Originally published April 30, 1993, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1015
“Tragic failures become moral sins only if one should have known better from the outset.”
The above quote is from The Third Chimpanzee by Jared Diamond, a fascinating book on humanity—where we’ve been and where we are, in all likelihood, going to wind up.
I finished reading it during Wonder-Con in Oakland. It was unquestionably the best of that series of conventions I’ve been to: the best attended (it seemed) and most enthusiastic.
However, in the course of the weekend I was also witness to, or made aware of, two incidents that directly relate to Diamond’s gem mentioned above. Both of them, interestingly, are also germane to comics as well.
The first was the untimely passing of Brandon Lee.
Lee was in the final week of filming The Crow, based on the comic book of the same name. The set had been so wracked by accidents that Entertainment Weekly reported that there was talk of “The Curse of The Crow.” Yet despite the mishaps, a production coordinator was quoted as saying, “I don’t think this is exceptional. We have a lot of stunts and effects, and I’ve been on productions before where people have died.”
The article became eerily prophetic when the term “movie shoot” turned into a deadly literal phrase: A scene being filmed involved Lee’s character being gunned down, which in the script was a precursor to his returning back to life.
Nowhere was the difference between reality and art more sharply delineated when the cameras rolled, the gun was fired, Lee went down, the director shouted “Cut,” and Lee did not get back up again. The autopsy reportedly found a bullet lodged in him.
As of this writing, although the official ruling was “accidental shooting,” there is still much confusion as to what happened and why. Live ammo is not allowed on movie sets, and guns are checked before every scene—and guarded zealously by the prop master.
How did it happen? No one is sure. But one thing seems certain: An actor fired a real bullet out of a supposedly empty gun and someone died (unless we’re getting into complete Columbo territory here, and the bullet was fired from somewhere else at precisely the same moment [JFK enthusiasts take note]).
I am forced to wonder something once again that I’ve been pondering ever since Jon-Erik Hexum killed himself. What the hëll are real guns doing on movie sets?
For those of you who don’t remember Hexum, he was a dashing young actor on a short-lived TV series called Voyagers. Some years back, he was clowning around on a set and he put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger. It was loaded with blanks. He thought that, because it was blanks, they could do him no harm. He was wrong and paid with his life.
And what I started wondering at that point was: If we know that you can die from point-blank range, even if blanks are in a gun—how about six inches, then? A foot? Two feet? What, precisely, is safe?
And now we have actors dying from genuine rounds of ammo. Whether it was deliberate or accidental, two things remain true: Brandon Lee is dead, and if there had been no real guns on the set, then he wouldn’t be. His mother wouldn’t be burying him next to his father and, by the time you read this, he would have been a newlywed.
I understand the reasons that they use real guns in movies. They want that effective-looking discharge. They want it to look real.
Well, Carolco studios have got “real” all right. They have footage of Brandon Lee dying. I’m sorry—that’s just a bit too real for me.
I know that movie making entails risks. Stuntmen have died making movies, and of course there was the hideous accident with Vic Morrow and two children during the filming of Twilight Zone that resulted in a lengthy trial of the film’s director, John Landis. Nothing can be done so that movie making is absolutely safe.
But something can be done to make it safer.
I think it would be an excellent idea if SAG and AFTRA and whatever other movie unions and guilds there are got together and demanded that guns actually capable of discharging bullets under any circumstance be banned from movies.
I mean, this is nuts. Movie makers fake buildings. They fake flying men. They fake the T-1000 Terminator’s morphing. They fake alien worlds. They fake wind, sea, deserts, snow, ice, earthquakes. They fake spaceships and light swords. They fake transporters and warp speed jumps. They fake the sound a fist makes when it strikes someone else (unless you really thought that the title character of Annie could punch with the same impact noise as Indiana Jones).
Hëll, almost everything you see in a movie is fake, including the acting.
So I do not understand how it can be impossible to fake a gun discharging. I just do not. And don’t bother trying to explain it to me, because I’m not going to believe it.
Film makers are an extremely clever lot, and I’m simply certain that if they put their mind to it, they could do it.
