Stunts, Man-"The Fall Guy"'s Got `Em

Ryan Gosling (and Emily Blunt) keep it super profesh in “The Fall Guy”. It’s not supposed to  be deep.

Does anybody remember the 1980 film “The Stunt Man”?  It was little-seen, though It won Peter O’Toole an Oscar nomination and also got a nom for Richard Rush as Best Director. He shared a writing nom with Lawrence B. Marcus for adapting Paul Brodeur’s 1970 novel of the same name. (The film is now airing for free on Peacock.)

The story follows actor Steve Railsback as Cameron, a fugitive Vietnam vet who’s recruited as an ad hoc stunt man. A nefarious plot unfolds in ways dangerous to Cameron; he’s soon ducking an attempted murder charge. In plot points  “tangled in exposition”, as Ryan Gosling’s Colt would  dub  similar twists in “The Fall Guy,” an actress emerges as love interest.  In a  finale sequence, Cameron is jeopardized in a car-wreck  gag gone wrong--but all parties survive.

Sound familiar? Once you see the pinballing, mostly fun, thoroughly self-aware  and self-marketing exposition  that is “The Fall Guy,” it just might. Not quite as deep-thinking as the Rush film, it is plenty clever. Said Rush of the Columbia execs who had  been baffled by the pitch for his movie, "They couldn't figure out if it was comedy, a dram, if it was a social satire, if it was an action adventure...and, of course, the answer was, 'Yes, it's all those things.' But that isn't a satisfactory answer to a studio executive."

Suffice it to say that Universal execs, faced with a similar compound of genre gestures and intentions, would have fewer misgivings: just  plug in the mixer and add Gosling…and Blunt…in a love story…from the director who co-founded the “John Wick” franchise…chockablock with crazy (and crazily `practical’) action sequences,…with a raft of meta-cheesy needle drops including  a few inescapable chart hits (Swifties, come on down for “All Too Well”!) …still with me?

Oh yes, and a pretty damn cute dog executing heroics..

The dog is under threat but unharmed. (So let’s all just leave Governor Kristi Noem, shameless  puppy executioner, to burn alone  in her own public relations Hell.)

A friend I ran into at the All-Media screening on April 29 wondered aloud if  Gosling, Kenough though he may be, was just maybe taking his victory lap a movie or two… too soon.

Look, I dig the guy as much as you all do. (Met him once at a small screening of  Craig Gillespie’s  2007  “Lars and the Real Girl”–not an ounce of pretense to him.) 

His actor’s gift in most reaction shots is—not quite reacting. The lips are pursed, the eyes are alive but shielded just a bit from revealing most mood swings, and the joshing lines and movie quotes flow naturally. Thus this kind of love-rekindling exchange between his Colt Seavers (the same name as Lee Major’s role model for this part) and  the fledging director Jody  ( the ever-watchable Blunt), which is pat enough but delivered on both sides with a slyness that welcomes us in:  

Jody: I'm the director. You're a stunt guy. We need to keep it super profesh

Colt:  Profesh is my middle name.

Jody: You said your middle name was Danger.

Bada-boy-ain’t they cute!   There are a fair few places where a crafty editor might have reduced this sprawler from 126 minutes to maybe ten or so  mnutes less, but it hardly seems fair to complain if the great reactor takes one…or two…ex…tra beats  when the rekindling chats unfold.

And who would deny Blunt a star-turn karaoke jam, converting the Phil Collins groaner—er, AM radio hit “Take A Look at Me Now” into the most gobsmackingly  heartfelt ballad throwdown of recent film times. The filmmakers have bragged a bit that they used the sequence’s cutaways to  properly pace the unfolding, simultaneous street chase through Sydney. 

And by the way, doesn't Sydney look great in "Anyone But You"? Also the city is very attractive. (Yer welcome mate.)

As it happens—“as it was supposed to happen” to quote Bokonon in Vonnegut’s “Cat’s Cradle”—the chase involving rubbish bins and the crotch-targeting dog slams to a stop at that very karaoke spot. But…well, let’s avoid spoilers.

There’s plenty more where all the above came from, almost exhaustingly so, and by the time an unlikely instance of mistaken identity insists upon elaborately wrecking a trailer with some in- (or un-) credible fisticuffs.,  you’re perhaps ready to say, enough “look guys, we know Blunt can scrap! (Check out “Sicario”  and “Edge of Tomorrow”.) 

No beefing here about the onslaught of earnest attention that must finally be paid to stunt men and their dangerous exploits. In fact I will braggadociously submit that this writer has been all in for stunt folks getting credit, before it became quite so cool.

The deal was, I knew a guy--David Wheeler, rest in peace, somewhere you’re driving recklessly and firing your Colt 1911 into the sky—who was the first major grass dealer to import sinsemilla from Mexico into the Southland. 

There’s too much to tell about Dave —just read about the character Finslander in “You’ll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again” and you’ll know his lightly fictionalized story—but he was pals with stunt guys. Guys on the order of Buddy Joe Hooker (a bit of a legend himself),  and Dick Ziker,  and many more. In those days of set visits by journos, they seemed to me the coolest of dudes. (And still do.)  So one stunt dude (who will go unnamed here) let me hop into the bolted-down bucket seat of   a “futuristic” car zooming down the just-built 105 freeway on “Demolition Man” in 1993. 

(I raced down the same highway in 2005, but that was airborne in a chopper on Michael Bay’s “The Island” and that was a whole `nother story. )

Boy, we went fast in that frail-feeling vehicle., threading busily eastbound alongside several like it.  (Were we chasing Sly Stallone? I think so.) “Wow, what is this thing?“ I wondered. Sideways grin,and  screeching pass of a similar car at speed: “Just a VW Beetle motor clad in shitty fiberglass.”

An hour later the same worthy was chatting with the stunt coordinator, tucking pads under his costume and pricing a gag—a simple (?) roll out of the car onto the freshly-laid cement at 40 m.p.h.  Such things got handled ever-so casually– the gag is described, the stunt man names a price. “Hmmm…1500.” Done.

It all went fine, yes.

Feeling pretty plugged in, a few years later on the set of a full-on car chase film, I spent a morning with a stunt double as his team rigged a couple of “air rams”—those purpose-built slabs that pneumatically trigger an air blast that will flip a stunt man forward –or head over heels—to simulate the percussive blast of a fake explosion behind.  We got down to, “Really? You really want to—”  Oh, yes.  So my dude gave me a little jab shot, no warning.  where say, Ryan Gosling’s ten-pack would be. He didn’t look impressed. But it was a pass/fail thing.

Gents and ladies, I buggered it up. They had dialed that sucker all the way down, but I still didn’t handle my trailing shin right, and lordy, the thwack. 

Oh shoot, I want my mom. But there’s my guy, not smiling. “All good,” I ventured, with a shuddery thumbs-up. Got up slow. Dusted off. And then had to sit at lunch for forty minutes making chit-chat without grimacing, because any boo-hooing would be so very lame and hold consequences for my guy.

There was plenty of time to feel sorry  for myself for the next two days of icing the black, yellow and purple mark  that marked my aching shankbone.  

So, when the stunt men say, with the warm approval of  Ryan Gosling, that  “It hurts. It all hurts,” there will be no argument from me.  And yeah, let’s get that Oscar for stunt work happening.