American Scandal - Twlight Zone Accident | Shoot to Kill | 5

Episode Date: March 17, 2026

Chris Winterbauer and Lizzie Bassett Boman have always been fascinated by the stories that lie behind the big screen—the on-set dramas and untold disasters that befell some of Hollywood’s biggest movies on their journey into theaters. In 2019, they started their own podcast “What Went Wrong” to share those stories, and in this conversation with Lindsay, they discuss the notorious accident on the set of Twilight Zone: The Movie—how it fit into a pattern of reckless behavior in Hollywood and whether the movie industry has really changed in the years since.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

From Wondery, I'm Lindsay Graham, and this is American Scandal. In July 1982, the Santa Clarita Hills were the backdrop for one of the most devastating tragedies in Hollywood history. 31-year-old director John Landis was filming a segment for Twilight Zone the movie, an anthology picture, executive produced by Steven Spielberg. But what should have been a night of movie magic ended in disaster when a helicopter crashed on set and killed three actors. The deaths of Vic Morrow and the two young children, Renee Chen and Mika Din Lee, were an avoidable tragedy. But in the aftermath, it wasn't only the decisions and conduct of Landis and the other filmmakers that fell under the microscope. There was intense scrutiny on the wider Hollywood culture that had allowed such a terrible thing to happen.

My guest today are Chris Winterbauer and Lizzie Bassett Ballman. They're the creators and hosts of the What Went Wrong podcast, which details the real-life drama behind some of Hollywood's biggest movies. Our conversation is next. Chris, Lizzie, welcome to American Scandal. Thank you so much for having us. We are thrilled to be here. So in our most recent series, we've been talking about the tragic deaths on the set of Twilight Zone the movie. Sadly, though, those are far from the only fatalities that have occurred while making a movie. One of the most notorious, I suppose, is the death of Brandon Lee on The Crow, which happened about 11 years after the Twilight Zone accident. So let's start there. Tell us what you know about.

how this tragedy happened? This is an interesting one. I don't think it's particularly unique in terms of this, but my understanding is that it was like 14 mistakes in a row, basically, that kind of piled up and led to Brandon Lee's death.

And if anybody had stepped in at any one of those points and checked something, it wouldn't have happened. But basically, as I understand it, what happened is they were actually shooting an insert shot a few days or even maybe weeks earlier, meaning they were capturing a shot of the gun in someone's hand,

a close-up, and you could see down the barrel of the gun. So they needed what's called a dummy round, which is just basically a completely fake bullet. It has nothing in it that could propel it forward, no gun powder, nothing. But they were shooting in North Carolina, not Hollywood, so they couldn't just go out and buy a dummy round. So somebody decided, well, let's just make it. make it. And so what they did is they took a real bullet and they removed the gun powder from the back of it. And they got the shot. They got what they needed. And then afterwards, they didn't properly remove it. And somebody kind of went, click, click, click with the gun. And just doing that, there was a little bit left in the bullet that they'd made enough to pop the physical bullet forward

off of the casing, thinking the gun was clear. And what that did was it left a projectile in the barrel of the gun. When it came time to shoot this sequence with Brandon Lee, and again, this was later, this was not even the same day. They used the same gun. And they had sent their armorer home and Michael Massey, who was playing Fun Boy in the movie, they got in position. He pointed the gun at Brandon Lee. And what he had in the gun at that point was a blank. but of course a blank actually does have something in it to make the pop sound, and that was enough to propel the remaining bullet down the barrel and to shoot brandedly. And they actually didn't even know what had happened because, of course, he's supposed to be shot in the scene, and he has a bunch of squibs on him, which are the little, you know, exploding charges.

And so the squibs went off, he went down exactly like he's supposed to. They call cut. They think it's all good to go. And then Brandon Lee does not get up. And he never regained consciousness and died a few hours later at the hospital. So like Lizzie said, it's just there are safety checks, multiple safety checks, anytime that a gun is used on set. And obviously in this instance, every instance of that safety check was either ignored or rushed through. And the circumstances differed, but a not dissimilar instance when Alec Baldwin shot Cinemort

Helena Hutchins on the set of the film Rust in 2021. Rust is a good thing to bring up because certainly the nation was captivated by that accident, as they were with Brandon Lee's death. What kind of impact did Lee's death have on Hollywood? How might it have been different from the reactions to the fatalities on the Twilight Zone? On the one hand, the Twilight Zone movie, I think, much more captured the nation's attention, not the least of which because it involved a much more famous director, John Land, It involved a much bigger production, which included Stephen Spielberg.

