Behind the Bastards - Part Two: The Twilight Zone Movie

Episode Date: May 19, 2022

Robert is joined again by Caitlin Durante to continue to discuss The Twilight Zone Movie.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Alphabet Boys is a new podcast series that goes inside undercover investigations. In the first season, we're diving into an FBI investigation of the 2020 protests. It involves a cigar-smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse look like a lot of guns. But are federal agents catching bad guys or creating them? He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Did you know Lance Bass is a Russian-trained astronaut?

That he went through training in a secret facility outside Moscow, hoping to become the youngest person to go to space? Well, I ought to know, because I'm Lance Bass. And I'm hosting a new podcast that tells my crazy story and an even crazier story about a Russian astronaut who found himself stuck in space. With no country to bring him down. With the Soviet Union collapsing around him, he orbited the Earth for 313 days that changed the world.

Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everybody, Robert Evans here. And for the last two years, behind the Bastards listeners have funded the Portland Diaper Bank, which provides diapers for low-income families. Last year, y'all raised more than $21,000, which was able to purchase 1.1 million diapers for children and families in need in 2021. And this year, we're trying to get $25,000 raised for the Portland Diaper Bank, which is going to allow us to help even more kids. So if you want to help, you can go to BTB Fundraiser for PDX Diaper Bank at GoFundMe.

Just type in GoFundMe, BTB Fundraiser for PDX Diaper Bank. Again, that's GoFundMe, BTB Fundraiser for PDX Diaper Bank. Or find the link in the show notes. Thank you all. We're back. We are. Yes. This is Behind the Bastards, a podcast hosted by you.

Evans, comma, Robert. And our guest today is Durante, comma, Caitlin. It's me, I'm back. Hot dog. Show enough. So how are we doing, Caitlin? I am doing all right. Learning a lot about Max.

No, not Max. I know, it's hard not to, right? It's difficult not to. He's just in my brain more than John Landis, but learning a lot about John Landis. And also, I went to John Landis' IMDb because earlier I was like, I couldn't name a single John Landis movie. Has he even made anything? Yeah, he's done a bunch of shit.

Turns out he's made so many movies that I have seen. Yeah, he's an incredibly influential director, actually. Turns out he's done some stuff. Good for him. Yeah. Like ISIS, you got to give him credit for a couple of things. For being active in the pursuit of their goals. And also John Landis famously conquered a sizable chunk of northern Syria.

Robert Task. I don't talk about that as much. Robert Task at hand. I'm always working on the task at hand. Which in this case is talking about John Landis' Twilight Zone movie. So the climax of Landis' segment of the Twilight Zone movie was notably the only really big action set piece of the movie, right? Not any other like war scenes or really like even all that action-y scenes, right? Like there's some cool shit, especially in Joe Dante's bit.

But like this is the only thing with like big explosions and shut and stuff. So one slate article I found alleges that it was, quote, an excuse for director John Landis to capture immense explosions on film. There have been allegations that the pyrotechnics that he was ordering people to use were illegally large. I can't speak to that. But I found nothing that makes me doubt the basic analysis, which is that John Landis had not gotten to direct a war movie yet. And he kind of used this as an excuse to do a big gritty war movie. Was this a feature film?

Because it's one of four segments. It's like a 30-minute chunk of a feature film, basically. Or less, really, I think. Probably more like 20. Yeah, it's weird that he got so obsessed with like making a Vietnam scene that was like brutally accurate in the middle of this Twilight Zone movie. It's kind of a baffling call. So yeah, the dude that he has flying the helicopter in this critical scene is the incredibly named Dorsey Wingo. And Dorsey is a Vietnam veteran who had flown choppers in combat, right?

So he's, you would think, pretty qualified for this, very experienced pilot. But he was really new to making movies. And during rehearsals, he was deeply rattled by how close the explosions were getting to his aircraft. And again, this is a guy who's been in combat in a helicopter, who is scared by how close the explosions are to his helicopter. On a movie set, yes. Yeah, and again, if you are directing a movie with a helicopter getting shot at and your combat veteran pilot is like, hey, this seems dangerous, you might be like, perhaps we're making a mistake because this is a movie and not the Vietnam War. Things may be going a bit far.

John Landis does not have this moment of realization. Absolutely not. So in normal circumstances, Wingo probably would have said something about the fact that he was deeply frightened by how the explosions were getting close to his helicopter. But he's really new to movies, right? He had been working with helicopters after Vietnam for years, but he hadn't been in film. This is kind of like his first chance at like becoming a Hollywood stunt pilot. And again, doesn't want to upset John Landis and get blacklisted. So Wingo, you know, since he can't, he doesn't feel like he can safely go to John Landis.

He goes with his concerns to the unit production manager, a guy named Dan Allingham. And he tells Dan that the pyrotechnics are way too close to the aircraft. Allingham agrees and he says, hey, obviously like safety first, right? Like we'll change things to make it safer. I'll go to John and I'll tell him we need to make some alterations. So Allingham later tells Wingo and the camera operator, Roger Smith, who also complained that everything's fine. He spoke to Landis and during the next scene, they're just going to be flying over the water, filming Vic and the kids. Like they're not going to have actors on the ground alongside explosions.

Like he's worked it out with Landis. But then later that same day, when John Landis walks past Wingo and another crew member discussing how terrifyingly hot and close the fireballs had been during the last time they'd filmed the scene, Landis smiled and told them, you ain't seen nothing yet. So Landis is well aware of how dangerous this scene was, but he wants this shot. He has a very specific vision for how the shots going to go. So he has associate producer George Folsey, who's his number two man, basically, go to the parents of the children on set and warn them. So, you know, they have explosions on this set. And if you have explosions on a film set, you have to have like a firefighter dude, right?

