Ryan Gosling, Emily Blunt & The Fall Guy Praise The Art Of Stunt Performance [SXSW]

Inspired by the 1980s television series of the same name, The Fall Guy follows Colt Seavers, who is returning to the film industry after an injury nearly ended his career as a stuntman. Colt was drawn back in by the opportunity to work with Jody Moreno, hoping to charm the first-time director. While performing death-defying stunts, Colt is tasked with hunting down the movie’s missing star, Tom Ryder. As he is drawn deeper into the shady criminal underworld that Tom was involved in, Colt soon discovers that the stunts may not be the most dangerous situation he’s put in.

David Leitch is the perfect director to helm The Fall Guy given his long career in stunts and his signature story-driven action. The Fall Guy also shows off Ryan Gosling’s range as an actor, allowing him to tap into his skills with comedy, action, romance, and drama along with the palpable chemistry between him and Emily Blunt. The Fall Guy is a bombastic cinematic experience that leans into the magic and escapism of action movies while also showcasing the below talent, all of whom are integral to moviemaking.

While at SXSW Screen Rant spoke with the cast and creators behind The Fall Guy on the red carpet before the movie’s premiere. The cast unanimously agreed that not only is The Fall Guy a love letter to stunt performers, but that it is well past time for the Oscars to honor stunts with their own category. Producer Guymon Casady broke down why Leitch was the only director he wanted, and writer Drew Pearce explained how Emily Blunt joining the cast elevated the love story at the center of the movie.

The Fall Guy Stars & Director Sound Off For A Stunt Category At The Oscars: “We’re Long Overdue”

Stunts are an integral part of most movies and television series, especially as action sequences have become more innovative as directors push the boundaries of what is possible. However, the people behind some of the most iconic moments in cinema—stunt performers, stunt coordinators, etc.—are often overlooked by both audiences and the industry as a whole.

David Leitch: No, we’re long overdue, but we helped produce that spot and internally, what is happening in the academy is we’re making a lot of headway. Now that casting has an award, the stunt community inside the Academy has really started to tick the boxes of what we need to do to move to our own awards. So I would say there’s a lot of hope and that the Academy wanted to do something [that] just sort of acknowledges that everyone thinks it’s long overdue, and it’s in it’s in process.

Ryan Gosling: Can you believe they don’t give an Oscar for stunts or for action design? It’s hard to separate the history of cinema from the history of action. The first popular film was The Great Train Robbery, and it was like 1905 is an action film with stunts at the core of it. They’ve created some of the most iconic scenes in movies, so much of what we love from a film is what they do.

They really go unrecognized, get no credit for it, and they put everything on the line. I was in a TV show called Young Hercules and I’ve had a stunt double my whole life basically. There’s always this strange moment where they come in to do all the cool stuff, they risk it all, and then they leave, and then we pretend like I did it. It’s just great to finally be in something that’s sort of acknowledging what they do and their contribution.

Source: Screen Rant Plus

Blunt and Gosling explained how important the stunt teams have been throughout their careers and why they deserve recognition during the award season. Leitch gave an optimistic update about the possibility of the Academy honoring stunt teams in the near future.

Emily Blunt: I’ve been feeling this for so long, because I think also for me being a part of films that have had a lot of action in them as well, I know what they do. They risk life and limb for all of us not only to look cool, but to entertain people and give people that crackling sense of wonder that you feel watching a movie and when you know it’s a real stun and you know that guy’s jumping across the building going through a window. They do it selflessly, effortlessly, and their bodies are broken for us to cheer. They’re amazing. They’re some of my favorite people on a film set

Source: Screen Rant Plus

The Fall Guy Is “A Love Letter To The Stunt Community” And Action Films

Stephanie Hsu shared how The Fall Guy is a love letter not just to the stunt community, but action movies as a whole, shining a light on the work that goes into this wildly popular genre of movies.

Stephanie Hsu: It is such a love letter to the stunt community and to the art of making action films. I’ve never seen that, really. I feel like, we always try to pretend that action films just happen in some sort of vacuum, magically, and no one is behind the scenes. This feels like a really important part of the story to share. I’m excited for that.