It took place in Los Angeles. It involved children. The Brandon Lee death, on the other hand, was obviously very notable. Not only is he the son of Bruce Lee, but death by way of prop gun is actually exceedingly rare in film and television. I believe there are three instances in which someone was killed by somebody else operating a prop gun. And that's Brandon Lee, Helena Hutchins.

And then over 100 years ago, Charles Chandler was an ex-exam. on the set of Cecil Bita Mills, the captive, and he was shot by a live bullet from a rifle. And so the prop gun deaths are extremely rare. There's also John Eric Hexham. He was a television actor. He was playing with a prop gun, and the blank drove a piece of his skull into his brain on the set of cover-up, a TV series. On the other hand, helicopter deaths are one of the leading causes of deaths on film sets. In fact, the Twilight Zone movie deaths in 1982 were three of nine that year.

You know, on the one hand, the crow was noticeable because it is the lead actor on camera killed by a prop gun. There's something so tragically almost, you know, grotesquely poetic about it. And the same with the Helena Hutchins ones. But they're also notable for how rare they are. I think there's a couple things to add there to. You know, one is that Brandon Lee was not a huge star at the time that he took the crow. Obviously, his father was, if anyone doesn't know, his father was Bruce Lee.

And this was kind of Brandon Lee's like chance to come out into his own. And this was really going to be his movie. So to Chris's point, that one, that one almost, I think, unfortunately, became more legend than it did cautionary tale, especially because there were already rumors about there being kind of a curse on the family that sort of made it feel larger than life. You know, and then with Rust, I think so much of that media firestorm that followed that had to do with the fact that the person who's fired the gun was Alec Baldwin. And, you know, I also see some similarities in terms of the way that Alec Baldwin handled it and John Landis handled the Twilight Zone. There wasn't a ton of sympathy necessarily expressed for the victims as much as there was sympathy expressed for themselves. But I think that that drives some of the interest around these cases too. And of course, with the Twilight Zone, you get a massive court case. So, Chris, when you bring up how, in quotes, common helicopter accidents are in Hollywood productions. If we zoom out and look at the industry as a whole, how dangerous is it to work on a movie set? This is really interesting because I've worked as a writer

and a director, and I've directed a couple of movies, but I've never directed an action film or anything like that, just to be clear. Whenever a tragedy like the death of Helena Hutchins occurs, I think you tend to see articles published discussing, quote, the all too common occurrence of film accidents. And that's the end. can feel anecdotally true because when there is an accident on a film set, they tend to involve people who are very visible to us, people who we feel we know parisocially in some way, like Alec Baldwin, for example. I think as a result, we overweight those accidents and assume that they are small samples of a much larger trend. And that isn't really the case. And so I was trying to

pull some numbers to get my head around the data. And so there were 19 fatalities, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, between 2010 and 2019, on film intelligence sets, 47 from 1990 through that date. But the fatal injury work rate for all industries nationwide in 2019 was 3.5 per 100,000 full-time workers. And the film industry has a rate of roughly 0.9 per 100,000 workers. The film industry is not an overtly dangerous industry in terms of these types of accidents that we're discussing. I think it's dangerous in ways that we perhaps don't anticipate. And so, yes, we have the very famous Twilight Zone incident, but more than that, most of the individuals killed in helicopter accidents are cameramen and cinematographers,

for example. And then another big cause of death and, you know, injury in film is that the working hours are extremely brutal. And there are countless cases of folks who work on film sets crashing their cars when they drive home drowsy after a 16-hour, 18-hour, 24-plus-hour day. And that has been something that in the film industry has continued to plague productions and has continued to be a fight between unions like Ayatzi and studios in terms of what is reasonable. So on the one hand, I do think statistically the film industry isn't particularly dangerous, especially in comparison to some very dangerous industries in the United States like roofing. But on the other hand, I do think that there is a culture of don't do anything that could hurt the show, don't do anything that could hurt the picture.

