Headrick joined the Stuntmen’s Association in 1989
and spent 20 years putting the magic in movies, performing stunts that imbued films with hard-edged action and
authenticity.
“Then I realized I was getting too old for this kind of
thing,” Headrick said with a chuckle. “When you reach
about, say 50 or 55, you realize you can’t jump as high or
as far as a 20-year-old. That’s when I decided to start paying more attention to things behind the camera, because I
knew eventually that’s where I was going to end up, and
doing some acting — something like that.”
According to Headrick, a native Texan who moved to
Weatherford 12 years ago, making a lateral transition from
stuntman to actor is not easy.
“It’s very hard to break in to acting from stuntman
because they put you in that category,” he said. “You
can try out for a part and they’ll say, ‘Oh, no, he’s one of
those stunt guys.’” A rowdy, hard-partying kind of guy?
“That’s about it,” Headrick said. He engaged an agent in
the 1990s and his résumé began to grow, along with his
creative scope and ability.
In mid-October Headrick plans to enter one of his own
films in the inaugural Billy the Kid Western Film Festival
in Hico. Yep, pardner, Hico has a film festival.
Headin’ for Mexico, which Headrick wrote, directed,
narrated and produced, is what he calls a “good, clean
western that you can take the whole family to and not
worry. There’s no cussing or sex or blood squirting ev-
erywhere.” Sure there are shootouts — it’s a western! But
when someone gets a bellyful of lead, they just fall down,
or off, if they’re on horseback.
Stylistically, he said, his westerns draw from the old
film and TV westerns of the heyday of the genre — the
1950s and ’60s. In those days it was a “white-hat, blackhat” world — the good guys and the bad guys, clear-cut
and simple. Audiences did not queue-up or tune-in to see
blood and guts or blatant sex, rather wrongs set right by
principled men (and some women, e.g., Annie Oakley)
who sat tall in the saddle and liv VB'