Bittersweet Infamy - #16 - And When the Sky Was Opened

Episode Date: May 30, 2021

Guest host Mitchell Collins tells Josie and Taylor about the helicopter crash that killed three actors on the set of Twilight Zone: The Movie. Plus: the Titanic chowder poisoning.

Welcome to Bittersweet Infamy. I'm Josie Mitchell. I'm Taylor Basso. On this podcast, we tell the stories that live on in infamy, the shocking, the unbelievable, and the unforgettable. The truth may be bitter, but the stories are always sweet. Hi Josie. Hey Taylor. How you doing? I'm good. Hi Mitchell. What's up Taylor? Hey Josie, how are you? Hey, hey special guest. Happy to be here, honored, honored. You're probably wondering at home, who the fuck is Mitchell? Well, Josie and I have kind of enjoyed creating this little space here for the past 15 whatever episodes, and I think we want to invite some other people into that space for, you know, different stories, different takes, different... I really want to

see what gets stuck in everyone's brain pan. You know what I mean? Gross. So our crash test dummy is Mitchell Collins. He's a filmmaker, he's a musician, he's Josie's boyfriend, and he seems to be Batman's dad, although the parentage may be in question. Yeah, I was like, you asked for my bio, and I'm like, Batman's dad, go ahead and put that down. And then Josie's like, step dad, actually. So like, wow, talk about... I'm not on his papers. I know, I'm not, I'm not on his papers. A father isn't who's the man on the birth certificate. A father is the one who shows up, every day, works to put that food on the table. Thank you. Also, I feel like it's important to mention, we referred to Mitchell as Batman's dad, step dad, this is Batman the dog. Yes. Bruce Wayne's

parents are dead. They are no longer living. I want to add though, I think it's important to note that there's a triangle of Mitchell's happening here. There is. That's in my notes, that's in my notes as well. Do you want to elaborate on that? I think you should, because you're kind of the lynchpin, you're the middle. It's true. You're the middle there. So the gist of it is this, Josie's surname is Mitchell, Mitchell's Mitchell name is Mitchell, and then my middle name is Mitchell. So for what must be the first time in podcast history... I think so. Big time. What are the odds, right? So we've got the Mitchell, the triangle, every conceivable way that you could name a child Mitchell, we have covered. Yeah. Yeah. Fuck. Yeah. Let's just sit with that for a second.

That's the story. That is actually what I have come here to tell you guys about. So that works out. So your name is Mitchell, my name is Mitchell, her name is Mitchell. What's in her name? Let me tell you. Exactly. In the spirit of all of this elevated cinematic discussion, I have chosen a little piece of cinematic history for our Memphis. Oh my. So this Memphis comes courtesy of the paper of record Vanity Fair. Okay. The date is August 8th, 1996. The place Nova Scotia on the east coast of Canada. Location filming is wrapping up for a little known indie flick called Titanic. After this, they're gonna move, they're moving to Baja, California to film the water scenes at a soundstage. So when they're all chatter and blue and corpsey, really they're in,

you know, the bathtub warm water of Baja, California. Getting margs after. That's great. After wrap. Yeah. It's getting around midnight in Nova Scotia. So filming schedules being what they are, the crew breaks for lunch. Just roll that over in your head. It's that's, they were breaking for lunch at midnight. Present are director James Cameron, producer John Landau, cinematographer Caleb Deschanel, and a few of the minor stars of the film, including Bill Paxton, RIP. So everyone's enjoying the chowder provided by the local catering company. Oh, brief aside, sources disagree on whether it is clam muscle or lobster chowder. Okay. Is everybody gonna barf? This is gonna be good. When all of a sudden, people start feeling a little weird.

Some crew members just start spontaneously laughing. Others are feeling really anxious. Some feel a spike of energy. One Russian PA says, quote, I feel toxic and beside myself. And then some people start puking. So, so James Cameron, soothsayer that he is, is like, I've heard about this. This is clearly a deadly paralytic shellfish neurotoxin. Oh my God, he drags himself to the toilet. He's like, I got to survive this. I got to make avatar. Like he yaks up everything in his stomach. Oh man. He collects himself. He staggers back to the set. And it is a ghost town. Everybody has just scattered in a million different directions, says Cameron. It was like the Twilight Zone. Oh my God. The scene moves to Dartmouth General

Hospital. Oh, medical personnel are trying to figure out this bizarre case of food poisoning while the entire crew continues to like lose their shit all over this hospital. Okay, so it's not just barfing. Like some people are like hallucinating. People are going crazy. Holy shit. Okay, okay. So says set painter Marilyn McAvoy. What is that? That's B-Man digging on the bed. Cutie. Once he gets to like a good spot with the dig, then he'll curl up and go to sleep. But it takes a little minute. He's exhausted about this long conversation about his own parentage right in front of him. Yeah, I don't blame him. Okay, it's draining. Says set painter Marilyn McAvoy.

Quote, eventually we all got put in these cubicles with the curtains around us, but no one wanted to stay in their cubicles. Everyone was out in the aisles and jumping into other people's cubicles. People had a lot of energy somewhere in wheelchairs flying down the hallways. Oh my God. James Cameron, meanwhile, has somehow been stabbed in the face with a pen by a crew member and he's sitting there bleeding and laughing his head off. Oh, like a pin jammed into his cheek? I don't think it's still stuck in there. I think he probably pulled it out. Okay, do we know what color the pen was? That makes a lot of difference to me. I feel like odds say blue. That's what I'm picturing. Maybe it's like a pink spirally pen with like a big

pink puff at the end. Yeah, a fifth grade girl might use. Like a gel pen. Yeah, I hope so. It was 1996 after all. Yeah, it's true. Says Cameron quote, people are moaning and crying, wailing, collapsed on tables and gurneys. The DP Caleb Deschanel is leading a number of crew down the hall in a highly vocal conga line. Yeah, where'd he go Caleb? You can't make this step up. So eventually the whole group is made to ingest liquid charcoal, which is a common if disgusting treatment for poison control, which sounds nap. You can do you know watercolors with that shit. That's a case file is opened with the Halifax PD who have their work cut out for them when the toxicology report comes back. And it is revealed that the chowder was laced with PCP.

Angel desk, baby. This is great. Holy fuck. Wow. Do we know tell us more? How this happened? Who done it? So who done it? So who done it? I know you're sitting there like it was Bill Pak. He chases twisters for a living. What can he do? I'm sorry to disappoint, but the case remains unsolved to this day. Oh my god. However, unofficially there is a crime suspect. Let's throw it back over to director James Cameron. We had fired a crew member the day before because they were creating trouble with the caterers. So we believe the poisoning was this idiot's plan to get back at the caterers whom of course we promptly fired the next day. So it worked. Wow. As for the catering company CEO Earl Scott had his own suspicions. He told Entertainment Weekly quote it was the

Hollywood crowd bringing in the psychedelic shit. I don't think it was purposefully done to hurt somebody. It was done like a party thing that got carried away. Wow. That's a pretty even Taylor. What stage were they at in filming? Like how much did they have left to shoot? Like what were they shooting right then? That was the end of location filming in Nova Scotia after which they moved to Mexico to do the water scenes. I believe but I'm not 100% sure that whatever filming they were doing in Mexico would be the last of the film. Okay. So second last location shooting. Yeah and so they probably were working against deadlines because they all had flights down to Baja. Like they had to get down there. Make that. Yeah. Yeah. So theories aside officially

the case has gone colder than the icy waters of the Atlantic Ocean. Oh man. If you have any leads on the mystery of the Titanic chowder poisoning you can contact the Halifax Police Department at 902-490-5016. Wow. Well it's funny you say that because the story I have for you guys today no it's not this. But this is very this is funny it's almost like you knew what my story was because this ghost it goes like peas and carrots. Oh I love that. Oh you did Forrest Gump you did Forrest Gump. I couldn't help myself. Did you know he was he was there when Kennedy got assassinated? Yeah. Through all the major miles. I'm just going to tell you guys the plot of Forrest Gump. Before we dive into Mitchell's story here real quick Josie do you do you know what the story

is going to be explain explain what you know. I I know that Mitchell told me a few weeks ago some like top finalists for his story today and I was like well that sounds good you can kind of like think about this and then I quickly forgot all all the things you told me. I love that. He hit you with that men in black. Yeah. Yeah. He was like thank you Josie. Yeah. And I feel like by you saying peas and carrots to the titanic puke clam story I should know it should like bring something for you but I can't I can't even my mind is so sift like I my mind is just fixated on you saying peas and carrots and then puke. Okay you guys y'all today I'm going to take y'all to another place another dimension actually a dimension as vast as space and as timeless

