Tell about yourself and story, Greg! My name is Greg Schwartz, I'm 34 years old, and I live in Meriden, CT. I've been athletic my whole life -- I played baseball into college (though got cut in my 3rd semester), football in high school, club ice hockey in college, tried to play golf professionally after graduating (boy was that a disaster), then took up boxing and MMA and was undefeated in my amateur boxing bouts until I hung 'em up to take care of my mother when she contracted pneumonia in the winter of 2011-2012.
After that, I went back to school and picked up rock climbing, and I began training for American Ninja Warrior around the same time.
I first competed in May of 2013, and have been competing/helping out on the show since.
I've also had the honor of competing on SASUKE Vietnam (their version of ANW) three times.
Additionally, I'm an avid cyclist and archer -- I was preparing to shoot in the indoor Olympic-style Recurve national championships prior to Covid. Cycling is a hobby, but in late 2018 I rode 625 miles in a week alone and unsupported to raise money and awareness for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.
That might've been a bit ambitious, but I survived it haha. After returning from that, the stunt life started to creep into my mind again (as it had been prone to doing for a few years up to that point).
I started my stunt journey in May of 2019 and don't regret it for a moment.
What inspired you to become a stunt person?
It's difficult to pinpoint a single thing. I'm not an adrenaline junky at all -- rather, I love seeing what the human body is capable of.
I love learning my limits (safely, lol) and surpassing them with training and discipline.
That was the appeal that American Ninja Warrior held for me, and it definitely translates to stunts in my opinion.
Performing on fire, the physics of wirework, even just doing a hard wreck on the ground captivates me.
One of the reasons I love wrecking so much is that to me, there are few better feelings than appearing to have absolutely destroyed myself on the pavement and popping up with a smile because it wasn't painful -- though more than a handful are plenty rough haha.
What is your greatest skill as a stunt performer, is there a story behind it?
I'm best at wrecking, for sure. Ground falls, acrobatic falls, impacts, wire-wrecks, I love all of it.
I think it comes from loving the feeling of weightlessness for an instant -- to me, it feels like freedom.
I have a predisposition to falling & wrecking from American Ninja Warrior and rock climbing, for sure -- on ANW, a lot of times we're hurling ourselves through the air, and even if we don't "fall," there have been more than a handful of moments where I've needed to just throw my body at a landing platform with as much force as I can muster.
I generally feel that sticking the landing in those situations isn't a great idea, so I got really good at dispersing my energy on impact.
Same for climbing; I specialize in bouldering (though I've done plenty of sport climbing in my time), where every fall is a ground fall.
When you're committing to a hard move 12-15 feet off the mats and you miss, bad things can happen, so I organically learned how to protect myself during awkward falls -- which makes controlled falls a *lot* easier to do safely as well.
Within the world of stunts, my vocabulary isn't nearly complete (still working on my scorpions!), but the things I'm capable of, I make sure I do exceptionally well.
What is the best part about being a stunt performer?
I mean, to me, it's just the coolest job in the world. I've always felt that stunt performers are enablers -- they enable productions to better tell the stories they want with broader options at a fraction of what VFX would cost.
They play no small part in transforming actors into superheroes. I look back at Keaton, Canutt, Chaplin, the Marx Brothers...I can see this visceral cinematic evolution in visual storytelling that took place over the last century...and it's largely because of THEM.
To get to be a part of that (and get paid for it, to boot!), how is that not the coolest job in the world?
What advice would you give other stunt people?
I am in *no place* to give anyone advice haha.
Maybe work really hard, be humble, contribute energy... something like, "find a way to be the best version of yourself when you're in the industry"?
I got into trouble with bringing some of my personal issues into training early on (and I like to think I've learned from that), so that's definitely something to avoid haha.
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