WHAT WENT WRONG - The Crow

Episode Date: April 15, 2024

A film that set the mold for R-rated comic book adaptations, but is perhaps most famous for putting its enigmatic star Brandon Lee on the map… and taking him off it forever. Lizzie walks Chris through a production riddled with problems long before Lee’s untimely death, who else almost played Eric Draven and the film’s surprising connection to John Wick. They're also joined by an expert, armorer Larry Zanoff, to break down the on-set shooting of Brandon Lee.Go Ad-Free - Join Our Patreon!Check Out Our Merch!Follow Us on Instagram!What Movie's Next? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

And welcome to a much anticipated episode of what went wrong. I am one of your hosts, Lizzie Bassett, here as always with your other host, Chris Winterbauer. But before we even let Chris speak, because we've been hearing a lot of that lately, haven't we? Please let me. We wanted to give a reminder to please, please, if you're enjoying the show, leave us a rating and review on Apple. It really helps us. We do read them. We do enjoy the constructive criticism sometimes.

Anyway, leave us a rating and review. Maybe we'll read it on here. And without further ado, I will finally let you talk. Welcome, Chris. Thank you, Lizzie. It's good to be here. Very excited about today's episode. Ooh, voice track.

Please do. If you are enjoying this podcast, yes, leave us a rating and review. It helps us on the charts as well. Also, if you guys are interested in listening to our podcast without ads, please consider supporting us through Patreon. We can't keep doing this podcast without your support. We mean that through your reviews, through your listenership, but also through your subscription to Patreon.

If you would like to vote in terms of what films we cover in the future, you can do so for just $1. And of course, at $5, you get access to our ad-free feed. For $50, you get a shout-out on the show and you get a piece of merch every quarter mug, t-shirt, tote bag, hoodie. And to be clear, those items are actually exclusive to Patreon. There are specific designs that you can not. get on our website. Give it a look. Head to www.com slash what went wrong podcast. If you are

interested, we appreciate everybody who has supported us through Patreon. And again, folks at the free tier, consider jumping up to our $1 level to vote. Ghostbusters won our last poll. And so we are going to have a new poll up for you soon. So make sure you get those voting privileges square it away. All right, Lizzie, kick it. it back to you. That's about as much talking as I'm going to do in this episode. I don't think that's true because we have a lot to talk about today. I have a lot of thoughts. I'm sure you do. So in today's episode, I am going to be teasing a special companion episode that we are going to be releasing next week. I'll get into what that is and why we are releasing it in a little bit. It's very cool.

It's an interview. It might be one of my favorite interviews that we've done so far. And you will see about halfway through this episode, why it is a companion to The Crow. It's all I'm going to say about that right now. So, since I just spoiled it, we are today covering The Crow. Sorry. Oh, Chris. That was a Raven. Yeah, that's great.

They are Ravens in the movie, so good job. Got it. I guess I should point out now, it's not a comedy, and this is not going to be a particularly funny episode. The Crow is a movie that says, cemented the 90s goth aesthetic and set the mold we are now accustomed to for so many R-rated comic book adaptations, which I'm sure we will talk about in a moment. It's a film that is unapologetically of its time. It is visually stunning, despite its minuscule budget, but unfortunately

the crow is, of course, best known for putting its magnetic star Brandon Lee on the map and taking him off of it forever. It was released on either May 11th or May 13th. 1994. Most places, including IMDB, list the release date as May 13th, which was Friday the 13th. But I did also find articles where the producers were like, gah, you know what? We didn't think about that. That might be weird. And so I think it may have actually been released on May 11th, which is the other release date that shows up. I think they realized that that maybe wasn't the best look in retrospect. Right. It was directed by Australian Alex Proyas, written by James O'Barr, and based on his comic, as well as by screenwriters David Scho and John Shirley. It's starring Ernie Hudson,

Michael Wingot, Byling, Michael Massey, Tony Todd, and of course, Brandon Lee. Mm-hmm. And the synopsis... Jesus Christ. I'm tired. The synopsis. I'm sorry, David. I told you it's going to be an easy edit. Well, we're just leaving that in, so far so good. The synopsis, according to IMDP, is a man brutally murdered comes back to life as an undead avenger of his and his fiancé's murders. That's actually, that's the whole movie.

That's the whole thing. There's nothing else. There's no exposition. Nope. No backstory. Which I actually, I liked. Don't need it. Don't care about it.

So, Chris, had you seen The Crow before? Yes. Only once, I believe, maybe twice. I saw it when I was pretty young. about maybe 10 years old, like 1999. Oh, wow. Yeah, right around the time. The whole world of R-D-R was opened up to me in about fourth grade,

and we went on a run. And my dad, because this was a movie that came out when I was young and my dad didn't have a relationship to it. We didn't re-watch it a bunch of times, like we did with Die Hard or, you know, eventually I re-watched The Matrix a million times. And you can see this movie's influences on The Matrix in so many ways. Yes. So I saw it when I was really young.

And as a result, it held this kind of hallowed ground in my mind. Well, Bruce Lee obviously has a connection to the West Coast in Seattle, specifically, Brandon Lee as well. And then I knew he died somehow in the production. And I had only, and I only got to see it once. So it sat on this pedestal as this transgressive, goss, grimy, you know, Seattle, grunge movement, you know, kind of film in the 1990s. Even though it's set in Detroit, but, you know,

Yes. Right. But no, no, no, I'm saying like, we're from Seattle. Yeah. 100%. Yeah. And then rewatching it, like you said, some movies made it out of that era, I think, feeling timeless. And this is not one of them for better or worse. I think for better. Sure. But yes, it is, it is very squarely of a moment. And that moment is 1994. Exactly. Yeah, I was struck by how much it felt like a time capsule. Yeah. Did you, like it this time? I had really mixed feelings about it, to be honest. I thought it was, candidly, I thought it was fine. I thought it was kind of like an exploitation film. You know, there was not a lot to it. That's totally fine. You know, it's relatively propulsive. I wouldn't go back and

visit it necessarily. Like, I'm glad I saw it again. But it, yeah, I don't want to, you know, betray too much before we get to some of the specific elements of the movie. But it was in the pantheon of, was it great or were you eight? This skewed more for me towards I was eight, just for me personally. That's interesting. I had the opposite experience. I had never seen this. I knew kind of a lot about what happened to Brandon Lee on the set. I was very aware of the fact that he died, but I'd never seen the movie. I loved it. I loved it. Great. I watched it twice. I watched it all the way through with director's commentary. I don't know what's happening in my life, but I loved the crow. I really wasn't expecting to love it. Was he's throwing knives at David?

