Fresh Air - Best Of: 'Wicked' Director Jon M. Chu / Stunt Performer-Turned-Filmmaker David Leitch

Episode Date: July 27, 2024

Jon M. Chu, the director of Crazy Rich Asians and In the Heights is now directing the film adaptation of the broadway musical Wicked. We'll talk about making movies, and being raised by immigrant parents who owned a Chinese restaurant in Silicon Valley.Also, we hear from stunt performer-turned-director David Leitch. He directed the film The Fall Guy, starring Ryan Gosling as a stuntman. Ken Tucker continues his series of great albums turning 50 this year with an album by Roxy Music.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for this podcast and the following message come from the NPR Wine Club, which has generated over $1.75 million to support NPR programming. Whether buying a few bottles or joining the club, you can learn more at nprwineclub.org slash podcast. Must be 21 or older to purchase. From WHYY in Philadelphia, I'm Terry Gross with Fresh Air Weekend. Today, John M. Chu, the director of the film's Crazy Rich Asians and In the Heights. He's now directing the film adaptation of the Broadway musical Wicked. We'll talk about making movies and being raised by immigrant parents who own a Chinese restaurant in Silicon Valley. Also, we hear from stuntman-turned-director David Leitch. He directed the film The Fall Guy, starring Ryan Gosling as a stuntman. Leitch has had a wild career. Smashing through breakaway tables or, you know, getting thrown out a window.

He trained with friends in his backyard. We'd fall off the roof. We would bounce on the trampoline. It was just fun times. And Ken Tucker continues his series of great albums, turning 50 this year. That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the Wise app today or visit wise.com. T's and C's apply. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Terry Gross.

After making the hit film Crazy Rich Asians and the film adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda's Tony Award-winning Broadway musical In the Heights, my guest John M. Chu is now adapting Crazy Rich Asians into a Broadway musical. He's directing a film adaptation of the hit Broadway musical Wicked, which is expected to open in November. He loves musicals, and his first feature film was supposed to be an updated version of the musical Bye Bye Birdie. Why that never happened is one of the disappointments he writes about in his new memoir. The memoir is part prequel to his career, but it's also about making movies.

Chu grew up in Silicon Valley at a time when Apple was getting started, lots of startups were starting up, and his friend's father was also the father of GPS navigation. Chu was an early adapter to as much new digital tech as he could get his hands on. His tech know-how served him well in his film career, but he soured on the tech industry's impact on how movies are seen, mostly at home and not in theaters. His parents are immigrants, his mother from Taiwan, his father from China. They own a Chinese restaurant in Silicon Valley that they opened in 1970. Chu says it started as a lunch counter restaurant in a nothing special strip mall, but by the time he was born in 1979, it had become a local institution.

Steve Jobs was an early customer. Years later, Jobs helped Chu launch his career without knowing Chu's connection to that restaurant. John Chu's new memoir is called Viewfinder. John Chu, welcome to Fresh Air. Thanks. Thanks for having me. It's an honor to be talking to you. It's my pleasure to have you. So you're best known for the film Crazy Rich Asians and for how it showed off the talents of great Asian American and other Asian actors who are so underrepresented in Hollywood and for showing that an Asian cast can be a huge hit. It was also a breakthrough for you personally. But previously, you hadn't wanted to emphasize that you were Asian American, the son of immigrants. You were taught to blend in to assimilate. What are some of the ways you were

taught to blend in? Well, my mom and dad, like you said, came from Taiwan and China. And so they always wanted us kids, I'm the youngest of five kids, to have an experience that was different than theirs. So they put us in dance classes. I took tap dance for 12 years, piano, drums, saxophone, violin. I was terrible at all of those. I did sports camps, basketball, tennis. We did etiquette classes where they taught us how to sit at a table and greet people. And they dressed us similarly in like polo.

And my mom really wanted us to be the Kennedys. So she would even call me John John sometimes. So it was very much like we are ambassadors. And some of the people who come into the restaurant, this is the first time they're going to interact with a Chinese family. So we have to show them that we can hang just as well as they can. Tell me a little bit more about the etiquette training. I didn't even know they did that anymore. Yeah, I mean, this was a long time ago now, too.