as infinity. That's right. I'm going to tell you guys about the events surrounding the infamous accident that occurred on the set of the Twilight Zone the movie. No I remember. In which three people were killed. And when you were giving us that infamous and you're like James Cameron said it was almost like the Twilight Zone. I was like no I feel like I'm in the Twilight Zone. Oh my. Geez that's heavy bro. So what do you guys know about this like. I know the vague outline of it but but none of the details. Dude yeah that was exactly the case with me. Like are you guys like Twilight Zone like you use zone heads zoners. I love the Twilight Zone. I've seen it and I do really like it but I'm not a zone head. Yeah. I think it's so ahead of its time. I

think it's so some of the episodes are pretty radical in in their morals in a good way. Yeah totally. Or in their storytelling too like in the narrative. It holds up it holds up really beautifully way way better than you might expect for a show of its age. Yeah I'm glad you said that because that's going to be a thing we're going to touch on I think later on. So yeah we'll go back to that. But yeah I I loved the show watched it a lot but I had never seen the movie but like you Taylor I kind of like vaguely knew like I knew someone died making it you know but like I guess there was like enough of a bummer around it and when like I read a lot of like film criticism and stuff and whenever that movie is mentioned it's always mentioned with like oh and people died

making it so I don't know has a stench around it sort of like bad bad vibes you know. A clammy stench. People like to attribute curses to films and television shows. Yes actually a major source that I used for this episode on Shutter. I don't know if you guys have ever watched anything on Shutter but it's a horror movie streaming app really dope. They have this series called Cursed Films and this they have an episode on this incident and I'm also going to go into this. I I'm not saying that cursed films don't exist because I'm sure that anything could be cursed but in this case this is not a cursed film. Okay this is not a curse you guys. Okay you're coming out hard. I'm coming out hard. The element of it being cursed I take issue with and something

we're also going to be talking about. To start things off I just want to like get the gory details out of the way. Okay. You know like tell you exactly what happens in this accident. This is the trigger warning. This is like I'm going to describe the gory details of how these people died. So yeah and it's sad it's very sad but I think that's that's the best thing to do so then we can focus on the story. Okay okay. So yeah and what happened is pretty horrible in the summer of 1982 they're shooting the feature length movie adaptation of the Twilight Zone and three people while they're shooting were killed when a helicopter fell down on top of them decapitating two of them and crushing the other and this was one adult and two children. Yeah it's bad vibes y'all like

right out of the gate and I apologize for that. No no problem. You didn't do it. I didn't do it. Yeah yeah and this is like I gotta say though the more I learned about the story obviously it was repeatedly confirmed. It's a sad story. There's no getting around it but more importantly I think it's also a really fucked up story. Okay. And like what I mean by that I guess is that this is a story about a crime. Yeah. What? The first time as far as I know that somebody died making a movie happened in 1914 on the set of a movie called Across the Border. When was the first movie made? Oh like way back. Don't ask me but it's like 19th century. Okay. Like there's some big movies that are like pretty notable in America and in Europe that were made in like 1902. Those are like you

know like a trip to the moon. I was gonna say that yes good mind-meld there. That movie is sick like yeah there's a lot of good stuff and like yeah earlier than that too like this really racist guy named Mybridge an American he made like anthropological studies of Native Americans right and that's kind of a weird thing about like the history of film is that's like that's kind of built into it's yeah that veteran and porn yeah and like and the Lumiere brothers anyway it's like turn of the century 1890s 1900 this is the beginning. Okay so they made we made it like 20 years yeah and yeah that we know of that we know of exactly that we know of yeah and the story goes with Across the Border in 1914 big star Grace McHugh I know you we've all heard of her

I loved her yeah Grace McHugh it's a western movie and they're filming in Colorado and they finished filming the movie it's totally done but they got to do reshoots of Grace in a boat crossing a river so they go to the Arkansas River in Colorado and they get Grace on a boat and they push her out and the boat capsizes the middle of the river and this cameraman a cameraman named what is his name Owen Carter he's the cameraman he sees this he's like I'm saving her jumps in the river he's able to drag Grace McHugh onto a sandbar which turns out to be quicksand oh and then the rest of the crew watches helplessly as the two of them are sucked under and drowned this is so scary oh my god I didn't know quicksand was real I thought that was not something we had to really worry about

but apparently on a river bank in 1914 in Colorado fuck me hey yeah they were sucked under quicksand and they died why are you sharing such scary deaths with us I'm sorry I'm sorry I know I felt like what's the what's the point of all this oh god I so we never leave the hot house again we're safe at home during quarantine can't even eat clam chowder I know I never lost a chowder yeah so but the movie was finished right so they released it and people saw it and it was like cool let's see another movie they released the film they released the film her performance was intact this was a reshoot right so oh yeah the film was done they're like oh well just not have the boat part and they just released it and everyone just went inside that's so cold yeah for that to happen

in them to be like okay well we're not doing the boat part yeah right right it's like you didn't need the boat part what are you telling me yeah and this is important later I promise you since then on that movie since then a lot of people have died making movies yes in a variety of circumstances did you guys know side note did you guys know that both Jody Foster and Mellie Griffith have been mauled by lions no no yeah yeah Jody Foster to this day like don't catch her out the zoo because she won't go like Jody Foster is afraid to death of lions because in the 70s both of them that's a good fear yeah both of them were like on like weird sets where they had lions and they got mauled by them oh yeah they didn't die obviously they're fine right yeah yeah it's wild

anyway um another common cause of death on movie sets is like confusion over live rounds and blanks on the movie the crow Brandon Lee that's how he died is that he was shot with a blank that which turned out to be a real bullet holy fuck yeah Jesus I didn't know that but the thing with the live ammunition and blanks actually has happened a lot that was actually just the biggest like people in our generation know about Brandon Lee's death but like it it happened a lot in early days of Hollywood wow people just like having real guns and not realizing it yada yada you know why is there a real gun at all exactly I don't I don't know America oh right America yeah someone left their gun uh at catering when they were like dipping an apple slice and some peanut

butter you know they put it down so that they could hold the plate and have their baby carrots exactly yeah I get it yeah yeah but yeah since humans have been making movies and this probably is not going to be a huge surprise the people who have died the most uh on movie sets are stunt workers particularly stunt pilots yeah um yeah there's a rich history actually of of planes crashing on movie sets and a majority of these crashes occurred while filming scenes simulating air combat scenarios okay this is like top god yeah yeah yeah like for instance like uh some pilots died making tour tour tour yeah a famous stunt pilot died making top gun I just see I didn't know that yeah this famous dude who's like this famous jet pilot for movies he died and it's like

at the end of top gun it's like in memoriam to this guy to goose it has happened a lot like uh this this has happened a lot I know there was a high profile incidents of a stunt woman being killed in Vancouver recently really because obviously we film a lot of uh of movies Hollywood yeah totally so it was on gosh I don't remember if it was bat woman or cat woman but a stunt woman died on that show wow sometime within the past five years I guess and it it it um it got a lot of coverage yeah well I guess that's good that we got a lot of coverage but that sucks no it's I felt obviously terrible for the person in their family it happens a lot especially stunt pilots when helicopters arrived to the scene the rate of accidents on movie sets skyrocketed I've got a

good quote here from this dude named David Robb he's a writer who had a column for a while in deadline and he had his column was basically like dedicated to onset safety and the quote from David is your chances of getting killed while making a movie go up dramatically the minute you step inside a helicopter this guy David Robb who I just quoted he said since the year 1980 helicopter crashes have taken more lives on movie sets than any other type of accident and in 1980 alone there was three accidents with helicopters on movie sets that led to multiple deaths that's just in eight 1980 whoa yeah yeah and if uh if helicopter pilot Dorsey Wingo yes that's his name if Dorsey Wingo on July 23rd 1982 if he had been the one who died it would have been like obviously it would

have been a tragedy just like you said like the woman who died in Vancouver yes it would have gotten coverage but it would have been like bizarrely kind of like unremarkable it would have been like a statistic a statistic it would have been a statistic not that not obviously to be clear nobody's life is a statistic but no no not at all I understand what you mean especially from the industry perspective it wouldn't have caused an uproar it would have been like stunt pilot dies on movie set and it would have been yeah but that is not what happened okay the year is 1982 okay what were y'all doing oh how fun for you I could because I get this I worry sometimes that that listening to us through the door with your sad little drinking glass is that is what happens

