"The Chute's on Fire." "Cool!"

Since the show began in 1999, Troy Hartman, host of MTV's Senseless Acts of Video, has repeatedly risked his life in the name of edge-of-your-seat reality TV. So far on Senseless, he has jumped out of a 37th-floor window, free-fallen insides a locked Suzuki Samurai, lured a shark into biting his arm, wake-boarded behind a helicopter, sky-dived onto the roof of the Las Vegas Sahara Hotel, ridden a saddle attached to a bomb and jumped off a 750-foot-high bridges form the top of a moving semi. Once, just for the hell of it, Hartman jumped out of an airplane with his parachute in a bucket of kerosene. As soon as his chute opened, he lit it with a flare gun. When that chute melted, he cut it away and opened another one. "Fucking gnarly," Hartman say.

Even when the cameras aren't rolling, Hartman plays daredevil. He is a trained pilot, He sky-dives to relieve stress. He base-jumps--illegally, of course--off radio antennas and cliffs. And wait until you find out why she was kicked out of the Air Force Academy.

His most recent brush with death wasn't even a stunt. In December, Hartman was on his way back to Los Angeles from Las Vegas when she plane's engine failed and he was forced to make an emergency landing on a California street. The incident made headlines world-wide. Hartman and his girlfriend escaped unscathed.

[Q] Playboy: Your plane almost crashed. What happened?

[A] Hartman: The engine stopped. It just quit. My girlfriend thought I was playing a prank until I called the airport and told them we had an emergency. I asked them to clear a runway. Then I realized wasn't going to make it. I was looking for a place to land, but most of the roads were too short, had too many power lines or were packed with cars. Finally, I found a side road that didn't have much activity. I thought no one was on it, but when I got 20 feet above it, I saw a truck coming right at me. There was no way I could avoid it. I had to play chicken with this truck and pray he would get out of my way. At the last second he did. I swear my wing missed him by six inches.

[Q] Playboy: How much time elapsed between the engine's quitting and your landing?

[A] Hartman: Three or four minutes. We were descending at 1000 feet a minute.

[Q] Playboy: Did you think you were going to die?

[A] Hartman: No, because the cards were stacked in my favor. It was daytime, I was in contact with the tower, I had enough altitude. I would have felt like a real idiot if we'd crashed. Any other pilot would have thought. This guy's a total dummy for figuring it out.

[Q] Playboy: Do you consider yourself a daredevil?

[A] Hartman: I don't like being called stunt guy or extreme dude or daredevil or death wish. I hate all those terms.

[Q] Playboy: What would you call yourself?

[A] Hartman: I have yet to find a good answer. I guess I'm an athlete. Before I started the shows, skysurfing was my expertise. In 1997, my partner and I won the X Games. Then again, how can I not consider myself a daredevil when I'm doing crazy shit like being lit on fire? I like to tempt fate. I like to play that game.

[Q] Playboy: What's your earliest memory of tempting fate?

[A] Hartman: I grew up in Mammoth Mountain, California, a big ski area. By high school, I was a good skier, but my friends were better. They would jump off 70-foot rocks. I couldn't believe what they were doing. I told myself, Man, if you don't at least try, you're a wuss. So I did. Fuck it. It scared the hell out of me, but I landed it, After that I (continued on page 160)Troy Hartman(continued from page 100) didn't have to watch other people do cool shit. I could do it myself.

[Q] Playboy: What's the key to landing a stunt--talent or luck?

[A] Hartman: If you rely on luck, you're going to end up a headline. These stunts involve skill, experience and knowledge. Knowledge is most important. It comes down to an exact science, where it's like, OK, this is what can go wrong, and this is what I'm going to do to make sure it doesn't go wrong. Once you have that knowledge, the fear is pushed out. Fear is a lack of knowledge.

[Q] Playboy: Two of your close friends, Vic Pappadato and Rob Harris, died in skydiving accidents.

[A] Hartman: Rob Harris, along with Patrick De Gayardon, invented skysurfing. He was unbelievable. By the time it happened to Vic, who was my partner in the X Games, I went, "OK, if this can happen to them, it can happen to me. It's a possible outcome of what I do." Those guys were my heroes. My theory is, I don't want to die doing this, but Rob and Vic have moved on, and if I have to go there, at least I'm going where my heroes have gone. I've always followed them. I accept it. I know they wouldn't change their pasts. And I'm OK with that. I honestly am.