Who's like your safety guy. And in this case, the guy who's the firefighter dude has also worked in like child protective services, adjacent stuff in the past. So Landis knows, oh, shit, if this guy finds out that we have a six and a seven year old illegally working at night with explosions. He's going to stop it, right? Like, as he rightly should. So he has George Folsey go to the parents of these kids and tell them, quote, if the firemen approach you, please tell them that you are not working for us. Say you are my friend. You are here to help me.

Don't tell them anything about the money or the children working. Now, I'm not going to spend a lot of time focusing on things the parents did wrong because spoilers, this is in tragedy. But I will say as a parent, if that conversation is had with you on the set of a film, time to time to get out, time to get time to get rolling right along. That's, you know, it sounds like impending doom is just right around the corner. I will say only one of the parents is a fluent English speaker. So the other parent doesn't understand what Folsey is saying. So Folsey gets an Asian friend who is on the cast to repeat it to her in Vietnamese, but the parent is Chinese. So Folsey's Vietnamese friend just winds up repeating the message slowly in English.

So at least one of the parents probably doesn't fully understand like what Folsey is doing here, right? And how fucked up things are. Now, as you might have begun to expect by this point, neither Landis or Folsey had done a very good job of letting either set of parents know how dangerous the scene was going to be, right? They were not adequately informed of the risks. I mean, honestly, the pilot was not adequately like finds out how dangerous this is when they're doing the test passes and things are exploding next to him, right? I'm going to quote from the book Outrageous Conduct again. In these conversations, Folsey would summarize the final scene, mentioning that there would be explosives, but ensuring the parents that the explosives would be nowhere near the children. Folsey was clearly nervous about the illegal hiring. He had always been an honest, decent person, and he did not feel comfortable breaking the law.

Another secretary in the office, Cynthia Nye, remembers Folsey coming out of one meeting with Landis and production manager Dan Allingham. They had been discussing the hiring of the children, and as he left the office, Folsey joked nervously, we'll probably all be thrown in jail for this. Schumann claims that she asked Folsey at one point what the penalty was for working children without permits. As she recalled the conversation later, Folsey replied to her, a slap on the wrist and a little fine. Unless they find out about the explosives, then they'll throw my butt in jail. So Landis and Folsey and Allingham are all very aware that they are like committing a serious crime here, right? Yeah. Now, on the night of July 22nd, 1982, Vic Moro, who was again playing like the male lead in this, right?

He was supposed to be rescuing these kids from this helicopter. And both children, Rene and Micah, were placed in position at Indian Dunes Park for like a test run of the scene. Indian Dunes is where, at this point, a ton of Vietnam War movies had been filmed. Here's how a Rolling Stone article at the time described the geography of this area. The park is actually a private property enclosed by steep, chaperone-covered cliffs at the base of one of those cliffs on the south shore of the Santa Clara River, a shallow, slow-moving stream that irrigates orange and avocado groves a few miles to the west. A Vietnamese village had been assembled out of bamboo poles, palm-fatch, and cardboard, right? So that's kind of the scene. They're going to blow this village up, right? As the kids in Vic Moro were like standing in like this stream with the helicopters strafing them, the whole village is supposed to explode, right? So both kids are nervous because explosions are scary to small children, as are helicopters.

And to adults. Yeah, and to adults. Vic Moro, being a nice guy, makes a bunch of funny faces to try to relax them. And he's so successful at this that the kids start laughing hard enough that they can't stop when Landis wants to start filming. So he has to halt the scene and yell at the kids to stop laughing. The shooting goes well this night because, again, there's not explosions. And then the parents are given $500 each in envelopes under the table and told to bring their kids back the next night. July 23, 1982 is the night that they are set to film the final scene of Vic Moro rescuing both kids by carrying them across the river while a U.S. helicopter attacks.

He was supposed to say, I'll keep you safe, kids. I swear to God, as the village explodes behind them. As the parents of both children sit, watching the final scene unfold, Renee's mother asks, is it dangerous? And Foalsie says, no, not dangerous. Just a loud noise. At 2.20 a.m., John Landis calls action. He yells, fire, fire, fire, as two machine gunners pump blank rounds into the river. James Chamomile, the pyrotechnician, begins setting off a series of explosions. It is immediately obvious that these are even larger and closer to the helicopter than the ones that had previously frightened the pilot. And as the pilot is zooming in over these explosions with the kids underneath them, Landis starts yelling at him, screaming over the mic, lower, get lower.

Michael Lee's father, Daniel, who was a Vietnam War veteran, says that the blasts reminded him of real rocket detonations. Quote, I was so horrified, I was screaming. The second blast I fell down on the ground, I cried, God, I was so fearful and I knew danger. It was not something made up, but real danger. So Landis just keeps telling the helicopter to get closer. Two of the explosions detonate, like basically right on the chopper, close enough that they have an effect not unlike anti-aircraft fire. The National Transportation Safety Board in their analysis would later conclude, quote, The probable cause of the accident was the detonation of debris laid in the high-temperature special effects explosions too near a low-flying helicopter, leading to foreign object damage to one rotor blade and delamination due to heat to the other rotor blade,

the separation of the helicopter's tail rotor assembly and the uncontrolled descent of the helicopter. The proximity of the helicopter to the special effects explosions was due to the failure to establish direct communications and coordination between the pilot, who was in command of the helicopter operation, and the film director, who was in charge of the filming operation. So the helicopter goes down, right? The explosions damage it and it crashes. Now, Landis had wanted the explosions to be close to the helicopter, and he had wanted that helicopter hovering right over the heads of Vic and the children for the same reason. He wanted the scene to look intense and frightening.

