Top 35 David Leitch Quotes

All film, at the end of the day, has wish-fulfillment.

Spies go undercover. They take on different personas.

You always start a fight scene or an action scene with, ‘What are we learning about this character at the moment, and how are we gonna arc him or her in the next three minutes,’ and it’s no different with ‘Deadpool’ or ‘Atomic Blonde’ or ‘John Wick.’

In the stunt world, fights and vehicles are often two different disciplines.

Great actors can transform, but sometimes there’s just this person who speaks right to the role. When they walk in the room, you know they’re that character. That is something you can’t teach an actor; that’s something that’s luck and chance.

As a stunt guy, you become a mini-director. You’re talking to actors about performance.

There’s a lot of directing within the stunt coordinator’s job.

You learn tricks to make action look more dynamic – having the fight come toward you or shooting on a longer lens to compress the speed.

I think in the ‘Deadpool’ franchise, the writers are really good at distilling the good stuff and applying that to the material in this universe.

Selling art is a lot different than making it.

There are a lot of big action movies that we’ve worked on where the attitude has been, ‘Let’s just get through this scene.’ Then you get those jumpy, what-were-they-thinking action sequences.

A lot of people don’t give their audiences credit. You can leave it a little mysterious. They can think about it.

You can sometimes break rules in comics that you can’t necessarily break in cinema. It’s fun to find something cool in a comic and then try and find a way to break the same rule in another medium.

I look at the action scenes as placeholders when I arrive on a script, knowing that I’m going to expand on them when I understand the constraints of the movie, the locations of where we’re shooting, the abilities of the actors, and where we want to go with the characters.

I think what’s really important is to challenge yourself. You can very easily fall into the rut of, ‘We know it works! We’ll use that old chestnut.’

Some actors have an affinity for dance, and they should explore it, train in it, and get good.

‘Atomic Blonde’ is about the characters’ bigger existential crisis and their world. It’s not so much the conceit of the spy game; it’s more that being a spy sucks. But we’re going to make it fun to watch.

You know, the ‘Atomic Blonde’ universe is its own universe. There’s influences obviously of Bond and Bourne and ‘Wick,’ all the things I’ve been exposed to, but it is its own universe.

Part of the problem is that many directors treat female characters too often as precious. Or they want to live in a fantasy world where they just do spinning hook kicks and knock out guys who are six foot four, and that doesn’t work either.

There’s an arc to an action sequence, and you need to come out the other end knowing your character better, and maybe the story has moved forward in a compelling way.

It’s called ‘John Wick’ – it’s really about this guy’s very simple journey. We just didn’t want to clutter it. It’s gratifying it in its own right, in its simplicity.

You have to make bold choices to be noticed.

Take up martial arts and get proficient. Take a sword-fighting class. Dive in and immerse yourself in it as you would any other acting class, so when the opportunity comes, that skill can be really utilized, and it’s not half-baked.

Coming from an action background, I always approach the action sequences in any script as kind of placeholders.

Stunt coordinating is a good training ground for directing because you have exposure to all the departments in film.

Film is a collaborative art form. I don’t know why you wouldn’t recognize the stunt performers.

Shooting a fight is like shooting any other scene. You have to tell a story using a very specific choreography.

Sometimes, the action genre does get stale. Although I want to go back and see my favorite characters in their tentpoles – and will religiously do that – it’s really fun to see breakout ideas and concepts. Let’s make some new stories.

The thing that I like about action sequences is that if they’re done well, you get to know more about the character in those few minutes than you do through 10 minutes of exposition.

As a filmmaker, I’m a collaborator first.

The completely irreverent tone was the thing that won me over about the first ‘Deadpool’ movie.

The way you present a stunt is tied in to the way you photograph it, so you’re hanging out with the cinematographer.

While filming ‘The Matrix,’ we studied how a Chinese fight-choreography team trains actors before production starts so that they can participate in action sequences in a more dynamic way.

Choreographing a fight scene is telling a little story. You learn a lot about the characters involved.

If you have John Goodman in your movie, you want to use him as much as possible.