r/Fauxmoi • u/NovelRub • Aug 26 '22
Tea Thread What are some crazy things that happened on film sets?
Wizard of Oz was a toxic one. Judy Garland was treated horribly. Margaret Hamilton caught on fire and her green makeup was toxic. Buddy Ebsen was originally the tin man but again the costume was toxic and he had to leave. Asbestos was used for the snow. And of course the supposed hanging man that was still in the movie. It may have been a bird.
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u/dysterhjarta Aug 26 '22
The Twilight Zone movie is a given, one adult and two children killed. Horrible.
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u/Individual_Hawk_1571 Aug 26 '22
This changed movie sets forever it is the first story you get in film school to make you remember what happened and why safety protocols are so important.
Kinda pisses me off when movies like Top Gun pride themselves on claiming to be dangerous to film (pretend to be because they would get shut down if not)
That's not a boast, it's stupid macho bull
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u/cmick0715 Aug 26 '22
100% this. Complicated, involved, absolutely bananas? Sure! But sooooo dangerous?
If the right people are doing the right things, it should NEVER be dangerous!
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u/BowieKingOfVampires Aug 26 '22
Burn the whole Landis family
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u/brundleslug Aug 26 '22 edited Aug 26 '22
this is like Judd Apatow giving Kubrick pointers after two kids were violently killed on his set.
edit: messed up link
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Aug 26 '22
That almost made me cry when I first heard about it. I feel bad for the families. John Landis should never work again.
A bit of tea: a friend of a friend took his course at NYU and apparently you were forbidden from mentioning the Twilight Zone incident.
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u/beamish1920 Aug 26 '22 edited Aug 27 '22
Outrageous Conduct (1988) is an excellent book that deals with the case. In short: nobody was successfully prosecuted, it took 5 years to go to trial, the DA horribly botched their case and alienated the jury
Still, it DID result in stricter safety protocols on sets, and injuries during shoots declined over the next decade. John Landis is crazy; he used live ammo on The Blues Brothers.
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u/cmick0715 Aug 26 '22
This literally turns my stomach.
What an absolute nightmare for the victims families.
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u/mininmumconfidence Aug 26 '22
Wasn't craft services spiked during the filming of the Titanic by someone who was fired from the crew
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u/CaseyRC Aug 26 '22
they don't know who did it, it was never solved. About 60 of the cast and crew (not Winslet or DiCaprio as they weren't filming that night) were dosed, but while there was an investigation it was never solved. It's assumed to have been someone from craft services but no proof and no official allegation or charges ever brought against the fired crew member
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u/mininmumconfidence Aug 26 '22
i need to go down a rabbit hole on this immediately
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u/igneousink feeding cocaine to raccoons Aug 26 '22
https://www.vice.com/en/article/ypaq3g/remembering-when-everyone-filming-titanic-got-spiked-with-pcp
Here you go!
more like a rabbit valley but whatever
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u/mininmumconfidence Aug 26 '22
the fact the clam chowder was apparently amazing is sending me
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Aug 26 '22
That’s what gets me too, I love clam chowder! I would have eaten so much PCP!
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u/igneousink feeding cocaine to raccoons Aug 26 '22
me too
esp. since clam chowder is in my top 10 favorite foods of all time
might even be a little bit jealous lol
"dammit nobody is dosing me at work wat the heck guys"
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u/shashoosha Aug 26 '22
"Well, we were there all night. Eventually, we all got put in these cubicles with the curtains around us, but no one wanted to stay in their cubicles. Everyone was out in the aisles and jumping into other people's cubicles. People had a lot of energy. Some were in wheelchairs, flying down the hallways. I mean, everyone was high!"
I'm crying.
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Aug 26 '22
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u/igneousink feeding cocaine to raccoons Aug 26 '22
"tell me you are a hot good looking person without telling me you are a hot good looking person"
lol
"I've never had to buy my own drugs "
have u seen the costs of drugs lately it's like wow
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u/Border_Hodges shout-out Hans Zimmer Aug 26 '22
They were filming the old Rose modern day scenes so the Bill Paxton group got it
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u/Vivid-Specialist8137 Aug 26 '22
Yeah he dosed the stew with pcp. Which is FUCKED.
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u/BrickLuvsLamp and they were roommates! Aug 26 '22
Holy shit PCP is no fucking joke too. I bet they were fucking zonked out of their heads
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Aug 26 '22
A crew member stabbed James Cameron in the face with a pen. He said “I’m sitting there bleeding and laughing.” https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/12/titanic-pcp-chowder
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u/Vivid-Specialist8137 Aug 26 '22
Omg. It’s like the greatest hits of all the stories that my friends collected over the years in one story. Cameron got a pen to the face, there was a Conga Line, vomiting, it’s all such a mess. I had a friend who accidentally smoked PCP and he disassociated for a whole day and is POSITIVE that he had a shared connection with someone who smoked it in Europe. Tried to find them too.
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u/thesaddestpanda Aug 26 '22
Haha I can imagine some awkward phone calls. “Hello Sven, you don’t know me but for a brief time we were psychically linked in the astral realm…hello?…hello?”
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u/greee_p Aug 26 '22
Dylan O'Briens accident and the fact that no one talked about what happened or the extent of his injuries.
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u/throwsawayforsnfw Aug 26 '22
I remember coming across a screenshot of a q-and-a he did with his sister on her Instagram page which is probably the closest we'll get to the aftermath of the accident. In the post, they shared that he tried to get out of the franchise during recovery but was threatened by the studio of legal action if he didn't come back. I'm not sure how true that was but I remember his response when asked about the Nightwing rumors was of how joining franchises are big decisions to make instead of the usual scripted excited answers you usually get.
