Richard Ryan is an Englishman living in Charlotte. That's like putting a Hobbit in Saving Private Ryan. Charlotte is as different from the UK as Yugoslavia is from Antarctica, although the food is probably better.

Richard, however, didn't move to Charlotte for the food. When asked about it, he casually explained that he married a Charlotte girl, and "it seemed as good a place as any." Ashevilleans would beg to differ, and now perhaps Ryan is discovering the reasons for himself.

Asheville has been hosting ActionFest this weekend at The Carolina at 1640 Hendersonville Road, and Richard is one of the honored guests. He is a fight director, which means he and the director choreograph the fight sequences that you'll see in a movie. He's worked on some blockbusters such as The Dark Knight, but he started, he said, "on the stage, where you only get one chance to do it right."

In the movies, Richard usually works with a select group of talented stuntmen and women. For Ironclad, though, he worked with ten Yugoslav unknowns. Ten people to stage a bloody sword-and-archery war. To give you an idea of the complexity of the task, he explained, "In one scene, I counted the same stuntman dying 15 times." While the body count is high, it's the same body over and over again. That's the magic of filmmaking.

He has recently finished work on Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows with director Guy Ritchie, who, said Richard, "definitely brought his own ideas and vision to the picture." But he was able to work with the actors and the director to form a collaboration that makes the film all the better. "With each project, I want input from the director and actors," Richard says. "They'll know more about the characters than I will."

Film is a collaborative effort, and stuntmen are rightly valued for the finesse, the energy, and the fearlessness they bring to the movies. Come out to The Carolina Theater and celebrate with them.

Mark Henry Bloom is an Asheville-based freelance writer/editor.