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Greg Tarzan Davis | Stunt School | Men's Health
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00:00Did you have a stunt double?
00:01I don't think Tom hired stunt doubles.
00:02I think he's like, you know, it's kind of a written, unwritten rule that you just go ahead and do it yourself.
00:08But I don't think any of us would want a stunt double.
00:10When you see somebody like Tom doing his own stunt, you also say like, hey, I can do that as well.
00:14So no, there was no stunt double.
00:16Everybody did their own stunts.
00:19Hey, my name is Greg Tarzan Davis.
00:25And I'm here to talk about stunts.
00:30Mission Impossible, Dead Reckoning with Greg Tarzan Davis.
00:38The first day we all get to Norway from London, right?
00:41I've walked to work before when I was younger working at Smoothie King.
00:45I've even ridden a bike to work on handlebars.
00:47I had never taken a helicopter to work before.
00:49So it is, hey, you want to come, you know, check out the bridge.
00:52You're like, all right, yeah.
00:53So we're walking along the bridge and it's so nice.
00:55It's like, well, all of a sudden you hear a helicopter and you look up.
00:58And Tom is flying by.
01:01And all of a sudden he lets go.
01:03And you're like, oh, my gosh, Tom!
01:05He does this thing, this warmup, maybe like three times.
01:08And then they say, okay, Tom is about to actually do the cliff jump, right?
01:12We're sitting there at the edge and they're like, all right, Tom is about to go.
01:14He's sitting on a motorcycle.
01:15He's revving up.
01:17He's going, he's going, he's going, he's going.
01:18And then all of a sudden he goes.
01:21And you see the motorcycle fall.
01:23And then you see him coming down.
01:24And we're all just sitting there like, did he make it?
01:29We working tomorrow?
01:29Will I be able to pay my bills?
01:31I don't know.
01:31And I get workers comp, even though I didn't get hurt.
01:33So that was a heart, heart to your butt moment.
01:38Scene, top of the train, where it is myself, Degas, Shea Wiggums, Briggs, Tom, and Isai Morales.
01:45We started filming Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning during a global pandemic.
01:49Tom was championing it, getting people back to work.
01:52And if it wasn't for him, man, I don't know when we would have started filming again.
01:56So that was really incredible of him.
01:57And then we had the actor strike.
01:59So that was another thing.
02:01We weren't on set, but we had to individually work out.
02:04So we would be on FaceTime, me and Palm, like, hey, what's your workout for your date?
02:08When I was breaking my character down, I was trying to figure out who he was as an individual,
02:12what his life was.
02:13And as I broke him down, he was good in martial arts.
02:16I have a background myself as a second degree black belt.
02:18And I said, I'm going to add that to that guy.
02:20He's more of that a militant type, but he also has a good combat, like close combat skills,
02:25like boxing and whatnot.
02:26So that's something that I dove into heavy.
02:29Tom is all about being competent.
02:30And the only way to be competent is to be able to understand all the logistics that goes
02:34into all of these stunts.
02:35That's why he's so calm when it comes out of these things.
02:38That's why he doesn't stress.
02:39That's why he smiles, because he has worked out every single intricate detail to make sure
02:43that safety comes first.
02:46My first day working on set was being on top of the train.
02:50They say, hey, can you climb up there?
02:52And I'm like, of where?
02:53You mean in a car?
02:55No, they mean on top of the roof.
02:56So I go on top of the roof and they strap you up in these harnesses.
02:59And while we're on the train, this was a scary bit.
03:03So I'm on the train and I'm like, you know, I have to fall down on the train.
03:07And when I fall down, my shoe comes off.
03:09And I'm like, whoa, that could have been me.
03:12That could have been me.
03:13That was scary.
03:15Mission Impossible, Final Reckoning.
03:17In the scene, we have several characters.
03:21We have myself, who plays Degas.
03:22You have Palm, who plays Paris.
03:23You have Simon, who plays Benji.
03:25And Rolf Saxon, who plays Don Lowe.
03:27And we're fighting against some Russian agents in a cabin in Svalbard.
03:31So when you're working on action films, it's important for you to be in shape.
03:34Because we filmed these two films back to back, we had to stay in that type of shape.
03:39So we were on a strict diet.
03:40Working out was six times a week.
03:43Sometimes it was two times a day, two a days.
03:45In this one, we were able to go work out with Tom in the pain cave.
03:48So that was cool to experience what that was.
03:50I know that's a famous thing, the pain cave, that he takes around with him.
03:53So it was always there.
03:54It's just specifically in the last film.
03:56It was like, hey, the pain cave is there.
03:58Let's use it.
03:59He has these things.
03:59He has this one treadmill.
04:01It's like a, I'm using the wrong word, like a hyperbolic thing.
04:04So it's not, you know, doing anything to his joints and stuff like that.
04:07He has some wheels on him, man.
04:09He has some serious wheels.
04:10There's this arc of running.
04:12And I was like, Tom, I don't want to look stupid compared to you when I'm running.
04:15Because I run a certain type of way in real life.
04:17And I was like, you got to give me some tips on how to actually run.
04:20And his tip was pump your arms and high knees.
04:23So now I'm doing a Tom Cruise run.
04:25And while I'm running down the street, people are probably like, is that Tom Cruise?
04:27No, that's Tarzan.
04:30I was so excited to get my first on-camera fight scene out there.