every episode it's kind of like just being next door to a party that you're not invited to so I'm I'm I'm happy that you you snagged an invitation here because how fun for you to ask that I mean dude it's my pleasure Taylor and also like dude I'm a 32 year old white man I've been asked to explain something oh 1982 yeah 82 I was definitely uh buying a lot of hair spray spraying my hair good for you I think yeah just like really wrecking it that's good you know what I was doing and it's a it's a great regret of mine and I'm embarrassed to say this but I was offered some futures in a little known company called Apple and I said that's not gonna go anywhere yeah I just yeah weird name yeah don't you know don't let it don't let it bug you Taylor you know

it's okay yeah so that was 1982 you that's what you guys are doing Ronald Reagan is the president we're in the middle of the AIDS pandemic fuck Ronald Reagan fuck Ronald Reagan I love rock and roll Joan Jett and the black hearts is blasting out of all the car windows yeah every one of them just doppel yeah this is the only song this is the only song it's a hellish echo chamber people are screaming yeah yeah uh June and Jennifer are busy breaking into the Kennedy house the cola the the cola super deep borehole I don't know what's happening they're probably getting close to the record right nice look at these look at these look at this so to the future guest host look how hard he's kissing our ass right now bring that energy 1982 Los Angeles California our first character

is a filmmaker named John Landis 30 years old of John Landis fame yes okay good John Landis right now it's 1982 he's already made Animal House and Blues Brothers okay and his latest movie he's riding high off the success of American werewolf in London another character Steven Spielberg we know him I've heard of Schindler's list of I believe it's pronounced at uh there's a couple yeah there's a couple yeah that's like that's super relevant uh to today's story because right now uh Stevie he just made Raiders of the Lost Ark it's a big movie yeah he's the man you know everyone loves him he's very busy and he just finished shooting et and this is like two of his biggest movies he's in between those movies oh wow it's like Lady Gaga when she was wearing the

meat dress that she was just the whole conversation you know this is hot girl summer beautiful Steven Spielberg right now yeah absolutely um yeah he gets offered pretty much everything he could do no wrong he just shits gold right now the two guys uh they've known each other these two John Landis Steven Spielberg for a while they met in the 70s they have cameos in each other's movies John Landis his wife Debra Nadulman uh she designed the costumes for some of Spielberg's movies they're pals they're buds like I don't have proof of this but I'm imagining them like going on double dates yeah you know what I mean okay yeah they're the same age um they're both coming up in the industry they're friends they're friends colleagues but also friends totally totally uh Warner Brothers right

now they are wanting to do something with the Twilight Zone property uh they're not sure what but obviously Warner Brothers they just want to make money they're like how can we make some money off Twilight Zone yeah um so yeah like everybody their first thing is like we should ask Steven Spielberg to like make a Twilight Zone movie and he's down yeah they're like can you do like can you do that for us dude yeah I mean he's super down he's down but he has in mind that like maybe he and John Landis should collab so they get together and they decide that they are down to do it they're excited but they're gonna make it an anthology thing so it'll be like okay man I'll make one you make a segment we'll get some other people to make a segment it'll be an anthology

movie the Twilight Zone kind of in the spirit of the show right you know yeah yeah clever yes yeah it's clever yeah and so uh this is what happens they assemble a dream team of white male directors it's gonna be Spielberg Landis Joe Dante he's the dude who made the gremlins movies yeah very very of the movie yeah very of the moment George Miller who made he's like made Mad Max that's what he's famous for right now oh yeah babe too pig in the city babe too pig in the city yeah he's a great filmmaker yeah and so we got the dream team of white male directors Spielberg Landis Joe Dante George Miller they're gonna do four segments anthology movie the Twilight Zone three of them are gonna do adaptations of classic episodes and for whatever reason John Landis is

gonna write his own episode and it's gonna be the one that opens it and I had all my research I have never been able to find out why this is like do he really want to and they're like okay John go for it I don't know but for whatever reason he's writing his own Twilight Zone episode okay so in the segment um what opens the movie that John Landis writes we meet this white American middle-aged guy named Bill he's at a bar meeting his friends and they get there and he tells them that he get passed up for a promotion in favor of this Jewish guy and he starts ranting about him and then it kind of like explodes into a larger racist tirade about all different types of ethnic groups using terms that I will not repeat here but basically like his friends are very quickly

embarrassed and there's a family of black people behind him and they're just like dude like and someone gets the bar owner and pretty John Landis is script this is his script for the Twilight Zone this racist guy is going on this tirade in the bar and pretty much after everyone's just upset and it's like fuck this guy even his friends are like fuck this guy they make him leave they make him leave the bar and they're like please leave sir and he's like you know saying horrible stuff and he steps out of the bar and now he's in uh Nazi-occupied France all of a sudden and he has to get chased by Nazis and uh and like he tries to hide and like people won't let him stay but then all of a sudden then whoop he's in the American South and he's being tied up by the KKK and he's next to a

Bernie cross and they call him the n-word and he's like no I'm white I'm white and then he warps again time warps and he's in Vietnam and he's hiding in a creek bed and these uh this is uh this is what's it called this is lofty John I know he's like going for this is some ambitious shit you're trying he's really going yeah he's really taking a big bite out of it yeah he's trying to like really say something right yeah so now he's in a creek bed in Vietnam and like these American soldiers are coming up and it's ridiculous like they're literally smoking weed and they're listening to Jimi Hendrix and one of them is like saying something like I don't want the VC up my ass man you know it's just like a caricature of Vietnam is happening

okay and he waves at them he's like no guys I'm an American but they shoot at him anyway and he runs away and then boom he's back in Nazi-occupied France again and the Nazis get him and they put him in a concentration camp found train Jesus Christ this is relentless it's relentless and then he's like looking from the bars of the train and his friends are coming out of the bar and he's like help help but they don't hear him and then it's like an insane and that's what happens and then it's just like now on to the next segment whoa yeah I know it's kind of like how do we feel not that good right no put it to you this way I feel like the depictions of human misery in there would be probably a bit triggering to me I think triggering to a lot of

to a lot of people the groups that they feel it just feels very empty feels very exploitative a little bit like patting yourself on the back I think is the gross part yeah yeah it's like a little a little exploitative of the people that it's purporting to empower yeah absolutely could not agree more yeah the the actor that they get they cast this actor to play this character this racist character and he is a seasoned character actor named Vic Moro he's been in some big movies at the time like he's in this movie king creole with Elvis he's in the bad news bears but he's most famous for starring in this 1960s tv drama called combat and it's called that because that's like an exclamation mark in the name yeah so he's famous from being in combat and combat is uh is a well

known show for its like military accuracy whatever that means it's like it really some like kind of dry military buff nerd was writing it exactly like this is what people don't know about the yeah they got the guns right they get the missiles exactly that's the kind of show yeah also Vic Moro is the father of actress jennifer jason lee oh yeah um to shoot the scenes they're supposed to take place in vietnam john landis takes his crew air go a helicopter yeah exactly air go helicopter here we go yeah exactly he takes the crew to this place called indian dunes national park it's near valencia it's just north of six flags magic mountain and this is a scene that is like place the national park that's used to like film exotic locales at this time okay they don't

use it anymore but that's what you know that's the kind of deal it is they are doing the scene where he's running from the american troops in vietnam and for some reason john landis insist that they use live ammunition he's like insist he's like no and some of the crew like pushes back they're like that's not safe bro and like he's like no we're doing it and he insists and they do it yeah for authenticity i don't like that and to his credit steven spielberg when he found out about this he right away was like so pissed yeah steven spielberg so pissed he's just like he could not understand like why john landis would allow that to happen let alone insist that it happens right he's just like beside himself but he's really busy right now et has come out already at this point

and he's on every talk show he's getting offered i'm sure he's taking lots of meetings he's just preoccupied and this isn't his segment right so he's literally not there but i'm also just imagining with live rounds there'd be bullet rounds right like they're shooting bullets at the actor what happens in the scene is that he's in a creek bed and the soldiers see him and he's like i'm an american and they shoot at him and he runs away and what they did is they shot at the actor and he like jumps out of the way that's fucking that is so for the sake of what also i think that's literally in general i feel strongly about making responsible art where you can i don't think that there is any piece of art that should the people who are helping you prepare this art are subservient to the art