Is she going for it? Okay. Yeah, I really, I really enjoyed it. And I was shocked by how many things are so clearly, very visually influenced by this. Yes. In particular, as I'm sure we'll talk about at some point, the Dark Knight and the Batman. Yes. Big time. The Dark Night, the whole scene where the Joker comes in on the mobsters,

is pulled from this movie. And the set design and miniature work of the city itself is what the slums in Batman Begins look like. They're like, there's such an obvious homage. And then obviously the makeup and, like, his trench coat and the Matrix. Yes. There are so many things that translate from this movie.

Yeah, big time. And I think it really kind of set the mold for comic book adaptations for the future. Now, while this was not the first R-rated superhero movie, if you can qualify this as a superhero movie, I believe that goes to Dark Man, I think. Yeah. No, that would make sense. Yeah. It was, I believe, the first R-rated comic book adaptation, and it was a very successful one at that. The Crow begins and ends with tragedy. Before the Crow was a film, it was a cult hit comic written by James O'Barr.

So let's talk a little bit about James O'Barr's early life. He grew up an orphan in Detroit in the 70s. Jeez. He picked up crayons at an early age as a way of entertaining himself and became obsessed with drawing monsters from old creature features like Frankenstein and the creature from the Black Lagoon. When he was 18 years old, after a very difficult, childhood and adolescence. His fiancé Beverly was killed by a drunk driver. When he was 18? When he was 18.

And he was engaged already? Oh my gosh. Yeah, he'd lived a lot of life. He told the Dallas Observer, quote, my life was changed instantly forever because I had unhealthily or not wrapped my whole existence around this person. Suddenly there was nothing in my future, but nothingness. And I was angry and furious, angry with God. And so I carried that around for a few years until it became almost poisonous and I needed to do something. So I just sat down and began drawing something where I could get justice and peace on paper that I couldn't get in real life. Well, the ensuing comic makes sense. Makes a lot of sense. He was really mad. Yeah. I don't think they ever found the person who killed her. It reminds me of Guy Pearce's character in Memento. Yeah, that whole, you know,

Justice has never served idea would make sense to then say, okay, I'm going to be on the grave Avenger. Yeah, I'm going to only serve justice. Yeah, exactly. And also, like, serve justice to serve the character, in this case, Eric Draven's own needs. Like, he's not out to, like, save other people or he is exclusively there to kill the people who hurt him and hurt his fiancé. That is right. So Obar says he based the comic almost entirely on people and things that he's. he had seen growing up in Detroit, which does not make me want to go to Detroit.

You should watch the Detroiters. It's a lovely show. Sam Richardson. Oh, I love them. Tim Robinson. Yeah, I think this, I think it's a very nice city. Anyway, continue. I'm just saying.

No hate to our fans in Detroit. The basic plot of the Crow comic is essentially the same as the film, which is that Eric Draven, an undead vigilante, is brought back to. life by a crow to avenge his fiance's murder and his own. So Obar joined the Marines shortly after Beverly's death and worked on the crow while stationed in Berlin. Unfortunately, the Marines also learned about his drawing skills and put him to work illustrating graphic instruction manuals on things like what to do with corpses and hand-to-hand

combat. He didn't love it. Good experience, though, getting ready to draw all those bodies after they get killed. via hand-to-hand combat in the comic. Indeed, it was. He definitely honed a lot of skills there. And I think he also talked a bit about how he didn't like sort of glossing over violence. Right.

Like, as part of this experience, he was like, I'm not going to just. PG-13ifying it. Yes, exactly. Yeah. So he finished the first part of the Crow in 1981 and then started shopping it around, but no one wanted it. So he kept developing it. seven years later in late 1988, a small publishing company called Calibur Press picked it up. And then shortly thereafter, Tundra Publishing picked it up from Calibur and re-released it as basically a two-part graphic novel, then releasing a third part in 1992.

Got it. Obar describes the success of The Crow as the neutral milk hotel of comics. Okay. In that it was entirely driven by word of mouth, and eventually it had grown an underground following big enough to catch the attention. of Hollywood. So things happened pretty quickly from here. Author John Shirley reached out to O'Barr about turning the crow into a screenplay

while it was still being published with Calibur, so very early 90s. Shirley was not the first person to approach O'Barr. Apparently in one of his earliest meetings about turning the crow into a movie, he was pitched a musical starring a huge pop star at the time. Any guesses, Chris? Kirk Cobain?

No, I wish. That had been it. It's a lot worse than that. Michael Jackson? Yes. No! Yes. They pitched him the crow, the musical starring Michael Jackson.

Okay. Yeah. Hollywood will never run out of bad ideas. Yeah. So that didn't happen. Leave that one alone. We're not going to touch that one. So it does make sense that people would be interested in turning this into a film,

maybe not with Michael Jackson, but into a film. Because Obar wrote the comic like a cinematic storyboard. He even said that he was pulling from early Cohen Brothers and Ridley Scott films, in particular, Blade Runner. He said, I used a very cinematic approach. He also pulled from bands at the time like Joy Division and Iggy Pop and the Stooges. That one you can definitely feel both in Brandon Lee's physicality, as well as the character of Funboy, who is very clearly dressed to look like Iggy Pop. And I believe they actually briefly considered reaching out to Iggy Pop for that part.

He actually does end up appearing in a sequel to The Crow. Oh, City of Angels? Really bad. I don't know which one it was. They're all terrible. A little side note, James O'Barr has said that the signature makeup is not based on Kiss or Alice Cooper, as many thought, but instead on the inside of a theater in London that he saw when he was in the Marines. It had paintings of sort of old, creepy marionettes on the walls, and he pulled the idea from there of sort of forcing a painted smile onto the character of Eric Draven. So John Shirley and his producing partner, Jeff Most, were already working together on the

specialist, and they were looking for their next project. They thought, smartly, that it would be a good idea to have a franchise that includes a comic book and a film. So Shirley had written his own called Angry Angel and submitted it to Calibur, who told him it was too similar to the crow, and that's when he found James O'Bar. Interesting. One of the selling points for O'Bar was apparently that Shirley and most promised they would not try to make the crow tamer and would instead make it the first R-rated comic book adaptation. Howard the Duck, to be fair, should have been rated R. It shouldn't have happened.