What would happen if they had to fake the gun discharges while using a weapon that couldn’t possibly shoot? Maybe it would cause an increase in budgets. So fine. What’s a human life going for these days? An extra ten, twenty grand? Show of hands, everyone out there who thinks their lives aren’t worth, oh, fifty thousand bucks. So maybe the lead actors have to live with smaller trailers. Big deal. At least they’ll be living.
Or maybe there would be cutbacks on shootouts. Whoa. That should be the worst thing that happens to moviegoers: To be subjected to less violence in the cinema.
Is it really that difficult to manufacture a movie-prop equivalent of a cap gun? Is it really not worth avoiding potential future disasters such as this one?
All I know is that I have a number of friends who are actors, and I find the prospect of thinking of their getting real guns aimed at them to be an utterly chilling one. I’d like to think they’ll realize that no movie in the world is worth dying for, if it can be at all avoided. And this death, I think, could have been.
If it had been a fake gun, then it would have been a fake death. Anytime a real gun is being aimed, a real death is being courted. And if you don’t believe me, then run it past Brandon Lee’s mom and fiancée.
In some ways, this may sound reminiscent of my earlier column about the near debacle at January’s Great Eastern Convention when comics were tossed into a crowd of fans. About putting things in perspective, and how it’s just comics (rather than movies) and not worth anyone being hurt. The column which Joe Monks took me to task for, since I didn’t specifically cite Image as the instigator.
Well, Joe’s just gonna love this.
At that selfsame Wonder-Con, as I was sitting at the CBG table thinking about the two members of Seduction of the Innocent who were attending Brandon Lee’s funeral and, consequently and understandably, were not able to attend (however the remaining performers, plus such pick-ups as Marvel’s Don Daley on drums, did a splendid job, although my own guest singing appearance was lousy; I had an off-night and went completely off key, limping through the song and apologizing profusely to everyone afterwards) when several people, one after the other, came up to me.
They had looks ranging from astonishment to outrage, and they each said the exact same thing: “Image is doing it again.”
I didn’t see it myself. But a half dozen people confirmed it to me separately, which is more than enough for any news story. And what they were confirming was that, at the Image booth, comics were being hurled into the crowd—the convention equivalent of standing at a Michael Jackson concert, pointing to your right and saying loudly, “Hey! Michael! Aren’t you supposed to be on stage?”
Fortunately enough, there was nowhere near the mayhem that came about at the Great Eastern convention. First, the crowd was smaller. Second, it was a California crowd, as opposed to New York. And third, the Wonder-Con security crew was on top of the situation, eagerly on the lookout for any such activities so that they could stomp them out, forewarned being forearmed.
Now I must take special care to mention at this point that none of the Image creators were involved with it. As near as I can determine, they were nowhere around. It was all Image staff people. Indeed, perhaps (and it’s just a guess here) they were trying to keep crowd enthusiasm high in the absence of The Gods Themselves.
I have a great deal of trouble believing that they were oblivious to what happened in New York. Part of me wants to believe that they were simply ignorant. I have a far greater suspicion, though, that they were very aware of what happened. They were probably even aware that this column, Don and Maggie, and various Oh, So? letter writers have taken them to task.
Which means that they were out to display utter contempt for the opinions of those who are concerned about matters of safety and, by extension, contempt for the safety of those who are their fans.
This isn’t like, say, when Marvel has its crazed game show formats for panels, and Marvel staffers toss comics into the audience. In those instances, the audience is seated and stays so. Anyway, Marvel doesn’t have the aura these days of “Gotta get it” that Image basks in; besides, it seems to have discontinued the game show stuff, at least at Wonder-Con. Perhaps it realized the dangers inherent when you get a crowd hyped up. Image, however, apparently hasn’t clued into it yet.
The behavior at the Image booth was execrable. Inexcusable. Whatever justifications for ignorance could be pleaded from Great Eastern are long gone. The Image staffers knew perfectly well what was going to happen when they started tossing comic books into the crowd. They knew people were going to start jumping, shouting, grabbing. They knew dámņëd well that they were playing with fire, and they didn’t care. They didn’t care.
