Where would the action film genre be without the tireless efforts of stunt doubles taking the hard hits for Hollywood’s marque stars? It takes a special kind of person to lay their life on the line for entertainment, even if the adrenaline rush is intoxicating. Ryan Gosling knows how essential stunt doubles are to his career, and he’s making sure everyone else knows it too, with the release of his new film The Fall Guy. The David Leitch-directed thrill ride premiered at SXSW on Tuesday. While there, Ryan Gosling sang the praises of stunt people throughout his career, saying they’ve always been an integral part of his filmmaking experience and he wouldn’t be where he is without them.
“I was on a kid’s action TV show called Young Hercules, and I’ve basically had a stunt double my whole life,” Gosling said about the role stunt performers have played in his career. “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. Everyone else on set gets credit, but there’s kind of unspoken understanding that they won’t.” Gosling then quipped, “That ends today!”
Continuing to talk about the incredible contributions of stunt doubles for his new film, Ryan Gosling often wondered if the team should take their skills elsewhere, perhaps for more nefarious activities like committing crimes! “It took like eight stunt performers to make one Fall Guy, and there were times when I was like, ‘Should we be making a movie or robbing a bank? Because this is kind of the greatest bank-robbing team’… it was like the Avengers or something, and a lot of them probably were the Avengers, if you look at their CVs. I’ve benefitted from their work and their help since I started, so to be a part of telling their story and in some small way trying to reflect how vital they are and how important what they do is.”
Glen A. Larson created the Fall Guy series. Lee Majors starred as Colt Seavers, a Hollywood stuntman who moonlit as a bounty hunter. Using his physical skills and knowledge of stunt effects, he traveled around the country, capturing fugitives and criminals. The movie will ditch bounty hunting and focus on stunts. Ryan Gosling will star as a “battered and past-his-prime stuntman who finds himself back on a movie with the star he worked with long ago and who replaced him. The problem, however, is that the star is now missing.”
Emily Blunt, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Winston Duke, Stephanie Hsu, Teresa Palmer, and Hannah Waddingham complete the main cast of The Fall Guy.
One stunt performer who stands out among the crowd is Logan Holladay, who received a Guinness World Record title for doing the most cannon rolls in a car. Holladay tumbled eight and a half times in the vehicle while acting as Gosling’s stunt driver. “He’s buckling me into a car for a stunt he’s about to do,” Gosling recalls. “And then he goes on to do eight and a half cannon rolls, which is a world record, and then he pulls me out of the car and pats me on the back for the stunt that he just did. In any other movie, you wouldn’t know that, but in this movie you do.”
Are you excited about seeing The Fall Guy in theaters beginning May 3? Check out some of the film’s early rave reviews coming out of SXSW here, and enjoy the ride when the movie crashes into cinemas.