It should have been rated R though. That's true. It was deeply upsetting. For overwhelming, deeply upsetting, potentially scarring sexual content. Sexual duck content, yes. Sexual duck content, exactly. Yeah, in many ways more upsetting than this one. For showing an unwrapped duck condom in someone's wallet that movie should have been rated R.

That's true. This did actually help them win out over New Line Cinema, who allegedly insisted on a PG-13 rating. Which is wild, considering they were the house of Freddie. They were the Nightmare on Elm Street studio. Yeah, and apparently just wanted to buy O'Bar out without further involvement from him. Interesting. Eventually, after over 50 rejections, most Shirley and O'Barr, then found their production partner in Edward R. Pressman.

Ed Pressman was a veteran prolific film producer. He had just come off a string of critical hits like Bad Lieutenant, Reversal of Fortune, love that one, and Wall Street, among some box office bombs, like To Sleep with Anger, which just came up in our episode on Boys in the Hood. That's right. He'd broken out with movies like Das Boot and Conan the Barbarian. He would go on to produce the island of Dr. Moreau, which we have, of course, covered.

Bingo. American Psycho and many more. So, eclectic guy who seems to be not afraid to take a risk. As we learned on Island of Dr. Moreau. Yeah, sometimes that pays off. Sometimes it doesn't. Pressman also, at this point, brings on paramount pictures to distribute. Got it.

So The Crow is a go with a budget of somewhere around $15 million. That seems to be the number I was seeing most frequently. Okay. That's not a lot for. what they're setting out to do here. Yeah. It seems tight. I mean, we were just talking about Boys in the Hood within three years.

That movie was about half that, but that movie had no enormous sets to build. Yeah. No giant gunplay sequences. No crow cinematography. I mean, the amount of just motion control camera work in this is astonishing for something from 1994. Yeah, this movie has a lot of set pieces in it, too. A lot of big action set.

pieces, a lot of explosions, practical explosions, like when he shoots all the wedding rings out of the shotgun at the pawn shop owner. That's actually, that's a fun thing that they did there. They literally just threw a bunch of rings into a puff of smoke just falling towards the camera. And, like, they did so many things like that. It looks great. It does look great. I think a lot of it looks really good.

But, yeah, they did not have money. And they have early CGI in a number of scenes, it seems like. Not as many as you would think. which we will get to. There's really only one that has quite a lot of it. So it was reportedly Pressman who had a director in mind, and that is Alex Proyas. This would be his first time directing a Hollywood feature, though he had made a small Australian indie film previously. He'd been directing major commercials and music videos for over a decade for the likes of In Excess and Fleetwood Mac, and he was looking for his first big Hollywood movie. Now, apparently his reel is sort of

the stuff of legend. Anyone who watched it was dying to work with him. Around the same time, horror writer David Scoke comes on to work very closely with Proyas on the final drafts of the script. We apparently have David to thank for grounding the movie in Devil's Night, dialing back a lot of the villains that had been added by John Shirley and most. And apparently, he also is the one who said that Draven should be a, quote, Gothic rock and roll terminator, which I would say mission accomplished, Dave. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Now, Chris, with a young, less experienced feature director, how does studio executives usually like to fill out the roles on a production team?

Experienced people that they've worked with before. That's right. Generally, you want to surround them with highly experienced people. However, in this instance. In this instance, when they give you $15 to make this movie, instead they decide they're looking for, quote, 30-year-olds with 30 years of experience. Okay. So people that started when they were babies. Okay. There we go.

Now, in many ways, this leads to some of the innovation and style that you're seeing on screen for production design. Alex McDowell is brought on. He had only made one feature but had worked with David Fincher on some music videos, including Madonna's iconic Vogue, I believe. He would go on to work with Fincher again on Fight Club, in addition to. to many other movies like Minority Report, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and Watchmen, which I think you see quite a lot of in this. Watchman's great. The show, and I like the Zach Snyder version, too. I like, I like it all. I like the Watchman universe a lot. I'm down for them watching. Watch those men. McDowell and Proyas decide early on to achieve as much of the desaturated look of the film in camera as opposed to in post-production, again, because they don't have money. With McDowell working with Art Direction to remove pretty much all blues and gregers.

greens from sets and costumes. And really the only color that you kind of see coming through is red. Red. Yeah. It's all red, white, and black, basically. Yeah. It's kind of like early Sin City. It is. It is. It would do later. Yes, yes. Not that much later. And I did, I looked that up because I kept thinking how much it looked like Sin City. And that was written very shortly after The Crow. Yeah, the comic, the graphic novel. Yeah. Yes, by Frank Miller. Cinematographer Darius Walski also came fresh off the MTV Revolution, having worked on music videos for Zizi Top, Aerosmith, and Paula Abdul. And he joined the project as well. He would go on to become a frequent collaborator of Gore of Rabinsky, including Across the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise and Ridley Scott.

Ridley's all over this one. So one of the first things that Alex Proyas does is call in another Ozzy to help storyboard the film. And he turned to someone we've met here on the podcast before, Peter Pound, who you may remember from our Mad Max Fury Road episode. He is an exceptional storyboard artist, and The Crow is actually Pound's first credit as a storyboard artist, though I think he had already been working with Miller for a bit on Fury Road at this point, because that movie took 500 million years to make. Right, exactly. 3,000 years of making Mad Max Fury Road. Now, when looking for a spot to shoot, Proyas and the team got word of the Caroleco Studios in Wilmington, North Carolina. Apparently, these had recently been hit by a hurricane and were looking to rebuild for a movie.

And that was appealing. Perfect. The Crow team. Just leave them destroyed. That's going to be the vibe. Just light some stuff on fire. Yeah, they were like, cool. Yeah.