And there are, again, many anecdotal instances of people feeling like they speak up for safety issues and then they feel that they are silenced or are unhireable after the fact. And on the flip side of that, you have someone like John Landis who is in charge of a production that resulted in the death of three people, including two children. And he went on to continue to enjoy a very successful directing career. So the rules seem to apply unevenly, depending on your status within the industry. Is there a sentiment in Hollywood that accidents of these sorts are an unfortunate inevitability? I don't feel that way. I have not felt that way in my experience. And I believe if you look at some of the commonalities between a production like Rust and the Crow, these are two films that are being done very independently in the instance of Rust and somewhat independently in the instance of the Crow. And the common DNA that's shared between a lot of these is there are regulations in place that are flouted due to the lack of time on a film set. So I do think that while people do not expect accidents like these to happen, and I do think that there are many, many people in Hollywood who work extremely hard to prevent accidents like this, there is a top-down pressure.

And I think that the executives at the studio feel it, you know, from their shareholders or the studio head. and it goes down the producers and it goes down the directors all the way to the poor person managing the gun or holding the gun or piloting the helicopter. And that pressure is time and money. It is very hard to turn around and say, no, we cannot do this. This is not safe. And so that's where I do think the culture tends to break down a little bit is that film is very hierarchical. And I do think that it's easy to say, speak up.

You know, if you see something, there's very much this idea of speak up. If you see something unsafe, I think that's much easier. said than done? Yeah, and just to speak to what Chris is talking about in terms of people speaking up, there was another death on a set in 2015. The movie was Midnight Rider. Never came out, will never come out because of this, but it was a biopic covering the life of Greg Allman. William Hurt was set to play Greg Allman. They were filming, I believe, a dream sequence that required a bed to be laid across a train track. They actually tried to get permission from the railroad company to film this sequence. They were in Georgia. The Railroad,

Road Company said no. And they said, well, we're out of time, we're out of money, we're doing it anyway. So they went onto the railroad track. They told the casting crew, look, we have 60 seconds to clear the track when we see a train coming. And a train did start coming. They tried to get everyone off. They did not have enough time. And the bed actually ended up causing debris to fly into a camera assistant named Sarah Jones, who was then pushed in front of the train and died. it's a similar situation where if you think you maybe shouldn't be doing it or you're cutting corners or you don't have the right permits, it's never worth it. And on bigger budget productions, fortunately, a lot of these corners are not cut in the same way. Now, I think that was different at the time of the Twilight Zone based on how productions were run and also how much authority these directors had at that time.

I think that's a great point. If I can jump in really quickly, Lizzie, you mentioned how much authority of the director. This was really, you know, by the 80s, you have seen the complete inversion of the producer-director relationship, right? You have the studio system where you have the central producer as epitomized by Irving Thalberg, and then, you know, an independent producer like David O'Slznik, for example. And then directors come up as a tour by the 60s and 70s. And then with Spielberg, Lucas, Landis, et cetera, Coppola, these are the titans of industry. These are the names that we know. Coppola, very famously, too, nearly lost.

to star in Apocalypse Now. Michael Sheen had a heart attack on the set of that movie. They infamously slaughtered a water buffalo on camera, which also led to some changes in the way the animals are treated on set. But I think the idea of the genius director remains a romantic ideal within Hollywood, I think, even today. And, Lindsay, the idea that you're circling is, what is an acceptable amount of sacrifice for great art? There is a way in which we lionize people, I think, over history who have sacrificed for their art. What I think makes film unique is that it requires the coordination and collaboration and subjugation of an incredible amount of people in order to realize one person or a few

people's vision. I do still think that idea of above all, protect the picture does pervade productions big and small across the board. And there is a sense that if and when an accident does happen, not that it was necessary, But sometimes I do think there can be an attitude of this is the cost of doing business. And I think about that more in terms of other abuses that we see on set, abuses of power, manipulations of people. You know, we've seen many instances of sexual abuse or sexual harassment on set.

And the directors are very often protected in these instances because they are viewed as such a precious resource. John Landis is a unicorn in their eyes. and there are only so many people that can do what John Landis does at the box office. His career eventually slowed down because his movie stopped making money, not because of this accident. Hello, I'm Matt Ford. And I'm Alice Levine. And we're the hosts of British Scandal. Now, Britain loves a royal scandal.