itself i think that's a really like old school it's so arrogant uh i'm kind of mega low maniacal way of thinking yes that people should legitimately be putting their lives at risk so taylor basso is sitting on the couch watching this movie can have no fucking idea that that was a live round because it all sounds like gunfire yeah yeah yeah and i think that's the only way like it's very baffling that's the only way i can make sense of it of why someone would want that like you can say this for authenticity or whatever but the only way i can make sense of it is it's a power trip right it's it's just the megalomania you know so this happens meanwhile spielberg is pissed landis finishes shooting the segment he's done with his movie um shitty movie yeah his shitty movie

he shows it to some executives at warner brothers and they're like oh it's good they actually for some reason they like it but they their problem is they find the racist main character for some reason to be unsympathetic that's hard yeah that's hard they actually ask him they're like if you could do one thing for us we want you to add some redeemable quality if you could please make soften him up a little bit that's actually what they tell him to soften up the character interesting and so then john landis comes up with this sort of like a white savior scene to yeah here we go this is what he comes up with yeah yeah and so it's gonna be like a white savior action scene after being shot out by the troops he's running away and he's gonna be seeing two

vietnamese orphans who he then like everything's exploding apocalypse now style and we get this racist guy taking the orphans under his arms and being chased by a helicopter across a river this sounds fucking terrible yeah it's terrible and it's like awful and to make matters even worse then in this in this treatment he's written up then what happens is that the three of them time work together back to nazi occupied france and then the nazis take the kids and kill the kids and then they put him in what the fuck yeah that's why that's what he comes up with i know and it's also he's responsible for these kids being in nazi germany as well like how does that some how does that make any sense it makes no sense and i and i i want to just be clear i'm maybe like spoiling

the punch a little bit but i think you guys are already getting the gist of it john landis is definitely he's the boogeyman of this story but like i just can't get past like who is reading this and is like cool yeah check check check we will fund this i don't want to take any of the blame off of him because he is to blame but it's like come on who read this and you know it's so it's so gratuitous yeah and like and jerking off to its own tragedy it's so bizarre oh my god yeah so bizarre have you guys ever read a vietnam win has a lot of dope writing about like american depictions of vietnam war no i've never like the not his his non-fiction writing is really good about it and he has broken down like these movies like platoon and apocalypse now and full metal

jacket these like successful anti-war movies that he is very critical of and there's a piece that he wrote and i'm gonna take a quote from it he wrote he wrote about the five bloods the spike lee movie that came out recently on netflix he's talking about this movie particularly but the quote that i'm gonna read is it directs kind of at all of that you know any kind of american depiction of of vietnam and i think it's extremely relevant sure in this circumstance yeah he says the reason for this troubling treatment is simple for hollywood and for americans it is better to be the villain or anti-hero rather than virtuous extra so long as one occupies center stage for vietnamese people as well as lauchians cambodians and hamang their role is almost always

that of the extra their function to be helpful rescued blamed analyzed mocked abused raped killed spoken for spoken over misunderstood or all of the above and yeah like yeah it's like it's good writing but it's like i think it supplies this absolutely tenfold absolutely it's just like he's just thrown in these prop kids and he's like cool we'll soften up the character that is like such like a known move to create character just to support your main character yeah it's a definition of tokyo and then these kids warp back in time where they are promptly shoved into a gastric yeah exactly it's just there's absolutely no care for these two as human characters in this let alone human whatsoever they are featureless yeah they're featureless yeah it's true yeah

their characters don't have names that's despicable it's despicable thank you yeah and i think but i think it's important before even it becomes an accident you know become before people are getting hurt yeah i think it's important to lay this you know absolutely these kids wouldn't have even been on a better version of this film no because the story the story sucks this is small potatoes now but the fact that he's the only one who's writing a story everyone else has the humility to be like i want to do the one where shatner's on the plane but exactly this motherfucker has come in and been like yeah this guy who made animal house is like i have what it's like oh my god right but there's also this other element too that's bringing the back of my head where it's like twilight zone was

from the fifties right late late fifties early sixties i think and those stories were amazing oh yeah and like so intricate and so gnarly and to think yeah this was 30 years prior and then this shit comes out yeah i was talking to our buddy uh john mire about this shout out to john mire john mire fussing with fire john mire is a good buddy of ours he's a talented writer and musician and he uh yeah i know that he had seen this movie and like he's a big horror movie guy so i knew that he would know some stuff i asked him and he said this is what um you something you said earlier taylor reminded me of this when you're talking about kind of like the counter cultural nature of twilight zone and he said that like he felt like this segment in particular even the way it

like plays in the movie it just kind of stands as a rebuke to any counter cultural any remaining counter cultural meaning that's left you know this is just an anti corporate property at this point yeah john mire nailing there's this horrible irony and this obvious racism to it that makes the story of this feel like an episode of the twilight zone i know it's so fucked like the real like the real twilight zone not this fakey fake what if a guy who hates to use got picked in a gas chamber shit i was reading on wikipedia about rod sirling have you ever heard of his like old or no story for the twilight zone so he joined up uh to fight in world war two right after high school yeah he was military i remember that yeah and he and his buds like he he's jewish

he hates hitler he hates fascism he wants to go kill nazis basically he's like let's go fight the nazis but he gets shipped to the philippines in the pacific theater and he's bummed he's like this shitty soldier right and yeah he's just kind of like always getting lost and getting injured and always getting reprimanded and he as punishment he gets sit on this like death platoon jesus where it's like it's this unit where it's like not only are they killing a lot of people but there a lot of them are dying it's a high casualty rate yeah and he has this best friend this is like the memory that he decides is like this is what births the twilight zone he has this friend named melvin levy he was in the platoon with him and melvin's like one of the

only jewish guys and one day melvin is sitting under all these palm trees and he's telling this like long joke like it's like an extended comic monologue yeah and and he's getting to the end of his joke and rod sirling and the guys are laughing that i hear it comes and just as he's getting to the end of the joke out of nowhere a us supply crate falls out of the sky and decapitates melvin levy yeah yeah and rod sirling had to like preside over his funeral like instantly like right away he put a star of david over his grave and he remembers this for the rest of his life and he'll get nightmares and insomnia oh yeah yeah and uh he kind of like has ptsd from this experience but it's like the twilight zone is him like working that out yeah and you can see him he's

dealing with young canny and these twists of fate yeah and death and and humor yeah with the humor and this yeah this weird whimsy to it sometimes yeah and it's like that's you know this is him processing a lot of art does this honestly yeah of course and i feel like this this thing that john landis has concocted is this sick reversal it's like he's dreamed up this scenario of danger and now it's gonna it's gonna become real yeah you know it's just like it doesn't mean anything this is the time period too in the early eighties it's like growing conservatism yeah in america particularly right fuck reagan yeah that literally happens i feel like every fucking episode of this show one of us joes your eye will be like so you know mid eighties reagan on the rise yeah

he writes this treatment this is his like reshoot this is going to solve the problem of his character being letting you know more redeemable one of the casting directors of the movie gets a hold of this and right away she's like oh man this looks potentially dangerous for kids to be involved in you know right yeah yeah and uh yeah of course go figure yeah because it looks really dangerous there's explosions happening and she also lets him know that he's also gonna have a hard time getting kids to work at night because california child labor laws prohibit little kids from working past eight o'clock whoop whoop yeah so instead of rewriting the sequence landis's response to this in private which he voices to his team is and i quote we'll have to get them off the street ourselves

um i told you this is a story about a crime you better tell me this man is in jail enter george folsey george folsey jr to be exact okay he's the son uh the son of a legendary hollywood cinematographer george folsey is john landis's right hand man oh good okay with few exceptions they co-produce everything together he edits all of john landis's movies they're best friends essentially collaborators even like when you watch the movie coming to america the opening title before it's even like paramount or whatever it says a landis folsey film so anyway george folsey is given the job of finding these child actors that will work under the table without permits and he does it and i'm going to get into exactly how he does this and how he finds them

later on but all we need to know now is that he finds these kids their names are micah dinley and renay shin yi chan micah dinley is a seven-year-old kid he's born in vietnam and now he lives in southern california he's the son of daniel lay a doctor and kim hoa who's a social worker uh they are literally refugees from the war in vietnam yeah um micah is he's an extroverted kid he loves getting his picture taken theater kid he's a theater kid um his parents are told that micah has a shot at acting in a steven spielberg movie oh no they're a little nervous they have questions but they're pretty excited micah is stoked and that's pretty much how it goes also with renay shin yi she is six years old she lives in southern california her parents are recent immigrants