So with a key production team and location in place, it was time to find Eric Draven. Now, from absolutely everything I saw, one person was officially offered. the role of Eric Draven, and that was Brandon Lee. I do not think they offered it to anyone else. Okay. Were there other names that came up in your research? There were, yes. Who do you think may have been batted around for this part? Well, there are a few, but what's funny is one I would have guessed is Keanu Reeves. No. He would have been really young. Yeah. Yeah. One point break was around this time, I want to say. Yeah. Christian Slater. Bingo. Yeah, he was the frontrunner.

He was great. I mean, he is great. And he, a different vibe, comedic in a good way, maybe. I think he was too expensive. Yeah, that's kind of what was wondering for the price range that they're going for. I don't know who would the other person be. The other two names that I saw somewhat frequently were Johnny Depp and River Phoenix. Okay, yeah.

I think River and Keanu are like almost the same age. And Johnny Depp makes a lot of sense. Yeah. He makes probably the most sense in retrospect of everyone else, aside from Brandon Lee. So Brandon came to mind early on for the production team because he had both the athletic prowess and the acting chops to pull off the part. For Brandon, this was very appealing because it looked like his chance to finally step out of his father's shadow. So let's go back in time for a brief look at Brandon Lee's life, which means we need to start with Bruce Lee. Bruce Lee.

Listen to our episode on Big Trouble in Little China where we talked about him as well. Yes. Brandon Lee was born February 1st, 1965 in Oakland, California to mom Linda and his father, legendary martial arts superstar Bruce Lee. I'm not going to go into detail on Bruce's career here. As Chris said, there's actually quite a bit more detail on it in the Big Trouble and Little China episode. But in the short time that Brandon got to spend with his father, he was on a meteoric rise to success. However, like Brandon, Bruce wouldn't quite reach worldwide superstardom until after his death.

Also like Brandon, Bruce had been working tirelessly to carve out a place for himself in Hollywood, eventually bringing Hong Kong action to America and revolutionizing action cinema. In 1973, at the age of 32, Bruce Lee collapsed during an ADR session for Enter the Dragon. He was rushed to the hospital and diagnosed with cerebral edema, or swelling of the brain. At this point, they were able to reduce the swelling and Bruce recovered, but he did not slow down. Just two and a half months later on July 20th, 1973, he laid down to take a nap and never woke up. An autopsy again showed cerebral edema and ruled that it was caused by reactions to a painkiller he'd taken earlier in the day. Now, I'm not going to go into more details about his death.

I'm sure we'll do a deeper dive on Bruce in even yet another episode. But suffice it to say his fans and the press were not satisfied with the explanation that they had been given. Rumors swirled that Lee may have been murdered by notorious organized crime society the triads or that he was poisoned or that he was the victim of a curse. No, doesn't seem likely. It didn't help that Bruce's final film, Game of Death, also released posthumously, featured a scene in which, in a movie within the movie, he was shot on set with a real bullet. Yeah. Producers also apparently used real footage from Bruce's funeral in the film. Brandon was eight years old when his father died.

Though Brandon had spent his life studying martial arts, when he became an adult, he didn't immediately throw himself into acting. When he did eventually become interested in his early 20s, he worked his ass off developing movement styles all of his own. He seemed determined not to ride on his father's coattails. However, at the time of his casting in the Crow, Brandon was by no means an established star.

The biggest credits to his name were Showdown in Little Tokyo, opposite Dolph Lundgren, and rapid fire opposite Powers booth and he was by no means a household name. He was a huge fan of the Crow comics and was thrilled when he was offered the part because this was finally his chance to step out of his father's shadow.

I did see some conflicting things about whether or not he had read the Crow prior to getting the part or gone back and read it after reading the script. But either way, he was, as we'll find out, really an instrumental part of making sure that it was very faithful to the comics.

He was offered the role early on and was involved in pre-production and development on the film for at least a year prior to filming. Wow. It seems like Ernie Hudson and Michael Wincott were also cast relatively quickly, but for everyone else,

it was a bit of a slog. And Michael Wincott, most recently, seen in Nope. Yes, he's great. I love him. He's great. He's kind of been a perpetual villain,

I think, because of his voice, which is amazing. His voice and his face. He's got an evil-looking face. You're trying to climb. It's so good. And Ernie Hudson's great.

And we're going to talk about him in Ghostbusters. And he's really good in this movie. He's really good in this movie. I think he's the best actor in this whole movie. I think he and Brandon Lee. I think Ernie Hudson really grounds it because he's just, he's very natural in his scenes, is my point. Yeah, he's great. He doesn't overplay anything.

Even when he's just showing the guy, no, no, no, you got my mustard wrong. It's just like good, simple. in a movie that's very broad in a lot of ways with its villains, it's nice to just have a normal guy with some normal scenes in it. No, I think he's really important for this movie. He does hold it down in a way that nobody else is sort of able to. Honestly, watching this made me sad that I haven't gotten to see him do more. Like, he's so good.

We'll talk about that in Ghostwester's. He has a lot to say about his career and the types of roles he's gotten. We talked about that a little bit with Jonathan Braylock on our episode on Boys in the Hood. Yeah. But yeah, more on Ernie Heard. Hudson to come. Hudson was reportedly brought on by Brandon Lee's recommendation and then was won over by Alex Price's reel. I did also see that his last interaction with Brandon, they had gone out to get dinner before Ernie left the set. And he was apparently talking about being

frustrated at where he was in his career and that it hadn't taken off to your point. And Brandon Lee evidently was extremely encouraging and was like, it's happening for me. It's going to happen for you, dude, like, keep going. Michael Massey, who plays Funboy, said he auditioned around three times. I did see in a somewhat dubious oral history, so take this with a grain of salt, that he had essentially lost hope

and was disillusioned with the acting scene in New York and ready to light everything on fire and head to Los Angeles. That is a common trope in the oral histories we read. A lot of these actors are like, I bought my ticket to go back to Omaha. I lit my apartment on fire, and I said,

one last audition before I go, and this was the one. Not that it isn't possibly true, but it does show up a lot. Yes. Now, this would prove to be a much bigger turning point in Michael's life than he realized, as he was through no fault of his own, the person who fired the shot that killed Brandon Lee. But we will get to that later. Now, the movie is visually very faithful to the comic, and a lot of effort was put in to make it mostly faithful across the board in terms of story with a couple of key differences.

