“The Fall Guy” Celebrates Cinema’s Unsung Heroes
Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt came together at the 96th Oscars ceremony on Sunday to present a special tribute to the stunt teams who pull off those unbelievable action sequences we know and love. “We’re here to celebrate the stunt community,” remarked Gosling and Blunt. “They’ve been such a crucial part of our industry since the beginning of cinema. They are truly the unsung heroes who risk life and limb for cinema.”
Gosling and Blunt appeared together making light of the supposed rivalry between their films Oppenheimer and Barbie, for which they received nominations for Best Supporting Actor and Actress, respectively. The pair are set to star in David Leitch’s action comedy The Fall Guy, which premiered at SXSW earlier this week.
Photograph by Gorden Correll, courtesy of flickr. com Photograph by Aubrey Gemignani, courtesy of NASA and picryl.com
Filmmaker David Leitch got his start performing stunts for David Fincher’s Fight Club. He was catapulted to stuntman stardom after filling in last minute as Brad Pitt’s double on the film. Leitch went on to work as Pitt’s stunt double in four other films, including Ocean’s Eleven and Mr. and Mrs. Smith. In 2014, Leitch made his directorial debut on the smash hit John Wick with fellow stuntman Chad Stahelski. Since then the director has helmed a myriad of successful action thrillers. In 2022, Leitch teamed up with Pitt once more for his star-studded summer blockbuster Bullet Train. His latest action comedy film, The Fall Guy, is loosely based on the 80s action television series of the same name.
What To Expect
The film stars Gosling as Colt Seaver, a charming stuntman who’s out of the game after a fall-gone-wrong. Convinced by his producer Gail (Hannah Waddingham) to return to set for one last job, Seaver reunites with his ex-girlfriend Jody Moreno (Blunt). Seaver does everything in his power to help her pull off her directorial dream, in the form of a space western epic titled Metalstorm, in his attempt to repair their rocky relationship. When things go awry, Gail enlists the stuntman to locate his movie star counterpart Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and save Jody’s film before it’s too late.
If there’s one thing The Fall Guy delivers on, it’s stunts. Gosling (along with his team of talented doubles!) fights his way through night clubs, yachts, and five star hotels, at one point surfing down the streets of Sydney on a hunk of metal hanging off the back of a garbage truck. In one especially impressive maneuver, the crew pulls off a “cannon roll” which sent stunt driver Logan Holladay flying through the air in a spinning car. The car rolled a total of eight and a half times, earning a new Guinness World Record which the cast presented to Holladay at the film’s Los Angeles premiere on Wednesday night.
Notably, despite the attempt to recognize stunt performers this awards season, there are no Oscar categories for stunt choreography or performance. “There’s this sort of accepted dynamic where they come on set, they do all the cool stuff, they risk everything, and then they disappear into the shadows and we all pretend as if they were never there,” Gosling commented at the premiere. “Everyone else on set gets credit, but there’s kind of unspoken understanding that they won’t. That ends today!”
The film features an impressive 90 person stunt crew helmed by veteran stunt coordinator Chris O’Hara. Gosling and Taylor-Johnson’s double Justin Eaton also appears in the film as ill-fated fictional stuntman Henry.
The action comedy film The Fall Guy is set to release in theaters on May 2.