from taiwan and just to be clear renay is not vietnamese in any shape or form right renay is taiwanese and this is a level of accuracy that they were not interested in no but we gotta use live ammunition live ammunition is a must but it doesn't taiwanese vietnamese doesn't matter you raise a good point you raise a good point so they don't care too much about that anyway same story they tell her you're gonna be in a steven spielberg movie her parents are hesitant but they're convinced and they're all excited george folsey asked both sets of parents to keep quiet about the late night working hours that are going to be happening at this time a production assistant named synthia nye would later say that during this illegal hiring process she heard john landis

crack the joke well we'll probably all be thrown in jail for this also there is donna shuman she is a production secretary on the film we'll meet her again later donna remembers being at a luncheon where john landis and george folsey they spoke at length about like very seriously about the possibility that they might be going to jail for hiring the kids like this yeah sorry okay i'm speechless with anger i know i know i'm speechless with anger this is so horrible and irresponsible and racist and yes it makes me uh it makes me mad makes me mad it's it's gonna make us all mad okay i wish i had a happier story but no you know what they're not they're not always going to be happy these in fact they're not always going to be happy most of them are yeah most of them are pretty

unhappy this is a bitterly selected the idea of an infamous story that this is a bitter bitter infamy yeah so it's the day before shooting starts on this reshoot segment and they're back in indian dunes they're prepping the location they're setting up a job that requires some grips to climb scaffolding 30 feet in the air while being repeatedly blasted by rotor wash from the helicopter what some of the text hesitated obviously and john landis yells at them he says and i quote is there somebody on this electrical crew who's not too chicken shit to do the job i know the pilot of the helicopter they find is dorsey wingo he is a former army helicopter pilot who served multiple tours of combat in vietnam he's never done a movie before but he's hoping this

is like his big moment he's gonna do this job he's doing a spielberg it's gonna launch a big career as a helicopter pilot oh my at this time dorsey wingo recalls them doing tests of him flying with the pyrotechnics and explosions going off he's flying the helicopter low near the water and the water splashing up on his windshield he's just getting shaken around a lot so he tells john landis i'm not gonna lie dude like i'm good to go but that was pretty shaky up there that's kind of kind of wobbly is that if there's anything that we can do to change that i would do that yeah and landis grins mischievously and replies you ain't seen nothing yet oh my god why is this guy doing so much foreshadowing why can't he be humble about his crimes i know he's really not yeah after watching

the same test with pyrotechnics and the helicopter a fire safety officer named richard ebbenthor tells landis very firmly that in his opinion with these explosions going off the chopper will be on the ground another person on set right now is a cameraman named steve leidecker a lot of times it's hard to find likeable characters in these stories yes but i think we might have one in steve hey steve yeah okay so steve is like a kind of shy burly guy he's got a big uh bushy mustache like imagine ron swanson as a 1980s camera operator gotcha yeah i'm on it and so steve is watching all this stuff happening with the explosions no i mean yeah no sleeves burly mustache hat yeah um steve has seen the explosions happening with the helicopter and he's concerned

so he goes up john landis and he's like hey dude do you ever think that like the explosions happening around the helicopter might like i don't know cause it to crash and john landis says uh well then we may lose the helicopter that's fine with we can go in there yeah right i don't know that was his response i know this is just piling on frustrations but i'm just trying i'm making a case here this is the you know yeah also on the set at this time is a young production designer named richard soyer this is also one of his first jobs uh they have him there rearranging plants and like moving little things around making sure everything's right but at one point he sort of stands up and he touches john landis on the shoulder and he's like john i see a village over there

and then john landis is like yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah village like a vdmi's village with huts we're gonna blow it up like an apocalypse now it's gonna be like fire and brimstone and then that'll be with there that'll be the backdrop and that's where him and the kids will be running from the all of it perfect do it and so wait in a split second decision they've decided to add a major explosion to the shoot yes well they're already worse gonna be explosions because it's like a war thing but this is gonna be like a very much added element of pyrotechnics where the entire village will be set aflame this has nothing to do with the twilight zone nothing no holy shit how many twilight zone episodes do you remember where they were fucking exploding

vietnamese villages yeah and also like i hate to say this but at this time like john landis has made some pretty good movies like he's not a bad filmmaker why he's sitting there like i need to do this like for my twilight zone right i need to make this like i seriously he doesn't he doesn't really have a lot to prove right now he's kind of convinced the industry that he's a dude and he can do this and but apparently he does he's doing like he's yeah i don't know fucking um so richard soyer is able to put together this elaborate village like in a day and it's actually like pretty impressive to everybody on set it's like holy shit and the interview that i watched the one with shudder the cursed films richard soyer is in that and he says that he recalls the day

that he builds this village being like instantly kind of embraced by some of the most powerful people in the industry it's like all these people pat in his back and they're just like wow damn man like good for you like what's your name can i get your number yeah and specifically he remembers somebody uh head honcho fat cat putting their arm around him pointing to this fake vietnamese village that he's built and saying you've done something wonderful how does it feel how does it feel to be in the big time what is happening this is like the fucking twilight zone yeah it is yeah just remembered that in my in the infamous what's his face says this is like the twilight zone good time that worked out that worked out great you couldn't have planned it better if you tried

day one of shooting this segment oh they're shooting at night around midnight the kids are groggy it's past their bedtime but vick morrow he's a pro he's like cheering him up making him laugh making faces they kind of get the kids into it but there've been a ton of delays that kind of set things back a major delay happens when that fire safety officer i've mentioned before he comes around and john landis has the kids hidden he hides the kids whenever the fire safety officer is around so that they won't know so they won't know that they've hired kids illegally right because probably there's some regulation about fire safety in kids i'm sure like every all the fire safety requirements go up a notch or two oh yeah i'm sure yeah so he has george foalsie hide the kids also george foalsie

tells the parents that if that same guy comes around asking who they are for them to lie and say that they're friends of george foalsie and they're just here to watch ultimately these delays kind of lead up to them deciding that this whole thing with the helicopter and the explosions it's not going to happen today they got to wait and do it tomorrow so george foalsie goes up to the parents he gives them each an envelope with five hundred dollars inside he says the kids will be needed tomorrow and uh they come back tomorrow and they start shooting at two a.m literally probably shooting guns at two a.m yes yeah they start shooting at two a.m this time to do this big thing here we go they've got all the pyrotechnics set up the helicopter's there renais mom the six

year old renais mom says that she smells gasoline and she starts to get a bad feeling she says to george foalsie is there gonna be any danger and he says no no no no danger just loud noises and john landis tells the kids that it's gonna be just like disneyland yeah you doing okay over there taylor thumbs up i'm fine i'm up i'm i'm upset at the story that you're telling me i know i know you don't have to apologize if you listen to this story and you have half a heart you should be upset so yeah you should be upset by this this is the proper response as vik morrow was waiting to film what would turn out to be the scene that killed him he said to a production assistant i must be out of my mind to be doing this i should have asked

for a stunt double what can they do but kill me right and uh weirdly when he was shooting a movie like 10 years before this this movie called dirty mary crazy larry he insisted on having a million dollar life insurance policy taken out before he would shoot any scenes involving a helicopter and when pressed about this vik morrow told him i've always had a premonition that i was gonna die in a helicopter crash oh my god you got this off that curse films one didn't you no that was on imdb baby oh yeah um so shivers fun shivers fun this is not a curse film i have to reiterate this is a preventable accident i see what you're saying now yes vik morrow at this time he's 53 he's not like an old guy he's not in bad shape either but carrying a kid under each arm through

river is not an easy thing to do no it takes him a little bit to get into this and he struggles with it and he's nervous but he gets comfortable with it he tries a couple times and him and the kids like are working on it they figure out how to balance weight and finally like he's got it and he he hugs the kids close and he says i'll keep you kids safe no matter what i swear to god yeah i know it's it's really sad um he then nods at john landis to let him know he's ready and then somebody yells action right away the rattle of the machine guns and mortar blast fills the air smoke is everywhere helicopter comes screaming down over the village and the village that explodes just like they wanted to uh the helicopter is like 20 feet off the ground