One difference is the actual crow. Evidently, this little guy is not really along for the ride with Eric in the same way that he is throughout the movie. It's not something that's quite so psychically and physically connected to Eric. I don't think. I had a little bit of a hard time understanding. Probably why they changed it. Yes, I think they did want to clarify. If it was more ambiguous.

Yeah, I think that's correct. And Obar did express some concern about Draven having this kind of physical. Achilles heel in the movie, but I think it works. I think you need it. Otherwise, he's just Deadpool or Wolverine. Well, as we'll get to, the fact that it's as sort of clear as it is actually has to do with what they had to cut in post-production. Got it. There were also originally more supernatural characters.

Brandon Lee pushed back on this, insisting that Draven be the only supernatural force, which I think was a really smart call. There is a character called Skull Cowboy who does appear in the comic and does not appear in the film. That's because he was cut from it in post. More on that in a little bit. Also, Top Dollar, Michael Wincott's character, was apparently changed from a sort of more low-brow drug dealer to the debonair, underbelly robber baron that you see on screen. Loved it. For $1,000, I never could have told you what his character's name was.

Top dollar. I don't think, I don't know if they say it. They probably do, but I just never... I don't know if they say anyone's names. Honestly, that's the thing. I was like, I don't know what I'm looking at. I only knew it was Eric Draven because they kept cut into his gravestone. That's the only way I get it.

Yeah. That's it. I couldn't even tell you the name of the little girl. I think it's Sarah. I'm not 100% sure. She's, she's just kid. She's hey kid. She's hey kid.

She's pretty good. Also, I thought she did a good job. She was good and she rode that skateboard better than I could. That's right. Filming began on February 1st of 1993 in Wilmington, North Carolina, and was set for somewhere around 54 days. Now, it was very scrappy from the get-go, as we have discussed, because of the budget. Some very ingenuative things came out of their lack of funding. As Chris pointed out, miniatures are used quite a bit throughout the movie, including for wide shots of the city, car chases, which you referenced, and even the helicopter is a miniature. They couldn't even get a helicopter. Yeah, that tracking shot where he's running across the roofs. Yeah, the miniature word. It's great. Yeah, the helicopter looks a little wonky now, but the other miniature stuff looks phenomenal.

The way that they move the camera like the crow over the rooftops. It looks really great. It's a really fun aesthetic. It's a bit Burton-esque with the perspective. It's really fun. It is. Brandon Lee and stunt coordinator and longtime friend Jeff Imada co-choreographed the fights with... Jeff Imada, stunt coordinator from Big Trouble in Little China.

Oh, shit! Yeah. There you go. Lee choreographed many of them himself, though, but did obviously work with his friend quite closely on this. Wow. One of my favorite things, Lizzie, when I just thought, oh my God, I don't bend like that. When he jumps into a cross-legged position on the end of the table, I just thought, oh, my legs don't go like that. I know. He's very fast, which like Alex Proyas points out in the director's commentary, there's a shot in the pawn shop where he just jumps, from the counter and onto, and that's not, like, that's him. Like, there's no wires pulling him up or anything, and it literally looks like wirework.

Like, it is pretty crazy, and he moved really beautifully. He did also pretty much all of his own stunts, unless it involved a huge fall. And then I think that was maybe Imada doing it. Actors got a lot of ownership in their costumes and performance. Lee made tweaks to his own costume, as did Michael Wincott, who insisted on his delicious share hair piece, and I'm glad he did. I love it. It's a lot of hair.

I remember in the first wide shot, I went, whoa, that is long. Yeah, it's like four feet long. A $50,000 wig. It just goes on and on. The whole budget went to Michael Wincott's hair, and I'm thrilled. They had to kill a Shetland pony and shave it just to make that wig. However, there were many negative impacts to their lack of funding as well, compounded by the fact that they were hurtling towards an August release date with Paramount.

Wow. Cast and crew found themselves working nights, all nights, sometimes 17-hour shifts with little-to-no sleep to recover in between. Jesus. On top of the schedule, it was absolutely freezing, and they were usually either outside or filming inside of a cement factory, not known for being warm. On top of that, they were constantly wet since almost every scene involves rain. Yep.

Not only did the cast not love this, but the ravens didn't either. And no, I'm not saying raven by mistake. The crows in this movie are not crows. Crows are evidently kind of badly behaved untrainable assholes, but ravens are incredibly smart, and you can train them and use them on screen. There are about four to five ravens in the film. It was evidently difficult to convince the birds to fly in the rain. because they would get waterlogged and just sort of like drop and they hated it.

So they had to be swapped out whenever one would get too wet. They also wanted all those shots you mentioned of the birds flying over the city, over the miniatures. So they put them in front of a giant fan hoping that they would then, you know, like flap the wings and flip. But the birds just coast because they don't have to flap in front of the fans. And so they'd be like, nope, no, no, no. that's not how we want you to do that, actor Bird. Yeah. They got a few shots, obviously.

And apparently also, Ravens like to sleep at night. So they did a terrible time on this movie. I hope they were getting overtime. And that's why they changed it to Batman. Not Raven Man. Not Raven Man. They do say Birdman in this movie. And I was like, is that what Inurit you saw when he came up with Birdman?

Perhaps. It's probably due to some of these uncomfortable circumstances. is that the set of the crow had a pretty weird vibe from the beginning. Yeah. So let's talk about the weird vibe, because I didn't know any of this stuff. Are you ready? Please. Long before the shooting that would take Brandon Lee's life, the crow was getting bad press

for being, quote, cursed. Now, you might think, oh, this is just, you know, hindsight being 2020. You would be wrong. On the first day of filming, a 27-year-old carpenter was severely illicit. electrocuted when the crane he was working on was hit by live power lines. Whoa. His wife, who was about to give birth at the time, said it would take five years for him to recover and be, quote, as normal as he'll get.

That's not a funny quote. I don't know why it made me laugh. I feel like... Well, it's a tragic quote, but it is worded in a way. It's funny. Yeah. Her quote was longer. Not to get to 100%.

