Baldwin shooting: Accidents on sets do happen

Alec Baldwin must be devastated by the death and injury of two crew members of his recent film ‘Rust’ since he was holding the prop gun that accidentally went off. As you must know that this film set was already fraught with safety issues, other guns went off by themselves on multiple occasions.

Unfortunately gun related and other accidents, though not commonplace, have happened on other film sets too. Remember Bruce Lee, the martial arts expert? His son, Brandon Lee, was also killed when a prop gun accidentally fired. That set was also fraught with numerous safety issues. But guns are not the only cause of accidents or deaths on movie sets.

The most famous death we all know of is that of Paul Walker, the star of the Fast and The Furious franchise. He died when a car in which he was filming a speeding scene crashed. Remember the Twilight Zone from the sixties? Well during the making of Twilight Zone: The Movie in 1982, a helicopter crashed when debris from what should have been a controlled explosion hit the helicopter flying above it. The crash killed an actor and two child actors. The movie Resident Evil changed the life of one of the stuntwomen who doubled for the star of the movie, Milla Jovovich, when the motorcycle she was riding crashed causing her to have a life-changing injury. One of her arms was injured so badly that it had to be amputated. Later on another stuntman died after being crushed by a Hummer! In The Walking Dead a stuntman was killed when he fell from a balcony. Apparently he fell 20 feet onto a concrete floor. The Valley of the Giants is a 1930s movie starring some very household names of the time. During filming actor Wallace Reid was killed during a train crash scene. It should be noted that it wasn’t the crash scene that was the cause of his death. He was so badly injured that the crew of the set regularly gave him morphine as a painkiller. What actually killed him was a cocktail of morphine and alcohol, since he became an alcoholic brought on by the trauma of the accident.

One always assumes that accidents usually involve falling from heights or falling into things or from flying or falling objects and, most of the time, they involve some form of mechanical device. But did you know that even Ben Hur had its fair share of accidents? During the famous Chariot Race one stuntman died when one of the wheels on his chariot broke. Another stuntman injured his chin very badly when the chariot he was riding flipped over. I often wonder if both were crushed by oncoming horses. If you remember the famous Chariot Race, accidents just seemed like they were waiting to happen.

But even kiddies movies like Wizard of Oz have their accidents. The actress who played The Wicked Witch of the West burst into flames when the special effect that made her disappear in a puff of smoke went wrong. Her replacement also had a hard time since she too was injured in a fire scene. Even Orson Welles did not escape injury during the filming of Citizen Kane. But some people might argue that perhaps he should really have been more careful. When simply walking down a flight of steps, he tripped and chipped his ankle causing him to be in a wheelchair for a while.

Now if, like me, you’re a fan of the old Bond movies, well they too have had their accidents. The actor who played Oddjob accidentally burned his hand when he was electrocuted during a fight scene inside Fort Knox. Sean Connery too injured his back during a fight scene with Oddjob in the same location. I don’t know how bad the back injury was but some reports claim that Connery used that injury to negotiate a bigger salary for his next Bond role in Thunderball. Speaking of which, a vast number of scenes in this movie were filmed under water or at sea. A stunt double nearly drowned after crashing a fighter jet into the ocean and his oxygen supply was momentarily severed.

And finally, I’ve always found The Godfather trilogies fraught with gratuitous violence, from the severed horse head in the bed to multiple shootings. It’s a wonder that there have been no reports of accidental misfires from the prop guns on set. One report I found was of the famous scene in which James Caan’s character, Sonny, beats the living daylights out of his sister Connie’s husband for laying his hands on her. The scene takes place inside a closed off fenced area of a house and Sonny picks up a metal dustbin lid and slams it down on him repeatedly. As a result, the actor who played the husband suffered two broken ribs.

It just goes to show that the movie business is not all glitz and glamour. People can and have got hurt, some even dying and occasionally payouts made to the victims’ families. That is if the producers accept responsibility or if the health authorities cite them for safety violations.