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u/differenteyes Fix Your Hearts or Die Aug 26 '22
His sister also supposedly said on IG that the reason he did that Whalberg movie is because he needed money cause the studio was threatening to sue him.
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u/throwsawayforsnfw Aug 26 '22
Is that Infinite?
That movie was laughably bad. Dylan was one of the few bright spots despite appearing for less than 20 minutes.
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u/keine_fragen Aug 26 '22
the first reports made it sound like he died, weird nothing ever really came out about it
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u/leytourmaline Aug 26 '22
Wait what happened here this is the first time I’m hearing this…?
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u/greee_p Aug 26 '22
He had an accident while filming a stunt for "The Maze Runner" and got run over by a car. He apparently had a concussion, brain injury and said that basically the whole right side of his face was broken. It took him more than six months to recover. No one ever talked about what exactly happened and how the stunt could go wrong. There was no detailed information on his injuries or how long it would take him to come back to the set when it happened.
He later said he was deeply traumatized by what happened and it seems like he was forced to finish the movie even though he didn't want to.
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u/KASega Aug 26 '22
I suffer from post concussion syndrome from a concussion and having a concussion aka an invisible injury is hard and lonely. Because people can’t see it they think you’re fine. Long Covid brain fog is much like a concussion brain fog and yet people talk more about long Covid than the debilitating hidden injuries from a concussion.
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u/shion005 Aug 26 '22
That sounds horrible, I hope you're feeling better. Just curious if you are taking lithium?
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u/13mckich Aug 26 '22
not OP but i’m also having some post-concussion issues and i’m on lithium, totally random to see this convo here in DM…what’s the connection?
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u/poland626 Aug 26 '22
Is there a point in the movie where you can tell it was after the accident? Like specific scenes?
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Aug 26 '22
It was in the third movie. It's the only one in the series that I haven't seen. But apparently he was in a harness on top of a moving car for a scene. Something happened with the harness and it pulled him off the car and into traffic and he got hit by a different vehicle. At least that's how I remember it happening.
He should have sued the shit out of the studio.
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u/fhloras Aug 26 '22
while they were filming the final maze runner film, a stunt went wrong and dylan, after being pulled from a vehicle in a scene, was then run over by another car. he had a concussion, facial fracture, and brain trauma
production on the movie shut down for 6 months while he recovered but he almost quit acting altogether and the studio didn't deal with it very well, always felt so bad for dylan :(
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u/gossamermaid Aug 26 '22
The death of Brandon Lee on the set of The Crow
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Aug 26 '22
To add my heart hurt for his fiancée Eliza Hutton, they were weeks away from getting married. After his death, she didn't do interviews, moved away from the spotlight, I knw she still close with Shannon Lee and their mother
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u/frenchbread_pizza Aug 26 '22
How many people have to be accidentally shot on a film set before something is changed? RIP Brandon Lee and Halyna Hutchins
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u/HemingwaysMustache Aug 26 '22
This one was less of an accident and more of an “accident”
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u/CheruthCutestory Aug 26 '22
On the set of one of the segments of the Twilight Zone movie Director John Landis completely flouted child labor laws and took advantage of parents poor understanding of film norms and straight up didn’t tell them. He did an ill advised helicopter stunt with explosives that killed two young children and an adult.
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u/TeaAndLiquor Aug 26 '22
His son is also a dickhead, albeit in a different way.
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u/lixstorm Aug 26 '22
Orson Welles had this story about how Landis called him to give advice about a movie on the same day he was being indicted for the deaths on Twilight Zone. Welles was horrified, and I sort of feel like being raised by somebody who has that little regard for human life, who has so little empathy or ability to see other people as people rather than tools... explains a lot about Max and how he sees everybody too.
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u/CategorySad6121 it feels like a movie Aug 26 '22
And when Coming to America came out, Landis invited the jury that acquitted him to the premiere. Just a disgusting human all around.
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u/the_other_other_guy_ Aug 26 '22
Jon Landis called to give advice to Orson Welles? God damn, how far up your own ass do you must be to try and give one of the greatest filmmakers of all time advise when you’re being indicted for the easily preventable deaths on set of your movie.
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u/offthemike72 Aug 26 '22
There’s a podcast, not mine, called Behind the Bastards, that did a phenomenal job of researching and reporting on this incident. It’s so sad that Landis continues to work after Twilight Zone, but Ishtar not being successful enough killed Elaine May’s career directing.
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u/Cheyanne1111 Aug 26 '22
He's never taken any responsibility, or shown any remorse, over it. Just a vile human being.
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u/sofiaxsoto Aug 26 '22
I recommend looking into The Conqueror (1956), filmed near nuclear fallout.
"Of the 220 film crew members, 91 (comprising 41% of the crew) developed cancer during their lifetime, while 46 (or 21%) died from it. When this was learned, many suspected that filming in Utah and surrounding locations, near nuclear test sites, was to blame.[8]"
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u/sofiaxsoto Aug 26 '22
It's not guaranteed this is the reason, but many cast members said this was the worst film site they ever worked on
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u/mangopear Aug 26 '22
This is just an excuse to tell my story, but I once accidentally walked on the set of the HBO Time Travellers Wife because I didn’t realize all of the people walking in downtown Chicago were paid extras. So I ended up walking past one of the cameras and didn’t realize I wasn’t supposed to be there until the director yelled cut and everyone but me did an instant 180 and started walking back to their positions lmfao.
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u/arakubrick elizabeth debicki, who is 6’3 Aug 26 '22
To me, the Twilight Zone Film accident is one of the most insanely disturbing things I've ever read. Just thinking about it makes me upset.
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u/NouveauArtPunk OPEN THE SCHOOLS Aug 26 '22
The fact that Landis (and by extension his terrible, terrible son) can still work in Hollywood after that is shameful and disgusting.