But yeah, they would show us where the forks go and how to take the napkin off and put it away. And it was also built into my preschool. My preschool teacher taught us a lot of how to act properly, as they said. Did you buy into that, that you needed to assimilate and be the Kennedys? 100%. Yeah. I mean, I didn't, I don't know if I had a choice, but I enjoyed it. The people

respected our family. We weren't just like, oh, that's the Chinese food restaurant people. Like we were as embraced as anybody else there as the engineers or the VCs that were there at the time. I went to a school that was very sort of an Americana small school where musical theater was a part of the curriculum where we learned cardan. And so that whole world that I grew up in at the time, Los Altos, California felt like Main Street, USA, with this sort of tomorrow edge that everyone was trying to invent what tomorrow would look like. And engineers were number one. No one was on cover of magazines at that time. It was Stanford. It was HP.

It was Apple. It was everyone was striving to invent what it would look like. And I totally bought into that. It was beautiful to live in that. So you made Crazy Rich Asians because someone in your family had read it and called your attention to it. And I figured who the other person was who said, you got to read this. And coincidentally, I think your agent was just on the verge of sending you the novel, suggesting that you do an adaptation. So after all the years of trying to blend in and be the perfect American family, how did you feel about doing an Asian-American themed film?

Well, before that, I would have never at that point. I had done a short film at USC, I went to USC film school. And it was the only time that I did something that dealt with my sort of cultural identity crisis. I was very, you know, all American boy, but look Chinese. And so the last thing I wanted to do was put myself in a category of, oh, that's the Asian director. I just wanted to be a director. And so I was very resistant. After 10 years, maybe more of that in the business and feeling like I had made it, there was a point where I was working on Now You See Me Too with some of the biggest actors out there. Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, Mark Ruffalo, Woody Harrelson. And we were flowing and it felt really good. And I felt like I hit my 10,000 hours. Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, Mark Ruffalo, Woody Harrelson. And we were flowing and it felt really good.

And I felt like I hit my 10,000 hours. I was like, okay, I belong here. I can do this. And then the big question came that landed on my head basically was like, okay, then if you could do this, what story do you need to tell that no one else can tell? And what are you trying to say with your movies? And so I told my agent and my managers and my whole team, like, I don't know what's happening with me, but I need to get off of any movie I'm doing right now. And I need to start fresh with

something that scares me the most. And so I went on a search for something that felt like it was going to deal with the scariest thing in my life, which was my cultural identity crisis. And that's when my sister and my mom sent me Crazy Rich Asians, and it just so happened that my agent and my manager were going to send me the script for it. So when those sort of coincidences happened, I felt compelled. This is the story of Rachel Chu, who's in that movie. She's an Asian-American woman who's going to Asia for the first time. To me, that was my story.

I 100% understood what that's when I went to Hong Kong for the first time or Taiwan for the first time. And you feel the sense of home and you feel the sense, oh, people are treating you like you're a cousin. But then they call you foreigner or they call you Guilo, which means foreigner. So that's what compelled me to do Crazy Rich Asians at that time. I think you left out part of the story here, which is that you had done a movie that was a huge flop. I mean, like really big. Thanks, thanks. And I forget the name of it because I didn't know about it and I don't know the thing it's adapted from.

Yeah. It was called Gem in the Holograms. Yeah. But it's only a flop if you look at the box office. I'm so proud of that movie. But yes, it did not do well in the box office. Okay. But that got you thinking, like, what track are you on? Like, what's the point of what you're doing?

Is it success? Is it money? Is it something that means a whole lot to you? And isn't that part of what got you thinking about being on a different track? Definitely. I mean, right now, everything's graded on what your box office numbers are. And that showed me. But when you're making a movie, it's about what you're making it about and who you're making it for.

And there's a certain point where when the box office numbers are disappointing, if that shifts the reason for you making that movie, and it did, it jolted me, then I knew I needed to recenter for myself, that whatever I was making, I knew I could not depend on who was showing up, that I had to make it for me, I had to make it for the audience that I knew needed this, or may not know they want it, but need it in some way. And that was sort of the process I was going through when Crazy Rich Asians came along. So you adapted the movie from a novel by Kevin Kwan. And there's a lot of personal things from his life in that movie. And you're kind of referenced in it in a roundabout way, because he knew your cousin? It's the weirdest story. Like this, again, when these weird, I don't know what you call it, things happen. Maybe spiritual, maybe the universe telling you. It compels you.

