Troy Lindsay Brown had never fallen from 150 feet before. Throughout his young but extensive Hollywood career, the 24-year-old stunt performer had dropped, backflipped, and somersaulted hundreds of times from heights as tall as seven stories. But ahead of shooting the climactic jump in The Fall Guy, he planned to push his limits and set a personal best. 

“It was The Fall Guy,” he says, emphasizing the title’s middle word. “I knew what movie I was working on.”

When director David Leitch heard the height that Brown wanted to conquer, the veteran stuntman turned filmmaker was thrilled. Leitch wanted the star-powered romantic action comedy to center on old-school practical stunts, the kinds performed in the eponymous 1980s ABC television series on which he’d based his movie. The throwback approach meant no wires or visual effects—just gravity, careful coordination, and a lot of trust. “It feels different when it’s real, and I think the audience really feels it,” Leitch tells The Ringer. “It takes you back to a different era.”

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So, near the end of production, there was Brown, one of several Ryan Gosling body doubles, standing 150 feet above the ground inside a prop helicopter attached to the end of a large crane, staring down at a 50-foot-wide airbag that “looks like you’re trying to land on a little napkin,” stunt driver Logan Holladay says. Even after practicing jumps from increasingly taller heights, Brown couldn’t fathom the view once he reached the proper elevation. “Seeing that for the first time, I was like, ‘Damn, this is crazy,’” he says. “Like, this is a huge fall.” Still, he wasn’t about to bow out now, not with his father and adviser, Bob Brown, a legendary high-fall specialist who had trained him since he was a kid, waiting below, ready to ceremoniously pass the baton on this dangerous, lost art.

“It’s a different deal to be a stuntman [these days],” Bob says. “They can put a harness on or do a wire gag. But we wanted to keep the tradition alive.”

In the spirit of Brown’s towering drop, The Fall Guy serves as a love letter to the tight-knit, intergenerational stunt community and its commitment to practical punches, leaps, and falls. The film follows Colt Seavers (Gosling), a prolific stunt double for A-list actor Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), who leaves the industry after a stunt goes terribly wrong. Years later, however, Seavers is coaxed back to work to help his ex, Jody (Emily Blunt), who’s directing a sci-fi epic in Sydney starring Ryder—who has suddenly gone missing. The concept was “completely authentic to my Hollywood journey,” says Leitch, who married production partner Kelly McCormick after a yearslong working relationship. “As a director, I could completely lean in and speak from a real well of knowledge.” 

Most of that knowledge was channeled into the movie’s showcase of stunt work: car flips, boat chases, helicopter jumps, fire burns, hand-to-hand martial arts, shoot-outs, and, yes, high falls. Though Gosling attempted a few gags, Leitch—who has done stunt work in dozens of Hollywood productions, including five occasions as Brad Pitt’s body double—leaned on and challenged stunt designer Chris O’Hara to create and execute daredevilish acts. The goal? To break records, spotlight stunt crews’ anonymous work, and make a compelling case for their greater recognition within Hollywood. 

“We were rallying together to create some really provocative action that all the stunt community could get behind and get excited about,” Leitch says. “There was a bit of pressure to do some cool stuff.”

Leitch first became interested in stunt work as a child, when he watched the Fall Guy television series. The Lee Majors star vehicle, about a blue-collar stuntman moonlighting as a bounty hunter, “had a lot of fun and wish fulfillment in it,” Leitch says, and it introduced his young imagination to outrageous bar fights, car chases, and truck crashes. Over its five-season run, from 1981 to 1986, it became a foundational text for soon-to-be stunt professionals, and it “lit the fuse for them to think about being a stuntman,” he says.

Almost four decades after the show ended, Leitch was eager to pay homage to it with a movie that celebrated the heyday of the industry. He wanted to channel the retro car jumps of Hooper, the high falls in Sharky’s Machine, and the truck drag of Indiana Jones—gags that didn’t rely on computer-generated imagery. “It was a great opportunity to do some things that haven’t been done in a long time,” Leitch says. 

To pull it off, Leitch enlisted O’Hara, his longtime friend (as well as former roommate) and head of the industry group Stunts Unlimited. O’Hara had grown up in the same era watching The Dukes of Hazzard, The A-Team, and Starsky & Hutch, and he was eager to build on Leitch’s nostalgic vision. Together, they brainstormed ideas for various stunts, eventually deciding on a handful that highlighted both the era they were paying tribute to and the specific skills of their stunt specialists. 

