Jeff Galpin: Handling With Care
Jeff Galpin: Handling With Care
Jeff Galpin: Handling With Care
Jeff Galpin: Handling With Care
The phone is ringing and I’m anticipating a shortish conversation with a southern, slow-speaking, possibly senior-ish, fellow. Someone who maybe grew up on a farm and was raised taking care of livestock. The man who answers is far from that. While he is a southern man, he was raised right here in New Orleans’ River Ridge. After introductions, he jumps right into the interview with a rapid-fire cadence and a deep, growly, native voice. He begins listing off experiences that led him into the film world, then after about a minute, he pauses and says, “I can give you the short version or the long version.” You already know which one I chose.
Jeff Galpin was 14 when his father noticed that he’d been hanging with the “wrong crowd.” Fearing his son might then end up on the wrong path in life, he encouraged Jeff to take an interest in animals and allowed him to keep any that he found. One afternoon, Jeff and his buddies found a baby raccoon that hadn’t yet opened its eyes, indicating that it was only a few days old. Jeff knew of a neighbor down the street who kept lions, Siberian tigers, caracals, Chinese leopards, monkeys, and so on, so he rode his bike to the man's house with the tiny raccoon in his shirt pocket. He rang the man’s doorbell and when he came to the door, Jeff showed him the baby raccoon and said he wanted to learn how to raise it. The man disappeared then quickly returned with a book on how to rehabilitate wild animals. He handed it to Jeff and told him to come back in a couple of months to let him know how it went with the raccoon. Two months later, Jeff returned with a plump, healthy, juvenile raccoon, crawling all over him. The man was pleased and told him that he’d done a great job. He introduced himself as Damion “Danny” Regep and offered Jeff a job helping to care for his big cats. Jeff jumped on the opportunity. He was paid $2.50 an hour to clean the animals’ cages, prepare their food, and play with them. That initial exposure to big cats inspired him to want to be a veterinarian.
Working with Danny every week led him to becoming an animal rehabilitator for the state and Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. He received a permit at the age of 16 and continued to rehabilitate animals until Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Jeff continued to work with Danny until he was 19, when Danny decided to relocate to Lumberton, Mississippi. At that point, Danny had acquired 200 big cats from the ten he had when Jeff met him. Jeff’s animal house grew too. He raised and kept five bobcats, two deer, 38 ducks, a wild boar, hundreds of raccoons, and a prairie dog. So when Danny moved, Jeff enrolled at Louisiana State University to study veterinary medicine. After school, he did his internship at the Audubon Zoo in New Orleans. While there he became the alligator handler and was known as “the alligator man.”
When the movies came to New Orleans, Jeff was their guy. In 1993, Jeff’s uncle John Falterman owned a welding shop. John called him up and said, “I got some stunt guys here at the shop talking about flipping over a bus for a scene in a movie. Come over and talk to them about being their animal guy.” So Jeff did just that. The film guys took a liking to him right away, and one of them, Danny Arnold, put him on for the film “Undercover Blues.” Jeff was 20 at the time and full of energy; he remembered Danny talking about the future of the film industry in New Orleans. “Danny said, ‘I’m movin’ to New Orleans ’cause it’s gonna be the next Hollywood, and when I do, I’m gonna make you a stuntman,’ but I didn’t believe him!” A year later, Danny called Jeff and said he wanted him on a show called “The Big Easy.” Jeff became the lead actor’s stunt double for the following two years. He’d been appointed the stunt coordinator on the show and was able to double-dip with animal stunts. Immediately following that, he worked on “Interview with a Vampire” working with spiders, roaches, crows, and more. After that, he was brought on “Hard Target” with Jean-Claude Van Dam where he worked with eight diamondback rattlesnakes at once.