Abdications, affairs, dodgy uncles, we've had the lot. But this series is about two brothers. Raised in palaces bound by tragedy, supposed to be inseparable. So how did they end up barely speaking? Was it jealousy, the press, the firm? Or was this royal rift always inevitable? This is the story of Harry and Wills and the scandal that split the House of Windsor.

Follow British scandal wherever you get your podcasts or listen early and ad-free on Audible. I'm Indravama and in the latest season of The Spy Who, we open the file on Larry Chin, the spy who outplayed Nixon. For decades, Chin was embedded deep inside US intelligence. Then comes an opportunity. Richard Nixon.

and secret plan to reopen relations with China, information Chin can place directly into Mao's hands. But the CIA has a weapon of their own, a Chinese mole ready to defect, how long until Chin's gig is up. Follow the Spy Who Now, wherever you listen to podcasts. You were earlier talking about the rise or the Auteur director in the late 70s and early 80s.

Tell us a little more about the culture that was evolving. What was this new Hollywood? Well, I think to understand where you get by the 70s and 80s, you first have to understand the studio system that existed from basically the birth of Hollywood up through early 60s. But the reason I bring up the studio system is because the studios controlled everything. I mean, the reason that it ends up dissolving is because of a very famous Supreme Court case that declared it vertical integration, which it was. They were controlling everything from the development of the films to, the contracts that the directors, actors, actors, and writers held. They controlled the production of the films. They controlled the distribution of the films. They controlled the theaters that the films were distributed to. And what that did, it put the power in the hands of the studios and the producers. As the studio system began to break down, that's when the director starts to emerge

as the visionary behind the movie. You start to get the Copulas, the Scorsese, people like Landis operating in the comedy space. And Chris, maybe you can kind of speak to the emergence of the otter. Yeah, I think as these directors start to gain more and more control, then these autosures really control their material. You know, when Alfred Hitchcock first came to the United States, David Selsnick controlled his ability to work through an exclusive contract. And because Selsnick didn't have enough work for him, he would actually loan him out to other productions and studios at a higher rate than the agreed upon rate of Hitchcock's contract with Selsnick, and Selsnick pocketed the difference. And so as these directors come up, they get more and more control on set, on the back end,

in terms of the way in which their movies are released. And so everything's completely flipped by this point in time. And for a director like John Landis, what does this shift mean for him? Well, you know, he's interesting. I mean, he came up, you know, obviously through the comedy scene, but he really broke out with, of course, National Lampoon's Animal House, as opposed to something like Coppola Scorsese, but it was financially very successful. I think the thing with him is that from the beginning, he was a moneymaker. And he follows that up with Blues Brothers, which was an absolutely insane production. It cost so much. money. There were so many disasters behind the scenes on that movie, but

again, it made money. And then following that is an American werewolf in London. So he's popping out bangers across the late 70s and early 80s. And the thing is, at this time, when you have someone who has developed this kind of voice that

is just minting cash, that's where I think you get into the kind of control that John Landis was able to have on his sets. He was also really young. I believe he was not even 32 when he was filming Twilight Zone. That's right. He's 28 when Animal House is released, 30, when Blues Brothers is released.

These movies are also extremely affordable, even though Blues Brothers went way over budget. Landis was a commercial filmmaker. He is able to transcend that moment because he is such a commercially successful director. He mainstream audiences love his movies. Yeah, he was pretty bulletproof at the box office. Yeah, Landis was batting a thousand. So we've been describing several possible factors that could contribute to an accident like the Twilight Zone.

We have directors who are becoming more powerful, and their voice is so commanding that they set the tenor of the set. We have studios who are much more interested in shore bets. what other aspects of working culture in Hollywood might have made a tragedy like the Twilight Zone more likely? I mean, I think, unfortunately, it was maybe not so uncommon to be pretty flexible with labor laws at that point,

particularly as it pertained to children. My understanding of this accident is that those kids shouldn't even have really been on that set because it was filming in the middle of the night, and they would have needed special permits to film with them after 10 p.m. and they hired the kids under the table. And that's something that, to his credit,

John Landis has never denied. And I'm sure that's something that they thought was not a big deal. I think we see, unfortunately, quite a bit of flexibility with regulations across this accident, although a lot of regulations would also come into place after the Twilight Zone.

