How Leonardo DiCaprio fell off a roof in ‘One Battle After Another’ in 1 take: An oral history

Just past the exact midpoint of Paul Thomas Anderson‘s stoner-road movie-political thriller One Battle After Another, there’s a shot so deceptively simple that it may take audience members a second to realize what they’ve actually seen.

During a desperate search for his daughter (Chase Infiniti), Bob (recent Academy Award nominee Leonardo DiCaprio) flees the fictional northern California enclave of Baktan Cross via a series of rooftops as he follows friends of the girl’s martial arts instructor, Sensei Sergio St. Carlos (Benicio Del Toro, another nominee). During the escape, the former revolutionary comes up short on one of his jumps and falls through a tree to the ground. Hurt but not incapacitated, Bob gets up and hobbles around a corner, where he’s promptly tased and taken into custody. 

The fall, captured as one continuous shot, is a feat of filmmaking that came together through the thoughtful collaboration of dozens of people, many of whom are now Oscar-nominated. In conjunction with the home video release of One Battle After Another, Gold Derby spoke with just a few of them to find out how the shot came together.

Florencia Martin (production designer): That sequence is made up of things that we stitched together with a lot of work and studies and camera tests to be able to pull off practically. That is a unique experience of that sequence, building the tension that’s happening in the background, as this character is very simply trying to find his daughter and charge his phone. There’s all this pressure stewing that ends with a very unceremonial splat of Bob falling through that tree and then getting tased. Just building that out was a really fun and very complex and complicated experience.

Andy Jurgensen (editor): When we’re in the cutting room, Paul’s always talking about keeping the momentum going. “Keep the momentum going.” So when things are moving, you got to keep moving. And it’s not only with the performances, but with the camera angles. But then there needs to be points in which there’s a dip, that you need to have a part in which the audience can take a breath for a second.

The idea for the shot as it exists in the film came about during a location scout in Texas. Despite Baktan Cross existing somewhere among the redwoods, El Paso served as the filming location, and it was there that Anderson spotted the tree that inspired the fall.

Brian Machleit (stunt coordinator): That’s a real tree in El Paso, a real alley, all coming from Paul.

Martin: We scouted extensively in El Paso, and so we knew the pieces that were important to us. When Paul saw that skinny little tree in that slice of an alley, it was like, “That’s it. That’s the tree.”

Michael Bauman (cinematographer): I would like to say, “Oh, my God, we had this whole thing storyboarded within an inch of its life. We had this whole plan that we just executed the plan.” Nuh-uh.

Executing the shot and the stunts at the center of it began as a conversation among Anderson, assistant director Adam Somner (in whose memory the film is dedicated), Machleit, and — eventually — DiCaprio.

Machleit: That was a fun “How are we going to do that?”. Adam and I had worked together before, and we presented an idea to Paul. We asked Leo, “Do you think you’d be up for it?” We showed him a bunch of rehearsals, designed it, tested it, made it all safe. 

We probably did about five or six takes of that, and midway through, Leo’s like, “What about this? What about that?” He’s coming up with ideas, and every time he comes up with an idea, it actually makes the scene better. Originally, I think we had him holding on for dear life at the top, and then the branch broke away. It was [DiCaprio’s] thought, “Wouldn’t it be funnier if I just fell through it?” So as a third wheel sitting in the background just watching [DiCaprio and Anderson] collaborate, it’s like “Why didn’t we think of that back in production?” Inevitably, we did his way of falling straight through.

Bauman: One of the joys of the film is the fact that it has an energy to it that is based off of improvisation and embracing the flaws.

Actually capturing the shot involved careful coordination among departments — including stunts, editorial, and visual effects — with an overall objective from Anderson to capture as much practically in the camera as possible.

Machleit: You’d be surprised how much Leo really did.

Bauman: We had a stunt double and a descender rig, which is a holding off of a crane that allows you to drop somebody really quickly, but you can slow them down very quickly as well. Levi [Gilbert] — Leo’s stunt double — did the jump, fell down the tree, and, they stopped him, like, a foot off the ground or whatever. And then they erased him in his fall, had Leo stand, come running out, and pan over with Leo as he comes out. 

The fall actually becomes two as Bob rounds the counter and is tased by police, sending him to the ground again, rigid with electrical charge.

Machleit: [Bob] falling like a tree, that was Leo’s idea. He fell differently at first, and then he was like, “What about this?” He just went for it.

Bauman: We had Leo do the fall with a thick pad, and then we had Levi do it with no pad. Then the two shots were stitched together.

Jurgensen was present on set during filming to make sure the proper elements were captured to convincingly combine them into a single shot. 

Bauman: Andy, the editor, is always there when we’re shooting. 

Jurgensen: I was there that night. They called me to make sure I got all the pieces I needed.

Bauman: He was able to mock something up in the AVID so we could see kind of how this fall would work. 

Jurgensen: When we got the dailies a couple days later, I basically went through and figured out how we were going to stitch it together, just crudely, to make sure that we could do it. We did not have other angles. It was always like, “OK, this is going to have to work.” Luckily, it worked.

On top of combining the various shots of DiCaprio’s and Gilbert’s falls, additional elements were digitally added to complete the sequence.

Bauman: It’s very subtle, the level of the effects work in this.

Jurgensen: It went through versions because you really want to make sure that it doesn’t look fake, especially when he falls and is tased.

Bauman: We had done a pass where we had the cop cars running by in the background, chasing some other people. They added that layer in there, and then added the Taser lines that hit him. Those are digital.

But Anderson and the crew wouldn’t really know if they had pulled off the shot until it screened for an audience.

Jurgensen: It was really fun when we had our test screenings. We had screened it internally, so we knew it’s a fun moment. But you just never know how an audience is going to react. I remember our first test screening, the shot wasn’t even complete yet. It was stitched together, but it wasn’t final. We had a huge eruption from people like, “Oh!” in the screening, so we knew that it had worked at that point.

One Battle After Another is now available on UHD 4K, Blu-ray, and video on-demand.