Ken Vieira

On one hand Visalian Ken Vieira is a pretty good listener.

On the other hand, he's an even better talker and for good reasons: He has a lot of interesting things to talk about. Things like recovering test-fired top secret missiles and rockets, helicopter stunt flying for major movies, including “Broken Arrow” with John Travolta and Christian Slater, and “Mars Attacks,” fighting fires from the air, military flight instructing, agricultural spraying and just about anything one can do with a rotary aircraft. Add to this hovercraft training for the military and obtaining the first Coast Guard-certified license for operating an air-cushioned vehicle in the San Francisco Bay and all inland waterways.

Ken obviously is a guy with an interesting life filled with hard times, good times, intriguing and risky work mixed with both military and civilian flavors. Add in the glory, adventure and prestige of that work in film, television and other entertainment industries and Vieira's story list fills a complete menu. Selling cars and insurance and other jobs are part of Ken's career menu, but not that spicy.

Ken cherishes his varied careers and adventures and is ever grateful for the opportunities he's had. Being at the right place at the right time and being trained in jobs needing to be filled has paid off, he says.

His military flight training led to several adventures including contract civilian and military tasks.

He was chief pilot for San Joaquin Valley Helicopters in Delano, flew for the Kern County Sheriff's Department and had ownership in Sweets Flying Service in Visalia.

Of course, there are stories related to all of those years and escapades, but Vieira seems to gain some steam and talk just a wee bit faster when he tells about his relatively brief but action-packed movie and television stunt flying.
Vieira has scrap books and photo albums filled with action scenes, notes, studio documents and photo files.

“Broken Arrow,” the action movie directed by John Woo, is probably Vieira's favorite adventure. Vieira, who still holds his Screen Actors Guild (SAG) card, continues to receive residual checks in the mail for his screen work. “Sometimes they are small checks, not like some of the really good ones I got for the original jobs, but it's still nice to get them,” he said.

He has filmed television commercials including several with brand new cars being tested or simply being shown off.
Vieira said few people realize that it sometimes takes hours and even days to film a single action sequence lasting only a few seconds on the big screen. “It takes hours of safety training and prep work to get ready for one take,” he said.

Get Ken started on some of those stories and you're on your own in sending out a “cut” message if you want to hear about another part of film production or some inside stories.

Safety, of course, is the top priority, a fact which isn't lost on the set and in the preparation of shooting scenes, especially where helicopters, airplanes, speeding cars, trucks and dozens of explosions are involved.

Ken can tell you just how precise camera angles and timing is and just how cameramen and stunt men and women and special effects sequences are timed to fractions of a second.

He can practically put you in a chopper hugging the side of a mountain or flying through the wake of explosions in his telling of his experiences.

With choppers racing through tremendous fireballs along with flaming debris and fighter jets screaming up, over, under and around the stunt, helicopter work looks death-defying, but not as dangerous as flying a wildfire retardant-dropping mission, Ken will tell you. “That's the most dangerous flying I've ever done,” he says, shifting back to more helicopter adventures which seemed to be more dangerous but weren't.

He enjoys talking about retrieving missiles and rockets, some of them still under tight security, fired into the White Sands military grounds in New Mexico in the Cold War and Viet Nam eras.

Ken hints that some of what he did was pretty top secret adding, with a sheepish grin and the cliché, “I'd tell you more but then I would have to kill you.” With Ken, it's hard to figure if he's just being cute or that there might really more to the story. I figured maybe I didn't want to know. Ken wouldn't kill me, I'm pretty sure, but you never know these days if my glass of iced tea had ears neither of us knew about.

Ken isn't afraid to occasionally slip in a semi-corny comment or two into his story telling. Usually it's just enough to spice up the conversation and test the listener. Most of the time, but not always, a wee twinkle is the clue to catch the humor.

In any case pholks, if you're bored and want to enjoy an hour or two of non-electronically powered adventure, give Ken Vieira a ring, go to lunch or breakfast and have a good time.

Miles can be reached at mshuper@valleyvoicenewspaper.com