Lifestyle
In 'The Fall Guy,' stunts finally get the spotlight
Ryan Gosling plays stunt man Colt Seavers in the new movie The Fall Guy, a new take on the 1980s TV show.
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Ryan Gosling plays stunt man Colt Seavers in the new movie The Fall Guy, a new take on the 1980s TV show.
Eric Laciste/Universal Pictures
At the Hollywood premiere of the new movie The Fall Guy, motorcyclists popped wheelies along the red carpet, one stuntman took a dive off a 45-foot crane outside the Dolby Theater, and Ryan Gosling’s stunt doubles were ripped backwards through a movie poster. Three performers smashed through a window for a lively staged fight scene.
The movie’s storyline and its massive global marketing campaign are all about giving credit to Hollywood’s behind-the-scenes action stars. In every appearance, Gosling lavishes praise, noting he’s had a stunt double since his 1990’s TV show Young Hercules.
“I kind of had a stunt double my whole life,” he explained at the premiere at South By Southwest. “It’s always been this strange dynamic where they come and do all the cool stuff and then they go and hide, and you pretend that you did it. And it’s not cool…it’s about time that we recognize that they’ve been making actors into movie stars for a century.”
A stunt performer at the Los Angeles premiere of The Fall Guy. Outside the Dolby Theatre, another stunt artist jumped from atop a 45-foot crane, while others showed off a staged fight scene.
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Valerie Macon/AFP via Getty Images
A stunt performer at the Los Angeles premiere of The Fall Guy. Outside the Dolby Theatre, another stunt artist jumped from atop a 45-foot crane, while others showed off a staged fight scene.
Valerie Macon/AFP via Getty Images
The Fall Guy is an action movie within an action movie: In the film, Ryan Gosling plays Colt Seavers, a stunt man trying to win back his film director ex, played by Emily Blunt. When the movie star for whom he doubles goes missing, Seavers is sent on a mission to find him.
Gosling did a few of his own stunts for the movie, including falling backwards 12 stories from a building. He did a fight scene inside a garbage bin spinning through the streets, and he surfed on a metal plate dragged by a truck on the Sydney Harbour bridge.
But Gosling’s stunt doubles did even more daring tricks.
“I got pulled back maybe 20 feet into a massive rock while on fire,” recalls Ben Jenkin, a parkour specialist who stood in for Gosling’s character as he was set on fire over and over. “I did the ‘fire burn’ eight times in one day. That was actually one of the ones that hurt the least.”
Throughout production, Jenkin took more than a few punches.
“The car hit wasn’t fun,” he told NPR. “I mean, it was fun to do, but the pain! It definitely hurt my leg a little bit when I smashed through the front windshield and landed on the road. That was a thumper. You watch the movie and you see the stunts and you’re like, ‘Oh my god, that’s crazy. That must have hurt.’ But you don’t see the prep that went into it.”
The new movie The Fall Guy is an update of the 1980’s action TV show of the same name starring Lee Majors, shown here in 1981. Majors makes a cameo in the new movie.
Walt Disney Television Photo Archives/Getty Images
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Walt Disney Television Photo Archives/Getty Images
The new movie The Fall Guy is an update of the 1980’s action TV show of the same name starring Lee Majors, shown here in 1981. Majors makes a cameo in the new movie.
Walt Disney Television Photo Archives/Getty Images
Pulling back the curtain on stunts
The movie was directed by former stuntman David Leitch, who spent 20 years doubling for A-list actors like Brad Pitt and Matt Damon before making such action films as Atomic Blonde, Bullet Train, John Wick and a Fast and Furious spinoff.
For The Fall Guy, Leitch says he wanted all the stunts to be old school and practical — using real people, not AI or CGI.
“We did high falls out of helicopters. We lit people on fire multiple times,” Leitch told NPR. “Cars flipping, crashing, fight scenes, bottles broken. A lot of stunts. We really put everything into it. Honestly, we knew we had to make sure we did right by the stunt community.”
Posing as Gosling’s character in the movie, aerialist Troy Brown took a backwards 150-foot fall out of a helicopter to land onto the same airbag his legendary stuntman father Bob Brown once landed on for a movie.