I have no idea what could possibly drive exhibitors to so openly flaunt their disregard for safety. At best, they are acting like public nuisances. At the very worst, they are leaving conventions open to lawsuits should something unfortunate happen. As I’ve made clear above, mishaps occur even in controlled environments such as movie sets. And the confines of a convention dealer’s room, where gullible fans and berserk speculators are being incited to riot, is hardly controlled.
Again, I emphasize it wasn’t the Image creators who were involved in this, but rather the staffers. What could possibly prompt Image staffers to behave in this deplorable manner? The answer, perhaps, again lies in Diamond’s book:
“(H)umans differ from either common chimps or pygmy chimps in about 1.6% of their (our) DNA, and share 98.4%. Gorillas differ somewhat more, by about 2.3%, from us or from either of the chimps…
“The genetic distance (1.6%) separating us from pygmy or common chimps is barely double that separating pygmy from common chimps (0.7%). It’s less than that between two species of gibbons (2.2%), or between such closely related North American bird species as red-eyed vireos and white-eyed vireos (2.9%). The remaining 98.4% of our DNA is just normal chimp DNA…”
Yes, that’s right, sports fans. Human beings are, genetically, merely 1.6% removed from nominally dumb animals.
And it may be that there are some members of the species who are even less removed than that.
(Peter David, writer of stuff, has the sneaking suspicion that it is his tendency to write these closes in third person that led to the confused notion that they might be written by someone other than he. That is not the case. It is merely an affectation. These closes are written by me. I write them in the third person to distinguish from the rest of the column. I apologize if it’s caused any confusion.)
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But seriously, Mr. David, who is it that _really_ wrote the closes to your columns?
Who was it that wrote about “the thin veneer of civilization”? 1.6% is pretty thin indeed.
The tragic death of Brandon Lee is precisely why I won’t watch The Original Crow film: I don’t like snuff films, accidental or otherwise. I once attended a convention where a fan dressed as a Klingon was wielding a prop gun that discharged steam instead of the flash that a real gun loaded with blanks releases. It’s a shame that Hollywood technicians couldn’t have created one earlier.
I’ve read that it’s a Hollywood tradition, when a stunt performer is killed, to use the footage (if it’s usable) in the finished film.
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For instance, the parakiting sequence in “xXx”.
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Actually, my understanding of the Crow footage was that the footage from that day was destroyed. The scene was more or less nixed as was and the used a double and some other footage that was nixed (due to the full on shots of the character coming out of the grave with full on display bullet wounds) to create the scene that’s in the film of the flashback to the death and of his coming back to life.
..David S. Said: “The tragic death of Brandon ..Lee is precisely why I won’t watch The ..Original Crow film: I don’t like snuff films, ..accidental or otherwise.
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I don’t think of it as a snuff film. I believe (and I could be very wrong) that the actual death scene was re-edited and not used in the movie. I don’t much like the idea of rewarding (thru the purchase of a ticket or DVD) the producers, et al whose negligence caused the death of someone, I also feel that I can in some way pay tribute to the man by watching his final work. (Libraries are good for this sort of thing).
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I also vaguely remember seeing a standardized proclamation in the movie credits, “No animals were harmed during the filming of this movie.” Now that took a lot of chutzpa.
I share your confusion regarding whether or not they discarded the infamous scene. Considering the mercenary nature of Hollywood, it wouldn’t surprise me if they chose not to as an economic expediency. As Mike Weber said, it’s a common Hollywood practice to keep a scene where a stunt performer died while filming (a famous example is the Chariot Race scene in “Ben Hur”). Paying homage to a deceased actor is a valid practice. I’ve done it when I’ve watched “The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus” but it’s my personal choice to avoid watching “the scene of the crime” and I respect yours to “borrow it from the library.”
IIRC they eventually figured out what happened was that real bullets, minus gunpowder in the shells, had been loaded into the gun for a close-up shot.
Then before the action shot took place the bullets were replaced with blanks, but unknown to the prop master, the slug from one of the real ones detached from the shell casing and remained in the chamber when they were replaced.
