I made friends with Richard Ryan in a dark movie theatre on the Fox production lot in Los Angeles. We shot the breeze about blowing stuff up and obviously I was impressed to discover that he more or less makes a living out of doing just that—and burning things and shooting things, too.Heaven forbid I should forget burning, because I recently received a video from Richard, the riveting plot of which unfolds to reveal the man himself enthusiastically torching a police car with a flamethrower. “The flamethrower is privately owned,” Richard told me. "And one of the original models. All the better for barbecuing with.