But he is friends, very close friends, with my cousin Vivian, who lives here in New York. And after reading the book, there's a section where the character talks about their cousin. Because she's defending the Chu family in Cupertino, which is Cupertino's like 10 minutes from my house. And these stories apparently were from stories that Vivian would tell him about our family. And so Rachel Chu and the Chu family in Cupertino, there was one point where the main lead, the guy, is defending their family about how much money they make to his mother. And he's saying, you know, they work hard for their money. And they even have a cousin who makes movies in Hollywood. And that's it.

Which when you read it, you're like, oh, that's weird. That's really close. I only found out when I met Kevin Kwan in person later that he said, no, that's a reference to you. And that was mind-blowing. My guest is film director John Chu. His new memoir is called Viewfinder. We'll hear more of our conversation after a break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air Weekend. After all the praise for representing Asian Americans and other Asians and crazy rich Asians, you made the film adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda's hit Broadway musical In the Heights.

I really enjoyed that, but it was criticized for not having enough dark-skinned Afro-Latino actors in a movie that was set in a predominantly Dominican neighborhood in New York. And you write that, you know, you were upset, you were hurt, but you tried to just listen, just as you wanted people to listen to you when you called out a lack of representation. Lin-Manuel Miranda issued an apology. And I was just wondering, you know, when a criticism, there's a fine line between criticism and condemnation in a situation like that. And I'm wondering which side of the line you felt it fell on. I don't mean to put you in an awkward spot, so I will just say this. That if it comes close to condemnation, it discourages people from even seeing it, which is really defeating the purpose because even if the representation isn't perfect, even if there's a group of people who are misrepresented despite your efforts to make it as widely representational as you could of the Latino American community, it can discourage people from going.

It can discourage other people from trying to make a similar film. Yeah. And it can make you feel like a bad citizen if you liked it. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's like, how come I didn't notice that? I'm not supposed to like this film. So I think the question of representation is really important.

But I also think that, you know that it's possible to go too far. Yeah, I mean, it's complicated. And I think that that's the work we're doing. We're on the front lines of trying to make change. And in that change, yes, there could be condemnation, it could be criticism. But I'm really glad I went through the gem experience. I'm really glad I went through a decade of making movies and hearing criticisms. Every movie has criticisms because it already had a solid sort of state to stand on that. I'm so proud of this of this movie. beautiful people and their beautiful stories that a dream as big as any hollywood musical could make can happen in an apartment building above a bodega that a bodega owner could be the main character of a story and and that's what we tried to do throughout the movie that's what every single actor there was every single dancer we worked our butt off to really create a world that was beautiful there's no violence there's no guns, there's no drugs.

This is about dreaming, dreaming at the highest levels, and that the American dream is complicated, and that everybody has their own version of how to fulfill the American dream or keep it going. And for that, I am so proud of the movie. At a time when Latino main characters in Hollywood movies, I think they had like 2% of the dialogue that year. And we made a full movie full of it. So yeah, it's hard to hear

those things. I was trying to go through a transformation in the way I make my movies that I make the movie and the audience takes it for as it is. And I have to be at peace with that. And that's sort of, there's one thing where you say that's the case, and there's one thing where you practice it. And that was a great test for me. And I think, and that's not easy sometimes. And sometimes it's at the risk time, I hope we have grace for each other, because if we're changing, that everybody's going to have blind spots or things they need to learn along the way. What did it do to your sense of self, to your personal identity, to be the person criticized about representation instead of the person criticizing about lack of representation? I definitely questioned myself for moments. I had a lot of support, you know, I definitely questioned myself for moments. I had a lot of

support, of course, from everyone who was part of the movie, people outside of the movie, people who found

the beauty in it. you know, I was getting messages, crazy messages from people. Like, I posted a picture

of my daughter when I got home from the press of In the Heights. We were in New York. I came home and posted a picture of my daughter

who made a sign that said, like, welcome home, daddy. And someone wrote, wow, you're raising racist children. And I was like, whoa, I need to get off the internet. And when it goes that far, you sort of like, okay, all right. I won't be their fodder. I won't let them be a part of my life, but I will keep making the thing that I believe that the world needs and make adjustments accordingly. But yeah, it was hard and it was a little bit, it was during sort of the end of COVID period, lockdown period, I guess.