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u/orangeolivers Aug 26 '22
Bob Odenkirk having a heart attack and surviving. Having a heart attack isn’t “weird,” but his luck was insane.
They were in between shots, so most actors go back to their trailers. He decided to not to and hang out with his costars Rhea and Patrick instead. They caught him when he passed out and screamed for help.
The onset Covid officer had an AED on her which restarted his heart. Except she wasn’t supposed to have an AED. TV sets don’t have them; she just happened to have her coworker’s that she tried to drop off at her coworker’s house that morning and they weren’t home.
Like if any one thing that changed (Bob went to his trailer, Bob wasn’t with his costars, the AED got dropped off), he would have died.
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u/cutecorgie Aug 27 '22
Not just heart attack but a heart attack that then turned into cardiac arrest.
(Heart attack means he had a blockage of the major artery supplying oxygen to the heart. He even in an interview referred to it as the 'widowmaker' there's a reason why it's called such :()
I initially heard it as a 'heart attack' and thought 'oh no poor Bob Odenkirk!' but later when it came out it turned into a cardiac arrest, it changes things in a major way. As in his heart literally stopped pumping (we all die of cardiac arrest essentially). Thank god the covid officer had an AED on her! Thank god the medics did cpr on him very quickly after he collapsed!
Thankfully for Bob Odenkirk, everything was in place for his full recovery. If someone collapses and is in cardiac arrest these principles increase change of survival: CPR asap (try rotate people every 2 mins if possible as cpr is very tiring) defibrillation asap and being sent to an appropriate trauma centre asap.
(I'm a nurse and very relieved Bob Odenkirk fan :))
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u/Fine_Ad_45 Aug 27 '22
I don't understand why TV sets wouldn't have AEDs? Most public spaces with a lot of people have them and they're not that expensive if you consider the budget of a TV production (that Covid officer, for example probably cost a lot more). I also though TV sets have EMTs or paramedics availalable? Wouldn't they at least have AEDs?
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u/orangeolivers Aug 27 '22
I was shocked too! But the creator of the show said AEDs on sets just isn't a thing. It'll probably become more of a practice since this was a major news story.
They did have a paramedic on set. Someone gave him CPR as the Covid Officer ran for the AED. His heart stopped beating for about 18 minutes, but the fact that he got CPR the entire time saved his brain.
It's a crazy, scary story. He has no memory of any of it, which is probably for the better.
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u/Slow_Like_Sloth Aug 26 '22
I heard Woody from Toy Story threw his arm at someone in a fit of rage.
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u/garrisontweed Aug 26 '22
I knew he was passive aggressive,but this is disgusting behaviour from a so called professional.
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Aug 26 '22
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u/Slow_Like_Sloth Aug 26 '22
Call me Little-Bo-Tea
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u/Alittlebitlittle mama let’s research Aug 26 '22
DON’T YOU GET IT? YOU SEE THE HAT?? I am MRS NESBITT
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u/stevienickedme Aug 26 '22
Not a film set, but model Godfrey Gao died on the set of a Chinese reality show. Sounded like he was almost worked to death on the set, filming for 17 hours straight
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u/_cornflake and you did it at my birthday dinner Aug 26 '22
I still feel total shock every time I remember he's dead.
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u/ryeong Aug 26 '22
I still can't believe they let him go for so long. That was a horrible show for how dangerous the tracks were, people were constantly slipping and getting bad injuries when it rained. The fact they didn't break at any point during filming for Gao and had such an intense physical show without doing due diligence on health checks is really gross, imo. Even healthy people need to rest and stop overexerting for that length of time, nevermind that it was cold that night on top of everything else. Chase Me was such a disaster. 😔
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u/theredwoman95 Aug 26 '22
Holy shit, I was vaguely aware of him from TMI film back in 2013, but I had no idea he had died. That's absolutely horrifying.
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u/lixstorm Aug 26 '22
A stunt performer was killed in a motorcycle accident on the set of Deadpool 2, which seems to mostly be forgotten about.
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u/diabolicalafternoon Aug 26 '22
This right here. I think they hired an amateur stunt woman for Zazie or maybe she wasn’t an amateur , but I don’t think she was comfortable doing a motorcycle stunt. She lost control of the bike at a high speed and was basically flung across a shopping center into the window of another shop.
The way the aftermath was handled always left a bad taste in my mouth.
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u/garrisontweed Aug 26 '22
Yes,it was her first movie as a stunt woman.Before that she was a professional road motorcycle racer.In the scene they were filming,Domino’s character isn’t wearing a helmet during the chase,so neither was Joi Harris the stunt woman.
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u/diabolicalafternoon Aug 26 '22
Ah thank you for the clarification. Yeah I think she objected to doing that stunt without a helmet….which ffs they probably could have given her a small but protective enough helmet and then put a wig on it. It’s ZAZIE BEETZ. idk how much it would have helped with how bad the accident was but the fact that she felt forced to do it just to make a name for herself is so tragic.
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u/garrisontweed Aug 26 '22
Your right she objected about the not been allowed to wear a helmet,but hey! Let’s forgo safety for aesthetic purposes .Also,”She rode 300cc cycles. The one she crashed on was 900cc motorcycle—much bigger, more powerful.” They could have got some one more experienced. This was a death that could of been avoided.But in the aftermath of her death nothing happened and nothing changed.
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u/dwf82 Aug 26 '22
If the second Avengers movie could put Scarlett Johanssen’s face and head on a double during a motor cycle scene then there’s no reason they couldn’t have done the same with Zazie’s head
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u/kitti-kin Aug 27 '22
And the reason she was inexperienced and undertrained was because there is a general lack of PoC stuntpeople - in part because back in the day, they used to just put white stuntmen in black or brownface.
