To understand the love letter that is “The Fall Guy” — a passion project of former stunt performer turned A-list action director David Leitch (“John Wick,” “Atomic Blonde,” “Bullet Train”) — consider that Drew Pearce couldn’t write the script until Leitch identified the old-school stunts that would serve as its centerpieces.
IndieWire talked to Leitch and stunt designer Chris O’Hara about four of those jaw-dropping action scenes: the record-breaking cannon roll on the beach, the 225-foot car jump, the helicopter high-fall, and the boat jump. The personal and creative stories of how they came about are almost as gripping as the scenes themselves.
The Cannon Roll
After his accident, stunt double Colt Seavers’ (Ryan Gosling) first stunt is a big one: an explosion that sends his Jeep into a cannon roll. It was so big that Gosling’s own stunt double, Logan Holladay (who is seen on screen buckling Gosling into the Jeep), broke the Guinness World Record with eight-and-half rolls. The previous record was held by stuntman Adam Kirley’s seven rolls in the 2006 James Bond film “Casino Royale.”
“I wrote it in the script, ‘Colt Seavers breaks the world record for most cannon rolls,’ just to mess with the stunt team,” said Leitch when he was on IndieWire’s Toolkit podcast. “So when they read the script, they’d be like, ‘What? How do we do this?’ And then they took up the gauntlet and said ‘We’re gonna do it,’ and it took a lot of testing.”
The first step was picking the right car: a Jeep Cherokee.
“That’s because it’s as wide as it is tall,” said O’Hara of the Cherokee. “To achieve something rolling, you want to basically try and create a cylinder.”
To complete the cylinder, the special effects team built a special roll cage. According to O’Hara, most roll cages are built to fit around the body of the car, but this one had extra room to avoid corners and create a rounder shape.
In the film, Colt is stressed about his first post-accident stunt and focuses on the sand being too loose. He suggests waiting for the tide to come in to harden the sand, then shoot. In real life, the beach location and sand density were very real issues that required the stunt to be timed to the tides. When the first take didn’t supply the desired results, the team had another shot at it with a second car. This time, O’Hara’s team didn’t leave it to Mother Nature to supply ideal conditions.
“We had an earthworks team driving up and down the beach from 4 am on. Just watering the beach, rolling the beach with shaker rollers, to compact the sand as best we could,” said O’Hara.
To achieve the stunt, Colt’s Jeep must reach 80mph before hitting the cannon, which packs 900 psi. However, the stunt demanded many vehicles achieve that speed — including picture cars and the ones capturing the stunt from multiple angles.
“I call it the lightning in a bottle stunt,” said O’Hara. “Logan’s input in the car, the amount of pressure in the cannon, the speed, the compaction of the earth — all of these things kind of led to the perfect stunt and it’s really hard to achieve perfection like that.”
The 225-Foot Car Jump
Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) is that annoying action star who tells the press he does all his own stunts — and must faces his worst fears when Colt and team strap the duplicitous actor into the car for 225-foot jump.
As O’Hara explained to IndieWire, the key to doing old-school practical stunts is having the time and resources to prep in similar conditions. The production created a mock set to practice the jump in baby steps (50, 75, 100, 125, and 150 feet) before achieving the film’s actual 225-foot jump.
There was one major difference between the mock set and the real thing: The actual set included a 40-foot deep ditch beneath the jump. That didn’t change its execution, but O’Hara said it created an intimidating optical illusion.
“You saw the set that we were going to jump and then you see where we were rehearsing and it was like, ‘Man, that doesn’t work,’” said O’Hara. “But we got out our measuring tapes and measured it and like, ‘Nope, this is right.’”
Holladay was again behind the wheel for the stunt. Suspension experts were key to prepping the car, which traveled at 72mph and reached apex of almost 80 feet at the jump’s height.
The Helicopter High-Fall
With CGI and wires, high-falls are not a practical stunt in modern movies. Legendary stuntman and second unit director Bob Brown holds the world record for highest fall into an airbag, set in 2002 when he jumped through a skyscraper window 20 stories high while engulfed in flames at the World Stunt Awards. To perform the climatic stunt of Colt falling from the helicopter into an airbag, O’Hara hired Bob’s son, Troy, who was only three years old when his father set the world record.
However, high falls into airbags are so rare that it was difficult to source an airbag that was big enough to execute the stunt.
“So we call Bob,” Leitch said. “Bob’s like, ‘We should try and call the people that I sold mine to in South Africa, see if they’ll let me use it.”
Bob Brown’s old bag, which measured 25 feet by 50 feet, was shipped from South Africa. Bob also traveled to set to work with his son on what would be Troy’s personal record, a 150-foot fall.
“He’s there coaching his son to do this high fall,” said Leitch. “Troy goes up to 150 and he does a beautiful fall, and his dad is over the moon, excited and proud. And then at the end of it, they got up their markers and he had Troy’s sign next to where he had set the world record on the bag.”
The Boat Jump
Leitch likes to shoot chronologically as much as possible. The movie has a running gag that director Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt) is trying to work out the third act as they shoot — something similar to Leitch’s approach. The big scenes are planned, but Leitch likes to leave room for story elements to develop and then make script adjustments down the line.
“This is a great script, but what I’m really excited about is where it’s going to take me,” said Leitch. “This is only a fraction of what this thing’s going to be. I can’t wait to see all the beautiful things that are come out of making a movie.”
In the case of the Colt’s boat jump, the adjustment came via a late-in-the-game costume discovery: Gosling’s personal costumer Mark Avery, found a “Miami Vice” stunt show jacket in a vintage store.
“Ryan tries it on,” recalled Leitch, “And he’s like, ‘Isn’t this cool? It’d be like I have backstory. I worked on a live show.’”
Leitch loved the idea. He knew a ton of stunt performers who got their starts on live shows and there was already a boat sequence in the movie.
“And then [Gosling] riffs this thing, ‘I used to drive a boat with my hands tied behind my back,’ and now I’m like, ‘Fuck, you just improv’d this great idea,’” said Leitch. “I called Chris [O’Hara], ‘Can we jump that boat backward?’ And he’s like, ‘What are you talking about?’”
O’Hara said identifying stunt location is key; from there, you can workshop the details… such as how to jump a boat backward. In this case, the boat chase takes place in Sydney Harbor.
Gosling obtained his boating license just in case, but hidden drivers in the 565 Formosa executed most of the scene. The boat jump measured out at 80 feet using a 4-foot-high ramp that was 24 feet long.
To hear more of our interview with David Leitch, subscribe to the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast, available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and other major platforms.