His vision for the movie now led to a calamity, while roughly a hundred people watched the helicopter plunged into the river. The right skid crushed six-year-old Renee, killing her instantly. The craft then toppled over on its side, cutting Vic Morrow and the seven-year-old Micah in half. There's footage on this. You can find it on YouTube. It's not gory, but you see the chopper because the water kind of covers it. You see the chopper hit them. It's pretty fucking terrifying. Jesus. If you want to have knowledge of what that looks like, you can see it.

I don't. Yeah. But, I mean, okay. So when I said horses maybe died or maybe people, it was... No horses die! It was the people and it was two of which were young, young children. Yeah. Two of which together did not add up to 14 years of age. Oh.

Horrible. Yeah. This is... It's pretty bad. Horrible. Yeah. And also, there's six people in the helicopter, right? Because there's folks filming too. They're all hurt, right? None of them die, thankfully, but they're all injured because helicopter crashes aren't great for your health.

So this is about the worst thing you could watch happen as a parent? Yeah. Yeah. It's not a lot that I could imagine being higher on that list. No. So there's obviously in the immediate aftermath of the crash, there's silence, right? As everyone kind of like grapples with what has happened. And then Renee's mother begins to scream.

John Landis, who being the guy that John Landis is still feels a need to act as if he's in control of the situation, says, That's a wrap! Are you kidding me? Now, it's one of those things. It goes on to say, like, leave your equipment where it is. Everyone go home. Please, everyone go home. Like, right?

Obviously, someone needs to announce that, like, filming is over, I guess. I don't know. Someone needs to announce something. I don't think the right thing to say is that's a wrap. I just don't. I really don't think that's the right thing to say after you have gotten two children and a stuntman killed. Killed. Not the right thing to say at all.

Oh, my God. John Landis! John Landis. But on the other hand, we got Animal House out of his career, so who can say? If it was worth it. Okay, so then I... He goes on to direct... What?

Sorry, I have a... A bunch of shit. A bunch of stuff. We'll talk about some of the shit he goes on to direct in just a little bit. But you know what we're going to talk about right now, Caitlin? Is it products and services? Yeah, and the products and services in this podcast, Caitlin, not once have they been involved in a fatal helicopter accident. I'm so glad to hear that.

That's the absolute guarantee we make. Unless the corporation winds up ever supporting us, in which case they've been responsible for a lot of deadly helicopter accidents. But that's a problem we'll cross when we finally get that big sponsorship. But I've always thought we're more of a podcast, right, Sophie? I find you to be so annoying. Yeah, well... You know, what else is annoying? Not having the great taste of...

Mmm. Are you really doing an ad for... That's good. Right now? Like they don't haven't done anything bad because... That's why I said the great taste of... Unlike the terrible helicopter crashy taste of... Of...

Products. So there, Sophie. Oh, Robert, it's time for an ad break. It sure is. During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations. And you know what? They were right. I'm Trevor Aronson, and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys.

As the FBI sometimes, you gotta grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation. In the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy-voiced, cigar-smoking man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns. He's a shark. And on the gun badass way. He's a nasty shark.

He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to heaven. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lance Bass, and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me. About a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991, and that man, Sergei Krekalev, is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on Earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart.

And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space. 313 days that changed the world. Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole.

My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus. It's all made up. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Ah, we're back. Caitlin, how we doing? I'm doing good. Okay, so after this, he directs the thriller music video.

She sure does direct the thriller music video. She directs, what are the things I'm familiar with? Three amigos. He directs three amigos. That's right. Another unpopular opinion that I have is that that movie sucks. I hate, hate, hate that movie. There's like 20 good minutes in that whole movie and there's a lot of shit in between. I do not like it.

Coming to America. Train. I like coming to America really enough. This is right before, or at least it's released before Twilight Zone movie. One of the fucking, one of the write ups about this disaster I found, like really shits on coming to America. I think just because it's like the first big hit Landis had after the accident, which like, I don't get, like, I think it's, my recollection was coming to America's perfectly fine movie, one of the better Andy Murphy movies. I tend to agree.

Yeah. I mean, except for Shrek and Shrek 2. And of course Shrek 3. And of course Shrek, and of course Shrek 4. Yeah. How many Shreks did we wind up getting? There are four and a fifth one is, I think past development, I think it's coming out soon. Well, this, this is the best chance we've had in years of getting another Austin Powers movie. Wait, Shrek 5. Hang on. This is, we just have to pause because this is important.

Yeah. Shrek 5, according to fandom, Shrek 5 might be released on September 30th, 2022. Sounds like really good information that is definitely probably correct. Anyway, we can move away from Shrek. Maybe. I guess. Should we? I mean, no. I actually plan to just talk about the Shrek movie, which has a pretty Titanic body count,

although that's primarily because in order to get some of the shots they needed, they had to back a brutal civil war in Ecuador. But, you know. The Shrek franchise? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's the only way you could get that realistically rendered of a donkey.

That's true. So, you know, John Landis gets two children and Vic Moro horribly killed. Really terrible deaths. Yeah. And, you know, this is going to cause problems, right? Hollywood is pretty good at smoothing some things under the table, right? But this is a problem, right? This is a big story.

This is too noticeable. Yeah. The children cut in half by helicopters are going to, there's going to be some legal stuff. That's going to come out. Yeah, a little bit. So, the wheels of justice or what passes for the wheels of justice start to churn up after this. The first court cases that kind of get resolved, at least, are lawsuits from the families of the children who get killed. The Chin family file on August 3rd and name both John Landis and Steven Spielberg.

And again, Spielberg is producing this alongside John Landis, right? He is involved in this whole thing. We will talk some more about the degree to which maybe he's culpable here because it's very murky, right? He immediately leaves the country. We'll talk about that more in a second. As does, oh God, what's her name? The Kathleen lady who wound up running Marvel. What's your name?