I think another big thing, especially with the Twilight Zone, is that we are at a really important moment in special effect. history and action effects history as well. And then in the 1980s, we get the birth of not only the summer blockbuster, but the action blockbuster. And I think that there's this sense that in these big commercial tent pole movies, you need an amount of spectacle that is bigger and bigger in order to satiate the audiences. And what's, I think, particularly tragic is in a mere 10 to 20 years,

visual effects will have come far enough that they will reduce the need for some of the techniques used on this movie. But for example, I believe well before this accident, on set, Land is called for the use of live ammunition because it was going to, in his mind, take too long to reset, you know, the squibs, the detonators on the banterry to blow them up in a safe way. There's this desire to create something mind-blowing for the audience. The other thing happening on sets at this time. You've got aerial photography is obviously very big at this time. Imagine in the opening shots of the Shining, for example. You've got Apocalypse Now. The helicopter has become this very iconic, maybe in a negative way, image in the American mind following the Vietnam War.

You have a sense that bigger is better with all of these movies. We've got things like Commando, eventually Predator, Die Hard, etc. And so the explosions need to be real and they need to be big. and we need to feel that sense of danger coming through the screen at us as an audience. And I think also when you're someone like John Landis, you're very young, you have a lot of power. As far as you're concerned, everything's going to go your way. So if you want bigger explosions, then people better do it, and it'll be fine and it'll look great. Something that was interesting to me about this is had the helicopter fly, in just a slightly different direction, it would have crushed John Landis. That tells me everything

I need to know about the way that he was viewing this stunt. I don't think he thought anything could possibly go wrong because he's untouchable. That is exactly where the problem comes in. So the Twilight Zone accident resulted in criminal charges but no convictions. What do you think that tells us about either Hollywood or the justice system? One of the things that I did find really interesting about this is that they didn't charge them with hiring the kids illegally, which is the one thing we know for sure that they did. And I don't know if that's because it would have complicated the case. You know, I believe they were going after child endangerment among other charges, but I think it made it a bit difficult to parse out exactly what had happened. And the other

thing is, of course, it is part of the director's job to ensure that the people on set are safe. Obviously, there's people underneath them who are ensuring more specific elements of that. But I think Hollywood and many big directors at this time were thinking that could have been me because they had cut corners. They had tried to save time. They had done things that they maybe looked back on and thought, I probably shouldn't have done that. But you know what? It was fine. And of course, in this case, he shouldn't have done it and it wasn't fine. I think there was a real hesitancy around this case because the feeling was if Landis in particular had been convicted, it would have changed the way a director operated on sets. It could remove some of their authority.

It could limit their creativity. It makes them potentially criminally liable. These are all things that these massive directors and also much of Hollywood did not want to happen. I think Hollywood was pretty split based on what I've read. I think that there were a lot of individuals who, especially by the end of the trial, felt Landis was at fault and had brought this upon himself, that this was an extremely arrogant director, although maybe not unusually so. He had a pretty bad reputation already as being a screamer on set. But despite Hollywood maybe being split and maybe even generally feeling like this should go against Landis, there were not sweeping changes made after the fact, you know, from the reporting I've read that was released contemporaneous to the trial,

there was very much a sense of the reason this happened is because Landis skirted the regulations. We have the proper regulations. We have the proper safety precautions. And when they're followed, everything is fine. And the problem is Landis. And I'd be curious to hear what you think, Lindsay, but to me, what that fails to recognize is Landis isn't really, an exception to this rule in a lot of ways. I think he represents the way that a lot of directors behaved at the time and maybe continue to behave. And I do know there were some changes after the fact, but there were not sweeping regulatory

legal changes in the way that the industry was regulated immediately afterwards. To me, the thing that really freaked people out is the fact that it was a criminal trial and that he would have been held criminally liable had he been convicted, something that I think was truly scary for them. It sounds like, Lizzie, that not much really happened in Hollywood after this accident, but maybe you know that there were some regulations changed. There was a little bit, not maybe as much as you would hope, but there were some things, particularly around helicopters.

I believe that there actually weren't very many regulations following helicopters on sets at this time. There were for fixed-wing aircrafts. So following this accident, they did put in place some regulations for helicopters. I think you had to get a permit. There were things like that that weren't even there when they were filming this, which is insane when you think about it. There were some changes to child labor laws, I believe. There was also a SAG hotline setup where you could call if you were feeling unsafe. And I think that actually did make a difference.