Throughout preproduction, O’Hara engaged in intense research and development, often using Unreal Engine, a 3D graphic tool used for video games, to visualize bigger chase scenes and jumps the team couldn’t rehearse. “Even though we had practical stuff, it’s still a guideline,” O’Hara says. “You want to be as prepared as you can [to] work out all the little bugs.” For one chase sequence, in which Colt fights off henchmen inside the dumpster of a garbage truck, O’Hara choreographed and rigged his performers on a controlled soundstage before testing the moving elements in a parking lot. “We set up intersections where we know some of our turns are gonna be to see how the bin would react as it’s swinging around,” he says. “When we get to the real day, we have it all pretty much figured out.”

Sometimes, Leitch initiated challenges and touchstones within the script itself. Ahead of shooting an early set piece, the director scribbled “record-setting cannon roll” to see how the crew might react. The now-hallmark genre of stunt is executed with a small air cannon, which is fastened to the floor of a car. After gaining enough speed, the driver can fire the cannon and flip the car into the air, rolling it numerous times. The most rolls that any stunt team had previously achieved was seven, but Leitch was confident that Holladay, Gosling’s driving double, could exceed that. “I think the studio was excited, too,” Leitch says. “They were like, ‘You don’t always go out to set records, right? You go out to tell the right story with the action.’ But the right story for the action in The Fall Guy is to set records.”

As an ode to the 1974 neo-noir action flick McQ, which featured a beachside car chase in which stunt driver Hal Needham executed the first cannon roll in movie history, the group chose a public beach for its own attempt. Holladay and O’Hara worked out all the logistics, opting to use a Jeep Grand Cherokee, whose equal height and width promoted better rolling. With the generous time that production afforded them, Holladay spent months preparing the car with the special effects team, eventually taking two practice runs to suss out the necessary amount of air pressure, tire pressure, and sand density (the latter of which Gosling even points out in the movie). When cameras eventually rolled, Holladay sped the Jeep up to 80 miles per hour, turned the wheel for a “millisecond longer” than his previous attempts, and rotated the vehicle eight and a half times, earning a Guinness World Record. “So much of it is feel—you have to know when to hit the button, know when to go,” he says. “I don’t know if I could have done it any better.”

But Holladay wasn’t finished. He still had to fly a GMC truck 225 feet off a ramp and over a desert canyon during the movie’s climax. Just as extensive preparation and engineering were needed for the cannon roll, O’Hara’s team spent weeks building a ramp with the right launch angles while an SFX team built a custom suspension truck, accounting for tire pressure and wind variables. “You can plot flight patterns of distance and angle just by punching them into a computer,” O’Hara says. Off to the side of the set, the stunt unit built a mock flat-ground runway with the same wind direction as the real jump, monitoring the impact and slowly extending the jump 25 feet after each successful trial. “Everything during testing is always baby steps,” O’Hara says. 

After consistently hitting 225 feet, the team moved over to the canyon for the real thing. At that point, Holladay just needed to go through the same progressions and ignore the fact he was now vaulting over a huge drop. “You’ve got to stay super focused because if you do something wrong, there could be huge consequences,” he says. Leitch describes Holladay as a sort of “zen character,” a product of growing up in a family of stunt performers. “He’s really a very technically minded performer and knows his limits and knows when he can push them and challenge them safely,” Leitch says. Still, even with his bulky movie résumé—Shazam! Fury of the Gods, Nope, and Hobbs & Shaw, to name a few recent examples—Holladay says The Fall Guy tested him the most out of any project. “I always put in my full effort,” he says. “But I don’t know if I’ve ever tried so hard on so many different stunts to make them turn out amazing.”

To round out their batch of old-school stunts, Leitch and O’Hara wanted to shoot a high fall. The pair had planned for it to be the last set piece in the movie, a breathless finish that would make good on the title and leave audiences with an indelible image. The only problem? Finding someone to try it. “Nobody was doing really big, high falls anymore,” O’Hara says. 

Over the last couple of decades, as VFX and wire technology advanced and practical budgets shrank, expert fallers became an endangered species. Most studios didn’t see the need to take chances on such dangerous stunts, which could occasionally lead to fatal accidents. The only person O’Hara felt confident in was Bob Brown, who had a long history of taking death-defying falls—but the well-regarded stuntman had long retired from performing them. After O’Hara pestered him a bit more, explaining the meticulous approach he planned to use, Brown unexpectedly volunteered … his son.

 “Troy will do it,” he told O’Hara. 

This wasn’t that absurd of a suggestion. Before he could walk, Troy had inherited his father’s daredevil genetics, taking to the backyard trampoline strapped to bungee cords and forming an “aerial awareness.” By 5—yes, age 5—he’d already earned his SAG card jumping off a helicopter into the ocean to complete a stunt that Bob needed while coordinating 2005’s The Pacifier. “I remember going over to Bob’s house when Troy was probably 8 years old to practice some air rams with a bunch of stunt guys,” Holladay says. “Troy was jumping on the trampoline and getting double-bounced so high by his dad. No matter what, he would always [land] on his back or his feet.”