Source: Screen Rant Plus

Hannah Waddingham also teased that the movie is chock-full of amazing stunt performers, praising Leitch and McCormick’s company 87North’s ability to draw in the best of the best.

Hannah Waddingham: It’s the biggest love letter [to stunt performers]. It’s like a whole love letter box of letters. I was just saying to someone earlier you can really see it in this movie. David Leitch and Kelly McCormack because of 87North, they attract the finest men and women stunt people on the planet. They are all in this movie. It’s aggressively chock full of amazing some people.

Source: Screen Rant Plus

Writer Explains That Emily Blunt’s The Fall Guy Casting Expanded The Love Story “Exponentially”

Pearce explained that Blunt being cast changed the trajectory of the movie by expanding her role and the love story as a whole. He also shared how he wanted to capture the feel of the 1980s television series and “Universalize” it. The Fall Guy celebrates the unsung heroes of the film industry, with Pearce describing it as, “a movie for every blue-collar worker.”

Drew Pearce: It takes, obviously, the idea of a stuntman as the jumping off point, but I kind of remembered and adored the show when I was a kid. What I really wanted to take was the vibe of the show a certain kind of looseness, a reality of being below the line, and kind of unsung. The entire theme tune was, “The Unknown Stuntman” and kind of take that and Universalize it. It’s really a movie for every blue collar worker. For me, what we were trying to shoot for was a movie about the unsung.

Drew Pearce: The love story was always going to be central to this movie, but it expanded exponentially. It’s something that Ryan believed in really strongly and I love that. I think it’s one of the things that makes this so unusual as a summer blockbuster. I think big screen, big scale, romance has fallen out of fashion. I feel it coming back, but I feel like this is the version that kind of supersize it.

What’s so crucial to that is Emily herself because the modernity she brings to the role, the intelligence, the humor, she is just a force of nature. The moment, she kind of turned up on set, and the two of them got together on camera. It was genuinely that movie magic moment, and we were like, “Okay, we’re gonna be good.”

Source: Screen Rant Plus

David Leitch “Was The Only One In My Mind” To Direct The Fall Guy

Leitch has made his mark on Hollywood as a director who not only delivers incredible action, but action with heart. The Fall Guy is the perfect movie to showcase Leitch’s skills as a director, with record-breaking action sequences on top of an impressive cast, a charming romance, an intriguing mystery, and a perfect balance of comedy and drama. Casady revealed that Leitch was the only name on his list to helm The Fall Guy and teased that the Oscars were only a taste of the amazing chemistry between Blunt and Gosling.

Guymon Casady: He was the only one in my mind who could direct this movie. The quick story is, it started over 20 years ago, I had convinced Glenn Larson, the creator of the show, to entrust me with the rights and sold the movie to Warner Brothers. It didn’t get made. And then, 20 years later, I would revisit and re-approach the estate and convince them again to give me a shot.

This time deciding to put the movie together before taking it to the marketplace, which started with approaching David, and Kelly. Because of David’s unique qualifications, not only is a very, very gifted and celebrated director, who I am just a giant fan of his movies, but also because of his background as a stuntman, and then stunt coordinator and all of the work he’s done over the years. I just felt like he was the guy to direct the movie.

[Emily and Ryan] so good and I can’t wait for people to experience them together. You did see a precursor at the Oscars, but one of the things that was so great was that we had conceived the movie as The Fall Guy, starring Colt Seavers, Ryan Gosling. But when we were fortunate enough to get Emily to join the movie, we realized it was a real opportunity to then write to that character and really write to that relationship. That role became much more significant than it had originally been [after casting Emily]. It really evolved and she is a major part of this movie.

Source: Screen Rant Plus

Winston Duke Thinks The Fall Guy Is The Perfect Summer Blockbuster

Winston Duke discussed why The Fall Guy is the perfect movie to help bring audiences back to the theaters as the industry still recovers from the aftermath of the pandemic. Duke also teased a hilarious bromance between his character, Dan Tucker, and Gosling’s Colt Seavers.