And then the DGA did start to discipline directors who did not adhere to. safety standards. So that's pretty minimal given how horrific this accident was, but it's a little something. John Landis was reprimanded, but not disciplined. And it reminds me a little bit of the way the way Hollywood operates can be seen similar to the way American sports leagues often operate, where you have instances of player behavior that are treated with relatively light sentences from the leagues domestic violence is the big one that comes to mind. And then you have a player who gambles on a game, and he is kicked out of the league forever. To me, it just shows, in this instance, folks made changes, but I think they were a bit

underwhelming, given the circumstances. So we've already touched on the death of Alina Hutchins on the set of Rust most recently in 2021. Given this industry's reputation and very public reputation for accidents like these, how could this happen again? In some ways, this one is a bit unique because my understanding of this is that she was actually shot with a live round. This is another instance where time was an issue. They were under a lot of pressure.

They were not paying people very well. They had hired an armorer who was not particularly experienced. And she was monitoring far too many weapons for one person. And somehow a live round made it into the gun that Alec Baldwin fired, which I don't understand how that happens. You know, we talked about live rounds of ammunition being used on the set of the Twilight Zone. It should never be on the set. There is no reason that live ammunition should be on any set ever, period, because you just don't know what can happen, especially if you don't have someone who is monitoring the weapons the way that they should be.

Yeah, this unfortunately seems to have been a set where There was so much chaos. There was such little oversight across the board in terms of just trying to get things done and they didn't have the money sufficient to accomplish what they wanted to. And so there were a mix of blanks, dummy rounds and suspected live rounds found. And one of the live rounds had made it into the gun. There's been a lot of speculation, I believe, at one point somebody suggested, could it have been a disgruntled member of the production who put the live round in the gun? That, I believe. leave has been dismissed, but there seemed to have been either a lack of understanding or a lack of acknowledgement of the safety processes that were supposed to have been in place, including the gun was not locked up in the way that it should have been. And there was some sort of communications breakdown between the armor and the first AD. It was then handed to Alec Baldwin. I believe, again, following safety regulations, it never should have been pointed at a Hutchins and the director, Joel Sousa.

But the point is, as Lizzie mentioned with The Crow, there are so many inflection points where somebody should have stepped in, done something, said something, and then where it gets really murky, even though films are very hierarchical, who is at fault suddenly becomes very difficult to determine in an accident that has been precipitated by so many poor decisions. from the budgeting of the film done by the producers and the line producer to the handling of the weapon by Hannah Gutierrez-Reed to the first AD, Dave Halls, to Alec Baldwin,

who's not only an actor on the movie, but also a producer on the movie. And so responsibility becomes extremely difficult, I think, to assign after the fact, which I think I would have to imagine is disturbingly frustrating for the family of Helena Hutchins. And that doesn't even get to the fact that most film productions are set up

by way of very Byzantine LLCs, you know, is funneled in ways where getting compensation after the fact for an injury or a death can be very difficult. Earlier we discussed the sea change of the collapse of the studio system, and we could be seeing a very similar collapse in theatrical releases of films with the rise of streaming and even more the rise of platforms like YouTube with creator-generated content. What do we think are going to be the consequences of entertainment switching to what are functionally amateurs? I mean, I think one factor of that is that not all, but certainly some of the content that we see on a platform like YouTube can be very dependent on shock value. How far is ex person willing to go to do XYZ? I can think of one very big YouTuber for whom this was recently quite a problem. and you're working with not much time and quite a lot less money. And as we've learned on any set, whether it's YouTube, whether it's a film set, that's going to be a problem.

And the second you start putting the art or the content over anybody's safety, you're in trouble. And there's going to be a problem. And I think that we are seeing some of that across YouTube. I think we'll probably see more of it. And one area of YouTube and of social media content in general that I do think definitely scares me is the amount of children that are on camera in these videos. And whether they're doing something physically unsafe or emotionally unsafe, it can get extremely murky. And I don't know what guardrails are in place to protect them. It reminds me in a sense of something like Uber, right, where there has been the question of,

are they the employer of their drivers or not? And a big issue with Uber has not only been the way they pay their drivers, but also are liable, for example, for the sexual assaults that are happening in the backs of Uber's, which happened at a disturbing rate. And with something like YouTube or Facebook or Instagram or whatever, these platforms have created a situation where they say, we have no liability. We are simply a platform for other people to publish their own actions for which they are responsible. And as Lizzie said, in an attention-dominated economy, attention is most easily come by,