[Q] Playboy: Do you fear death?

[A] Hartman: My fear of death has subsided. I don't fear death, but I fear permanent disability, pain and suffering. Before a stunt I always say, "If something goes wrong, I'm OK with the fact that I might perish, but damn it, I hope it's quick." It's weird to put it into words. It probably sounds warped. But that's the way I have to think in order to be confident.

[Q] Playboy: Have you had any close calls?

[A] Hartman: I broke my neck in May. We were shooting the show and I was flying my own little airplane. It was going to be a really neat opening sequence. We take pride in our camera angles and capturing things that have never been seen. We try to put ourselves in weird situations, like hanging on the edge of a cliff or free-falling out of an airplane. In this one, they asked me to fly my plane beneath a helicopter to get a certain shot. That was a major mistake. I didn't realize the downwash from the helicopter's rotor blades was going to be so strong. My airplane weighs 900 pounds and the helicopter weighed probably 3000 pounds. In order for it to fly, you have to push that same amount of weight downward. So, essentially, I got a 3000-pound weight dropped on my 900-pound airplane. I hit the roof so hard I saw stars. Luckily, I didn't get knocked out, otherwise I wouldn't be here today. When my neck hit the roof, a nerve in my right arm was crushed. I radioed to the helicopter pilot and said, "I think I broke my arm. We had a violent bit of turbulence." When I landed they were like, "Dude, you have a broken neck." I was lucky, though, because the vertebra broke outward. If it had broken inward, it would have killed me.

[Q] Playboy: Did you have any idea that that stunt would be so risky?

[A] Hartman: There was no fear involved in that stunt. It's funny--the only times I get injured are when I'm overconfident. That's when I'm not calculating and taking every precaution I should. In that case, we were having a good time. I was like, This is great, this isn't even a stunt. It was a no-brainer. The broken neck was a freak accident. Later, I found out that people break their necks in commercial planes all the time. They get up to go to the bathroom, the plane hits a bump and they hit the ceiling.

[Q] Playboy: How does your family feel about your day job?

[A] Hartman: My friends and family want me to quit. When I was skysurfing, they realized it was a competitive event and they were OK with that. Now that I'm doing stunts, they don't like it. My friends are always calling and saying, "I saw you doing something stupid on TV again." I feel bad for my mom. Every time we talk, she asks when I'm going to stop. That's my biggest conflict.

[Q] Playboy: Does it affect your relationship with your girlfriend?

[A] Hartman: She's into it. She's a sky diver, so she has no problem with that, but we fight about the other stunts. It plagues our relationship. On one side of the coin, she thinks it's mysterious and intriguing. On the other side, she hates it. She dreads the day she has to hear bad news. When I broke my neck, a lot of my friends and family expected me to quit. Like, OK, this is your wake-up call.

[Q] Playboy: Why didn't you?

[A] Hartman: Good question. We do six-show runs. When I'm doing a run, I'm like, I'm gonna make it to the end of this run, and then the show will get canceled. Or something else will come up. I have a hard time walking away from something. If they offer me a third season, I don't have it in me to turn it down. If the opportunity is still there, and I'm healthy and strong and my mind is capable, I'll take the challenge.

[Q] Playboy: Do you lie in bed at night thinking about these stunts?

[A] Hartman: Oh God, you don't even know. I have to take sleeping pills. It has negatively affected my day-to-day life. Sometimes I snap. I get irritable. Right now everything's great because I'm done with the second season. Everything's in the can and I have a few months to chill. I know we're going to have to go even bigger next season and, Jesus, I don't want to think that far ahead. I'm sleeping well now. Last month I was not happy. But I had to keep plugging away. The producers avoid me when I'm in my zone and I don't want to talk to anybody. They give me space and let me think and breathe and do what I have to do to concentrate. If you're not concentrating or feeling 100 percent about what you're about to do, you'll get killed.

[Q] Playboy: Which stunt plagued you the most?

