The Fall Guy director, ex-Hollywood stuntman David Leitch, on giving his former colleagues the credit they deserve

There are two things to keep in mind while being burned alive for a movie scene. The first, says stunt performer Ben Jenkin, is to not breathe in a flame. That would be bad. Jenkin was reminded of that over and over before doing his first fire burn (and then seven more) in David Leitch’s The Fall Guy, an action extravaganza that affectionately celebrates the rough-and-tumble lives of stunt performers. The other thing: keep moving. “Moving forward and keeping the fire behind you allows you to breathe and to control the fire,” Jenkin says. “Movement is your friend.” That would make a decent slogan for stunt performers who have, since the early days of Hollywood, fuelled the mayhem of movies. Since at least when the facade of a house fell around Buster Keaton in Steamboat Bill, Jr., stunt performers have played a vital role in sustaining the illusion of countless car chases, bar fights, rooftop leaps and, yes, people on fire. The Fall Guy: Ryan Gosling plays stuntman in engrossing comedy It is, by nature, nearly anonymous work, with stunt performers doubling for daintier stars. But Leitch, a long-time stuntman before he became a director, hopes to redefine the role of stunt work in Hollywood. The Fall Guy, which features nearly every kind of stunt imaginable, arrives as a growing chorus is calling for a new Oscar category for stunt performance. “It was never really about: the individual stunt performer needs to be recognised,” says Leitch, who spent years as Brad Pitt’s double before transitioning to directing with John Wick. “It was more about the contribution of the department. We create these sequences, whether it’s for Paul Thomas Anderson or Adam Sandler or James Cameron.” The most eye-catching stunts come in big-budget action movies like The Fall Guy, but nearly every studio movie involves some stunt work. Take Chris O’Hara, head of elite stunt performer group Stunts Unlimited and the stunt designer on The Fall Guy. He is not only a veteran of innovative, stunt-heavy films like The Matrix and the Jason Bourne series, but he was also the guy who caught Saoirse Ronan when she leapt out of a (seemingly) moving car in Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird. When you’ve had life-and-death stakes, what’s the worst that can happen in a scene? David Leitch, on transitioning from performing stunts to directing With The Fall Guy, O’Hara is the first person to be credited as a “stunt designer”. To O’Hara, that credit better represents what is usually called stunt coordination. Conceptualising and crafting elaborate sequences requires more than making sure everyone stays safe. “To be seen by the film community as stunt designers hopefully brings more light to what we really do,” O’Hara says. “Back in the day, stunt guys were the cowboys. Now we are creative. We create amazing things, just like a production designer does or a costume designer does.” When they were starting out in Los Angeles, Leitch and O’Hara lived together. Their garage was stuffed with mats and airbags. They dug a hole in the backyard and put a trampoline in it. “The landlord never caught us,” Leitch says, grinning. They, along with four other stuntmen including Chad Stahelski, set out with big ambitions to make their mark on Hollywood. While cutting their teeth on TV shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, they trained. Some were gymnasts, some drivers, some martial arts experts. “It was a nonstop circus of skills you need but it’s fun to learn them,” Leitch says. “Hard on your body, but fun.” Shaun of the Dead at 20: ‘Britpop movie’ prefigured our infantilised culture They became masters of their craft – or at least mostly. Leitch never got driving down. On The Mexican, he crashed an El Camino into its only backup, another El Camino. But eventually, filmmaking seemed like one more skill to hone. Leitch had become adept at pre-visualising sequences as a moving storyboard to show directors how an action scene would move and fit together. He was accustomed to keeping a cool head in extreme circumstances. How scary could directing be compared to standing on a ledge as a production raced to get a high fall in before the day’s light went? “When you’ve had life-and-death stakes, what’s the worst that can happen in a scene?” Leitch says. “I have to cut it differently?” Leitch has since become a sought-after action director, working on films like Atomic Blonde, Deadpool 2 and Bullet Train, in which Pitt starred. That was a full-circle moment for the former star-stuntman, but The Fall Guy might be more so. Based on the 1980s Lee Majors TV series, it is a comic, behind-the-scenes ode to the nature of stunt work and on-set life. It’s not that they want more recognition than any other sort of department. These days, they’re in almost every film Kelly McCormick, Leitch’s wife and production partner, on stunt performers getting the credit they deserve Ryan Gosling stars as Colt Seavers, a veteran stuntman and double for star Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) whose romance with a fellow crew member, Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt), is severed after an accident on set, only to fitfully resume years later. By then Jody is directing her first feature and Colt is brought in as a stuntman, including for that fire-burn scene. For Leitch and Kelly McCormick, his wife and production partner, both the stunts and the love story of The Fall Guy have a touch of autobiography. After a years-long working relationship, McCormick and Leitch were married in 2014 and together run their production company 87North. “Maybe I am a little bit like Jody,” McCormick says. “I’m definitely the one that would set you on fire eight times.” “Would you?” Leitch replies. “Only if it was safe,” McCormick says, laughing. Jackie Chan on his early days as a stuntman and learning fast At the South by Southwest festival premiere of The Fall Guy, Gosling proudly announced something most actors will not: that he did not do his own stunts. The movie required five stuntmen to double as Gosling, including Jenkin and Logan Holladay. In the film, Holladay sets a record for cannon rolls of a vehicle, rolling a Jeep Grand Cherokee eight and a half times down an Australian beach. In one of the movie’s many ironic moments, you can see Holladay strapping Gosling into the car just before the scene. Jenkin is skilled in parkour. “I fell right into stunts,” he puns. His gift for contorting himself through the air and landing on the designated spot has made him one of the most sought-after stuntmen. Still, The Fall Guy was the busiest he has ever been while working on a movie. “I cannot remember how many times I went through a pane of glass,” he says. Some moves were new for Jenkin, like getting hit by a car. “Hips over hood,” Leitch advised him. “When you’re a kid and you watch Jackie Chan running down the street and he was chasing a bus and then he hooks onto the bus with an umbrella, you’re like, ‘That’s so cool,’” Jenkin says. 5 movies to watch instead of Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver “Now we get to live that. Me and Ryan were surfing a door across the [Sydney] Harbour Bridge holding onto the back of a bin truck with a shovel. When do you get to do things like that?” Though the campaign has been ongoing for years, it will take time for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to embrace a new category (though it did so recently by adding an award for casting directors). They have some strength in numbers; stunt professionals make up the largest group of members in the academy’s Production and Technology branch. “It’s not that they want more recognition than any other sort of department. These days, they’re in almost every film,” McCormick says. “They are front and centre working with all the other departments – including, by the way, they go to post [production]. A lot of times they are helping the editor find the way through a sequence. I haven’t had a hair person come to post ever.” For some stunt performers, it is the family business. Troy Brown’s first stunt was in the 2005 Vin Diesel comedy The Pacifier, for which his father, Bob Brown, was the stunt coordinator. Troy jumped out of a helicopter into the ocean. He was 5. “Stunts was just everything I knew,” says Troy Brown. “It started out with my dad in the front yard jumping off of stuff into a [giant pad]. I just thought it was super fun so I’d do it every day.” In The Fall Guy, Brown makes the biggest jump of his career, falling 150 feet (46 metres) from a helicopter to land on an airbag used by his father. During the stunt, his dad was standing next to the bag, talking his son through the jump. “I’m going out of this helicopter backwards and I’m lining it up as best I can,” Brown says. “When I get out there and I’m about go backwards off of this thing, I have my dad on the radio giving me the green light for the bag: ‘You can go whenever you want. We’re good, we’re good, we’re good.’”