And so there was a lot of reassessing. It sort of led me to Wicked in a weird way. This idea that Elphaba sings in Defying Gravity, she says, something has changed within me. Something is not the same. And those words, which I've known for many, many years, meant more on that day than anything else. And I felt like this is what we all feel. We are all rejiggering our, how we see the world and what we thought the world had prepared for us and how we think the American dream was and how it actually is. And now we need to write the new story. What is that?

And I felt compelled with, that I had a microphone, I had a movie to make that kind of could help us all heal from that idea. Let's go back to the beginning. You grew up in Silicon Valley in the 80s and 90s. What was happening at the time in Silicon Valley that you were aware of? Well, NASA was a big part of our community. HP was a big part. There was, you know, I think when I was growing up, there was Reagan and

Bush were around. And so there was, and Stanford, of course, was kicking. Steve Jobs had just sort of been kicked out of Apple. So he was our hometown hero and everyone was rooting for him. George Lucas was in the city making his own movies, independent movies called Star Wars and things like that over there. So it was a beautiful, magical time. And you had a lot of early digital tech in part because one of your parents' customers what distributed them and so i don't know whether he gave you deals or just gave you the tech but but you had stuff what did you have that helped create the know-how that you needed when you started making your own little indie teenage films yeah i got them for free from customers. They literally, Russell Brown from Adobe would give me all the Adobe Photoshop.

I got After Effects Premiere. I was getting computer equipment from Dave Smith, who had a company called True Vision. I got monitors. This is all free for this. I was, I don't know, 14 years old. Did they know that you were dying to make movies? Yeah, this is the reason why my dad would talk to them. You know, the chef chooses a house of stories, so he'd be telling them all stories about us.

And they would be like, yeah, we have this thing. It's called digital video. It's going to change everything. Before that, I had been just editing on a VHS on different VCRs. So that changed it. I had no business owning this equipment. It had no manual, so I had to figure it out myself. But that sort of got me started in figuring out the grammar of audiovisual storytelling. And you started making movies with your older brother.

Yeah, my older brother, he's like, you know, everyone loves my older brother. Everyone wants to be friends with me to be friends with my older brother, Larry. He was like 6'2", and he's like the basketball player. And so he would have these class videos, and he would tag me along because I could carry the camera or carry the batteries or whatever. And I would just tag along and watch them. And it was also the time of Spike Lee and Michael Jordan. And so the sort of convergence of media and sports, and my brother was a basketball player, so he had a guy who was shooting them and shooting their highlight videos and stuff. It became really cool to have a video guy with you at whatever you were doing.

And so I was just that guy for them and became that guy for a lot of people in our school. When you were in film school, you did. I'm unclear about this, whether it was a trailer or a movie called When the Kids Are Away, because I saw the trailer online, you know, on the internet, but I couldn't find the actual movie. Yeah, the full movie is what got me into this business. It's what Steven Spielberg saw. You can't actually see it online. I have not posted it.

Oh, no wonder. Okay. Okay. So let me describe the trailer, because the trailer is pretty funny. It starts like a kind of like horror film, like what do mothers do when the kids are away? And you see all these like stills with kind of scary music underneath. And it looks like, oh my god, they're like, they're all serial killers, you know, but it turns out a kid

sneaks into like a trash can and hides out so he could see what the mothers do when the kids are away. What they're doing is all these big, joyful production numbers. They're singing and they're dancing while folding laundry and stuff like that. So it's funny and it's fun. And there's so many, there's like a bunch of different production numbers in it edited together in this kind of really fast sequence. And it's quite impressive considering you were in film school and just, you know, what it took to do so many songs and, you know, to do so many dances and so on. So tell us about the doors that that opened for you. Well, we had no budget for that as well. And we got it all together. And it was at that time, there was no YouTube. So you couldn't just get it online. People had to have a physical copy in their hand. And that's the one that Steven Spielberg saw. That was the one that I got my agents and managers from.

That's the one that got me my first movie. There was something magical about it that people saw that changed everything for me. What did Spielberg do for you? He asked to meet with you. What happened? Yeah, he met with me, and I got to go to the DreamWorks office, which is overwhelming when you're 22 years old. And I was prepared to tell him how much I loved him. And all he did was tell me what he loved about my short.

It was the kindest thing I've ever experienced. And my goal was to, my friend was like, you got to get a second meeting. That's the goal. So I tried to maneuver a second meeting by saying, oh, I have a musical that I'm writing right now. And he's like, I would love to hear it. And he was like, how about Thursday? And I was like, yes.