it's inching closer to the actors john landis's voice can be heard over the bullhorn lower lower lower dorsi wingo takes it lower and then there's an explosion right behind the helicopter spinning it completely out of control and into the river directly on top of the three actors and for a moment everything is just eerily still just quiet and horrifying there's smoke everywhere and somebody eventually says like where's vik where are the kids um people start crying murmuring and asking questions john landis sends his assistant out there he finds their bodies and then people just start screaming um renation yi chen's mom she finds her daughter's body and she's just like screaming bloody murder it's just like all hell yeah um yeah and then at that

point a voice comes on the loudspeaker and says that's a wrap everybody please stop what you're doing take your things and go home oh my god yeah funerals are held for the dead uh all of which john landis attends he even speaks at vik morrow's funeral yeah he speaks at vik morrow's funeral which is so gross yeah yeah fuck you and this is what he says at vik morrow's funeral he says just before the last take vik took me aside to thank me for the opportunity to play this role tragedy can strike in an instant but film is immortal vik lives forever now ew ew what an what an oscar segment of a fucking eulogy i know uh fucking god because of this steve leidecker ron swanson guy oh yeah he that paces him off and he and a couple of the other

members of the camera crew decide to hold a press conference at his house where they essentially serve as whistleblowers yeah they're like this is what fucking happened yeah and this is the first time the media gets word that this actually might be a criminal situation right because john landis is like tragedy strikes yeah at this this is the moment that everyone's like oh whoa we just thought it was like a crazy accident and then they basically i don't know exactly what they told the press but they say like no this was messed up and yeah so pretty much immediately after this steven spielberg makes a point to publicly end his friendship with john landis he says that this accident made me grow up a little more and has left everyone who worked on a movie sick to the center of our souls and but

if he still finishes the movie like they make all the other segments after this yeah they finish it and they release it and the really messed up thing is that this was a reshoot it's just like grace mckew yeah this was a reshoot so they just vik morrow's performance the whole rest of the story i told you it's just there the kids there's no trace of them no trace of the kids in this movie it's just the first story i told you with vik morrow's performance and uh when challenged about this by people including steven spielberg john landis's defense was like it would be offensive to vik morrow not to keep it in to take this performance out with like disgrace his legacy or something it's just like oh my god oh my god what's disgracing to his legacy is killing him

yeah exactly that's um ah that's that's very sad uh it's very sad that hurts that hurts my soul i think how can you even if you have not a heart in your body for the memories and dignity of these three folks who died while doing this completely extraneous dangerous illegal thing for you and kind of bad too yeah because the other you know it's a bad story yeah oh it's a terrible exploitative offensive story even if you can't get that into your soul how do you not realize that this is all anybody's gonna think about when they watch this film now when they're watching this fucking grim piece of tragedy i know that you've put together all they're going to be thinking is right killed those kids i know and that's the thing that's also really messed up it's like the

kids are not mentioned but also like like i said when that dude died making top gun i think i don't know where it happens at the beginning of the end but it's like this film is dedicated to this stunt pilot who died this does not happen in twilight zone not at all there's no trace of the accident on this movie there's no like this movie's dedicated to vik morrow and these kids nothing there's no nothing what a what a shitty approach to making art man amen what a shitty approach to human life what a shitty way to move about the world to make these decisions exactly so at this point multiple investigations are in the works and while legal action kind of seems imminent at this point it takes a few years for all that to come together so in the meantime

pretty much there's no effect on john landis's career at all this the accident happens in july in december he's shooting the movie trading places with dan acroyd and eddie murphy shooting that movie comes out it's great he gets a call from michael jackson michael jackson's a huge fan of american werewolf in london and would like him to direct the video for thriller which he does john landis directed the thriller video after this happened his wife deborah nidolman she designed the red jacket and the glove like she designed the costumes for him oh jesus you really are giving us forest gump i really am truly a film in every pie okay yeah instead of like a dumb guy from alabama it's just this evil film director right yeah so yeah yours go by he makes other movies like three

amigos other comedies he like writes the movie clue produces the movie i love clue me too don't take that away i know this is how i feel about a lot of these things ah you motherfucker but this is the to your point about it's a bad story i think the racism of the story is relevant yeah for this but it being bad i think is irrelevant because whether or not like roman palancy is a great filmmaker but he's also a shithead because he's a rapist you know what i mean it's like john landis is not bad because he makes bad movies he's bad because of what he's done here i would argue that this is the extreme of a bad movie but yes oh yeah no but i'm saying that like like that just adds insult to injury you know what i mean that's what i mean i don't want to mean to say that he's

this incident and the murder of these three people is bad because the movie was bad or the story wasn't worth it or whatever i don't i don't want to say that what i want to say is that because the story was so inhumane already it's baked in it's gross it's insult to injury yeah it's baked in it's the foundation of the project nasty no yeah understanding other humans absolutely yeah um also another reason to not like uh john landis so he directed the thriller video he would actually later go on to sue michael jackson because he didn't believe he was given enough money and that like you know the video did so well on mtv that he sues michael jackson to get more money okay yeah cool yeah he's that guy so now guys we're ready for the trial okay it's the trial the trial um yeah i'm i'm pleasantly

surprised that there was a trial yeah right i know i did not think this is going that way so it started in the summer of 1986 and it lasted for 10 months and this would be the first time ever that a movie director has faced criminal charges for events happening on a movie set okay because there's so many regulations and so many people that have to check lists and all that stuff that i feel like you would be tied up in liability crap yeah yeah this has never happened before and a lot of that is because like the studios always have the back of the filmmakers enough to where like whoever's prosecuting just you know can't get enough sway to make that happen yeah and somehow it did in this case but to be fair fuck the studios they all had john landis's back right Warner Brothers had his

back but also other movies like he made this movie into the night from you with universal and the head of universal was a character witness was like hey i got your back because it's money in the bank that's all they care about right yeah and they don't want to be held account they don't want regulation you know it's just an industry anyway so john landis george foley dan alliam who's the production manager and special effects coordinator paul stewart oh and as well as pilot dorsy wingo these five people are charged with involuntary slaughter john landis's legal team at first he gets herald brawn who previously represented roman polanski but apparently herald brawn thinks that he's so much of an asshole even worse than roman polanski that he won't wow yeah so you're

worse than roman i know like that's have a moment with yourself check in i know listen listen buddy tone the attitude down you're no roman polanski yeah that that's what herald brawn said yeah exactly he's like listen honey and so then john landis uh he retains the services of james f neal who was very famous for prosecuting jimmy hoffa as well as top officials of the nixon administration in the water great fallout so like this guy's a fancy lawyer yeah you know i mean the prosecution is pretty fancy too though they're represented by li di augustino she is an undefeated lawyer with a nickname the dragon lady okay stop stop it i fucking love phoenix right this is a legit like an undefeated prosecutor they call the dragon lady that's your rival in court like this

is proper phoenix right shit good so i'm excited for her i'm happy yeah they call her the dragon lady i don't know why but i'm assuming misogyny i don't know maybe she's like no but you know you know in mortal combat when like people can transform into a dragon in their fatalities maybe that's how finish it yeah exactly maybe that's how she ends a trial when she's victorious i think so that's probably why they called it okay nice yeah so at the trial john landis officially blames special effects coordinator paul stewart and pilot dorsey wingo for quote not coordinating the scene properly the scene he dreamed up in his head and then broke many laws in order to have make it happen exactly the way he wanted you know the scene of which he is the

director yeah sweetheart do you ever see the uh fucking buck stops here plak yeah you're where the buck stops my love also maika dinley's father daniel uh dr daniel lay he testifies to he gives a harrowing emotional testimony he talks about how this was giving him flashbacks when the explosion went off so actual memories of the war and he's just like this was horrible it brought that personal memories of trauma he also testifies that he clearly heard john landis yell for the helicopter to go lower repeatedly lower lower lower over the bullhorn yeah which john landis would fervently deny in his testimony there must be footage there is footage two other notable witnesses are a married couple named donna and herald shuman i mentioned donna before remember she was a

production secretary who was like she had a luncheon with them where they were like very seriously talking about like oh could we go to jail for this like what can we do right get around this the non hiring yeah with the illegal hiring of the children prosecution questions are on this they say didn't you get the impression that they might have been joking though when they said they could go to jail and donna says oh no in fact it was one of the grimest luncheons i've ever attended this is of all of the luncheons of my many luncheons this one stands out as exceptionally grim this is his sex job working for john landis one has a lot of grim this is in hollywood where everyone's in some state of recovery right exactly there are probably a lot of grim luncheons across la county oh my god