In the midst of production in Australia, O’Hara took Bob’s suggestion and called up Troy. The father-son duo answered the phone together and laid out everything they would need to execute the trick. “Getting the call to be on this project was like I was getting drafted by a Super Bowl–winning NFL team,” Troy says. The young stuntman got down to business. “I knew exactly what trick I wanted to do, and I knew what height I wanted to do it,” he says. 

As Troy began prep work, O’Hara went to track down a 50-foot-wide airbag capable of covering Troy’s proposed 150-foot fall. The search was difficult. He eventually returned to Bob, who had last used a bag of that size while coordinating (and high falling in) 2004’s Flight of the Phoenix in the Namib Desert. When the Dennis Quaid–starring production ended, Bob sold it to a group of South African stuntmen. Soon, he and O’Hara were on the line with the same Cape Town–based company, which still had it folded in a box, and they arranged to buy it back. “They used baby powder to keep it so it doesn’t get moisture in it,” Bob says. “Chris pushed a few buttons. Next thing you know, it’s in Sydney.”

After setting up the bag and a crane in a parking lot, Troy began getting a feel for the fall. In the same way that Holladay slowly stretched out distances for his car jump, Troy gradually elevated his platform, topping out at 130 feet so he could practice his somersault. Bob talked Troy through his body position over the radio, “because if you turn 2 inches to one side or the other, you could potentially miss the bag at that height,” he says. On the day of the jump, Troy arrived to set and thought he’d entered a cemetery. “Everyone was staring at me like I was already dead or something,” he says. “Nobody wanted to talk to me because they didn’t want to get in my head.” Even his experienced peers were nervous for him. Ben Jenkin, another performer on O’Hara’s crew, remembers looking down from the helicopter at 90 feet, where he had been involved in an earlier stunt sequence, “and I would think, ‘Troy’s got to go higher than this,’” he says. “My palms are sweating just thinking about that day.”

Upon Troy’s initial descent, Bob was internally “praying, but very focused,” but he soon joined his son in exultation after seeing him emerge from the bag. Leitch, O’Hara, and Gosling all rushed over to embrace him. Bob quickly followed up. Then he handed his son a phone to speak to his mother. “Everybody was choked up,” Bob says. “It was a big celebration.” 

But the stunt wasn’t official just yet. A few minutes after Troy landed, Bob began searching the deflated corners of the bag until he found his old signature from two decades earlier. Troy quickly found a Sharpie and scribbled his own name and fall height beneath his dad’s. “It’s just amazing that it’s the same bag,” Bob says. “You can’t write this shit.”

In addition to highlighting impressive stunt work, The Fall Guy doesn’t shy away from the rivalries that can sometimes emerge between actors and their stunt doubles. Though it might seem petty or arrogant, Leitch and others have often witnessed moments when actors take credit for stunts they never performed or show frustration when a double looks better than them. “There are types of Tom Ryders out there in the business that are insecure about their own fame, just trying to protect their brand,” Leitch says, “that don’t want to acknowledge how films are made.”

But that attitude has recently begun to change. Leitch—who, in addition to working with Brad Pitt (whom he recently directed in Bullet Train), has worked with Keanu Reeves and Matt Damon—has watched those same name actors become more outspoken about the stunt community and its contributions to a movie’s finished product. “I’ve been pretty lucky,” Leitch says. “The big stars that I’ve doubled, that I have relationships with, they’re all super supportive.” 

Count Gosling as another A-list proselytizer. On a few occasions, the actor conquered some fears, performing a wired fall at the beginning of the movie before surfing asphalt behind a truck through the streets of Sydney. (“He’s like, ‘I’m not really good with heights,’” Jenkin remembers. “We dropped him 15 stories, and he was fine.”) But when introducing the movie at its SXSW premiere in March, Gosling wasn’t afraid to give all the credit to the stunt team and his doubles. “I’m Ryan Gosling, and I did almost none of my own stunts in this movie,” he told the Austin crowd. 

“He was fantastic,” Jenkin says. “When it comes to getting hit by a car or rolling a car down the beach or falling 150 feet out of a helicopter, he’s very aware that you need specialty stunt people to do that. And there is no ego involved.”

Jenkin spent a lot of time beside Gosling during production. Many of his responsibilities involved parkour, getting slammed by vehicles, and, maybe most dangerously, being set on fire. To prepare for the blaze, Jenkin donned about 10 layers of clothing that had been soaked in a cold fire gel. “You don’t want to get hot, because when you get hot, it means it got through all of your protective layers,” he says. Each take took about an hour with wardrobe, but the hardest part about a full-body burn was the noise. “You can’t hear anything because the fire is all around you,” Jenkin says. “The first day, [first assistant director] Paul Barry gave me a ‘3, 2, 1, go.’ I couldn’t hear him.”