[A] Hartman: Jumping out of a 37th-floor window scared the fuck out of me. I got a migraine and was sick to my stomach. I couldn't concentrate. I was forgetting people's names. The producer almost called it off because I was having a really bad day. When I finished the stunt, I went from being scared to death to thinking it was the best thing I'd ever done. One of my friends went after me to get a pickup shot, and he just about fucking killed himself. He went through the glass completely wrong, which is what I was worried about. He opened his parachute, like, a second before hitting the ground. It was scary.

[Q] Playboy: Did MTV make you sign your life away?

[A] Hartman: I can't remember. I've signed my life away in every direction since I started skydiving. I don't read the fine print anymore. My family knows that I'm ultimately in charge of everything. They're not going to sue anyone.

[Q] Playboy: Growing up, did you do stunts to attract chicks?

[A] Hartman: Are you kidding? I was a nerd. I lived 20 minutes from Mammoth Mountain in a tiny community of about 12 houses. There were no kids there. I was isolated. My sister and I would come home on the school bus every day and be stuck with each other. I didn't get to play after school and go to the arcades. There are TV shows people tell me they used to watch that I've never seen, I didn't have a TV till I was in the ninth grade. We lived in the rocks where you couldn't get television.

[Q] Playboy: What did you do all day?

[A] Hartman: I built model planes and studied. When I was in the seventh grade, my dad bought me a motorcycle. I got really good at riding my dirt bike. That was great, because I was in the middle of nowhere. I found trails and started riding into Mammoth. I'd finally found a way to connect with my friends. Then I started doing stupid things like riding my motorcycle to parties and drinking. Of course, I got caught and my parents took my bike away.

[Q] Playboy: Who were you in high school?

[A] Hartman: I was never really the daredevil or the jock or the cool, popular guy. The big problem was that I skipped eighth grade and went right into ninth. The freshmen hated me. They were like, you little nerd. No one in ninth grade accepted me, and my friends in eighth grade thought I was too cool for them. So I started drinking and smoking pot and doing the stupid shit you do as a kid to be cool.

[Q] Playboy: Were you into sports?

[A] Hartman: Not at all. My younger sister was the good skier. She was into volleyball, baseball, basketball, cheerleading. I was too scared to do a flip on the trampoline. My dad made me play football. I was so scared, so intimidated. I dreaded going to practice because I knew I'd get hit. I played for two years. I didn't love what I was doing, but I had to keep proving that I could keep coming back.

[Q] Playboy: When did girls come into your life?

[A] Hartman: When I turned 15. I was an outcast until then. Seriously, everyone called me Poindexter. I had maybe two girlfriends during high school. I definitely wasn't a player.

[Q] Playboy: After high school, you went to the Air Force Academy. Tell us what that was like.

[A] Hartman: The first year is complete hell. It's impossible to describe. It is a day-to-day, minute-to-minute fear of getting hazed. You're constantly under the watchful eyes of 3000 upperclassmen. From day one, you get worked. The first six weeks, you think, Oh, this is boot camp. And after the six weeks are over, you're like, It's gotta calm down. No one could put up with this for longer than six weeks. But it gets worse.

[Q] Playboy: How so?

[A] Hartman: Basic training is like any other basic training. You march around, you do the obstacle course, the assault course, push-ups. Once you finish basic training and start freshman year, you're up at 5:30 A.M. every day to clean. You have to dust lightbulbs--that's how bad it is. Your socks are all perfectly rolled and facing the same way. Everything has to be polished and your shoes have to be shined and everything has to be in the right spot.

[Q] Playboy: What did the upperclassmen do to you?

[A] Hartman: They would make us memorize quotes. You have to know them word for word, and you yell them as a group. You're standing there with your chin tucked into your neck and your shoulders rolled back. It's painful. You're trying to scream out this quote, you're sweating, and you have this ugly face jammed up against yours, yelling at you. You deal with that every day for a year. One of the most popular quotes was the Budweiser creed.

[Q] Playboy: Do you remember it?

[A] Hartman: [Starts reciting] It's the famous Budweiser beer. We know of no other beer that takes as much time to do do do the fine hops yeast. Do I have to go on?

[Q] Playboy: That's enough. How else were you hazed?