It's just to get to... As normal as he's going to get. As normal he's going to be. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, God, and I feel for her raising a child with, you know, a partner dealing with that. Yes. On the same day, a unit publicist was involved in a minor car accident and an equipment truck caught on fire. This is day one. Good first day. Great first day. Apparently, Bai Ling didn't really speak much English at all when she made this,

so she couldn't read the signs on set that said, do not touch, and was constantly being screamed at, not to electrocute herself. Byling, notorious toucher. It just goes to say they had too many things on set that said do not, you know what I mean? Yes. How many things were labeled do not touch? Exactly. That poor Byling is going around zapping herself on stuff.

She was fine. Later, a sculptor who was allegedly brilliant, but a giant pain in the ass, was let go. And his reaction was to drive his car through the plaster shop on set. No, what? Yeah. We're just getting started, buddy. Also, Byling Southland Tales, listen to our episode. She's been in a couple of these.

Yeah, she'll probably be in more. Poor Byling. She's great in this, though. She's really fun. Don't touch these movies, Byling. What are you doing? Read the signs. Maybe that's the problem.

So this is all, like, this is happening early on. Just somebody driving their car through the work. Let's just put that in perspective. That's like you get let go of your job, you know, working at the office. So you drive through the break room. That's right. Got it. Yeah, so it's going well.

A construction worker also slipped and drove a screwdriver through his hand. I don't know how you do that. I don't know how you do that. Okay. Wow. I like this. Of this incident, the same publicist who got into a car accident told Entertainment Weekly, Quote, I'm sorry.

It was serious, but it's not like he was going to lose the use of his hand, end quote. If anything, he now had a screwdriver everywhere he went. I love that the publicist who also was like involved in a car accident is like, let's turn this ship around. Other publicist is like, it's not like he doesn't have a car anymore, like me. To top it all off on March 13th, the set was hit with the store. of the century. That's literally what it was called. It was a massive blizzard that wrecked the southeast in 1993. I lived in Virginia at the time, and I vaguely remember this. It dumped a massive amount of snow. Wow. It bested up their sets. Which were like leaky and destroyed by a tornado

before they even got there. Yeah. A hurricane, but yeah. A hurricane, yeah. Of the alleged curse, a production coordinator told Entertainment Weekly, quote, I don't think this is exceptional. We have a lot of stunts on effects, and I've been on productions before where people have died. Little did she know she was already on one. Which sets was she on before this, too? It's true, there are accidents on many film sets, but it's not a common occurrence. No, it's unusual for someone to die.

That's an extreme. She goes, what if she was cursed? And the joke is like, it seems like every set I'm on, somebody's dying. Oh, no. It's just following this one lady. So despite the onset weirdness and uncomforts, comfortable conditions, cast and crew seems to have mostly had a positive experience making the movie. Everyone was very into the art that they were making and dedicated to having it be the best it possibly could be, no one more so than Brandon Lee.

Here's Brandon in his last on-camera interview talking about his role. It's a wonderful role, and it really is a role that you have to take risks with. And it gives you a wonderful opportunity to take those risks and stretch because you tell me how somebody who comes back from the dead is going to behave, you know. You can watch the whole interview. He's just really sweet and happy to be there. He was known as an incredibly generous collaborator. He worked later than everyone else. He never complained.

He was shirtless and shoeless in 23-degree weather, constantly shooting in the rain. he had also dropped a substantial amount of weight to look right for the part and was basically pure muscle. He's thin. I mean, very strong. Yeah. Like that's when he's climbing the ladder. I was just like, whoa, what are those muscles? One report said that the six foot tall Lee had dropped to 138 pounds, echoing a similar weight loss his father had prior to his death. That's thin. I don't know if that's true. That sounds really light for somebody who's six feet tall. No, that's feasible for how thin he looks, even with the amount of muscle he had on. He looks like he's at 5% body fat in this case. Yeah, it's crazy.

Crazy. By all accounts, he would spend his extra time helping his fellow actors on set whenever they needed it, including the little girl who played Sarah. He was a very grounded person who had his whole life ahead of him. He was looking forward to the crow rapping because one week after it was set to rap, he was going to marry his fiancée Eliza Hutton in Mexico at sunset. Based on an on-set interview, it also sounds like Brandon had been signed to a three-picture deal with Ed Pressman by the time they were deep in shooting and was very excited about his future. He wasn't just generous to his castmates, but also to the Crow's creator, James O'Barr.

O'Barr says that when he first came to set, Lee didn't approach him and he couldn't figure out what was going on. Eventually, Lee came up and told him it felt like in Blade Runner when Roy Batty, meets Tyrell. He was meeting his maker. And Obar obviously loved that. Lee opened up to Obar talking about the death of his own father, Bruce Lee, when he was only eight years old, and how he was using that as motivation and connection to Eric Draven. He also told Obar that this was the first film that he really felt like it was his film. He didn't feel like Bruce Lee's son anymore and had finally come into his own. This is his movie. And I do think he would have been a pretty enormous star coming off of this. Had what we are about to talk about, not happened. So let's talk about the shooting.

Eight days before all filming was supposed to wrap, at about 1230 a.m. on March 31st, Proyas, Lee, and the team were set to film the sequence where Eric walks in to discover Funboy, played by Michael Massey, and the rest of the crew assaulting his fiancé Shelley. Funboy immediately turns the gun on Eric. This was obviously late in the shoot, and Brandon Lee was very accustomed to being shot at at this point in the movie. Right, they already shot the scene with the gangsters where he gets shot literally 500 times. Yeah, we're actually going to hear about that right now from Brandon. It's listened to an onset interview from Midway Through the Shoot,

where he talks about a typical day of shooting on the crow, and I'm pretty sure that is the sequence he's talking about. It's a little hard to hear, but the interviewer's asking him if he can describe the scene, they're shooting, where it comes in the film, and what it means. What's going on with the scenes that we're filming today, and it's sort of described where it comes to the film, what it means? Well, it means I'm wearing a bulletproof vest right now, and I just got shot 20 times. And I've worn Squibs before, and I've gotten shot before, but I must say I have never been shot 20 times at once before, which is an experience I think everyone should have.