Stunt driver Logan Holladay jumped a truck over a 225 foot-wide canyon. And for another scene, he broke a Guinness World Record. Driving 80 miles per hour on a wet, sandy Australian beach, Holladay maneuvered a modified Jeep Grand Cherokee. A blast from an air cannon under the SUV propelled it to roll over itself eight and a half times. (The previous record for cannon rolls in a car was seven, held by Adam Kirley for the 2006 James Bond film Casino Royale.)
Ryan Gosling, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ben Jenkin, Logan Holladay, and Justin Eaton, along with director David Leitch on set.
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Ryan Gosling, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ben Jenkin, Logan Holladay, and Justin Eaton, along with director David Leitch on set.
Eric Laciste/Universal Pictures
“Logan gets out of the car and gives us the thumbs up, and we know he’s okay,” recalls the movie’s stunt designer, Chris O’Hara. He and his team had carefully calculated the density of the sand and the speed.
“It’s definitely a science,” he told NPR. “It’s not just, you know, go crash a car; We’re really doing our due diligence to make it the perception of danger while eliminating all the risks so that in the end, we can make something super exciting.”
David Leitch says all of the stunts in the movie are also there to serve the story. “There’s a lot of math, there’s a lot of physics, there’s a lot of physicality and performance,” he says. “But there’s also this artistic design and creativity. Like, how is this sequence going to move the character forward? How is this sequence going to be more fun? How are we going to make them laugh? How are we going to make them be scared?”
Emily Blunt plays Judy Moreno in The Fall Guy.
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Emily Blunt plays Judy Moreno in The Fall Guy.
Eric Laciste/Universal Pictures
Campaigning for an Oscars category
Unlike costume designers, hair and makeup designers, and soon, casting directors, the Academy Awards have never had a category for stunts. But The Fall Guy stars Gosling and Blunt made a pitch for one at this year’s Oscars ceremony.
“To the stunt performers and the stunt coordinators who help make movies magic,” Gosling said onstage, “we salute you.”
That support is appreciated by stunt performers like Michelle Lee, who doubles for Rosario Dawson in the Star Wars spinoff series Ahsoka. She hopes this effort helps people understand discipline and sacrifices stunt performers make to entertain audiences. “Sometimes, you pad up and you’re like, ‘Oh, this one’s going to hurt,’ but this is what I’m here for and I’ve practiced,” she says. “You know, pain is temporary, film is forever. You have that cool shot forever.”
Mike Chat and Neraida Bega train Hollywood stunt performers at a center run by 87 North, the production company run by The Fall Guy director David Leitch and his producer wife Kelly McCormick. They say that for years, stunt performers have campaigned for the Academy to honor their work.
“People have petitioned, they’ve gone out and picketed,” says Chat. But that didn’t work, says Bega.
“The fear was that people were going to make the stunts more dangerous and bigger and bigger for them to win. But that is not the goal,” Bega says. “There is so much discipline, they work so hard and they have to be always ready.”
Chat has been in the business for more than 20 years. He and others hope The Fall Guy may finally convince the Academy to award an Oscar for best stunts.
“They have taken the initiative to say, ‘OK, we’re going to educate you, we’re going to earn it, we’re gonna prove it and show you why it’s deserved.’”
And for that effort, he says the stunt community around the world is giving The Fall Guy a big thumbs up.
The way Sheila E. remembers it, she received her first call about a gig as a working Los Angeles musician as she was busy unpacking the moving truck with which she’d just moved to L.A.
“‘Can you come do a session?’ — that type of thing,” the Oakland native recalls with a laugh. “It was pretty awesome.”
In Sunday Funday, L.A. people give us a play-by-play of their ideal Sunday around town. Find ideas and inspiration on where to go, what to eat and how to enjoy life on the weekends.
This was 1980 or ’81, she reckons, just after she’d come off the road playing percussion for the jazz star George Duke; by 1984, she’d become a star herself with the pop hit “The Glamorous Life,” which she cut with her mentor Prince and which went to No. 7 on Billboard’s Hot 100.
Over the decades that followed, Sheila E. went on to record or perform with everyone from Ringo Starr to Beyoncé. Yet her latest projects look back to her earliest days playing Latin jazz with her father, fellow percussionist Pete Escovedo: “Bailar” is a salsa album with guest vocal spots by the likes of Rubén Blades and Gloria Estefan, while an accompanying instrumental disc features appearances by players such as bassist Marcus Miller and trumpeter Chris Botti.