I don't know. One sec. One sec. What about the behind the scenes people in movies? Kathleen Kennedy, who is also helping to produce this, she also fucking books it, right? Yeah. Like both Spielberg and Kathleen Kennedy are like, you know, we should probably not be around for this. I don't want to get involved in it.

So, yeah, the first court cases that follow this are lawsuits from the families of the slain children. The Chin family files on August 3rd and they name, yeah, Landis and Spielberg as well as Folsey and Wingo. Folsey's the associate producer and Wingo's the pilot and their request for damages. Michael Lee's family file suit a year later. These all do get settled out of court. Now, one for an example of kind of the crapulence of big studios. When Warner Brothers is named in the Chin lawsuit because right there they have some culpability too. Their law firm argues that the studio should not be liable because, quote,

the risk, if any risk there was, was knowingly assumed by the decedent, Renee Shin-Yi Chin. Who was again, six. You're choking me right now. Yeah. First off, the risk if any there was, you can't have if any there wasn't there when three people have been cut to pieces by helicopter rotors. Okay. Like you can't say was there really a risk? There was a risk. Yeah.

That everything about that sentence is wrong. Yeah. It's unbelievably like it's a strong case that entertainment lawyers should be boiled. Yeah. So these civil lawsuits are all eventually settled. We don't really know like what kind of money the families get. I hope it's a lot. Like, you know, but we don't really know.

But of course that doesn't end kind of the legal stuff around this because three human beings have died gruesome deaths. Two of them are children who have been hired illegally. So the state of California needs to determine if there was any criminal liability for the accident. District attorney John van de Kamp assigned prosecutor Gary Kesselman to the case and an LAPD sheriff's detective assisted. The investigation found the things that I have noted already. They find like full Z saying, oh, I'll go to jail for this. They find that, you know, the children have been illegally hired. That this has been hidden from the fire safety officer.

So they, they're like, well, there's enough here to convene a grand jury for fucking sure. Which, you know, one of the rare times I'll be like, yeah, that LAPD sheriff's deputy was more or less right. So they convene a grand jury. And when you convene a grand jury, that means that there's enough evidence that there's something wrong. That you're going to bring the people involved in front of a jury and have them be questioned. Right. And then the jury is going to decide, do we indict, which means like, do we actually charge people with a crime? Right.

So they, the foals winds up in front of the grand jury, who he says that in front of the grand jury foals. He says, in retrospect, it would have been better to shoot the helicopter and the actors at separate times, which. No shit. I'm glad you can see that, buddy. Yes, in retrospect, it would have been better to not do the thing that got three people killed. There was adequate technology at the time that, yeah, you can like superimpose two things together. If you could, I mean, if you could have explained the concept of a helicopter in 1899, there was adequate technology for them to have said, no, this sounds like a bad idea.

Right. Yeah. Oh, no wonder everything is CGI these days. As much as I love a practical effect, if it puts anyone in danger. Well, you could have had a practical effect and like puppets. Like there's, people have done scenes like this that did not endanger human life. Right. So many ways to do this.

Or at least not children, right? Like that one of the things happening here is that like no one's getting charged or even like attempted to be charged with, with Vic Moro's death, because it's questionable as some of the decisions made. He was an adult who chose to be in a really, a situation he knew was dangerous, you know. Which is still wild. I mean, they're still fucked up, but like, these are children. These are children. They cannot.

And honestly, their parents can't consent to put them in that danger. You're not allowed to do that. They're children. And they're not given any of the information and children are famously not very good at advocating for themselves, nor fully understanding. I mean, everything. So much of our society exists to stop people from doing things like this to children. Right.

This is why you can't put them in coal mines anymore. So I'm going to quote for more on how this grand jury goes from crime library quote, John Landis testified and blamed underlings for the tragedy. He said that he had assumed Stuart and Wingo had worked out the coordination of their jobs. He did not make certain of it because I assumed if these men are experts licensed by the government do their jobs, they've done their jobs. Kesselman pressed on as to why he did not make sure they talked because when you get into a taxi, Landis replied, you assume the driver is not going to drive you off a bridge.

It's just assumptions. The guy is a licensed taxi driver. These are experts. Later, the prosecutor began the final authority in terms of camera actor positions, helicopter or whatever on that set is not mine. Landis broken because if I ask an actor, I said, would you please take your hand and stick it in this garbage disposal? The actor is going to say, of course not.

So he's accepting absolutely no accountability for this. No, no. The actor should be the ultimate authority on set, but also should have no responsibility when things go wrong. Right. Oh my gosh. He, as you've said, was like, no, these explosions need to be closer. You ain't seen nothing yet.

Like he was constantly, despite many people protesting and saying, this is not safe, this is dangerous, this is going to lead to bad things. He was like, but my vision. But the realism. I must make a perfectly accurate Vietnam war scene in this Twilight Zone movie. About a time traveling racist. Yeah. Embarrassing.

What a loser. He sucks for sure. He's definitely a real... So bad. You know what? Poopy. That's what I'll say, Katelyn. Jamie Loftus.

Pee-pee poo-poo. Wow. Wow. Powerful. Powerful. To quote the award-winning Jamie Loftus. Pee-pee poo-poo. Who I am feuding with.

Feuding and fussing. Just the hypocrisy of, yeah, being like, no one questioned me. Yeah. Every choice I'm making is the best. I have ultimate power and control here. Yeah. And then when something goes wrong, well, I don't know. And it was safe because they didn't say anything.

It was the helicopter operator's fault from me fucking putting explosions right next to him. Definitely a case we made that the helicopter operator and the pyrotechnician have some degree of culpability here, right? I'm not saying they don't because they are professionals. And the fact that they could have suffered career consequences from complaining doesn't mean they shouldn't have said something, right? True. But again, the director is the dictator of the film set. He has absolute power. That is less the case now because of this accident.