Is it an acting challenge that you would recommend for every acting? It's an NAR day. It's a definite no-acting required day when you get shot 20 times. A lot of squibs go off in that scene. A lot. There's a wide shot of him where you're just watching blood shoot everywhere. Yeah. And those are loaded, you know, with small explosives that are blasting the blood off of you.

So I'm sure you feel some impact when you're wearing that on your person. Right, which may have been a reason he was wearing a bulletproof vest. although I don't think it's uncommon for actors to wear bulletproof vests, even when filming these scenes. You know, it's interesting. There's a deep history of that. About 100 years ago, they shot a scene where they had a person hanging on a tree. This was like a studio film back in the 20s, I believe,

and they brought a sharpshooter on to set who had to shoot them in a, they were wearing a ceramic plate on their chest, and they had to hit the ceramic plate, and they would drop them from the tree. Jesus. The sharpshooter was so accurate, they had accidentally, only hit the same spot twice, and the second one broke through where the first bullet had weakened the ceramic plate, and it only took six days for them to exonerate the sharpshooter and effectively say it was, you know, just bad luck that it had happened in that instance. Anyway. Yeah, it's not bad luck,

guys. Stop using live ammunition. Now, you might wonder why Lee wasn't wearing a bulletproof vest for the scene in which he was actually shot and killed, which certainly spurred more rumors online after his death since, as you just heard in that clip, he had worn them previously across the rest of the shoot. But it likely has nothing to do with a curse, or the triad, and everything to do with plain old negligence. Because they were on such a tight budget and were nearing the end of their shoot, many of the cast and crew had already been sent home, including the weapons specialist. That means there was no armorer on set the day that Brandon Lee was killed. Chris, you and I had the chance to talk to one of the most prolific armors working in Hollywood today.

He's a really incredible guy named Larry Zanov who has worked on everything from Captain America Winter Soldier to Django Unchained. Larry talks a lot about how exactly armorers are supposed to work and the importance of gun safety on set. And for anyone who doesn't know, armorers are the people in charge of all firearms and weapons. As I said at the top, it's one of my favorite interviews we've ever done, and we're going to release it in full next week so you can listen. all of it. But for now, since he is an actual expert, I'm going to let Larry explain the events that led up to the shooting and what happened next. There were like 14 different things that led up to that incident. Wow. So along the way, there were 14 different moments where they could have picked the right thing to do or the wrong thing to do. And at any time along the way,

Had anyone picked the right thing to do, that chain would have been broken, that chain of events would have been broken, and the incident would have never occurred, right? And that tragedy would have been averted. And so that's true, not just in the movie industry, but almost any event that leads to a tragedy, that's true. And in the crow, the most recent. version of the story. I mean, I wasn't there. You weren't there. So I don't know that any of us can definitively say exactly what happened. But the most researched version of the story is that they

needed what's called an insert shot. In other words, it wasn't action related or anything like that. It was a hand holding a firearm with the camera just looking at the fire. At the fire. At the firearm. So there's an action event happening and then you know when the camera just cuts away to like a hand holding the gun and then it cuts back again, that's called an insert shot. So they needed an insert shot of a hand holding this firearm. And it was a revolver. And on a revolver when you look, you know, when the camera looks right down the barrel, if you look at it from the front, you can see the cylinder. And if it's empty, you, the viewer, would be able to see that it's empty.

Right. Well, we don't want that, right? Because, again, we're trying to create an illusion. And if the viewer sold that the gun was empty, poof goes to the illusion. So in the film industry, we use what's called a dummy cartridge. It's not real. It can't go bang, right?

It looks real, but it's not. Problem was they didn't have any dummy cartridges with them. They were filming this. in North Carolina. It wasn't in Hollywood. There was no place to run out and get a dummy cartridge. So somebody went to a gun store. Oh, man. And they bought live ammo. And they took the bullet off the cartridge. They pulled it off. And they dumped out all the gunpowder. And they popped all the primer caps. And then they put the bullet back on the cartridge case. And so they kind of made home homemade dummies gave it to the first AD.

And they went off with what they call a splinter unit because all they needed was a camera and a hand and the gun. And oh, by the way, they sent the armorer home to save budget because there was no more gunfire. Right? And so you start, so what are we hearing based even just on the conversation that you and and I have already had in this short amount of time. Nobody was in legal possession of the gun, right? Because the armorer wasn't there. So who was maintaining control over the gun?

Nobody. We don't make gummies out of live ammunition. Specifically to prevent this kind of thing from happening. Who was in control of the gun? The AD. Why was there a prop person? in there. You can see where this is going, right? And so they put the dummy cartridges into the revolver, pointed it in a safe direction,

because they wanted to be safe, when click, click, click, click with the gun to make sure that nothing went bang, but one of the primers was still live. And it's like a cap. And it went pop. And it had just enough energy to push the bullet out of the dummy halfway down the barrel. And now there's a bullet stuck halfway down the barrel that nobody realized. And they film the insert shot and then they give the gun back to the prop department and everybody goes home. And a couple weeks later, they put a bubble. blank into the gun that now has a bullet stuck in it, and they pointed at Brandon Lee,

because in the scene, his character's getting shot, and the blank pushes the bullet, which is a barrel obstruction now, right? It pushes it out of the barrel, and it leads to a fatality. Yeah. So that's... That's it. Can't really explain it better than that.

Just mistake after mistake, after mistake, after mistake. Yeah. And then the compounding effect. I mean, like weeks of mistakes. That's the craziest thing about this is that, you know, some of the interviews we have heard from Brandon at this point in the episode were taped after that dummy round that he's talking about was already lodged in the gun. That's so strange to think about.

it, you know, it's something I can say, listen, I've not been on nearly as many sets as Mr. Larry Zanoff has, obviously. But having been on a couple sets and directed a couple of movies that were tight on budget, but did not have any firearms there, it's the idea of having a firearms on set is, is very scary because you feel the tightness of that budget. constantly. It's incredible the decisions that are made. And I've been involved in making to save a little bit of money. It's just remarkable. And, you know, we do it constantly in a lot of different ways. And at some point, we'll have to, you know, you talked about the 17-hour days, Lizzie, and there was a big movement in Hollywood a number of years ago about reducing working hours and increasing turnaround times. It's the time between when you wrap a day

and when you start the next day because too many crew members were falling asleep at the wheel driving home and dying behind the wheel of the car because they were too tired to drive at the end of their workday. And so it's just, it is obviously always downstream of trying to do more than you can

with the amount of money that you have. Yeah, and they were going big on this. When Michael Massey fired the gun, it seemed like everything had gone as planned because there was a squib in the grocery bags that Brandon was carrying. That went off as it was supposed to.