So me and my friend had to conjure up this musical by Thursday, and we came back in and pitched the movie, and he bought it. And we developed it for a couple of years. It never went, but he invited me to his set to visit him and watch him direct, and it was the most encouraging, beautiful thing that someone could do. When you were watching him direct, he did

a scene that wasn't going well. People criticized him for the way it was done, and instead of being defensive, he said, let's try it another way, and then it worked. It was a master class for me to watch. I'm literally sitting next to him. He gave me a seat next to him. I'm sharing like candy with him.

And this musical number that he was shooting wasn't happening. And so he just took a moment. I saw him totally calm, never panic. And he just said, no, we're going to switch this camera. Forget that whole thing. We're going to switch the camera here. Do this, do that. And the whole machine moved.

And he was just right back at the seat with me and it kept going. And there was a lot of tension right before that. So to see that and to see the kindness that he would give in those directions and the confidence made me want that said, Oh, you can be at that level and be that kind and giving, I guess the image in my head of an artist is always like demanding and screaming and yelling. And, and that for the rest of my life affected me. John, it's really just been such a pleasure to talk with you. Thank you so much. I look forward to seeing your latest projects. Thank you very much. It's an honor to talk to you, Terry.

John M. Chu's new memoir is called Viewfinder. His film adaptation of Wicked is scheduled to open in November. As part of his summer series about great albums celebrating their 50th anniversaries, rock critic Ken Tucker has chosen an album by the British band Roxy Music. Led by singer and songwriter Brian Ferry, Roxy Music released the album Country Life in 1974. The band was always more popular in England than America. Country Life was their first album to crack the Billboard Top 40, and it became a centerpiece of the group's reputation as innovative art rockers. Here's Ken's take on the album and its historical context. In America, we tend to like our artists passionate and direct, straight shooters.

It's no wonder Brian Ferry and Roxy Music were not the most successful British exports. Ferry aimed more for archness and irony. He moans beautifully, artfully aloof. Yes, he falls in love sometimes quite desperately. But he's not going to let his tears stain his white dinner jacket as he moves languidly toward the microphone. I fear I won't share Now I know there's a future for all of us Not so long ago I was so scared Country Life was Roxy Music's fourth album,

its title taken from a British fashion magazine about country life at its most posh. In 1974, the band was readjusting itself. Keyboardist Brian Eno, who'd done the most to put the art in Roxy Music's Art Rock on their first two albums, had left unhappy. Brian Ferry may have played the detached dandy on stage, but when it came to creative differences, he was a ruthless winner. From now on, Roxy Music would be his project, designed for a series of grand melodramas. The sky is dark, the wind is cold The night is young before it's old and gray We will know

To fill it all The time has come It's getting late It's now or never Don't hesitate The storm When I call Don't spoil

The thrill of it all That's The Thrill of It All, one of two extraordinary cinematic compositions on country life. The music there is a roiling swirl of chaos created by guitarist Phil Manzanera, saxophonist Andy McKay, and the keyboards of Eddie Jobson. Paul Thompson's drumming propels the melody forward, never permitting Ferry's vocals to go slack with his decadent ennui. The effect is to heighten and intensify

the romantic agony. By the time Ferry gets to the climactic line, a quote from the American wit Dorothy Parker, you might as well live, the song has taken on a delirious intensity. Too much in whose control Pressure and resentment So I'm told something's got to give I'm there I had life at the sea You might as well live The other high point of country life is the song buried next to last on the album,

A Really Good Time. It begins with an orchestral fanfare that ushers in Ferry singing to a woman as dissolute and hedonistic as he is. He and she share the despairing belief that a really good time can only end in a messy breakup. You've heard enough of the blues and stuff You're pretty swell now Cause you're pretty tough But I don't have to tell you How hard it can be to get by You never bothered about anyone else

You're well educated with no common sense But love, that's one thing you really need to get by All your troubles come from yourself Nobody hurts you, they don't care Just as long as you show them A really good, really good time Brian Ferry, born working class, the son of a coal miner, liked to play up his blue blood pretensions during this period. He'd be insufferable were it not for his immense talent as a chronicler of love corrupted and ruined. As a result, he, Roxy Music, and Country Life remain thrilling.