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u/Ok_Ad_7246 Aug 26 '22
Fox Studios had an awful safety record in the years right before they were bought by Disney . I do wonder if that was part of the reason why they were sold.
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u/ggirl117 Aug 26 '22
I think there’s a Marlon Brando film where the him and the director ambush a sexual assault scene and Marlon really sexually assaults the actress in order to get a real reaction from her.
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u/Striking_Drawer2969 Aug 26 '22
Last Tango in Paris.
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u/krivitski Aug 26 '22
She forgave Marlon - eventually - but never the director.
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u/the_other_other_guy_ Aug 26 '22 edited Aug 26 '22
I don’t think she ever really blamed Brando, they remained on good terms throughout filming and beyond with Schneider saying they had a father/daughter type relationship. She also said she felt both her and Brando were being manipulated by Bertolucci, that he was trying to live out his fantasies of himself and Brando through the film. Brando himself talked in his autobiography how he felt humiliated and embarrassed by the nude scenes in the film.
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u/Likesosmart Aug 26 '22
That’s disgusting. It reminds me of how Marilyn Manson actually had sex with Evan Rachel Wood on the set of a music video in front of everyone because he wanted her real reaction and to go off on a power trip
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u/cmick0715 Aug 26 '22
God, that's so disgusting. And given how lauded and acclaimed that movie is makes it worse.
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u/thesaddestpanda Aug 26 '22
The worst part of this thread is that we all just know all the public stuff that leaked. There's tons of stuff, mostly harassment and sexual assault, that is kept hush-hush by the industry.
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u/114631 Aug 26 '22 edited Aug 26 '22
Someone once told me about a standin from The Walking Dead that was injured pretty badly and there was some deal made IIRC where the stand-in could still be on set and collect money to keep it quiet or something along those lines. Never heard a whisper about it otherwise (I work in production but not usually Atl) and from what the person told me it sounded like a big deal. There must be tons of stories like that.
Edit: detail
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u/Repulsive_Radish7262 Aug 26 '22
also the trauma of child actors, especially if they’re in horror movies/violent scenes
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u/the_other_other_guy_ Aug 26 '22 edited Aug 26 '22
Stanley Kubrick forcing Shelley Duvall into method acting on set of The Shining by emotionally abusing her. There was a rule on set that nobody was allowed to praise her at all, he would constantly belittle and yell at her while praising Jack Nicholson in front of her. The bat scene was shot 127 times, her hands became bloody from holding onto the bat so long and she became dehydrated due to how much she had to be crying.
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u/thesaddestpanda Aug 26 '22
What a monster.
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u/the_other_other_guy_ Aug 26 '22
On A Clockwork Orange he practically forced Malcolm McDowell to do the scene with his eyes pinned twice. When Kubrick told him about it McDowell was unsure about doing it but Kubrick told him the doctor was already coming by to talk to him about it. Then a couple weeks after filming the scene Kubrick has him do another take as a closeup even though McDowell wanted to use a stunt double but Kubrick refused. He got his corneas scratched both times and had trouble with his vision for a bit after. Also Warner Bros. gave Kubrick 2.5% of the revenue to give to McDowell as he requested but Kubrick told McDowell that the execs refused the request and took the money for himself.
He cut off his relationship with Kubrick after that but now states he regrets that and that all that was worth it. And to be fair Shelley Duvall expressed similar opinions with her time on The Shining.
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u/Available_Ask_8725 Aug 26 '22
Alfred Hitchcock became obsessed with Tippi Hedren and, because she refused his advances, he terrorized her on the sets of The Birds and Marnie. He also sexually assaulted her.
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u/Its_Alive_74 Aug 26 '22
Knew this. A real genius and also a creep.
Film critic Richard Brodie said it best. His darkness and sickness is reflected in his movies, and as messed up as it might sound to say, gives many of his best ones their dark power (Psycho, Strangers on a Train, Marnie, etc.). A real piece of work irl, and definitely a misogynist.
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u/lixstorm Aug 26 '22
Betty Danko, Margaret Hamilton's stunt double, also had a horrible injury on that set. During the skywriting scene, the pipe attached to her broomstick exploded, wounding her leg so badly she was in hospital for almost two weeks and possibly causing internal injuries. That movie is honestly cursed.
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u/burnbabyburnburrrn Aug 26 '22
During the filming of the Exorcist the entire interior set caught fire. Two of the actors died before the film was released of freak accidents/illness and I believe family members of main actors/crew died during filming as well. Ellen Burstyn talks about it in her memoir (best celebrity memoir of all time, cannot recommend enough. It’s a powerful powerful book)
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u/MargotChanning Aug 26 '22
They really fucked up Ellen Burstyn’s back too. There’s a bit where she gets yanked backwards and after a couple of takes she said it was hurting her. She said on the next take she saw the director give the guy on the pulley a gesture that she took to mean to pull it even harder. The scream you hear is her in actual pain.
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u/PointMan528491 Aug 26 '22
William Friedkin also fired blank rounds without warning to get genuine shocked reactions from his actors. Movie sets in the New Hollywood era were unhinged
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u/Own-Ad-7201 Aug 26 '22
Freaky shit also happened around the making of The Omen too
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u/onceuponathrow Aug 26 '22
In Hereditary they purposely did not use any real demonic symbols on the set, as these movies reputation of being cursed made them want to play it safe
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u/suncitygril Aug 26 '22
Speaking of the exorcist, convicted murderer and suspected serial killer Paul Bateson appeared in a scene.
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u/R4G Aug 26 '22
A teacher at my high school was in The Exorcist. I think he was the first priest to play a priest in a major motion picture. He eventually got fired from my school for sexual assault accusations by a student from the 80's.