We'll talk about that in a little bit. But at this time, he has absolute power. The buck stopped with John Landis, or at least it should have, right? Yeah. He was the motherfucker who was making the calls here. And it's kind of like he compares it to a taxi driver and like, well, look, it's not my fault if I hire a cab driver and he crashes. Well, okay. But if you hire a cab driver and then you force him at gunpoint to do body shots while driving the cab and then he crashes, then you are responsible for that car crash, actually.

Because he would not have been drinking if you had not been forcing him to do it. Which is not to say that it's wrong to force your cab driver at gunpoint to drink. That's a fun time. That's actually a cool party time. It is a cool party time and cab drivers love being forced to do shots. That's the motto of this show. It is not. Threaten a cab driver.

Anyway, it could be Sophie. Allegedly. It could be. So obviously a grand jury indicts the shit out of John Landis. Along with Folsey and Allingham, they are charged with manslaughter in the deaths of Renee and Micah. Again, they're not being charged for Vic Moro's death. The charges are based on the fact that the deaths had occurred during the commission of an inherently dangerous unlawful act. And that unlawful act was the illegal hiring of children, right? So the fact that they're getting charged with manslaughter, that manslaughter charge relies entirely on the fact that those children were legally being employed, right?

Does that make sense? That's why Moro, no one's getting charged for Moro's death. It makes sense because I understand what you're saying, but it also doesn't make sense because it should just be illegal to... Yes. I'm not trying to make a moral case. Do everything that happened on this set. You know, the law is the law. It has nothing to do with morality. So I'm trying to explain like this is legally what's going on.

Right, right, right. So again, the crime is not just that they got people killed. It's that those people, the people they got killed could not legally have been on that set when they got killed. That's what makes it not just an accident, but adds like the criminal responsibility. I see. So Kesselman decides not to try and get an indictment against these guys for the illegal hiring of the children itself or having them work past curfew. These would have been slam dunk convictions. Obviously they were blatantly guilty,

but both would have had like 10 day maximum jail sentences because they're more like... A day maximum? Yeah, because it's like illegally having kids work at night and stuff isn't like a serious crime on its own. I guess a felony, yeah. It's not like, yeah, it's not like hard time or whatever. And Kesselman, I'm not going to like make a stance on whether he made the right call or not. The reason he doesn't go for these slam dunk convictions alongside manslaughter is he's worried that if the grand jury has the chance to like indict these guys on something easy

that's lighter than manslaughter, that they'll go with the easy charges and they won't go for manslaughter. I see. Again, it's like the prosecutor in this, you're always playing kind of a game with the jury here. I'm not a law expert. I'm not going to give an opinion on whether or not this is a good call, but this is the call that he makes, right? So the case churns forward. And while this is happening, obviously the dead people are having their funerals because that's what you do when people get killed.

In one of the most un-fucking-hinged moments in Hollywood history, John Landis decides to attend all three ceremonies. All three funerals? Yup. Is he super apologetic? Now, there is some speculation that he was advised to not just attend. Like, did he go in? He was super apologetic. No? No?

Sophie, that's a fun question. Absolutely not. But he does do the opposite of that. There is speculation that his lawyers advise him to not just show up but to speak at the funerals in order to seem deeply hurt by what has happened. Now, in all cases, the families beg him not to come, right? Like, nobody wants John Landis at these fucking funerals, you know? Not only does he come, but he makes a speech at least at Vic Morro's funeral. And I'm going to quote now from a write-up by Dick Peabody,

who's one of Morro's friends. They'd worked together in a bunch of stuff before. And he's a close enough friend that Peabody winds up as a pallbearer at Morro's funeral. So this is Dick Peabody's recollection of the funeral. I rode with them, them being Morro's family, to the funeral and sat with them in the section of the chapel reserved for family. Moments after we arrived, an audible shockwave of reaction from Vic's friends and co-workers who'd come to pay their respects grabbed my attention. A thin, bearded man was coming down the aisle, seemingly unable to walk without assistance.

He was supported by a woman and another man, Miss John Landis and George Folsey Jr., the production manager of the Twilight Zone movie. The bearded staggerer was Twilight Zone director John Landis. His stooges helped him to the lectern and he began a rambling eulogy, unplanned, unrequested, unwanted, and shocking to Vic's family and friends. His mere presence at the funeral was offensive to them. He did this presumably on the advice of his attorney. The most obnoxious remark he made among many was that he was proud to have directed Vic

in what Vic himself considered the best performance of his career. Vic's girlfriend and his ex-wife Barbara both said that Vic thought the movie was a piece of shit and he was ashamed to be connected to it. So, I cannot confirm whether or not John Landis was telling the truth or Dick Peabody was telling the truth about how Vic felt about this movie. It is worth noting that multiple other accounts back up Dick's retelling of events. In fact, some of them sound worse. According to several accounts, here is the full text of what Landis said.

Tragedy can strike in an instant, but film is immortal. Vic lives forever. Just before the last take, Vic took me aside to thank me for the opportunity to play this role. Now, Katelyn, if you had to calculate in a lab the worst eulogy to give after getting three people killed in a helicopter accident, could you do better than this? I think he absolutely nailed giving the worst eulogy imaginable. The balls, number one, to get up and speak and say anything, but I'm sorry and my life means nothing now, is one thing to get up and say

at least it was the best thing he ever did. My movie was his best moment. The ego. Unbelievable. I cannot even begin to comprehend the size of the ego you have to have to do something like that. We need to have a law wherein if a certain number of people vote that a situation is deserving of a motherfucker getting hit in the face with a brick, then it's legal to hit them in the face with a brick. And I think this would be my yardstick, right?