or the perception seems to be, through spectacle, risk, putting yourself in harm's way. You know, the number of selfie deaths, for example, is alarming, you know, across the world. There have been YouTube creators who have crashed planes, you know, attempting to create content. Mr. Beast has consistently come under scrutiny for the way in which his productions have treated individuals who have come on his YouTube show and he's the most popular creator in the world. In my opinion, these tech companies, there needs to be a lever or some mechanism to hold them liable in some way as not only things that are harmful to us physically, but things that are harmful to us psychologically, politically as well, proliferate through YouTube is obviously

the most watched service in the world. And they are able to simply say, we have no control over this, which I don't believe is true. If you had a magic wand, what would you wish for the entertainment industry to become more safe and more caring of its inhabitants? As strange as it may seem, I think one of the biggest issues that plagues the entertainment industry, and this does tie a little bit into your comment, Lindsay, about YouTube, is that no one is an actual employee. So many people who work on these productions, you are all contractors who have come together. It's like the circus or something, right? You come together for this thing that occurs over a few weeks and then you all leave and you have to get hired onto the next thing. And the problem with that system, in my mind, is that it creates, there's already a scarcity problem in Hollywood, right?

Hollywood, the film and television industry has a higher unemployment rate than many other industries because there's so many people that want to work in it. And they're kind of willing to take bad pay in order to realize a dream of working in this industry. and by making everybody a contractor, they are not protected in the same way that many employees are protected under United States labor law. And then they also are dependent on getting hired again every few months. And when you are dependent on getting hired again every few months, I think that it creates a condition where you are extremely hesitant to be the squeaky wheel. I don't want to speak up on this production because I'm going to need to get a new job in six weeks. And if I'm wrong about this or I am proven wrong about this, I don't want to be viewed as the person who's going to be brought into your production and cause problems. And so the studio system had a lot of problems.

But one nice thing I think about it earlier on potentially was relatively consistent employment for a lot of the folks that worked below the line. Now, there are still a lot of safety issues. But I believe that employment protections as they pertain to safety in a lot of ways, I think, are downstream of more general employment protections. And if we can give people the sense that their jobs are secure, they will then feel ownership and the ability to speak up because they will understand, I'm not just going to be jumping on the grenade when I bring this up in the next safety meeting. I wish that it could be burned into the brains of everyone working on a film set that the needs of the art. will never outweigh the needs of the people who are making the art. And there's long been this idea that sacrifice and suffering equals great art, whether that's something as innocuous as choosing to hurt yourself for the method of the acting

or make the other people around you uncomfortable because you're in character all the way up to sacrificing the physical safety of people around you in order to get a shot. It's never worth it. And I think that we've seen from some of our greatest directors that you don't have to do that in order to make great content and in order to make great art. So that's what I would say, never put the safety of anyone around you in front of the movie that you're making. Chris and Lizzie, thank you so much for speaking with me today. on American Scandal.

Thank you for having us. Thank you so much for having us. That was my conversation with Chris Winterbauer and Lizzie Bassett Bowman. Their podcast on the extraordinary difficulty and sometimes danger of making movies, What Went Wrong is available wherever you get podcasts. From Wondry, this is episode five on the tragedy that occurred during the filming of Twilight Zone the Movie for American Scandal. In our next series, in 2003, a deep-sea tourism venture ends in

disaster, when the Titan submersible vanishes beneath the North Atlantic. But the disappearance of the Titan wasn't just a tragic accident, it was the culmination of years of reckless decision-making had only confirmed the deadly price of cutting corners in the world's most unforgiving environment. Follow American Scandal on the Audible app, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to all episodes of American Scandal, ad-free, by joining Audible. And to find out more about me and my other projects, including my live stage show coming to a theater near you, go to not-that-lindsayam.com. That's not-that-lindsayam.com. American Scandal is hosted, edited, and executive produced by me, Lindsay Graham for Airship.

Audio editing and sound design by Gabriel Gould. Music by Throne. Managing producer Emily Burke. Development by Stephanie Jens. Senior producer Andy Beckerman. Executive producers are William Simpson for Airship and Jenny Lauer. Beckman and Marsha Louis for wondering.