetruck jump in A View to a Kill and the rocket-powered Peugeot 406 jump in Taxi 2 particularly stand out among the stunts he coordinated.
