Quote:
Having worked with several people who were on that shoot, and having researched all the available materials, I am amazed that the prosecutor bungled such an obvious case.
Wow...I don't suppose you could furnish us with details could you? I mean, not to sound like a ghoul, but the reports around that incident were so convoluted.
Most of what I've learned I picked up from the two books on the subject, SPECIAL EFFECTS and OUTRAGEOUS CONDUCT, along with a telling 1984 LA Weekly article by Gary Goodrich on the matter. (That Weekly article, by the way, was infamously the cause of a full-page retraction that reeks today of them bowing to pressure from some of the paper's backers at the time. This was a real shame, because the LA Weekly was the best paper going in Los Angeles through the 1980's and is barely a shadow of its former self today. Also, when seen today, Goodrich's original article holds up in terms of the testimony given and the physical evidence, while the retraction doesn't.)
The simple truth is that the events at Indian Dunes were completely avoidable and criminal negligence was evident. Essentially, John Landis had written a new ending to his segment of the movie, which focused on the bigotry of its main character, played by Vic Morrow. As originally scripted, the character winds up as we see in the finished film - trucked off to the concentration camp. This ending didn't sit well with higher-ups, so Landis wrote a bigger ending where Morrow's character would find redemption by rescuing two Vietnamese kids when their village gets destroyed by a nighttime helicopter attack.
There was a safe way to have done the scene, but Landis and his production team chose not to use it because it would have taken more time and cost more money. He was determined to complete his segment on schedule and on budget, and he wanted as much production value on screen as he could get. The scene called for Morrow's character to cross a shallow river, carrying the two kids, as a helicopter hovered overhead and the village exploded around them. If you wanted to do this safely, the proper method would be to film Morrow and the kids in a water tank set on a stage with everything blacked in. You put Morrow and the kids in the shallow water, you turn on wind machines and flash stage lights to simulate explosions, and you get any closeups you can with the kids while on the stage, including any interior shack or tent stuff. Then you go out to Indian Dunes, get some early evening shots with Morrow and the kids, again without any explosions or helicopter, to tie them in with the big bang shots. You then send the cast away and complete the work with a trained stunt team, filming separate passes with the helicopter coming in with lighting effects but not explosions, and with explosions in the village, but no helicopter in the immediate area. And with any of these shots, you use a stuntman for Morrow's character holding two dummies in the water. Cut it together and viola, one major finale for your movie.
Landis rejected this idea because he wanted to get the whole thing in a single shot, with something like 8 cameras rolling. (The footage they shot later got used in the trial as evidence against him.) Landis wanted to see that it was really Morrow and the kids underneath the helicopter, and he wanted to be able to shoot the close-ups and the wide shot at the same time, which would save time and make it easy to match everything in the editing room.
Unfortunately, this also meant he would have to break the law, since nobody would grant the hiring of minor children to work near explosives and a helicopter, particularly as the scene would be a night shoot and would go past midnight in the middle of the week. So Landis and his team avoided the usual sources and found a pair of Chinese families in Los Angeles who would allow their kids to be used on the set for this scene. The parents later testified that they didn't understand much English and didn't understand the danger. They only knew this was going through a friend of their family and that they would be paid cash under the table for bringing their kids to be in the movie. Things got even uglier in this matter when the assistant directors on the set realized that one of the fire safety men at Indian Dunes, Jack Tice, was also an accredited studio teacher. So they sent Tice to the farthest point away from the set and referred to the kids over their walkie talkies as "the Vietnamese". Tice stated in court and to me personally that if he had known what was going on, he would have shut the situation down.
You can surmise what happened when the real actor was placed in a real river below a real hovering helicopter near real explosions at 230 AM. Landis' defense team tried to deny this, but the evidence pretty much shows that a piece of one of the village huts blew up into the tail rotor of the helicopter, causing the crash and the deaths.
The subsequent trial only named Landis, producer George Folsey, production manager Dan Allingham, special effects man Paul Stewart and helicopter pilot Dorcey Wingo. The two books about the trial show the prosecutor completely blowing the case both by failing to properly refute the more ridiculous defense claims (like delamination of the rotor blades!) and by grandstanding against Landis to the point that the jury began to feel sorry for him. In the end, Landis and the other defendants walked away. Landis continues to make films with Folsey and Allingham, although nowhere near the level he did at his career peak. Stewart and Wingo's careers were ruined, as were several others who testified against Landis at trial.
There has been speculation over the years whether Steven Spielberg or Frank Marshall knew about the situation, but nothing was ever proven one way or the other. (Frank Marshall acted very strangely about it, though - he avoided attempts to subpoena his testimony by leaving the country to go to Sri Lanka to scout the next Indiana Jones film.) Before this incident, Spielberg and Landis had been friends, and had made appearances in each other's movies. After the tragedy, Spielberg distanced himself from Landis.
From my research, I have concluded that the parties responsible for the deaths at Indian Dunes were Landis, Folsey, Allingham and the assistant directors on the set. I understand why the prosecutor included the effects man who supervised the explosives and the helicopter pilot who flew into them, but I don't see their culpability beyond trusting that Landis and the producers knew what they were doing. My understanding is that safety meetings were held on the set before the explosion and helicopter shots, but those meetings did not include discussion of the children being exposed to the situation. The people who dressed and made up the kids knew they would be on the set, but NOT UNDERNEATH THE HELICOPTER. I believe that the only people on the set who knew what was actually happening were Landis, Folsey, Allingham, Elie Cohn (the first assistant director), Andy House (the second assistant director) and Hilary Leach (the DGA trainee). I excuse Leach from responsibility as she was very green in the business at the time and had no idea of the big picture - she knew she was not to refer to the children over the radio, and she knew something was up, but didn't know how to put it together. The AD's on the other knew exactly what was happening, even to the point of both of them trying to suggest another, safer way to do the shot. When this was barred, they had options - they could have made an anonymous safety call, they could have pulled the kids off the set, they could have told Jack Tice, they could have walked. In the end, they went along with Landis, and we know the result.
Sorry for the long sidebar in this thread, but this is a matter that directly concerns the work I do in the business, and it is one that continues to haunt the business to this day.
3 topics, one reply. Here goes:
STNG-INSURRECTION-not a bad little film, but the settlement scenes look like they were shot at a SoCal shopping mall. Interesting analogy with the settlers in the Americas and the natives.
Spielberg's section was a bit too saccharine for me; I actually liked the Dante part although the ending blew; and Miller's was a nice exercise in technique-really. The best thing about the film is Goldsmith's score (especially for Miller's part) and I still like Jennifer Warnes' song, even if you barely hear it in the film itself.