If I'm arguing the Supreme Court, what is the bricking? What is the threshold for a bricking? Right here, somebody should have hit John Landis in the face with a brick. That would have been fine. Yeah. I mean, it was according to... It seemed fine that he had the most dangerous film set imaginable. Unbelievable.

I think it's also worth noting at this point, as we have a couple of times. Sometimes accidentally, which is usually how people refer to this dude, that John Landis has a son, Max Landis. We will discuss briefly at the end. Now, Max directed the film Chronicle, and most infamously, the Will Smith flop bright. Since he was pretty active online at one point, big Reddit guy, Max Landis. People on Reddit would often troll him by bringing up the fact that his dad got three people killed, and Max blew up at them at one point in a fairly famous post among Max Landis knowers. And one of the things he stated was that it's really fucked up for people to accuse his dad of having killed one of his best friends.

Now, that's bullshit. I have come across no evidence anywhere that Vic Moro and John Landis were close. Most accounts seem to show that Moro was somewhat scared by the director and certainly worried about what upsetting him might do for his career. A friend, I think, would be comfortable telling a friend, hey, I am worried about the explosions that you are putting next to me, right? Now, I actually don't think I'm not one to go to bat for Max Landis. I don't think Max Landis is lying here.

I think this is what John Landis had to tell his son in order to try and preserve some sort of, I don't know what term to use here. My guess is that is the lie that John Landis told Max. I think and I were great friends and like he understood the risks and you know, it was just a tragic whatever. That's my guess here. So for the other funerals and for what happened at them, I'm going to turn again to that right up by crime library quote at Renee Chin's funeral, a gray-faced John Landis being held up by his wife and friend showed up to pay his respects. The child's relatives fixed cold accusing stairs at the director except for Renee's mother who was sobbing.

Landis also went to Micah Lee's funeral, the boys choir to which Micah had belonged saying his favorite him, Jesus loves all the children of the world. There is no question that the accident traumatized the director for several weeks after it. He was heavily medicated. At one point he called a confidant and wondered if he would ever be able to ask anyone to take even the simplest direction. So I will admit first off when I wrote this, I misunderstood that as John Landis asking them to sing that hymn. I think they're saying that that was Micah's favorite hymn. So I will delete my objection there. But like it's this, he's clearly doing a bit, right?

Every funeral, he has the same people carry him in. He's acting, right? Like he is, he's putting on a show for the court primarily and for his own future career to like seem less like a monster here. But it's the same show every time, like being carried in because you can't. And among other things, it's just basic ethics, right? Really minimal human decency. If you are going to a funeral and it is someone you knew that died, but not like someone super close in relation to you, you do not act more distraught than that person's parents or children or loved ones, right?

Because it's about them, right? It's not about you. If it's just like someone you knew where it's like your friend's mom or something, you don't go there and like collapse because it's about them and that's putting more shit on them, right? Like that's kind of fucked up to do, you know? Yeah, you don't act more devastated. You don't get speech. Certainly as the director of a film that these kids you've known for two days are in, you don't act more distraught than their fucking parents, you know?

And you don't draw attention to yourself by giving... Absolutely not. Like you don't do... You don't... First of all, you don't go, John. Don't... You shouldn't obviously... You shouldn't go.

You shouldn't go to these funeral. If you do feel some need because you actually are ridden with legitimate guilt, which he clearly is not, you slink in, you stand in the back, you don't draw any attention to yourself, and then you bail, you peace out. Even that's questionable, but like... Right, absolutely. You absolutely don't do this. You absolutely don't do any of the things that he did. No.

What a performative piece of shit. Now, the good news, Caitlin, and I know you're concerned about this, is that killing three people and being actively involved in a manslaughter trial does not hurt his career. Does not hurt his career. While the case unfolds, which takes like three years, he directs four films and takes on a number, again, as we've talked about, he directs the thriller video. Like... Yeah. He doesn't get a lot more high profile than that, probably still like the biggest music video ever made in terms of its like cultural impact. He also directs the Eddie Murphy hit Coming to America, which is somewhat less influential.

Now, there's a fun story with Eddie Murphy and John Landis that we're going to tell in a bit, but first, you know what won't show up to the funerals of its victims and make it about them? These products and or services? The fucking corporation sure won't. What the fuck has labor activists executed in Latin America? They don't show up at those funerals. Do they bomb them sometimes? Allegedly. Allegedly.

But they don't show up. Here's ads. During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations. And you know what? They were right. I'm Trevor Aronson, and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. As the FBI sometimes, you got to grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation.

In the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy-voiced, cigar-smoking man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns. He's a shark. And not in the good and bad ass way. He's a nasty shark. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to heaven. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Lance Bass, and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me. About a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991, and that man, Sergei Krekalev, is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on Earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost.

This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space. 313 days that changed the world. Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday.

I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match. And when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus? It's all made up. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back. So Eddie Murphy and John Landis were friends at one point, right? They'd been in some stuff together, and they're good enough friends that in the wake of this tragedy, Eddie goes to Paramount. Because coming to America is like a script that comes to him first, right? I'm not going to get into the weeds of like how it gets made, but right? He's wanting to make this movie.

And he makes Paramount hire John Landis and give him a million dollars and final editing rights on the film, which is more than they want to spend. And he does it because Landis is his friend and Eddie Murphy wants to give his friend a win. Now, I'm not saying Eddie's not a questionable dude because this is a questionable moral decision, but it's being a good friend. You can't deny that, you know? Which is not being a good person, but it's at least Eddie. Eddie is a guy who will go to bat for his friends. This does show that. So what's funny about this is that Eddie Murphy really does John Landis a solid,

and then John Landis treats him like utter shit the entire time they're making this movie. It's just a nightmarish douchebag to this guy who is like saving his career. It's a really weird call. Eddie Murphy talks about this in a Playboy interview, and I'm going to read an excerpt from that now. And again, for an idea of the tone of this, this is a Playboy interview. So Murphy's going to be saying some questionable things later on. After he got the job, he brought along an attitude. He came in with this, I'm a director's shit.