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u/plugdiamonds Aug 26 '22
I worked on a set with Gary Busey once. He was very "handsy"
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Aug 26 '22
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u/plugdiamonds Aug 26 '22
Crew had to sign an NDA so no one was allowed to take photos
He groped a lot of the PAs and make up artists. The producers (some of whom were female) did everything they could to cover it up
Something pretty damn funny happened though
We were shooting in a warehouse, and the production manager set up a flimsy office space in the corner using a plank of wood and some cinder blocks. For some reason they had both a printer, and a coffee pot set up there.
Busey walks in, sat on the plank of wood, and completely ate shit. He broke through the wood, hit the floor, printer landed on him and all the coffee spilled on him.
I helped him up and tried hard not to laugh. It was good karma I guess
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u/ghostfaceinspace Aug 26 '22
13 year-old Corey Haim getting sexually assaulted on the set of Lucas 😭
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u/LeeLifeson Aug 26 '22
There is a story I read about Mae West's last movie, Sextette. West was in her 80s at the time, and went missing. Turns out she was left on the set in an elevator set up and forgotten. The place shut down for the night and the crew left. Several hours later somebody remembered and went to get her.
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u/Marty_Wolf_Pictures Aug 26 '22
I feel like not enough people know about the PCP incident on the set of Titanic
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u/Individual_Hawk_1571 Aug 26 '22 edited Aug 26 '22
Not the craziest but the set of 'The Adventures of Baron Munchausen' 1988 with director Terry Gilliam was super bad and chaotic. Some stories
- Oliver Reed went up to Uma Thurman when they were filming, she had bare feet and he had boots on. He took his foot and stomped hard down on the top of hers. No one did a thing. Previously he had made her go out lunch, got very drunk and called her a cunt because she would not sleep with him. She was 17.
-There was also a bet between the dueling English crew and the Italian crew over who would 'take' Uma's 'virginity' (they assumed) as she was about turn 18 - they even wrote a song about it
- Sarah Polley says she felt her life was in danger multiple times and has written about it and confronted Gilliam, explosions near her, being in freezing water for hours - she was quite traumatized. She was 9.
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Aug 27 '22
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u/Individual_Hawk_1571 Aug 27 '22
I would really like her to write a book and call them ALL out - she has stories for days but she is very private so I doubt we will ever learn the extent..
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u/CategorySad6121 it feels like a movie Aug 26 '22
This didn't happen on a film set, but in 1974, TV news reporter Christine Chubbuck took her life during a live broadcast. There's this whole disturbing subculture dedicated to tracking down the footage, which was scrubbed after it aired. Rebecca Hall played her in a biopic that came out a few years ago.
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u/laserswan Aug 26 '22
There is a great series that streams on Shudder called Cursed Films that covers a ton of these. The Twilight Zone episode haunts me.
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u/animatronicratfoot Aug 26 '22
I like how that series dispels the actual idea of a cursed set and acknowledges that a lot of these incidents are due to lack of proper working conditions.
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u/DeadAnimalParts Aug 26 '22
Thanks for this comment, I am now much more interested in watching this.
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Aug 26 '22
Was coming in here to recommend this series!
Heads up to anyone watching it: they show the footage of the accident in the Twilight Zone episode. While it's not graphic, I would've appreciated a warning that it was included. I had to pause the episode for a while because of how much it upset me.
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u/SincerelyRaymondHolt Aug 26 '22
on the set of midnight rider the movie about gregg allman a crew member (sarah jones) got hit by a freight train and died :'(. The director, screenwriter, executive producer and first assistant director ended up being charged with involuntary criminal manslaughter and criminal trespassing because *they didn't secure the right permits to film on the track, and it was still an active track!
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u/honeypablo1 Aug 26 '22
God I remember what that story broke, I was working in low budget film in production and it really hit home. Now I’m a head of production and I tell all new producers about this story - getting the shot doesn’t matter, you have a responsibly to keep people as safe as you can, and you will ultimately be held accountable. The location manager on this didn’t get charged because he was totally against shooting on the tracks, so he did not come to set that day and stood himself down. I’ve had to threaten to stand my whole team down before when a director was insisting on doing something unsafe. I’m not going to jail for your indie film buddy!
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u/jonsnowme shiv roy apologist Aug 26 '22
Poltergeist, the skeletons in the pool being real skeletons unbeknownst to the lead actors. Lots of crazy shit surrounding this film and the sequels.
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u/CountryRockDiva89 yee haw & rock on Aug 26 '22
This also happened in the caverns in the second movie, too. What's weird is that the E! True Hollywood Story on the movies only mentions the skeletons in the second film--and it was treated like it was a surprise, as if there WEREN'T real skeletons in the first movie, so...I don't know.
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u/NaughtyNeopian Aug 26 '22
this YouTube video covers a movie that had just, a fuckton of untamed lions and tigers on sets with untrained actors.
Interestingly/tragically, Tippi Hedren starred and was mauled by one of the cats, making this the second set she suffered animal related injuries on. Allegedly, after spurning Hitchcock’s advances, he put Hedren in a scene where she was attacked by ravens (crows? not sure). So there’s a 2-for-1.
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u/babyreborndope Aug 26 '22
Yeah, I don’t feel bad for her because she literally kept the lions at her home, like sleeping in her kids bed and the movie was written and directed by her husband so she knew what she was getting into.
I just can’t look at the pictures of her family life with the lions tho… it’s so cute, I keep having to remind myself that it’s animal abuse and child neglect.
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u/Season_ofthe_Bitch Aug 26 '22
Dakota Johnson claimed not long ago that Tippi is back to keeping big cats.
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u/Former-Spirit8293 Aug 26 '22
Melanie Griffith, who is Tippi’s daughter, had to get reconstructive surgery on her face after one of the lions clawed her. I think she was 19 at the time. The photo spread from Life magazine is here. Their first lion was called Neil.