[A] Hartman: You have to walk on thin strips that are up against the wall. You have to make 90-degree turns. If you get caught looking around, even a quick sideward glance, they pin you in the corner and make you recite quotes for an hour. At lunch, you have to serve them, entertain them and report on current events. If you fuck up, you get hazed and don't eat a damn thing. Then you leave hungry and pissed off and life sucks. You have to greet every upperclassman who walks by. The worst thing in the world is when a husky girl walks by and you call her sir. It's like, "It's Pat from Saturday Night Live!"

[Q] Playboy: Weren't you dying to rebel?

[A] Hartman: You can't. You have to do as you're told. After a year of being hazed, you get recognized. The day of recognition is the one day in my entire life that I remember most. It's one last day of hell. You put on your fatigues and run for miles and miles until you puke. You get thrown around and hazed some more. At the end of the day, you're an upper-classman.

[Q] Playboy: Did you hook up with any girls at the academy?

[A] Hartman: When I was a junior I had a sophomore girlfriend. I was a flight instructor. She was my student.

[Q] Playboy: What would happen if you were caught having sex on campus?

[A] Hartman: You'd get thrown out. A lot of people did. A lot of the girls, though, were macho, aggressive, unattractive women. We'd go off base and find civilian girls. But I spent a year dating my girlfriend. Having somebody there made it better. A lot of guys were frustrated after four years of not dating. It's common knowledge at the academy that they put saltpeter in the food. It keeps you from being horny.

[Q] Playboy: Are you serious?

[A] Hartman: Totally. And it worked. I was able to keep from getting too worked up.

[Q] Playboy: So, did you ever do it in an airplane?

[A] Hartman: Yeah, we did the mile-high thing once.

[Q] Playboy: Were you the pilot?

[A] Hartman: Yeah. Actually, she performed on me. It would be difficult to go all the way while flying a plane.

[Q] Playboy: So where's your mile-high partner now?

[A] Hartman: She flies big refueler jets. She's a captain. She's way up there. I taught her to fly and now she's flying the big jets. And I'm not.

[Q] Playboy: Do you miss it?

[A] Hartman: I miss some of it. I would have gone to fighter school. It would have been awesome. I sometimes dream that I'm still there.

[Q] Playboy: Why did you leave?

[A] Hartman: I left under bad circumstances. I had an accident in one of their planes. I used to hotshot around, flying under bridges, doing aerobatics, going off with friends and doing crazy shit. I was buzzing cattle, scaring them, going superclose and watching them run. Fucking with them, you know? But I got too low and nailed one. I actually killed a cow with a plane. I crash-landed. I'm lucky I survived.

[Q] Playboy: You were kicked out for that?

[A] Hartman: Totally. Thrown out. Four months before graduation. I had my life planned out, and that was it. Tossed. I was devastated.

[Q] Playboy: Did your parents kick your ass?

[A] Hartman: Shit, they hated me. I was the second person in history from our town to go to the Air Force Academy. It was embarrassing for them.

[Q] Playboy: All because of a cow scandal.

[A] Hartman: [Laughs] I refer to it as the bovine scandal. But seriously, it was horrible. The next year was miserable. I got back into college, but my credits didn't transfer. I was a junior again. I started losing interest in school. I was like, Shit, I have nothing now. I had a great career ahead of me and now I'm nobody. That's when I got into skydiving and skysurfing. I felt like I had a purpose.

[Q] Playboy: What is your most memorable jump?

[A] Hartman: I jumped out of a plane over the ocean in a wing suit, which was awesome. You can fly. Skydiving so far out over the water was eerie. I was supposed to make it five miles to shore. So there I was, in the middle of the friggin' ocean, falling, going, Man, if I land out here, I'm alone until some boat comes and gets me. It was intimidating.

[Q] Playboy: Did you make it?

[A] Hartman: I think I traveled about three and a half miles before crashing into the water.

[Q] Playboy: You pussy.

[A] Hartman: [Laughs] I know. My God, I'm such a loser.

[Q] Playboy: Is it true that you want to go into space one day?

[A] Hartman: Dude, that's my next thing. We have talked about me going into space, jumping out and coming back into the atmosphere with a parachute. But that's a $5 million venture. It may happen if I have the right people behind me. If NASA would let me go into space, I would go through all of the training. Hell, yeah. Are you kidding? That would kick ass.