I was thinking, wait a second, I fucking hired you. And now you're running around going, you have to remember, I'm the boss. I'm the director. One of his favorite things was to tell me when I worked with Michael Jackson, that everyone was afraid of Michael, but I'm the only one who would tell Michael, fuck you. And I'm not afraid to tell you, fuck you. And sure enough, he was always telling me, fuck you Eddie. Everyone at Paramount is afraid of you. So that's weird.

It also, again, like you really want to be the dictator of the movie when nobody's gotten killed, but suddenly it's a team project when three people die, huh? That's fun. Yeah. So I'm not going to get too into the weeds on this interview, but it has some incredible lines from Eddie Murphy that really adds some context to the filming of a classic comedy. Quote, what first put a bad taste in my mouth about him was when after he hired co-star Shari Headley and all these other people, I said I wanted to take everybody to dinner. I didn't know anybody, but Landis grabbed Headley and said, you stay away from Eddie.

Don't go near him because he's going to fuck you and ruin my movie. He just wants your pussy. I'm thinking, wait, oh no, this has nothing to do with being a fucking director. He's a control freak. Just assuming that I was trying to get the pussy is one thing. And even if I was trying to get the pussy for him to try to stop me getting it because he was directing the movie, he's got a lot of nerve. Plus it wasn't even about pussy.

So again, Eddie Murphy, right, like, you know. It wasn't even a plus. It wasn't even about pussy. I do kind of suspect Eddie Murphy planned on hitting on her, but it's still not it's still fucked up for John Landis to just say that. But like, yeah, he seems what a power hungry. Yeah, fucking dick shit. Now this all culminates like the only like eventually Eddie just like threatens to beat the shit out of him and things calm down,

but they have not talked since like Eddie Murphy has hated John Landis ever since and we'll talk shit about him at the drop of a hat. Anyway, back to the trial. So being a giant piece of shit, Landis and his lawyers opted for a strategy in which the above the line people blamed everything on the below the line people. Now in Hollywood parlance, above the line workers are actors, producers, directors. Those are the big names, right? The actual technical people, the crew folks, pilots, stuntmen, pyrotechnicians,

all that stuff, they're below the line. So Landis, because again, a bunch of above and below the line people have gotten charged here with manslaughter, Landis wants to blame the folks responsible for pyrotechnics and the pilot for everything that's happened. That's his plan to throw his people under the fucking bus. Also, no wonder there's like a director becomes one of these just like power hungry maniacs because just like language like that. Like if you come to a set and you see that there's a hierarchy like that

and then you realize you're at the top of it. I mean, it just speaks to how shitty a person is inherently if they just are in that situation. They're like, oh, I'm above all these people. Look at all these below people there are below me and look at how below they are and I can exploit them and manipulate them and put them in danger. And also the whole system because like a lot of these lower people who get charged don't work again or at least not for years, right? Landis doesn't have that problem because you can the below the line people have a stink to them

because three people died. But Landis makes money. So there's no real consequences for him career wise for this. I hate it. So for an example of how utterly crappulent these defense tactics were, I'm going to quote again from Crime Library, quote, Braun, his defense attorney, called Landis an artist and praised his Twilight Zone segment as a cinematographic statement against racism and bigotry.

He also gave a strangely cynical reason for the casting of the children. Children are classically used in films other than as principles, he opined, in order to evoke emotion in an audience because adults generally don't like one another, but everyone likes children. Kesselman called Cheyenne Hui Chen to the stand. His mother spoke through an interpreter, she cried as she talked about watching her daughter die. So this is like a nasty, nasty case. The jury eventually finds Landis and his fellow defendants not guilty of manslaughter.

A lot of it is like the same kind of shit you hear in like the OJ Simpson trial, like they're picking apart, like someone will say, well, I heard them say we're going to get arrested for doing this. And then someone will say, well, who said it? When did you hear it? Like is it possible? Like it's all about like creating whatever doubt you can. There's a lot of theories as to why the jury acquits them.

People will argue it's because Landis was famous or whatever. I don't know. It's worth noting. He's like a master manipulator. Yeah. And he's got a lot of money to put in. And so does the studio. The studio puts a lot of money into his defense.

The Monday after he's acquitted, John Landis appears on Good Morning America to celebrate. He invites all 12 members of the jury to attend the premiere of Coming to America, which they do. So fun fact about Coming to America if you like that film. That is wild. Now, there are some like minor fines and some censure from like industry organizations and shit after the trial.

But John's career again, just plows forward. The main personal consequence he faced aside from his son getting dragged on reddit was the end of his friendship with Steven Spielberg, who again bounces for a while to be. And they base it the studio because like there's initially an attempt to get him to like testify because he was the producer on this movie too. And the studio is basically like, he's too important to testify. And the court's like, OK.

Wow. OK. What? I think the same thing basically happens with Kathleen as well. So before you think too positively of Steven, it is worth noting again, he is the producer of this movie as well. He is also responsible for the safety of the actors in this film and for ensuring things like the illegal hiring of child actors

for an explosive helicopter scene do not occur. There are allegations that Spielberg was on set that night. I have not found any substantiation of them and those allegations are printed by people who were who talked to folks who were on set. I haven't heard them directly from people who were on set. Spielberg has claimed that the interviews in interviews that the tragedy made me grow a little, which is a weird thing to say. In the wake of the disaster, he issued a statement.

I was never at the Indian Dunes location of Twilight Zone on the night of the accident or at any other time. Now, to follow up to that, I'm going to quote again from the book Outrageous Conduct. That two sentence letter marked the complete extent of Spielberg's sworn statements on the Twilight Zone case. Joe Dante, who directed a segment that had nothing to do with the Landis episode, had to give a deposition in one of the civil cases. Spielberg, who was the producer of the entire movie, did not do even that much.