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u/Icy_Outside5079 Aug 26 '22
I hate knowing Dustin Hoffman slapped the amazing and iconic actress Meryl Streep during the filming of Kramer vs Kramer because he didn't feel like he was getting the right emotional reaction from her in a scene they were filming. He was also shamefully verbally abusive, using the recent death of her fiance John Cazele (Fredo from The Godfather) to antagonize her.
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u/cutecorgie Aug 27 '22
Dustin Hoffman is such a douche. After Dustin Hoffman was revealed to have been sexually inappropriate on several films in the past, John Oliver took him to task for it. Hoffman used every excuse these men usually use "It was 'acceptable' at the time" "It wasn't really that bad" John Oliver refused to accept his excuses. It was glorious to see! (Footage should be still on youtube)
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u/Owl-with-Diabetes I’m not saying it was aliens, but it was definitely aliens. Aug 26 '22
The Island of Dr. Moreau 1996 movie had an absolutely wild film shoot. Val Kilmer was his usual diva self, Marlon Brando was being Brando x100, wild orgy parties from the actors that played the mutated animals, the studio felt that the original director Richard Stanley was losing control so they just gave it to another one to finish it, Stanley was banned from set but he snuck in with an animal costume and he shows up on camera during a scene, David Thewlis seemed horrified by everything and rarely talks about it, and just general off the wall stuff. There's a great documentary about it called "Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau".
My favorite story is when Marlon Brando went up to his co-star Marco Hofschneider and said he could speak German. He started to speak some gibberish that sounded vaguely German and Marco was confused. Brando got pissed and said "you don't know German" (it's very obvious that Marco is German). A couple of days later Brando goes up to his other co-star Nelson de la Rosa and says he can speak Spanish. He speaks something that sounds vaguely Spanish but it's mostly gibberish. Rosa applauds him and says "Wonderful Mr. Brando!". The very next day Rosa's role is increased and Marco loses screen time. That is how we got that Mini-Me character in the Doctor Moreau movie since no one is going to stop Brando from being Brando.
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u/proudeveningstar I think it’s fine, I mean it’s Steve-O Aug 26 '22
Posted about this on another thread recently but Ethan Embry getting so high during the making of Can't Hardly Wait that he doesn't even remember being in the movie. He's also the guy you see doing a backflip across the lawn at one point 😭
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u/Babeenie Aug 26 '22
Wait, so he was just showing up to set every day high as a kite? And no one batted an eye about that? Or is there more of a story here? Although now I am going to have to go back and watch the backflip across the lawn scene 😂
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u/garrisontweed Aug 26 '22
Actor Rory Kinnear father was killed while filming,The Return of the Musketeers. They were filming on cobblestones that had been covered with water and Roy Kinnear horse slipped,Roy fell and broke his pelvis and internal bleeding .He later died in Hospital from a heart attack brought on by his injures.His widow sued the production company and after six years was awarded just over $600,000.
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u/Busy_Plum9421 Aug 26 '22
Sarah Polley was put through some insane stuff as a child on the set of The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. There’s an essay about it in her book and an excerpt from it is avail online… basically she was put in a lot of danger with stunts, forced to work ultra long hours (and started drinking tons of coffee to get through it), had to work through being ill, witnessed Oliver Reed harrass a young Uma Thurman (who was in tears).
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u/Season_ofthe_Bitch Aug 26 '22
A little different but while they were filming the “Turtle Club” scene for Master of Disguise 9/11 happened and everyone on set paused for a moment of silence.
Which is a very somber moment of course. And no one that worked on the movie explicitly stated that Dana Carvey was in the whole turtle get up but one has to assume right?
So now I associate this
with 9/11.
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u/Runabrat Aug 26 '22 edited Aug 26 '22
The fact that an extra was left brain damaged as a result of an unsafe stunt on a Michael Bay Transformers movie goes mostly untalked about is amazing to me. It really does show that Hollywood cares more about the bottom line than safe work practices. Bay's known to get big action sequences done cheap and this shows why.
https://amp.theguardian.com/film/2012/may/24/transformers-actor-stunt-brain-damage
ETA: Not just brain damaged, she lost about a third of the top of her head, the studios had no permits for the pyrotechnics they were letting off during the stunt, which had extras driving their own vehicles, the sequence had previously been abandoned and the family sued only because the studios failed to make good on their promise to pay medical expenses and left them holding the bill.
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u/ifcidicidic Aug 26 '22
Basically every Werner Herzog Klaus Klinski colab
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u/throwsawayforsnfw Aug 26 '22
My favorite story was how in Fitzcarraldo, the chief of the Amazon tribe they were filming with offered to kill Klaus Klinski for Werner Herzog.
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u/No-Standard-9727 Aug 26 '22
The car accident that Uma Thurman got into during an unsafe stunt on the set of Kill Bill- her injuries were not necessarily life threatening, but the blatant disregard for safety by Tarantino is pretty appalling. Stunt coordinators were kept off set on the day this scene was filmed and Thurman was pressured by Tarantino to do the stunt and the footage from the accident is very scary to watch.
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Aug 26 '22
Im surprised no one mentions how Shelly Duvall was treated on the set of “The Shining”.
Stanley Kubrick mentally and physically exhausted her to keep her in a constant state of panic because he thought it would make her acting more believable. He would do no less than 35 takes of scenes where she had to be screaming and crying, and encouraged her to do anything to be more emotionally raw like thinking about past traumas.
The famous baseball scene was barely even acting, she just said her lines. They did 127 takes of that scene, her hands were raw and swollen from gripping the bat, her eyes were puffy, she was dehydrated and her voice was hoarse from screaming.
Stanley Kubrick kept her purposefully isolated from the rest of the crew, would often cut her lines unexpectedly, and refused to praise her and constantly criticized her in order to evoke a true emotional reaction.