Jeff has amassed more than 200 animal trainer credits and 400 stunt person credits. “IMDB [Internet Movie Database] is just a portion of my resume,” Jeff laughed. But if you look at IMDB, it is still a staggering amount of credits. He has now been in the industry for close to 30 years and has no plans of stopping. Of his three children, his 24-year-old son Tyler now works with him in the business. “He ran the animal stunts in ‘The Highwaymen’ with chickens and horses,” Jeff said proudly. Tyler is closely following in his father’s footsteps by also moving into the stunt world. Jeff wants Tyler to learn all that he has over the decades working with dangerous animals. Having an extensive animal background helped Jeff to really know what animals and people can and cannot do together. This talent helped him as a stunt person. In fact, Jeff is one of the very few people who are allowed to work with alligators in the U.S. and was the first to obtain a permit to work with them. He has dealt with so many alligators that he can put his hand on an alligator’s back and know which way it’s going to strike.
As one can imagine, Jeff has sustained countless injuries in his field of work. He shared that he still has nerve damage in one of his arms from a raccoon attack 14 years ago and is only now starting to regain feeling back in parts of his hand and arm. Jeff underscored the dangers of handling exotic wild animals: “These are wild animals, you know? Even if they’ve been in captivity and domesticated to a degree, they’re still wild, and will forever be wild. You gotta understand that and respect that. Bites and injuries come with handling wild animals—even possibly death.”
Jeff recently finished a show called “Killing It,” a comedy on NBC. Even though he enjoys traveling for work, he expressed how much he had wanted to be a dad and that being a dad was more important than work. “Being away, you’re stuck in one place and you can’t see your loved ones. I didn’t want to put my kids through that all of their life.” While he was able to fly his kids out to see him while working, he knew that was not a healthy lifestyle for their schedules to be tailored around his. Jeff has implemented the same ethics his dad did on him by encouraging them to take care of animals. All of his kids have had the experience of waking up every two hours to raise bobcats or raccoons, in turn, keeping them busy on weekends “and out of trouble.”
Today, Jeff still lives in River Ridge, near his family and where he grew up. In his spare time he enjoys teaching children about animals, and has taught at the Elmwood Fitness Center, the Human Society of Louisiana, and the SPCA in Jefferson Parish. He teaches youngsters about native animals of Louisiana and how to respect them out in the wild. Of course his lessons always include live animals—chickens, rabbits, possums—and often animals many kids who live in the area have never seen in real life. “Having the physical contact with these animals can change some of these kids lives. You can see how curious they are, and it’s awesome for me to be a part of that.”
Jeff Galpin was 14 when his father noticed that he’d been hanging with the “wrong crowd.” Fearing his son might then end up on the wrong path in life, he encouraged Jeff to take an interest in animals and allowed him to keep any that he found. One afternoon, Jeff and his buddies found a baby raccoon that hadn’t yet opened its eyes, indicating that it was only a few days old. Jeff knew of a neighbor down the street who kept lions, Siberian tigers, caracals, Chinese leopards, monkeys, and so on, so he rode his bike to the man's house with the tiny raccoon in his shirt pocket. He rang the man’s doorbell and when he came to the door, Jeff showed him the baby raccoon and said he wanted to learn how to raise it. The man disappeared then quickly returned with a book on how to rehabilitate wild animals. He handed it to Jeff and told him to come back in a couple of months to let him know how it went with the raccoon. Two months later, Jeff returned with a plump, healthy, juvenile raccoon, crawling all over him. The man was pleased and told him that he’d done a great job. He introduced himself as Damion “Danny” Regep and offered Jeff a job helping to care for his big cats. Jeff jumped on the opportunity. He was paid $2.50 an hour to clean the animals’ cages, prepare their food, and play with them. That initial exposure to big cats inspired him to want to be a veterinarian.
Working with Danny every week led him to becoming an animal rehabilitator for the state and Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. He received a permit at the age of 16 and continued to rehabilitate animals until Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Jeff continued to work with Danny until he was 19, when Danny decided to relocate to Lumberton, Mississippi. At that point, Danny had acquired 200 big cats from the ten he had when Jeff met him. Jeff’s animal house grew too. He raised and kept five bobcats, two deer, 38 ducks, a wild boar, hundreds of raccoons, and a prairie dog. So when Danny moved, Jeff enrolled at Louisiana State University to study veterinary medicine. After school, he did his internship at the Audubon Zoo in New Orleans. While there he became the alligator handler and was known as “the alligator man.”