yeah she also testifies that she was instructed to closely guard any script or any document that mentions the children at all she also says that in passing a conversation she had with john landis while they're walking by each other at universal studios he told her quotes i want it big i want it big i'm gonna blow that vietnamese village off the face of the earth yeah just in case there's not any doubt i don't know why there would be i'm happy that everyone this man ever spoke to you seems to be diming on him yeah really really pretty much except for people that are profiting off of him i wish that obviously things had conspired differently and that someone had been able to stop it from happening obviously i know i know i'm probably gonna say this again even before we're

done but like that's a part where it's like other people are implicated i feel like steven spielberg is implicated yeah the movie studio at large is implicated but it's like john landis is he's the bad guy here you know what i mean it's like yeah the box stops the box yeah a lot of people could have done something but he really did something intentionally here you know yeah a lot of people could have done something to prevent him from doing what he did yeah but he's the main driver but he's this engine of chaos no one was in there saying let's use live ammunition no other than right yeah um so yeah donna schumann testifies things get messy when her husband dr herald schumann takes a stand because it turns out that he's bffs with george foalsie and dr herald schumann is

how they got the kids so his co-worker at work is this guy named peter chen who is the six-year-old renay chen's uncle her uncle works with dr herald schumann who's bfs with george foalsie so basically he he's like hey you have a kid i see that picture or whatever right yeah and it's like and then uh peter chen actually knows the other kids dad daniel lay who's also you know he's a doctor right so like that's how it all happens this guy dr herald schumann and he comes he corroborates his wife's testimony but what's really fucked up is that dr herald schumann being like he's got the back of his friend right george foalsie he contradicts the testimony of her uncle peter chen because peter chen testified earlier and he said that uh they were not told about explosions

they were not told about danger they weren't told about helicopters nothing like that just this is about late hours and dr herald schumann testifies saying nope that's a lie that they were told everything everything was above board and that like they was never above board i was gonna say nothing was above board nothing was above board it was like illegal i know so he contradicts that peter chen ends up having kind of like a breakdown actually like on the stand where he tells the judge he's just sort of like dude you have me on here under oath to tell the truth yeah i'm telling you the truth eventually uh john landis goes on the witness stand at one point in his questioning a member of the prosecution team says the final authority in terms of camera actor positions

helicopter or whatever it is is the director right and then he interrupts them he's like no it's not mine not my authority because if i ask an actor would you please take your hand and stick it in this garbage disposal the actor is going to say of course not that is exactly what he did he asked them to like i know this is dangerous and it seems horrible but please do this yeah and then he's blaming them you know he's saying that like well if they thought it was dangerous they shouldn't have done it it's like what is that yeah well no because what he's asked them to do is to put their hand into the garbage disposal and he said i won't flip the switch i won't tell anybody to turn that on we're just gonna have your hand in there and then he flips the switch it's just

like or the switch circuit breaks blah blah blah and it turns on whatever it is yeah he's the one who out yeah john landis's whole vibe here is sort of i'm the victim how dare you suggest that i could be you know he's like really beside himself and he's mad at everyone else he's like how could you even think this is his the white boy defense you know yeah yes that is what it is thank you for naming that it's really just the privilege of all of this this is such a it's a privilege thing absolutely it's something that i think white men i think we are like kind of actually encouraged to do you know or this thing of like if you do the right thing if you say the right thing you can get out of something you know it's like that like don't you know who my father is it's like yeah yeah

yeah i know exactly you know learn skill and he's doing it you know so yeah where was i uh john landis is on the witness stand he says that ridiculous thing about like the hand and the garbage disposal at one point he's on the witness stand he starts crying and prosecutor lee diagucino she theatrically passes him a box of Kleenex uh yeah yeah and he's just indignant rolls his eyes at that oh yeah boom now you look stupid buddy yeah now you look stupid she also asked landis if if he thought the conditions of his set were so great so perfect then he would have no problem filming this scene again right exactly that way to which he replies no of course i would never shoot it like that again but it's like you still refuse to concede that that was an unsafe environment

right yeah so he's trying to have his cake needed to the jury arrives at a verdict the defendants including john landis are all acquitted of all charges including hiring children illegally which was expected i think all the interviews i watched because this is a like oh very like pre-oj coverage of a big trial okay there wasn't any like juicy camera angles in the courtroom nothing like that but it was like on the news every night in la especially and they'd have people like they get peter o' tool come on there they'd be like what do you think can a director you know be convicted for a crime and it's yeah all these hollywood old people would be like oh yeah that used to happen all the time yeah but it's like no it didn't this is a crazy thing that happened right yeah but i think

to be fair to onlookers and like regular people watching at this time a lot of the details i've said like a lot of the fucked up foreshadowing and all the things that couldn't you have known this doesn't come out until later like one of my major sources is this book that got written in the 90s about all this right and that's when we really find out what happens yes and like the public is not really hearing all the fucked up stuff there's this trajectory of this was newsworthy it was reported on in a certain way things go fallow for about five years then it comes out that no actually the story wasn't as it reported we amanda knocks didn't actually kill anybody you know whatever it is yeah and there is that kind of swell of interest for about four or five years

and then there's like the netflix special and that yes you know what i mean you get what's that guy ryan murphy does he does a version of it exactly set in stone exactly yeah so this is and and then it kind of trickles down to the general interest podcasts yeah which is this yeah this is where we are yes yeah so they have the conventional wisdom since seems to be that there's like a debate over whether or not that they can be held accountable or that a filmmaker could be held accountable for manslaughter how right that's the debate and that's what the studios are all they have his back about is they want to make sure that this doesn't get a guilty verdict that precedent but every but the conventional wisdom is sort of it like everyone knows that they broke the law in terms of hiring

these kids illegally at least at least but then nope they they're all acquitted of all charges somehow the jury found it to be an unforeseeable accident the families of mica denley and renation yi chen are each given two million dollars in separate settlements later and vik moro's family receives an undisclosed sum which means they get more okay yeah mere hours after the verdict comes through there is a helicopter accident on the set of a movie shooting in the philippines that movie is braddock missing in action three starring chuck norris uh directed by chuck norris's brother erin okay you were saying this isn't cursed it's not cursed no i don't i i to be clear i a hundred percent agree the the curse there is like hubris and important white man syndrome and fucking and

colonialism colonialism a shitty hack director yeah a bunch of shit going on there yeah so a bunch of people died in the philippines on that movie a few years after that there would be another helicopter crash on the set of another chuck norris movie this time delta force two the columbian connection also in the philippines also directed by his brother erin killing multiple people maybe they should stop using fucking helicopters yeah this is what i'm getting it's not i'm just yeah you can allow just spitball it's not a cursed film it's like in all these circumstances helicopters are used in this very like fetishized vietnam scenario green beret style scenario where it's like explosions are going off and helicopters are flying through and lo and behold they keep

crashing and killing people yeah yeah oh my god yeah it's crazy the monday following the verdict john landis appeared on a good morning america to decry his thoroughly dishonest and political persecution and in a subsequent interview with the los angeles who wants to see that fucking at eight in the morning i know who wants good morning america good morning america john landis has some aggressive defensive denials to make vis-a-vis those three people he killed and then we're gonna have a recipe about baked ziti on a good morning america he calls prosecutor lee diagnosino grotesque an aberration he calls her she is very unimportant what is important is that the la la district attorney's office spent this type of money pursuing something that they know

damn well as bogus your hard-earned tax dollars are misused his latest movie coming to america comes out now and it's a massive success uh he and his wife by a mansion in beverly hills that was formerly owned by rock Hudson he throws a one-year anniversary party for his verdict he invites friends yeah i know yeah this is this guy he's that guy he invites his friends to celebrate the verdict he even invites the jurors of the case to acquit who acquitted him to a private screening of coming to america no yes he invites the jury to come see on the house taylor thoughts uh you look like you want to like punch someone over there i know i do i would very much like to punch specifically john landon yeah yeah uh so now i'm gonna do i'm gonna do like a little epilogue we love a we love a

little epilogue yeah it's like that thing at the end of the movie where it's like you know elwood's graduated at the top of her class erin brokovich you know that baby is still good the people of pgne hate her yes the people of hinkley love her etc yeah the chromium um yes so epilogue love ladder to the movies sorry go ahead yeah hollywood helicopter pilot dorsi wingo spent the next 20 years after the trial flying helicopters for the logging industry uh and he wrote an autobiography called the rise and fall of captain methane these days dorsi wingo is active in the speedway bike photo journalism scene sorry rise rise and fall was it the rise and fall rise and fall okay uh can i ask a question how was he not seriously or fatally injured in this crash that's the thing i didn't get