04:35What I didn't realize was how challenging it was to actually do fight choreographic.
04:41Because you're throwing punches, but you're not supposed to hit the person.
04:44And then a person's throwing punches at you.
04:46And you have to, like, act like you're being hit.
04:48You're getting thrown around, slammed.
04:50You're just going.
04:51It's take after take after take.
04:52What they wanted to do was really cater the fight scenes to our specific character's ability.
04:58Mine is all, like, close combat type things.
05:01And he's very tactile.
05:02So he's really good in close spaces, which you'll see in the film.
05:06Did you have a stunt double?
05:07I don't think Tom Hire's stunt doubles.
05:08I think he's, like, you know, it's kind of a written, unwritten rule that you just go ahead and do it yourself.
05:13But I don't think any of us would want a stunt double.
05:15When you see somebody like Tom doing his own stunts, you also say, like, hey, I can do that as well.
05:20So, no, there was no stunt double.
05:22Everybody did their own stunts.
05:25Here we go.
05:26Top Gun Maverick.
05:27Let's talk about it.
05:28So the scene is where Coyote goes up to try and do the training mission that's going to happen at the end of the film.
05:35But he's doing it probably in the midpoint of the scene.
05:38And he's going up, pulls a lot of G's, and he passes out.
05:42So Tom Cruise is, as we all know, a person who loves to do his own stunts.
05:46And he kind of encourages everybody else to do their stunts as well, i.e. me, i.e. what the?
05:51To my surprise, I wasn't a part of the core group that was going to fly.
05:56So I was kind of upset.
05:57But a long film, and I guess I left an impression.
06:00And they said, hey, buddy, you're going to start flying now.
06:03In order to get into F-18, we had to go through this water train, this survival train,
06:06just in case you went down in F-18 and the helicopter had to come and get you.
06:10And the helicopter so happens to go down.
06:12They have all of these redundancies just in case something happens.
06:15Thank God nothing did.
06:16In a helo dunker, you're strapped in, and the helo dunker drops down in a tank of water.
06:20And you have to take a breath the last minute before you go under.
06:23And it spins upside down.
06:27And before you can unlatch yourself and get out of a window, you have to wait.
06:30The water has settled down, and then you have to go through.
06:33For some reason, Lewis was moving slow.
06:35I don't like drowning.
06:36So I was moving fast.
06:37I was trying to get out.
06:38Lewis, he thinks he's a mermaid, and he breathed underwater.
06:41That's not how water works for human beings, okay?
06:43I don't understand why he was chilling by the window so much.
06:47So once we got there, we were also learning how to fly a plane.
06:51I ended up getting about 20 hours in the Cessna before I actually moved up to the extra 300,
06:55which was an aerobatic plane, so I can learn how to pull Gs,
06:58so I can get comfortable with what that felt like.
07:01One of Tom's advice was don't eat too much.
07:03I took that advice to heart.
07:05I was one of the pilots who never threw up.
07:07I can't speak for Lewis.
07:08I can't speak for Jay, Glenn, but I know I didn't throw up.
07:11I also, I was taking some dromamine pills in order to hold that down.
07:18I'll tell my secret.
07:20After doing the extra 300 for so many flights, we moved on to the L-39,
07:24which is similar to the F-18.
07:26It's not quite there.
07:27And then we move into the F-18.
07:29Being in the F-18 is like a roller coaster in the sky.
07:32You don't necessarily feel it when you're flying straight ahead,
07:35because, you know, when you're in a car, you don't know if you're going fast or not.
07:38But when you start dogfighting, that's when you feel it.
07:41One thing that they tell us about was hypoxia.
07:43We had to go through this machine where they just give us an example of what that felt like.
07:47So they let us fly it while the mask is on.
07:50And you just get delirious, and you don't even understand what's going on.
07:53And I'm flying the jet, and I'm running and everything.
07:56But in my mind, I'm flying perfectly.
07:58I'm like in cruise control.
07:59Like, this is nothing.
08:00But they had a video of us all, you know, how silly we look.
08:04That was a big thing to be cautious of when you're up in the air.
08:08So we had to go through these long briefing meetings before and after each flight.
08:13And Tom was like, hey, I'm going to show y'all how to do it.
08:16I think, like, the first two days, we just sat there and we watched.
08:19So we would go in and brief and understand how we're going to shoot.
08:21Because as the actors, we were the only ones in the cockpit besides our pilot who was flying in front of us.
08:26We had six cameras operating, so we had to, you know, turn the cameras on.
08:30We had to turn it off.
08:31We had to make sure the lighting was right.
08:32So we're communicating with the pilots to say, which is crazy.
08:36You have a bunch of actors saying, yo, pilot, please turn this $30 million thing this way
08:39because I need the lighting this way so they can get my good side.
08:42You know what I mean?
08:43The first scene that I shot was the scene where I'm passing out.
08:46And I want to say we did it, I kid you not, probably like 12 to 15 times.
08:50I can't remember the exact number.
08:51But that is the most exhausting thing ever because you're constantly pulling Gs.
08:56And we hit, like, 7.8 to 8 Gs.
08:59And you can't really do that because you can bend the wings back.
09:02But it was intense.
09:03Shout out to me.
09:04I didn't pass out.
09:05But my scene was so good, I had everybody thinking I passed out.
09:08And that's Stunt School with Greg Tarzan Davis.
09:10Thanks for watching.
09:11Boop.
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