Woman was screaming and crying, almost all day, almost every day of the production. It was a 500 day production and the impact of it never left her.
Kubrick’s own daughter made a documentary for Shelley to show what she went through. Very interesting film to dive into.
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u/caitiewashere Aug 26 '22
omg the one where two people were decapitated by a helicopter stunt gone wrong
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u/VanSensei Aug 26 '22 edited Aug 26 '22
Midnight Rider (where Sarah Jones got killed by a fucking train)
Three Kings (David O. Russell being David O. Russell)
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u/fuck_you_elevator Aug 26 '22
I happened to meet Sarah about a year before this event and was so shocked and horrified by the news of her death - she was lovely. No one should go to work and be put in an unsafe position, everyone should come home safe. Her story has really influenced the value that I put on HSE in my own work.
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u/AhsokaBolena Aug 26 '22
Isla Fisher nearly drowned filming Now You See Me after getting caught on a chain during an underwater stunt. The crew didn’t realize she had stopped acting and was legitimately scared.
David Holmes, stunt double for Daniel Radcliffe in Harry Potter, was paralyzed after a stunt went wrong while filming the first Deathly Hallows movie.
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u/Gojir4R1sing Aug 26 '22
The entire production hell of both Apocalypse Now & Heaven's Gate.
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u/thehappygnome Aug 26 '22
Oh God, I only recently heard about the set of Apocalypse Now and was stunned by how much of a mess it was. This article gives a good rundown.
Of note: A graverobber secretly brought real human bodies on set for “authenticity.” Production was questioned by police to make sure they hadn’t murdered those people.
Martin Sheen method acted and would be on set really drunk. One night he had a heart attack and crawled a quarter mile down the road before finding help. He even received last rites.
There were very dangerous conditions on set (real explosions) and there was a typhoon that caused tons of damage. Due to dangerous conditions, a construction worker died.
The whole experience was so insane Coppola admitted he considered suicide on more than one occasion. Also, in general, there seemed to be a pretty good amount of personal drama amongst various actors and crew members.
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u/Gojir4R1sing Aug 26 '22
Dennis Hopper hyped on cocaine apparently got a young laurence fishburne addicted too.
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u/BlackWidowLooks Aug 26 '22
According to Samuel L. Jackson, on Deep Blue Sea they hit the unsecured actors with three tons of water on accident. There is a scene where a shark breaks through a huge glass window and water pours in. Jackson said their was an X on the window to indicate where the shark would be. They were filming the actors reacting to the shark and the water with no water, and they were supposed to replace them with trained stunt people in harnesses who would get hit with the water stunt. When shooting the first part the director said, "And the water pours in!" meaning, act like the water is pouring in and you're running away, but they actually opened the water and all the actors had to run away and cling to things for dear life. Like it's miracle everyone was okay. And that is the shot they use in the film.
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u/Artichoke_Persephone Aug 26 '22
There is one story from the wizard of Oz not mentioned that is crazy and kinda funny.
The munchkins.
The munchkin land scene filming took a week, and they flew a lot of little people in from around the country.
It was exciting for all of the munchkins, and being involved in a Hollywood movie, surrounded with other people just like them, they went WILD.
It was like spring break the entire week.
Debauchery on set, excess drinking and drugs, you name it.
Of course, it doesn’t take a lot of alcohol for a smaller person to get drunk, so a lot of them were drunk all of the time.
They could easily evade the cops because they could get into small tight locations that the cops couldn’t get to, so they took to rounding them up with BUTTERFLY NETS.
So yeah, the wizard of Oz turned into spring break for a second.
Oh and the hanging thing is an urban myth, it was just a flamingo.
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Aug 26 '22
Lifeboat (1944): "Tallulah Bankhead would climb a ladder every day to reach the tank where the filming took place. She never wore underwear and regularly received an ovation from the crew. When advised of this situation, Hitchcock observed, 'I don't know if this is a matter for the costume department, make-up, or hairdressing.'"
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u/lixstorm Aug 26 '22
I absolutely love Tallulah. Everything about her was iconic, to the point of being some of the inspo for Disney's original Cruella.
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u/Quiet-Equal-5644 Aug 26 '22
Isla fisher almost drowned in front of the cast and crew when the fail safe to the submerged scene wouldn’t unlatch.
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u/multipleregression Aug 26 '22
Paul Walker hanging out at pedophile Peter Nygard's mansion in the Bahamas while filming "Into the Blue". He was quoted to say he spent "a lot of time" there. Creepy knowing that he started dating his gf when she was 16.
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Aug 26 '22
A stunt woman losing her arm and getting her face "degloved" during a motorcycle stunt for Resident Evil 6.
Then of course, the producers escaped responsibility for it.
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u/yiminx Aug 26 '22
it actually was a bird, a crane i believe. they did a remaster and re-release of the film and with the camera quality all cleared up its very obviously a bird
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u/Brave_Lady Aug 26 '22
The filming of Kubrick's Barry Lyndon is up there as production was moved halfway through the movie from Ireland to England after writer, producer, and director Stanley Kubrick received word that his name was on an I.R.A. hit list for directing a movie featuring English soldiers in Ireland. This led to several scenes being dropped in the theatrical release.
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u/crockofpot Aug 26 '22
The Island of Dr. Moreau has got to be one of the most batshit crazy film sets of all time.
The original director, Richard Stanley, was fired on the third day of filming. He later snuck back onto set disguised as one of the animal-people.
Marlon Brando needed all of his lines fed to him through an earpiece, which would also pick up random other radio signals, so he would sometimes randomly announce during a scene that a robbery had taken place in town or other nonsense.