Nevertheless, Tom Buds argues that there was no compelling reason to interrogate Spielberg. There is no indication that Spielberg even knew anything about the hiring of the children. So, I don't know, you can feel however you want about Spielberg in this. He never talks to Landis again. They're not Buds anymore. I don't know how much blame to throw his way. A number of other directors do come out and basically say, fuck, and John Landis is a murderer after this.

There are some directors who really go to the mat to condemn him. In fact, I'll actually pull a couple of those up. Brian De Palma is one. He's the guy who directed Carrie and the Untouchables. Said, quote, I don't think Landis was railroaded. It's difficult to imagine putting all those elements in one place. Helicopters explosions, children night shooting and not treading a very thin line. That's a combination you would try to steer clear of.

Helicopters by themselves are very dangerous even with very experienced stunt people. And as soon as you have inexperienced people in a set, you are adding to the danger. Landis's actions were definitely excessive. When asked why so many directors had rallied behind Landis, De Palma answered, I have no idea. Maybe they're afraid of being sued. So that's cool. James L. Brooks, who directed Terms of Endearments also issued a statement.

If you hire children illegally, pay them under the table and then they get killed. That sounds like criminal negligence to me. So there are some people in Hollywood who are like, they fucking murdered those kids. Good for them. But notably, although he doesn't talk to Landis, Spielberg doesn't say shit. Okay, Steve. Yeah, that could have done a little better there, Stevie.

It seems unlikely he was on set. I don't think he directly had anything to do with this. Although you could argue that like, you should have been aware of what was happening on this set that you were helping to produce. In theory, yeah. It depends on the type of producer and stuff. Some of them don't step foot on set ever. This is not that case, right?

It's also directing segments of this, but yeah. In the years since the tragedy, John Landis has again had a great career. He's also signed onto a petition in favor of child molesting director Roman Polanski. Okay, not surprised about that. Yeah, big Roman Polanski fan, John Landis. And of course, his greatest crime after the murders was raising Max Landis. I was just gonna say, yeah. He uses his clout to get his son screenwriting and eventually directing jobs.

And Max puts out a mix of, some people will say that Chronicle was pretty good. I haven't seen it. I watched American Ultra, which was very mediocre. In December of 2017, he is accused of sexual assault by a former coworker. And then a couple of years later by seven other women who eventually accuse him of rape, assault, and psychological abuse that borders. He's got kind of a cult. It's like this weird group of friends that like he's always cycling people through and exiling people.

All this kind of like, he's fucked up dude, Max Landis. A bunch of fucked up shit. He is now running a seminar coaching screenwriters. His career seems to have pretty much cratered. So that's good. We'll see if he tries to come back at some point. Another Max Landis story is the devastating Daily Beast article about the years and years of psychological abuse that he did to a number of women and how fucked up and insidious it was.

As a note, if you just find Google Daily Beast Max Landis, you'll get the URL for that. It's on a paywall, but if you type it, if you go to archive.is and you plug that link in, it'll pop up an archived version that you can read outside of the paywall. If you want to know the kind of fucked up shit that Max Landis was doing, that's beyond the story today because we're talking about John Landis who has fucked up as Max Landis is his dad is worse because his dad murdered three people. That's just a whole bloodline of great fathers undue. And that's the story of John Landis, a guy who sucks.

What a bastard. So I don't know, show up to his funeral when he dies and make it about you. I will, I really will do that. Katelyn, do you have any plugables for us perhaps? Oh gosh, sure, I sure do. You can follow me on Twitter and Instagram. I've been doing this new thing on my Instagram stories where I recap a movie with as much detail as I can. Speaking as quickly as I can and doing the whole thing entirely from memory in 15 seconds or less.

It's a bit that we all love and is super cool and fun and good. Do the movie pie. The movie pie, oh, are you... First of all, I barely remember. I couldn't even... Yeah, I've never watched it while not tripping and I've watched it like seven times. I've definitely seen it, but it was like in college because I was like, I'm a film student and I need to watch...

It's a great movie to trip while watching. Although if you really want to fuck your head up, watch Tetsuo the Iron Man. Because that'll... Oh yeah. There's a drill fucking scene in that one. But anyway, Katelyn. So I'm afraid I will not be doing a good job recapping the movie pie. Also, as soon as you said that, my brain immediately went to life of pie.

And I was like, oh yeah, it's about a boy and the tiger in the boat. Nope, did it. Yep. I guess my pie summary would be math and Judaism. Yeah. Yeah, that could be. Again, don't remember single detail about the band. There's a lot of both in that movie.

So yeah, check out those Instagram stories. Follow me on those social media platforms if you must. Slash please do because the more followers I have, the more validated I feel as a human person. And then you can check out the Bechtel cast, which I co-host with Jamie Loftus. And we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens. Well, follow Katelyn and find us both on Twitter. Once you've listened to this and tell us your Max Landis stories, I'll bet there's a number. I'll bet like a not insignificant number of the people listening to this show were like,

oh, I had to run in with that motherfucker. Yeah. There's a lot of them out there. Mostly just inane stupid shit, but also some horrifying stuff. So anyway, that's the episode. Thanks for having me. Thanks for being on the show. Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media.

For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com. Or check us out on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Alphabet Boys is a new podcast series that goes inside undercover investigations. In the first season, we're diving into an FBI investigation of the 2020 protests. It involves a cigar-smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of goods. But are federal agents catching bad guys or creating them? He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen.

Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. He was at a Russian astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. With the Soviet Union collapsing around him, he orbited the Earth for 313 days that changed the world.

Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.