When stunt coordinators Tim Connolly and Hank Kingi Jr. first read the script for the pilot of FX’s “The Old Man,” they thought its central chase sequence was one of the best-written scenes in TV. Then, their minds flooded with “a ton of concerns.”
Speaking with Variety as Emmy voting comes to a close, Connolly says their challenge was: “How do you pull such a significant scene off with an actor that is 70 years old, and make it feel real and visceral?”
So Jeff Bridges prepared for the scene for over a month. In the series, he plays Dan, a rogue CIA operative on the run after being discovered by the FBI. The pilot climaxes with Dan trying to outrun a tail. He seemingly disappears, but before the agents can react, he comes out of nowhere and crashes his car, staving off any fightback from the FBI agents chasing after him.
Since Bridges was taking on a younger and stronger enemy, Kingi Jr. was concerned about making the scene feel believable and creative. Luckily, they had plenty of lead time to rehearse and choreograph the sequence. “It was one of the first things we tackled,” Kingi Jr. says. Their first conversation with the showrunners was to ensure Bridges’ safety at all costs, and yet still make it feel like he was in a fight.
Connolly explains that as they prepped, “We’d bring the camera in and keep it moving. But [Bridges] has a bad back, and his back was bothering him. That’s typical for a man of his age, and so we built that into the action.” He continues, “We built in the wet-rag technique. It’s old man jiu-jitsu, which is about tying down certain parts of the body and holding them so you can believe this man is about to take out the younger guy. He takes his hits and beatings along the way.”
To ensure Bridges didn’t get injured, the duo worked with him on a warm-up routine that focused on his back and shoulders. Says Connolly, “We built on what his capabilities were.” However, there were hurdles regarding “taking the weight on the body,” so they had to figure out how to tweak that.
Bridges had a willingness and determination to get the scene right, and he came in with plenty of notes, says Connelly. “He pulled out a binder that was as thick as the script for that episode, and he was so prepared,” Connelly recalls of their first meeting. “He had thought about this scene from every direction, from the minute he hits the vehicle to how he gets out of the vehicle, to how he’s going to go from that. That prep helped elevate the scene and us, because he brought so much to it.”
However, a month of preparation could not protect the scene from bad weather. Connolly says they had planned to do one or two takes at most, but, “When we went to shoot, it was three in the morning, it was freezing and there were big gusts of wind.”
The strong wind meant it would move the camera out of frame. Says Kingi Jr., “We would lose the framing, which meant we had to do another take because the shot simply wasn’t there. But Jeff was very understanding about it, and he’d push on and we got the shot… Jeff gave 110% in every moment of that sequence.”