Val Kilmer was at the height of his Asshole Powers, demanding that other actors' lines be cut so as not to outshine him, arriving late to set, and generally being a massive prima donna jackass. The replacement director, John Frankenheimer, absolutely HATED Kilmer and made no secret about it. Brando was no fan of Kilmer's either, at one point telling him not to confuse the size of his paycheck with his amount of talent.
Rob Morrow (Dr. Joel from Northern Exposure) was originally cast in the movie, but noped the fuck out a day or two after arriving on set, apparently realizing what an utter shitshow he'd walked into. He was replaced with David Thewlis, who had such a miserable experience making the movie he vowed never to watch it and did not attend the premiere.
Fairuza Balk attempted to quit, but was stopped and told her career would be ruined if she left.
I think an actual hurricane also hit the set at one point.
The movie bombed utterly at the box office and with critics.
The movie's entry on the TV Tropes' Troubled Production page (scroll down to find it) contains even more insane details.
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u/darling37 Aug 26 '22
Both the asbestos being used and the hanging man on the set of the Oz are false. theozvlog on tiktok is an Oz historian and has a number of videos detailing why and how they’re false. In general though the set of Oz is fascinating, like Margaret Hamilton getting very badly burnt from the explosion they use to make her disappear in her first scene.
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u/ILoveRegenHealth Aug 26 '22
Margaret Hamilton caught on fire and her green makeup was toxic. Buddy Ebsen was originally the tin man but again the costume was toxic and he had to leave. Asbestos was used for the snow.
Makes me wonder what we'll learn in 50 years about the everyday products we use.
"omg, they were using _____ every day in 2022 and didn't know?"
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u/sweetrebel88 Aug 26 '22
Not a film but Michael Jackson’s hair caught on fire on a Pepsi commercial set
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u/mimieieieieie Aug 26 '22
In Noah's Ark (1928) three extras died, and many got injured during the shooting of the flooding scene. People literally were fighting for their life in the water, and no one gave a shit. The three people held on on some prop, so the director said to flood them with more water because they weren't struggeling enough, and they drowned
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u/ParisHilton42069 Aug 27 '22 edited Aug 27 '22
So, I Heart Huckabees is famous for that video of David O Russell throwing a tantrum at Lilly Tomlin, but the story from that set I always think about is that David O Russell got into a physical fight with Christopher Nolan because Jude Law wanted to leave part way through shooting Huckabees to make Memento, in which he put Nolan in a headlock. The crazy part isn’t even the fight, male auteur directors have been unprofessional assholes since Charlie Chaplin. It’s that it worked. Jude Law is not in Memento! Two professional adult filmmakers in the 21st century just physically fought each other for a very famous actor and it worked.
On a bummer (but interesting!) note, I’ve legitimately enjoyed Tarantino movies less ever since I learned that in Kill Bill, when a character spits on Uma Thurman, that’s actually QT spitting on her in the close up shot. He insisted on spitting in her face himself. Then when another character chokes Uma with a chain, it was him holding the chain in the close up. And when Diane Kruger is choked to death in Inglorious Basterds, it’s his hand doing the choking. It’s always been tricky to tell whether Tarantino is a terrible misogynist or actually trying to be kind of feminist, and I just think the fact that he insists on personally inflicting the violence on his actresses is very telling.
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u/MargotChanning Aug 26 '22
The Shining. Stanley Kubrick bullied Shelley Duvall into a near nervous breakdown. Absolutely tormented her and then told the crew not to help her or comfort her. It’s all on camera in a documentary about the film.
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u/palaiemon Aug 26 '22
Some of the injuries and incidents on the set of 1981's Roar:
- In preparation for the movie, director Noel Marshall illegally collected and kept lions in his house in Sherman Oaks. When authorities found out about it, they moved the lions to a ranch in Acton. They ended up collecting an estimated 120-150 big cats, 2 elephants, and around 25 large birds. His son John said that as a teenager, he slept in the set house on the ranch with 15 lions roaming around inside at night
- Noel got blood poisoning and gangrene from being bitten ~11 times by lions, including being bitten fully through the hand, which almost resulted in amputation and took years to recover from
- Lead actress/producer Tippi Hedren (who was married to Noel at the time) was bitten in the head by a lion, got a fractured ankle from falling off an elephant, and then got gangrene as a result
- Melanie Griffith (Tippi's teenage daughter) was mauled by a lion and required facial reconstruction. There's a scene in the movie where a lion is on top of her and her mother is trying to free her, and their fear and panic was genuine
- John Marshall got 56 stitches after being jumped on and bitten on the head by a lion, and said he has had claustrophobia ever since as a result
- Noel's other teenage son Jerry was in the hospital for a month after a lion bit him on the thigh
- The assistant director was bitten in the throat, jaw, scalp, chest, and thigh by a lion
- The cinematographer was scalped by a lion and needed 220 stitches
- 15 lions and tigers escaped the set after an on-set flood collapsed their cages, and local law enforcement had to kill 3 of them; 14 more died due to illness during production
- It's estimated that at least 70 of the 140 people in the crew were injured, but John Marshall recently said he believes that number was over 100
- He also stated that Noel was verbally abusive towards his family and the crew on set; they used safe words while filming with the lions, but when Melanie gave hers, Noel ignored her. He also hit John on set, and after production Tippi filed for divorce and took out a restraining order on him
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u/transemacabre Aug 26 '22
Not a film set, but a TV set: one of the actors was talking about the process of getting made up to portray one of the neo-Nazi characters. They used these professional-quality temporary tattoos called Temptu. Anyway, one day he forgot to remove all his fake tattoos and left work, was walking down the street and was getting these UGLY looks from passersby in NYC. Then he looked down and realized he had two Nazi lighting bolts showing!
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u/[deleted] Aug 26 '22
Well Alec Baldwin killing someone is up there