Rock critic Ken Tucker revisited the album Country Life by Roxy Music, which was released 50 years ago. Coming up, we hear from stuntman-turned-director David Leitch. He directed the new film The Fall Guy about a stuntman played by Ryan Gosling. This is Fresh Air Weekend. My guest David Leitch is a former stuntman who directed the new film The Fall Guy about a stuntman who ends up having to execute spectacular stunts in his real life in order to save the film he's working on, regain the love of the woman who's directing it, and save his life. Inspired by the 80s TV series The Fall Guy, Leach's new film is a blend of action film and rom-com, starring Ryan Gosling as the stuntman and Emily Blunt as the camera operator turned director. The film is a

tribute to stuntmen and the risks they take in spite of their lack of recognition. It's the actors the stuntmen double for who win the awards and the fans love. In The Fall Guy, Gosling's character is the stunt double for the biggest action star on the planet, who also has one of the biggest egos. The opening scene of The Fall Guy is a series of clips from action sequences in which the stunts include tumbling down a rocky cliff, riding a motorcycle over the roofs of several cars, each car a distance from the next, getting thrown through a bus window,

running through a battlefield surrounded by explosions and getting blown off the ground. While we watch that, we hear this voiceover narration by Ryan Gosling's character. You'll hear lots of motors, explosions, gunfire, and shattering glass. They're in almost every movie. You just don't know that they're there. Because that's the job.

They're the unknown stunt performers. And they get paid to do the cool stuff. They also get paid to take it on the chin. And everywhere else, if you know what I mean. Oh, that's... that's me. Colt Severs. Getting blown up and hiding my face in a muddy puddle, which isn't ideal when you're trying to look cool in front of Jodi,

who you just so happen to have a major crush on. She's a camera operator. She's definitely going to achieve her goal of being a big-time Hollywood movie director. It's rare for a stuntman to become as successful behind the camera as David Leitch. He directed Bullet Train, Fast and Furious Presents Hobbs and Shaw, Deadpool 2, Atomic Blonde, and was an uncredited co-director of the first John Wick movie. As a stuntman, his breakthrough was on Fight Club as a stunt double for Brad Pitt, who we work with on several subsequent films, including Troy, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and Ocean's Eleven.

He doubled for Agent Smith in two Matrix sequels. Leach did stunts for Matt Damon in The Bourne Ultimatum. He's also been an action coordinator and stunt coordinator. Leach is credited as being at the forefront of a new generation that's credited with making martial arts sequences more realistic. David Leitch, welcome to Fresh Air. I really enjoyed the new film. And your working career is pretty amazing.

Do stunt doubles have a code, kind of like magicians do, not to reveal certain trade secrets? And did that limit what you could reveal in the film? Can I just start by saying thank you for having me? Like, I'm a huge fan, and I'm very excited to be here. Well, back at you. I'm a fan, so... But, yeah, it is a little bit like magic, you know? I think we're always reinterpreting the classic gags

and the classic tricks, and so, you know, that's what we did with Fall Guy. We sort of reimagined the big car jump. We reimagined the high fall from the helicopter. And there is a little secrecy. I think, you know, part of it for years, because it was such a business where it was passed down, it's apprenticeships, it's passed down from family, usually to kids. And it's hard to crack in and find someone to teach you because they didn't want to share the knowledge so much, you know, because it can be a really fun and lucrative business and not um give too much away you know you see those fire stunts we didn't really give the science behind that away um and there is a you know that's what's really amazing about stunts i think people think it's a bunch of daredevils and

and there's a little bit of that sensibility in stunt performers but really there's a lot of physics and math and legacy tricks that, you know, get you through the day. The first stunt that Ryan Gosling does in the film is jumping from a ledge 12 stories high. And we see him wearing a harness, as stuntmen do in scenes like that, and the harness will eventually be erased in post-production. When you do a stunt like that, and I'm sure you've done lots of those high falls, do you like say a prayer or meditate in the moments right before you jump? Like what goes through your mind and how do you like center yourself and prepare yourself? You know, I had many conversations on the set of Fall Guy with Ryan about that because you're standing on the ledge

and ultimately a lot of stunt work is trusting your team. Now, we had an incredible, what we call, rigging team on the Fall Guy. Keir Beck is an Australian stunt performer and I've known him since the Matrix years. He's now become one of the legendary stunt riggers in the business. And you're hooked up to this machine and you're trusting the physics of it