into this there was four other people on board the helicopter too like a lot of people that have died on movie sets traditionally are camera people aboard planes too yeah so there's extra cameras on board the helicopter and like grips and they all went down with dorsi wingo and they were all hurt but they're they all lived oh my god yeah they got like non-serious injuries i guess that's something to be thankful for yeah i guess that's like somewhat of a silver lining because yeah that like yeah shitty silver lining i know yeah so these days pewter lining yeah pewter lining tin lining tin lining so yeah these days dorsi wingo he's active in the speedway bike photo journalism scene and he currently runs a website called speedwaybikes.com

according to his linkedin he's also the CEO of a company called smoking hole productions yeah smoking hole smoking hole yeah i think that this gentleman needs to stop doing fucking cute helicopter crash puns and literally everything he does considering yeah in this situation yeah yeah it's i agree uh micah dinley's parents daniel and kim hoa they divorced two years after the trial ended yeah george folsey has continued to have a successful career as an editor he edited the thriller video obviously and pretty much everything else john landis made from then on but he's also worked on some pretty big movies since then like dude george folsey edited the hostel movies he edited super troopers hot tub time machine george folsey edited hot tub time machine

so all all of my favorite film i know these are all great movies super super troopers hot tub time machines but then when i'm in the mood for something a little bit more lighthearted i'll put on like hostel too yeah right just watch just someone's fucking achilles get hacked out from under them for for fun yeah george folsey did all that according to imdb right now he's currently working on a project called will you be my quarantine so yeah cameraman steve leidecker the guy who blew the whistle on the whole thing uh he was he was branded as a troublemaker in the industry for cooperating with the prosecution and he never worked in hollywood again what was his name again steve leidecker he's the ron swanson guy yeah he was completely blacklisted i would argue that

it's more trouble when the people actually die yeah because that's that's actually there's a there's a lot of work that comes with killing three people through yeah industrial practices on your movie so like yeah am i am i missing something here maybe if we know not to do that and we get rid of the people who are doing that the real action but you know what it probably costs them less to make it go away than the movie itself will make for them exactly yeah exactly oh god that's that's the fucked up truth yeah today steven spielberg is probably the most financially successful filmmaker ever uh easy easy literally a billionaire considered by many to be the single most powerful individual in the entertainment industry i go opera in her day was pretty high yeah oh yeah

ellen in her day was pretty high not as not on that same level but she was in there yeah sorry now i'm just thinking of famous people go ahead yeah yeah yeah you know who else is famous kate winslet all right she's just a random famous you know who i like kate winslet she's a good great actress great great john landis has since said that he lives with the twilight zone the movie every day of his life oh do you john yeah do you he has also said uh since then that the idea that this could be anything other than an unforeseeable accident is not only wrong it's bewildering bewildering you're confused now boohoo boohoo his son max landis you've all heard of him yeah no max landis is his son max landis at one point was a semi successful screenwriter and producer and max

landis sucks y'all he has recently been called out by many women for sexual abuse and assault so when we were talking about john landis i thought that what you just said about max landis was also true about john landis like i had gotten the landis is mixed up well obviously they have a lot in common right you know yeah they both kind of suck yeah yeah they both suck a lot they're both bad to other humans i don't have much to add for john landis's legacy if you want to watch his movies you can but i'm not going to mention any other ones you know it's like that's all he gets i mean we've also mentioned like 40 of them so yeah we got him a lot of advertising today i feel like i've been pretty kind to his movies actually so that's all he gets but i think we should give the last

word to eddie murphy actually oh geez is it eddie murphy as the clumps or is it eddie murphy right yeah the movie coming to america right like this has always been a big favorite of mine i've watched a lot there's a rumor that i've heard a lot like online read it online i remember as a kid my friend's dad told me this and it kind of goes like this it's like when eddie murphy was younger movies like trading places and 48 hours he was fresh and he was like upstart he had a great attitude but later in the late 80s that's when he got bitter and he was a prima donna what a diva he turned into turns out these rumors are actually kind of like supported and maybe even got started by john landis who has said in many interviews that eddie murphy was difficult to work with on set of

coming to america that he was like a handful yada yada yada but in a 90s playboy interview eddie murphy said this as it turns out john always resented that i hadn't gone to his twilight zone trial he never knew that i thought we were cool but he'd been harboring it for a year every now and then he would make little remarks like you didn't help me out you didn't realize how close i was to go into jail i never paid any mind so basically he was asked to show up as a character witness yeah and eddie murphy's didn't do it obviously he also said this he's like i don't want to say he was guilty or who was innocent but if you're directing a movie and two kids i'm sorry it's it's funny because he gets the facts wrong in a way that's funny and he's so

okay he's like if you're directing a movie and two kids get their heads chopped off at 12 o'clock at night and there ain't supposed to be kids working and you said action then you have some sort of responsibility so my principles wouldn't let me go down there and sit in court sorry that's just the way i am big size true words eddie murphy true words i just love it because it's like it's just so common sense it's just like i don't know yeah like call me crazy if decapitations happen on your watch you're probably responsible yeah yeah yeah on your watch that you've already kind of tweaked to be a little different because you knew that you couldn't have kids after eight p.m. yeah after everything i think that's kind of how i feel it's like there's a lot going on

like we've talked about it's like the racism of the story yeah the history of hollywood all these things but it's like at the end of the day it's that is what happened and this dude made that happen and then got also got pissed when colleague of his didn't show up at his trial you know like yeah and like made himself or for it oh wow yeah i didn't know that i didn't know any of that i had the vague shape of this story i knew that there was an accident it had involved a helicopter and two two asian children had died i knew that yeah but that was all i knew about it and like you say there really is these roots under it of of just you know the dual powers that are like yeah the the sociological systems and effects that lets a horrible thing like this

happen but then also one person who shouldn't have had yeah any kind of power responsibility over yeah some something like fucking explosions and live ammunition yeah it's like the whole place is a haunted house but he's the monster in the house you know what i mean yeah you know first that's a good way to put it there's like absolutely no justice in that there is no justice to walk off trial i wish that i kind of had the eloquence of a rod surling to do i know the monologue out here truly words fail me truly words fail me i think that yeah this is a very complicated story do you feel like you maybe had some pcp laced clam chowder and that this story has just wilded your brain no because the clam chowder sounded kind of fun that's what maybe like now

looking back yeah i hear that and i'm like that sucks for them but also like i would like to try some pcp lace clam chowder i have none of the responsibility i just get to be on pcp which i'm sure that the yeah right there's many stories of people like screaming and wailing so i don't mean to minimize the the reality of that but in the end no one no one gets hurt everyone they're cracking jokes about it now chains cameras like someone stabbed me in the face with a pen like i don't know yeah that's that's hygiene baby yeah that's just that's just calm that's the episode of mad men where dr feelgood comes in and gives them shots in the butt and the whole rest of the episode they're just flying around thank you so much for coming and doing this little

experiment with us i hope that everyone who is listening enjoyed this little experiment we're gonna try to bring in guests from time to time not all the time we're just excited to share this little project such as it is with other people yeah and to hear some gnarly stories yeah that was a gnarly story and so thank you so much for being here and and doing this for us and with us yeah yeah y'all it was my pleasure stay sweet hey beautiful that was nice thank you wow thanks for tuning in if you want more infamy go to bittersweetinfamy.com or search for us wherever you find your podcasts we usually release new episode every other sunday and you can also find us on instagram at bittersweetinfamy and if you liked the show consider subscribing

leaving a review or just tell a friend stay sweet thank you for sharing that story michael the sources that michael used for his story were the book outrageous conduct art ego and the twilight zone case by steven farber and mark gree they also published an article in the la times in 88 entitled trapped in the twilight zone a year after the trial there's the new york times article by vietpian nguyen published in 2020 called vietnamese lives american imperialist views even into five bloods there's the 2014 deadline article by david rob safety on set helicopter crashes have taken most lives on tv and film sets the book broken wings hollywood's air crashes by james farmer a slate article published in 2012 a new dimension in

filmmaking by robert weintraub an article published in 86 called jurors your testimony about young victims of movie accident by linda deutch published by the associated press the book by gordon sander surling the rise and twilight of television's last angry man published in 92 a new york times article published in 86 entitled father of six-year-old testifies and film death's trial and lastly shutters cursed films episode five the twilight zone accident the song that you were listening to is tea street by brian steel you