Stunt doubles

Edward Berger

By the way, also look at, here's another sound cue when Felix blows up. We go into, and the typical thing would be, I think, again, another, we wanted in one shot to have him run and then be thrown into the air. That shot where he explodes is a VFX shot. It's actually a stuntman that gets thrown into the air, but we stitched it together with Paul running.

1:16:44 · jump to transcript →

Edward Berger

And the guy who's playing the Frenchman, who's playing Duval, I cast a lot of people. And you know who I took? I took a stuntman in the end. Because I knew, okay, I want to concentrate again. I want to have the time to concentrate on Paul's face. Check out this makeup in this scene. And to be with him and not to worry about the soldier. And if you have an actor, if you have someone, first of all, he needs to fall down that crater hole and lie in the mud.

1:24:05 · jump to transcript →

Edward Berger

You know, you can't let an actor lie in the mud for 10 hours. A stuntman, that's his job. And he also needs to fall down this little crater when he gets blown up in the beginning. And so that gave me the ability to concentrate on Felix and just let this guy lie in the mud for 10 hours. We try to take good care of him. But I think he did such a fantastic job of playing this dying. And it's really hard.

1:24:33 · jump to transcript →

Shit. This guy thinks he's gonna beat the crap out of these guys. Anyway, Daniel trained me, guys. I do my fighting in this movie, and I always wanted to do that. I won't say the name of the actor, but I told an actor once, who I like, that I'm gonna do an action movie and that I was training, and he laughed at me and he said, "Why are you training? "They have guys who do the fighting for you." And I was like... I didn't say it to him but I wanted to say, "No, I want to do the action movie. I don't want to just be in one." You want to put in the work. I want to do what Jackie Chan does, my version of it, the best I could do. So I trained for two years with Daniel, and he took me from zero to wherever the hell I am here. But I do this fight that you're about to see, and I had fun doing it. I had so much fun doing the fight sequences. And there are no stunt doubles except for one shot in the entire sequence. Which is... It's one thing coming from me. It's another when... Our fantastic action choreographer, Greg Rementer, he said, "Ilya, enjoy it because you don't get this ever. "You don't get the dedication. "People just come in and they kind of, you know, Stretch a little bit "and then as soon as it gets a little bit uncomfortable "the doubles run in and do the hard work." It was fantastic that every shot, every action beat was done by you. And furthermore, the fact that, you know, we had to cut, and we wanted to make it a little more dynamic than just a steady camera single shot. But we could have done five, six connections in a row, no problem, without cutting away because you memorized the hell out of this whole thing and trained in this very bus. There were moments when you trained, right? Right before the production and prep? - Yeah, we trained in LA. We had a layout of this bus and we trained for this sequence. It changed over time. For different reasons, it changes. There's Daniel and me, head to head. There he is, the guy who trained me. And he's such a great fighter. He's such a great on-screen fighter, and he's such an amazing guy. An amazing, intelligent, upbeat, hardworking, just one of the best people I've ever worked with, known. And he got me here. What else can I say? I love him and I want to make more movies with him and... Then he gets thrown out of the bus. Our hero.

27:13 · jump to transcript →

Can we just talk for one second about our black Russian? Araya. Araya is a great actor, Araya Mengesha. Yep. And he has a great part in here, and he plays it so well. Now, is he a stuntman? - No. He is an actor from Toronto. Yeah. - A great guy. And I give him a lot of credit because he... When I talked to him, I said, "Look, I want him to be... "I want Pavel, the black Russian, to be speaking Russian "and to sound as Russian as possible." Yeah. - 'Cause he's based on... I don't know how to pronounce it. "Amalgamation"? Yeah. - Of a few Russian black guys that I know. 'Cause, obviously, we don't... You know, we're mostly predominantly a white nation. Right. But the story that Pavel, or Araya, the character talks about how he's the son of an Ethiopian Olympian from the Moscow Olympics. That's all... There's a certain group of people in Moscow or in Russia who were the result of the Olympics. Just people came over, had sex and left. And so these hyper-athletic kids from Olympian fathers or mothers, fathers, they grew up with a very different skin color in a country which... People were not used to that in the slightest. So they had a very, sort of, in a way, great experience 'cause they were getting the right kind of attention. But obviously, with the right kind of attention also comes, usually, the wrong kind of attention. So he is based on a real concept. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I said, "Araya, it'd be great if you can, you know, spend some time "and I'll coach you a little bit and let's get the Russian right." And he did. Like, we spent, before recording, you know... Yeah. Twenty minutes a day just going over... - He's fantastic in this. Such a great guy. A joy to work with too. As were all these guys, but... This is a team of people, mostly Canadian stunt people, but overseen by Greg Rementer and Daniel Bernhardt, who did some of the fight choreography, all the fight choreography. Well... - It was Daniel and Kirk together. Yep. - Well, together. I mean, Greg Rementer is this... What is his title here? - I think he's both... He's the stunt choreographer and the second unit director. Yes. Anyway, it was a team effort.

48:18 · jump to transcript →

Nia DaCosta

Help! This, we had a really fun rig on Gordon... Wait! ...In this scene, who plays Jonno. And we have the best stunt performers in this scene. They were just, like, so game to throw themselves around, to get tugged around.

24:58 · jump to transcript →

Nia DaCosta

This was so fun to shoot. This... Our amazing stunt performer, who we lit on fire, I think, three times. And the crazy thing about this, which I didn't know, is basically he gets covered... His body... Like, underneath the costume, he gets covered in something that protects him from fire. And then he gets... puts on the costume, puts on a gel that was supposed to light up. And then he wears a mask over his face so that he doesn't, you know, his face doesn't burn off, obviously, and... But he has to hold his breath for the entire time that he's on fire, which I didn't think about. But obviously, you wouldn't want to be inhaling and burning your lungs to shit. So I was so impressed. And I always am with everyone I work with, but especially him being lit on fire three times, I think, on that night, and then three times on this night, to do the shot that's about to come.

48:04 · jump to transcript →

There was an eight-foot-high sculpture of smashed scooters. And here we are. This is the essence of this chase. For all the energy and all the resources that go into it, the cops, the stunt performers, the street closures, none of it would work without the performance of these two actors. And speaking editorially... And always covering them, almost always, in a two-shot. There were very few single shots. And that means that

1:02:02 · jump to transcript →

But these, man, this is like one of the proudest moments for them. They all did great, but the close proximity shooting, if you've dealt with gunfire, if you're a movie maker. Solid stunt for not being a stuntman. Yeah. Blank fire, proximity, I challenge anyone to beat this. If you do, good fucking job. Hey, come on, man. Giddy up.

1:20:50 · jump to transcript →