and you've rehearsed it and you've seen the weight bags go down and up. But again, you're stepping off the ledge and you have to have this ability to calm your nerves, trust in the process, have the confidence that we've tested this over and over and it's going to go great. And so you do find a little bit of a meditative state and really just focusing on performance. That's how I do it. It's not unlike an athlete, you know, at the starting line, you really have to focus on the first step and then your body takes over. And I think you wait,

you hear that cue action and you go. Which made you more nervous doing stunts like that yourself or feeling responsible for Ryan Gosling's safety when he did the stunts? See, Terry, I knew you were going to ask these hard questions. No, I think absolutely, as a stunt performer, when you move into being a stunt coordinator, it's harder, because you have your friends that are doing the stunts and you're designing them and you're, you know, you are, you are responsible for their safety. And so, yeah, it's harder to see how someone else do it than it is yourself, you know, and especially with my experience of them doing them so long, it's easier for me to do it and feel comfortable than to watch somebody else sometimes. Your heart goes through your chest. Apparently Ryan Gosling is afraid of heights. So there's a scene where he does the 12 story high jump, but also there's a scene with a helicopter falling from the helicopter. So how, it's kind of cruel to put somebody with fear of heights in stunts like that.

Like, how did you both work that out? To be fair, he didn't necessarily bring it up when we were working on the script together. Like, he had a crippling fear of heights. And I think... So you didn't know that? I didn't know it until we were now having this negotiation about the first stunt. And we had been designing it and rehearsing it you know that the I went that cure back that that stunt rigger we had actually

simulated the high fall in a parking lot we had a construction crane we had built the same rig that we were going to be flying inside of that building and we were rehearsing it at different heights and we had the winches that lower you at sort of free fall speed set up and I'm like oh we're going to bring Ryan out for rehearsal and it was that first day when we brought him out for rehearsal he sort of confides in me he's like you know I have a crippling fear of heights and I'm like now you're telling me yeah now okay and he's like I'm sure there's a green screen version of this right there's absolutely and I'm like there is but why don't we just take you up 10 feet and then 20 feet and then you can kind of feel how the rig works and and sort of you know build the trust in the system and then ultimately after that first day of rehearsal he said you know I am playing a stunt performer and I know we want to celebrate the real stunt performers doing it in this movie but I also think I need to do this so I understand the character and it's like we're

opening the movie I'm gonna do it I'm in there's a line in your film in which Ryan Gosling says it all hurts getting thrown out of a window getting set on on fire, it all hurts. So what is like the typical kind of pain that a stuntman experiences when they're not like injured exactly, but it's just like the standard pain of doing that stunt? I have a lot of experience with that. You know, you talked about specialties and like, you know, the car stunts and cars and fire and things like that. They actually hurt less sometimes, I think, because, you know, you've built in all these protocols to protect the performer and there's a lot of science involved. But the meat and potatoes of stunt performing is just physical performance. And sometimes it's like, you know,

getting thrown down a set of stairs and, you know, multiple takes and you know how to protect yourself and you know, you know, you know, you're not going to break anything, but you're going to get a lot of bumps and bruises and twisted ankles and crooked necks. And, and, um, but that's just something that you accept. And so having been a fight guy, that was sort of my life. Like, um, you're doing fight scenes,

you're getting, you know, whiplash from doing reactions and you're, um, smashing through breakaway tables or you're, you know, getting thrown out a window. And like,

you just, part of it is like the ability to be a little bit tough and have some pain tolerance and know that you're okay, that they're just bruises, but you know, you get back up. Okay, so you're in a little bit of pain and then the director says,'s do another take how do you feel when that happens working as a stuntman you hate it but you you know you're stoic about it and it is sort of the contract that you sign in the sense of like the unwritten contract that you sign like if you can get up you should be going again and you know and the stunt coordinator expects you to do that too because he's hired you and he doesn't want you to not make him look good in front of the director i think for myself now

being in the director chair i have a lot more appreciation for you know the performers and um it's really like if we get it on one take why not you know check? Like, why are we doing it again? You know, there is a there's a great story from Fight Club, you know, and this is not to, you know, throw David Fincher under the bus, who's like one of my mentors who I love. But we did that stair fall 12 times, 12, 12 takes. And I think the stunt double for Edward Norton was in boxer shorts. And, you know, we had figured out a way to pad the stairs. And, you know, the art department had faux painted. It looked like concrete.