So effectively a real bullet was made. When the blank fired, it blew the slug down the gun barrel like a normal bullet, and the next thing you know, Brandon Lee is down. =(
As I recall, there was another error as well; the gun had been loaded with full-strength “squibs” (blank rounds) for a close-up shot earlier, so they could get the exact look of a real gunshot; for the shot involving the actor, the squibs were supposed to be quarter-strength, barely enough to make a cloud and a “bang!” Unfortunately, shooting was running late that day, and the armorer had already left. The director decided they could squeeze in one more shot, and went ahead without the armorer. One of the prop people accidentally loaded the full squibs into the pistol, rather than the quarter squibs. Had the correct blanks been loaded in, the stray round would have merely wounded Lee, rather than killing him.
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Still not the gun’s fault. It didn’t ask to be loaded with the wrong ammo, nor did it ask to be pointed at someone and fired.
The dummy round, as i recall, had a real primer. When the primer went off inside the round, it drove the slug forward into the barrel.
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There was a bigger error than that. Quite possibly the biggest error of all. They weren’t treating the guns as deadly weapons.
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I’d been on some film sets before and after this happened. Obviously, being Virginia, several involved the Civil War but others were modern. Anytime the extras or primary actors were firing a gun at someone they were told loudly and repeatedly that you treat the guns like they were loaded with real bullets, you don’t play around twirling them and whatnot in between scenes and you do not actually aim at anyone during the shooting of the scenes.
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On every set I was on they gave clear instructions to aim high and to the right or something to that general effect. It was explained that at only a reasonably short distance the camera won’t be able to tell if your aiming at someone’s head/body or above their heads even if it’s a straight on shot. Since the camera won’t be able to tell the audience won’t either and it wasn’t worth risking an accident when there was no dámņëd good reason to.
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If they had told the actors on the set that then every other error in the line of errors that occurred wouldn’t have made a difference. A “real bullet” could have been fired from that gun and he would have still been alive today.
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Just carelessness and stupidity and a waste of life and talent.
The two questions I get asked the most when I do panels about SPFX makeup are the two I dread the most–gunshots and fire.
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And the answer is the same–don’t. Anyway, I think the easily available CGI gun effects programs do a better job than even blanks do. Fire is a lot tougher but only a fool would risk using the real thing on a real person.
Peter, have you read Diamond’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Guns, Germs and Steel, which explains why the people of Europe developed into to a colonial power instead of the people of Africa or the Americas? I haven’t yet finished it, but the portion I’ve read of it so far is fascinating.
That is a great book.
Brandon’s death still makes me sad. It was such a tragic loss of life, at a time when his career was on the up and he was just about to be married. He was good; sometimes when I watch The Crow I feel he could’ve been the next Johnny Depp.
Ack! I forgot to ask this in my previous comment, but are there any plans for you to show up at New York Comic Con this year?
Or the Big Apple Con? I think that’s the one Peter usually goes to.
Re the mob scene at the Image table at WonderCon: I remember distinctly standing at the adjacent table when it went down. It was a bewildering and disgusting display. A friend of mine who was nearby told me that he actually saw one member of the mob punching another in the mad rush to get one of those comics the staffers were throwing out to the crowd. Sickening.
It’s depressing to realize that Brandon Lee has been dead for so long, and that I’m getting old!
What I most remember about The Crow, a movie I loved, was that it finally was a urban dark avenger superhero movie done right. The Tim Burton Batman movies had left a very bad taste in my mouth.
Whe I heard the news of this accident from a friend, I couldn’t believe it, because it was so close to the “murder” scene in Bruce Lee’s last movie The Game of Death. It wasn’t until I read a newspaper the following day that I realized that it was true. I felt like an idiot.
And maybe what I will say will once again make me look like an idiot, but the death of Brandon Lee certainly put The Game of Death in the list of “cursed” movies (like Poltergeist), with four deaths: Bruce and Brandon Lee, of course, but also Gig Young and his last wife (who met during the filming of the movie).