Winston Duke: When I got to see it finished, and I got my preview, I just found it so charming. The characters are charming. The world that they created that they belong to is charming. The tone is very charming. It’s approachable. It’s a movie that you watch over and over. It’s a movie that’s gonna play really well during the summer. At a time when our industry hasn’t really fully recovered from COVID movies like this, bring people back to the movie theater for the reasons that they go, which is to escape.

I don’t fight Ryan Gosling. There’s a lot of bromance in it. So, I don’t fight him, but I cheer him on a lot.

Source: Screen Rant Plus

“It’s Still Wild”: Kelly McCormick Describes The Fall Guy As David Leitch’s Take On Classic Cinema

Leitch and McCormick explained why they were excited to shine a light on stunt performers with The Fall Guy, given their own connection to that world. McCormick praised the performances of Blunt and Gosling, especially in regard to the love story. She also explained how The Fall Guy feels like Leitch’s take on classic cinema.

David Leitch: Well, obviously, it was dear to me because I was a stunt performer forever. I do think they’re under recognized and I think this was really a fun way to sort of shine some light on the industry that I spent 20 plus years in, and that I love so dearly.

Kelly McCormick: Yeah, they’re really complicated, guys and gals, if you think about it. They are in a very dangerous profession. They are on set for hours upon hours. They have this moment where they do something insane that they had to rehearse and practice and be athletic for and then they cannot be seen. That’s their job is to not be seen. So it’s a really interesting layered story for a protagonist, when that’s your journey and perhaps relatable to others who work really, really hard and feel unseen.

It’s pretty insane. One of the fun things about it is relationships are messy, right? They’re kind of complicated, they’re kind of messy, and a lot of times in a romantic movie, they’re really just perfect. In ours, it’s a little messy. It’s a little complicated, because there’s so phenomenally talented that you can play and it can just kind of become its own organic beast of its own. To me, it’s sort of like, if David Leitch is gonna do a classic film, this is the classic version of it. Because it’s still wild like he does and it’s still more and more, but it actually has this vein in it that feels very classic at the same time. Because of their heartbeat together.

Source: Screen Rant Plus

The Fall Guy Composer Shares Key Musical Inspirations, Including KISS

Composer Dom Lewis shared the musical influences that helped shape the score for The Fall Guy, including the KISS song “I Was Made For Loving You.” Lewis also revealed that he wrote an original 80s-inspired “cinema love song” and while it didn’t make it into the movie, it is featured in the end credits.

Dom Lewis: We really wanted to make it a love letter to film scores as well as a love letter to movies and stunts. So I tried to draw from all my inspirations, like way back to the 70s all the way through to the early 90s. So you’ve got mixes of synth stuff in there, rock. KISS “I Was Made For Loving You” goes throughout the whole movie.

A bombastic adrenaline score with some love in there too because it’s a love story, ultimately. You know what Dave told me at the beginning of the whole process and said, I want like a traditional 80s cinema love song. So I wrote that. We tried to get it in the movie, but it was too on the nose. It wasn’t fresh and updated enough, but we did get it in the soundtracks and in the credits.

Source: Screen Rant Plus

About The Fall Guy

He’s a stuntman, and like everyone in the stunt community, he gets blown up, shot, crashed, thrown through windows, and dropped from the highest of heights, all for our entertainment. And now, fresh off an almost career-ending accident, this working-class hero has to track down a missing movie star, solve a conspiracy, and try to win back the love of his life while still doing his day job. What could possibly go right?

Check back for our other The Fall Guy interviews:

• Ryan Gosling & Emily Blunt
• David Leitch

The Fall Guy

The Fall Guy is an action thriller from Bullet Train and Deadpool 2 director David Leitch. Ryan Gosling stars as a stuntman who is forced to find a missing movie star, investigate a conspiracy, and repair his relationship with the love of his life. The film was written by Drew Pearce and inspired by the 1980s TV series of the same name.

Director

David Leitch

Release Date

May 3, 2024

Studio(s)

Universal Pictures , Entertainment 360 , 87North Productions

Distributor(s)

Universal Pictures

Writers

Drew Pearce