Sheila E. will tour Europe in April. Here, she runs down her routine for a welcome day off at home in L.A.
10 a.m.: Parents in the pews
I would get up around 7:30 or 8, and the first thing I’ll do is go to church. My church is called Believe L.A., and it’s in Calabasas. My pastor is Aaron Lindsey, who’s an incredible gospel producer who’s won many Grammys. The band is always on point, and it feeds my soul — it’s what I need as part of my food. You just walk out so happy. I mean, I walk in happy most of the time. But you walk out filled with love and peace. It’s a joyful time, especially when I get to bring my parents with me. Still having them around is a huge blessing. They just celebrated their 69th anniversary. That’s really rare.
Noon: No juice required
After church we’ll go to brunch at Leo & Lily in Woodland Hills. Sometimes I’ll order the breakfast, which is two eggs and turkey bacon and potatoes. But sometimes that’s a little bit too heavy, so I’ll get the orzo salad, which is really good. I might have an espresso, or I might have a glass of Champagne. I don’t like mimosas — just give it to me straight.
1:30 p.m.: Retail therapy
My parents love driving down Ventura Boulevard. We’ll stop at some places and go window shopping, or maybe we’ll go to the Topanga Westfield mall. And when we finish at the mall, I have to go to Costco. The Costco run is really just for my dog — I have to get all her food. I get turkey and vegetables, and I cook all that and pre-make her meals for two weeks so I don’t have to deal with it. I can just open it, warm it up and feed her. She’s a mixed pit rescue, and her name is Emma. I got her when she was 5 months old in Oakland while we were performing, and now she’s 12. She’s a sweetheart.
4 p.m.: Family secret
We’re sports fans, so if it’s football season, we have to hurry up and get back to my house for the game. We’re a 49ers family. I would say the Raiders because we’re from Oakland, but we’ve always been 49ers fans. I mean, when it’s time to root for the Raiders, we do. We don’t hate like the Raiders hate on us. I’ll cook food depending on who all’s coming over — my nephews and various friends and so on. I grill a lot, so I’ll do steaks or lamb chops or chicken wings. My mom loves making potato salad. I can’t tell you the recipe — it’s a secret. It’s actually her mother’s potato salad, and they’re Creoles. Those Creoles don’t mess around with their potato salad.
8:30 p.m.: Games after the game
I never tell anyone to leave. Sometimes people spend the night — it’s an open house. If we’re not too tired, we’ll start playing board games or card games. Don’t get us started on poker.
11:30 p.m.: Steam time
Before bed I’ll get into the sauna just to relax and do a little sweating. Then I go take a shower with jazz or spa music playing. Sometimes I’ll do a little stretching before I get in the bed. I usually don’t read before I go to sleep. My go-to is HGTV — I set it for an hour and a half, and I’m out.
How the Epstein files are upending U.K. politics
Nate Diaz
Ready to Throw Hands for America
… I Want In On White House Card!!!
Published
TMZSports.com
Nate Diaz has his sights set on kickin’ ass on one of the most unexpected stages possible: the White House.
The MMA star tells TMZ Sports he’s all-in if talk of a potential fight card tied to the nation’s capital ever becomes reality … making it clear the idea of scrapping under a red, white and blue spotlight has his full attention.
“Yeah, that’d be dope, too,” Diaz said. “America gang, baby. You already know what’s popping.”
While Diaz is hyped about the possibility of fighting on a patriotic mega-card, he says he’s not picky about who he faces — as long as it’s a legit, high-level fight.
And if he gets his way, the White House event could feature some familiar names from his past.
Diaz says he wants to run back his legendary rivalry with Conor McGregor for a trilogy bout — a fight that would instantly become one of the biggest attractions possible for a blockbuster event.
He also called out Dustin Poirier as another potential opponent, though Diaz didn’t exactly extend the olive branch … saying he’d be down to fight him “if he stops being such a p****.”
Diaz even floated Mike Perry as another name he’d gladly throw down with … making it clear he’s ready for whatever matchup gets him back into what he calls “real action.”
The 40-year-old last fought in the UFC in 2022, but his message now is loud and clear: he’s ready to return.
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