When the movies came to New Orleans, Jeff was their guy. In 1993, Jeff’s uncle John Falterman owned a welding shop. John called him up and said, “I got some stunt guys here at the shop talking about flipping over a bus for a scene in a movie. Come over and talk to them about being their animal guy.” So Jeff did just that. The film guys took a liking to him right away, and one of them, Danny Arnold, put him on for the film “Undercover Blues.” Jeff was 20 at the time and full of energy; he remembered Danny talking about the future of the film industry in New Orleans. “Danny said, ‘I’m movin’ to New Orleans ’cause it’s gonna be the next Hollywood, and when I do, I’m gonna make you a stuntman,’ but I didn’t believe him!” A year later, Danny called Jeff and said he wanted him on a show called “The Big Easy.” Jeff became the lead actor’s stunt double for the following two years. He’d been appointed the stunt coordinator on the show and was able to double-dip with animal stunts. Immediately following that, he worked on “Interview with a Vampire” working with spiders, roaches, crows, and more. After that, he was brought on “Hard Target” with Jean-Claude Van Dam where he worked with eight diamondback rattlesnakes at once.
Jeff has amassed more than 200 animal trainer credits and 400 stunt person credits. “IMDB [Internet Movie Database] is just a portion of my resume,” Jeff laughed. But if you look at IMDB, it is still a staggering amount of credits. He has now been in the industry for close to 30 years and has no plans of stopping. Of his three children, his 24-year-old son Tyler now works with him in the business. “He ran the animal stunts in ‘The Highwaymen’ with chickens and horses,” Jeff said proudly. Tyler is closely following in his father’s footsteps by also moving into the stunt world. Jeff wants Tyler to learn all that he has over the decades working with dangerous animals. Having an extensive animal background helped Jeff to really know what animals and people can and cannot do together. This talent helped him as a stunt person. In fact, Jeff is one of the very few people who are allowed to work with alligators in the U.S. and was the first to obtain a permit to work with them. He has dealt with so many alligators that he can put his hand on an alligator’s back and know which way it’s going to strike.
As one can imagine, Jeff has sustained countless injuries in his field of work. He shared that he still has nerve damage in one of his arms from a raccoon attack 14 years ago and is only now starting to regain feeling back in parts of his hand and arm. Jeff underscored the dangers of handling exotic wild animals: “These are wild animals, you know? Even if they’ve been in captivity and domesticated to a degree, they’re still wild, and will forever be wild. You gotta understand that and respect that. Bites and injuries come with handling wild animals—even possibly death.”
Jeff recently finished a show called “Killing It,” a comedy on NBC. Even though he enjoys traveling for work, he expressed how much he had wanted to be a dad and that being a dad was more important than work. “Being away, you’re stuck in one place and you can’t see your loved ones. I didn’t want to put my kids through that all of their life.” While he was able to fly his kids out to see him while working, he knew that was not a healthy lifestyle for their schedules to be tailored around his. Jeff has implemented the same ethics his dad did on him by encouraging them to take care of animals. All of his kids have had the experience of waking up every two hours to raise bobcats or raccoons, in turn, keeping them busy on weekends “and out of trouble.”
Today, Jeff still lives in River Ridge, near his family and where he grew up. In his spare time he enjoys teaching children about animals, and has taught at the Elmwood Fitness Center, the Human Society of Louisiana, and the SPCA in Jefferson Parish. He teaches youngsters about native animals of Louisiana and how to respect them out in the wild. Of course his lessons always include live animals—chickens, rabbits, possums—and often animals many kids who live in the area have never seen in real life. “Having the physical contact with these animals can change some of these kids lives. You can see how curious they are, and it’s awesome for me to be a part of that.”
Tagged in Life Fur Real in our Spring 2022 issue