Summary

• David Leitch's career as a director started from humble beginnings as a stuntman for big stars like Jean-Claude Van Damme.
• Leitch's close call with a dangerous stunt early in his career highlighted the risks involved in his line of work as a stunt performer.
• Leitch's experience training actors for fight scenes has been crucial to the success of films like Fight Club, John Wick, and Atomic Blonde.

The Fall Guy director, David Leitch's career was nearly derailed towards the start after a stunt with Jean-Claude Van Damme almost went horribly wrong. Before directing acclaimed action films like Bullet Train, Atomic Blonde, and co-creating John Wick, David Leitch was a stuntperson, doubling for Brad Pitt and Matt Damon multiple times. Leitch recently appeared on Corridor Digital's Stuntmen React series, breaking down the various stunts and action sequences in The Fall Guy, as well as his past movies.

During the video, Leitch discussed one of his first major jobs as a stuntman, working alongside Van Damme on Replicant. David Leitch started off by describing his "crazy" role in the film, saying:

"Jean-Claude needed someone to fight himself because he was a clone."

Leitch then broke down one of the film's major fight scenes between himself and Van Damme. The scene involved the pair fighting each other in a warehouse and, at one point, fighting on a moving staircase. Leitch then described the moment his career nearly ended just as it was starting, after an unintentional stunt involving the stairs failed.

"This is a great stunt, I gotta tell you about this. It’s not really even a stunt. We tell Jean-Claude, and again, this is not his fault, this is our fault. My fault. ‘You know, Jean-Claude, you can shake it so much, but I’m not tethered in.’ And I’m supposed to be leaning backwards, and I’m not tethered in. They should have probably webbing strapped my feet in or something. And I remember him tipping the whole thing over. He tips it over. And I’m like ‘oh my god I’m going to hit my head from 12 feet high onto the concrete, right?’ I’m falling and in slow motion I just hear this pad go “zzzzt from across the floor.’ 20 feet away, Scott Ateah just slides this pad. And I land, I mean I totally taco. I mean I would’ve been knocked out, or neck broke. Scott just saved my ass."

David Leitch on Training Actors to Fight

David Leitch didn't need to do any training with Van Damme before the fight scene, as anyone who has seen the Belgian actor's movies will know that Van Damme is a lifelong martial artist. However, for his recent directorial work, and even as far back as Fight Club, part of Leitch's role on set is to train actors for their fight scenes.

For David Fincher's Fight Club, Leitch trained Brad Pitt, Jared Leto, and the rest of the cast for the fight scenes. Leitch described the process, saying:

"The biggest job on Fight Club was training the actors. David Fincher wanted them to do their stuff. The design of the fights in this movie... they were more about the narrative of this brutality. If you really brought these people that never fought in real life, what would it look like? But then we had to make sure that they could do it safely."

Leitch then ran through all the projects he's worked on where he's had to train the actors, including 300, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Atomic Blonde, and John Wick. Leitch had a lot of praise for Keanu Reeves' dedication to the training process, saying:

"We trained Keanu [Reeves] exhaustively for that movie. And he delivered. He did set the bar for all the actors that came after him."

The Fall Guy is currently in theaters.