Gosling was nearby for every stunt, “watching Logan break the record, watching Troy, watching me,” Jenkin says. Aware of the irony in playing a stuntman who still needed stuntmen, Gosling remained curious throughout the shoot, asking and suggesting various approaches to stunts and gleaning insight into his doubles’ mindsets and habits before a big trick. “I think we all kind of feel it a little bit different,” Holladay says. “Ben likes to get in the zone with some music and go that route. I kind of like the quiet and just go over what I have to do, repeat it over and over, break it down, and make sure it’s the most simple thing.”

“It was really cool having Ryan there on the day when I did my fall,” Troy says. “I was just listening to music and just kind of getting in the zone. And then I get a tap on the shoulder and he’s like, ‘Oh, what’s up, dude? I’m Ryan.’ He was just the coolest dude asking me all these questions, getting inside of my head—what I’m thinking, what I’m looking for, how the airbag works.”

“He’s just a big fan of stunts, really.”

Gosling hasn’t slowed down in his appreciation. Two months ago, he kick-started the Fall Guy press tour at the Oscars, presenting alongside Blunt about the unheralded talents of the stunt community. “They are truly the unsung heroes who risk life and limb for cinema,” Blunt told the audience. After a brief montage highlighting various stunts throughout movie history, Gosling then provided a final toast. 

“To the stunt performers and stunt coordinators who help make movies magic, we salute you.” 

The moment felt a bit hollow, like it was primed for a big kicker—perhaps an announcement declaring that stunts would be included as an Oscar category in the near future. Along with his business partner and John Wick codirector Chad Stahelski, Leitch has been crusading and pushing the Academy for that kind of recognition. Still, he’s aware of the misconception—and fundamental tension—around his “For Your Consideration” endeavors. 

“The contract that we enter into as stunt performers is we’re supposed to keep the illusion alive,” Leitch says. “It’s kind of the unwritten rule. You’re not supposed to be seen, and that’s OK. We accept that.”

What Leitch doesn’t accept is the broader exclusion of the stunt department, which he says deserves to be “recognized for the action that it designs and the artistic contribution it gives to film.” Considering Oscars get handed out for costume design and hair and makeup, Leitch feels the all-encompassing and collaborative work of stunt coordinators and professionals has, especially recently, become too crucial to ignore. On a more optimistic note, he says, “We’re making all this headway with the Academy, and it’s incredible. I feel like [an Oscar category] is imminent.”

In some ways, The Fall Guy (along with Leitch’s Action, a Peacock-exclusive docuseries detailing the making of the movie, among several of his other projects) has functioned as the ultimate Trojan horse for the director’s campaign, both a coming-out party and a flashy critique of an industry that’s kept the stunt community mostly invisible. Along with Holladay’s Guinness World Record, Universal sent out a news release about a subtle but critical detail that could shift the industry: changing O’Hara’s title from “stunt coordinator” to “stunt designer.” It’s a small tweak (approved by SAG-AFTRA and the Directors Guild), but Leitch believes the credit speaks more descriptively and comprehensively about a job that’s more than “executing something on a technical level.”

“The stunt department takes the script that says, ‘They conquered Rome’ and puts together a 15-minute action sequence that gets you from A to B and develops characters,” Leitch says. “You’re coming with creative ideas, you’re pitching to the director, you’re R&Ding, and modern-day stunt coordinators shoot and edit the sequence, do pre-vis or stunt-vis. It’s time for the perception to change.”

“We are more than just guys that fall down for a living,” O’Hara adds. “We are integral to the whole filmmaking process. Hopefully it’s a huge step.”

For the guys that do fall down, the push for recognition has been an adjustment. Universal has rolled out the red carpet for Troy, Holladay, and Jenkin, who have learned to take credit for their stunts, flash their faces for the camera, and speak eloquently about their careers and perilous endeavors. (“We really do put our lives on the line for these movies,” Jenkin says.) They’ve made short stunt promos, collaborated with Gosling on goofy sketches, and even taken part in the actor’s recent Jimmy Kimmel Live! entrance. “It’s not me. It’s not my persona,” Holladay admits. “We just really like what we do.” 

Though he’s become a better ambassador recently, Jenkin remembered a similar feeling throughout his press tour. “I was so nervous,” he says. “I would rather get hit by a car than do an interview.” There’s always the sequel.

Jake Kring-Schreifels is a sports and entertainment writer based in New York. His work has also appeared in Esquire.com, GQ.com, and The New York Times.

Jake Kring-Schreifels