There were some safety things. But it's still launching yourself down a set of stairs. And it's like, I don't want to ask him to this day, like, David, which one did you use? And he's like, oh, take two. So that's ten takes that were not necessary. Yeah. Yeah, like, what were you looking for? And again, like, I just know as a stunt performer, like, if it looks like a wreck and it was really compelling and painful and you got it on film, why are we going again?

Like, you know, it's only going to get, you know, the stunt performer only gets more cautious and tries to protect themselves even more. I mean, it's just instinct at that point. As a former stuntman and current director, do you worry at all that all the computer special effects and, you know, CGI are going to make audiences or have already made audiences kind of numbed to all the risks that stunt performers actually take because you can now assume that it's all done in post-production or most of it's done in post-production with a green screen. So you're not so worried as you might have been in the past about the risks and the technique and the art of stunt performers. I know that that's where the world is heading. And I think that that's okay.

You know, for me, as someone who enjoys action films, I feel the difference in the stakes of what's happening on the screen with the characters when I feel that it's real. And so I think there'll always be the want for that, I hope, especially for action film lovers. But actually just really good storytelling. Like, if the visual effects and the CGI can't deliver the reality of really feeling the stakes behind it all, then it's always going to fall flat. When you were just getting started, and you weren't even getting started yet, you were hoping to get started. You had graduated college. I think you taught elementary school for a year, then went to LA. And with some friends who

were also aspiring stuntmen, you lived together in a house that was nicknamed Stunt House. And it became kind of famous in the world of stuntmen and some directors, because you had your backyard outfitted to practice stunts on. What did you have in the backyard? So we had rented this house. And it actually was a, I think a family was living in Florida or the landlord was living in Florida. And I actually moved into this house. There was a friend of mine, Tim Rigby, I think who actually had the lease. My friend

was Brad Martin at the time, and another friend of mine, Brad Simonson, who's now a visual effects producer. And what we did in the backyard, we had bought a trampoline, an Olympic size trampoline. And we were learning trampoline skills, because it actually helps you for a couple reasons one for high falls you know when you're falling off of something you want to be able to you know understand air awareness and get your head under and fall to your back you know into the pads you always want to get to your back um so your trampoline allows you to train that you know that that skill and that instinct at constant repetition like you're doing you're jumping up you're doing a header we call it where you're just like landing on your back and bouncing landing on your back and bouncing and

your body gets used to you fall off of something you get to your back that's why trampoline is so crucial to the stuntman's training. So we had this in the backyard and we just decided, you know, why don't we dig it into the backyard? It should be great if we had like a flush with the ground. So one afternoon we just got the shovels out. We didn't ask the landlord and we dug a hole and sunk the trampoline into the ground.

And then later that month, I think we bought cinder block and we made it perfect and we sort of really dressed it out. And it was funny that we stayed in that house for four years, three, four years, and the landlord never said anything. And then we've always paid our rent on time. And we would train at this house in Redondo Beach. We'd fall off the roof. We would use the air ram.

We would bounce on the trampoline. It was just fun times. It was really, really fun times training ourselves to be stunt people. If you hadn't become a director, could you still be doing stunts? I don't know how old you are now, but at some point, like your body really can take that. You can, you have to evolve. I mean, there's a lot of great stunt performers that are still, that are, you know, my age that still perform. But they have to move into the things that weren't my specialty. I think, like, I would have had to move into vehicles. There's some great drivers that are in their 60s and seventies that can still maneuver a car. You know,

they just the years behind the wheel of just the precision of all of the fine, you know, motor skill it takes to like hit your marks in that world. And it's not so hard on your body, but being a fight double and being like the physical double that's, you know, getting ratcheted back from explosions or falling down the stairs or, you know, taking the big hits. Like, yeah, you can. I'm so grateful I was able to transition out of it because you don't want to be doing that at a certain age. Yeah.

Well, I want to thank you so much for talking with us. It's really been fun and very informative. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. David Leitch directed The Fall Guy, starring Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt. It's currently streaming. Fresh Air Weekend is produced by Teresa Madden. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller.

Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Amy Sallet, Phyllis Myers, Roberta Shorrock, Anne Ribaldonado, Sam Brigger, Lauren Crenzel, Heidi Saman, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, and Joel Wolfram. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross. Better results. Learn more at Grammarly.com slash enterprise.