Bond Stunt Man Injury due to Incompetence, Cowardice

LAKE GARDA, ITALY (FCN) - Yesterday on the set of the next Bond movie, Quantum of Solace, Aris Comninos won the dubious recognition of stunt man with the weakest sauce in recent memory. "It's unbelievable," says fellow stunt man Aston Martin, who skidded into a lake on the same set last Saturday, "he definitely wins the Darwin award."

Comninos participated in a fairly straight-forward one-take stunt involving driving a moped off the top of a skyscraper, activating his jet pack just before striking the ground, then firing a rocket into a hummer (pictured) to blast it out of the way so he could streak, inches above the ground, into a parking garage just before a B-2 Bomber crashed where he had been.

"The moment he drove off the building," says stunt coordinator Gary Powell, "I knew it was going to go sideways." Comninos began his comedy of errors by losing his cool halfway into his three-hundred foot fall and sawing away at the jet-pack spark plug. "It's lucky the activator on the unit was only for show," says Powell. "He could have ruined everything. Not that he didn't anyway." Powell had his own remote activator in his hand, and activated the jet-pack at the correct moment one and a half seconds before impact.

Alas, the incompetent Comninos was in charge of the controls. Instead of steering toward the parking garage, he maxed out the power and got as much distance as possible between himself and the ground. He wasn't fast enough - the B-2 intercepted his upward course and crushed him deep into the pavement.

"The medical breakdown isn't complicated," reported Seth Mont, one of the paramedics who flew the cowardly stunt man out of the area by helicopter. "Basically he broke every bone in his body, including those really tiny little bones you have in your ear drums." Mont predicted a full recovery following two years of therapy and a hot water bottle, pending new advances in cryogenic and teleportation technology.

"What's really tragic about it is the shot," replied director Marc Forster when asked to recount his feelings regarding the incident. "Film isn't cheap, and he totally ruined the take... it's very unprofessional to... sign as a stuntman and go and do something this childish. If you don't want to be a stunt man... get out of the way, because I can guarantee ... there are a million other people just waiting in line for a chance at the life Aris leads."

Or led, as the case may be.