Brandon dropped to the ground as he was supposed to, and no one thought anything of it. It was only when Proyas called cut. Did people slowly start to realize that Brandon wasn't getting up? Jesus. When they approached him, they found a silver dollar-sized hole in his abdomen and a pool of blood that was building behind him. He was rushed to the hospital where he underwent six hours of emergency surgery.

He never regained consciousness. At 1.30 p.m., he was pronounced dead at 28 years old. The bullet had severed multiple arteries and was lodged in his spine. Production shut down immediately, and everyone was. was sent home. Alex Proyas was, by all accounts, absolutely destroyed and did not even want to think about continuing the film at that point. So insurance was set to cover the losses, meaning they absolutely could have shelved this. And Chris, maybe you can explain how insurance would work for something like this. Right. So this is backed by Paramount. So my guess is they have a standard

insurance policy on the movie. That would mean that in the case of a force measure event, an actor dying, meaning elite actor dying, could be a natural disaster, any number of things. The budget of the film is covered and the studio will be made whole. On an independent film, you can do something similar. It's called bonding your film. You pay a certain percentage effectively as collateral of your budget so that it can be insured. Fun fact, this is why Robert Downey Jr. had a hard time getting work for a brief period following rehab, because he was uninsurable, meaning this studio could not get insurance for the project

because he was deemed too unreliable from an insurance perspective. So if he walked off set or suffered a drug overdose, God forbid, or something like that, the production would not recoup its budget. Additionally, an investigation into the shooting was conducted, and the DA declined to press charges, but did find the filmmaker's $77,000. signing gross negligence, which, yeah, I'll say. Brandon Lee's mother also eventually filed a lawsuit and settled out of court for an undisclosed

amount of money. However, it's thanks to the cast, crew, and most importantly, Brandon Lee's fiance, Eliza Hutton, that the film ever made it out into the world. You might have noticed that the film is dedicated to both Brandon and Eliza at the end. This is why she fought for it very hard to make it to the screen. She and the cast made the case that, that this was his film, he had worked his ass off for it, and it would be a real shame to give up on it now. They were almost done. Like, this was not a thing where he died halfway through making the movie. And as we'll get to it, they didn't really cover a lot without him.

The amount of footage that I think ends up in the final film is only something like 30 seconds. That's not him. So just a few months after the accident, select cast and crew returned for reshoots to get the pick up shots that they needed, including, I think, poor Michael Massey. I only saw that in a couple of places, but I think he may have had to come back. Probably if they're still filming those introduction scenes. Yeah. In order to finish the film, Proyas had spent a month rewriting and figuring out how they could tweak the script to accommodate the shooting. One result is that the character of Skull Cowboy is completely cut from the film despite actor Michael

Barryman having shot scenes. This was a combination of things. It was a combination of things. It would have needed a couple of additional scenes with Brandon for the character to make sense. The character was sort of like a spirit guide kind of to Brandon. But it was also that Proyas was not a huge fan of the character's look and also just didn't really think that they needed more exposition. He's a big cut the exposition guy, as you may have noticed by the fact that there's none. There's literally none. There's literally none. I honestly had to roll it back and be like, did they explain how the crow ripped him out of the gravy? They didn't.

All right, that's fine. Let's just keep on going. Just the little girl intro, and that's all. That's it. That's all you get. So that character is gone. He does say that people have become kind of obsessed with the character over the years, but, quote, there is nothing particularly intriguing about him.

So he's just like, you just, you didn't need it. Yeah. Any additional exposition that was needed was then added in voiceovers from the little girl's character. No matter how much tweaking. Proyas did, though, there were several shots and scenes that they still did need Brandon for. This is where his stunt doubles stepped in, which you mentioned earlier. So one of the doubles used to complete a few shots for Brandon was his dear friend and stunt

coordinator for the film Jeff Amata. However, Jeff's a pretty different size and weight than Brandon. Yeah. So they brought in one other person to help complete the film, and it's a name that you may recognize. It's Chad Stahelsky. That's right. For those who don't know, Chad went on to become a legendary stuntman and coordinator working with Keanu Reeves on The Matrix trilogy, which she mentioned. And then, of course, went on to produce, develop, and direct the John Wick franchise, which I hadn't even seen that.

And watching this movie, I was like, there's a lot of John Wick in this. Yep. John Wick is very much a spiritual successor in some ways. Yes. Chad Zahelski had known Brandon for five years prior to filming. They had trained together at the martial arts gym founded by Brandon's father, Bruce Lee. Chad was called in because he knew how Brandon moved, and also they looked somewhat alike.

And they're built very similarly. Chad seems a little thicker maybe, but I've only seen him recently, so I don't know. He was quite young here. I think he's a couple years younger than Brandon was, so he would have been like maybe 25. Wow. Actually, they looked so much alike in the makeup

that according to Ernie Hudson, it was really creepy. And poor Chad had to kind of keep to himself So as not to upset people when he was on set. He spent several days going over footage of Brandon and character with Alex Proyas, whose Tehlski did say was just visibly destroyed. They spent a lot of time training to make sure that Chad could capture the character

through movement well enough and also that he was comfortable taking this on because this was a close friend of his. Now, one of the most famous shots that Chad stepped in for involved what was at the time extremely innovative face replacement. Do you know which shot this is? No, I either heard about it or you mentioned it and I didn't notice it watching. Yeah, it's really pretty good.

And I think because they did it so sparingly, they did not try to cover a bunch of stuff. They didn't really try to reshoot a lot of that opening scene. But the shot that I'm talking about is when Eric Draven walks up to that. that broken circular window with the crow on his shoulder. The camera comes around to the front of him. We zoom out. He's in full crow makeup as the camera kind of pans back into the night. And you see his face in those flashes of lightning,

which was a very smart way to cover. Exactly. Yeah, they hit it. And then I think you kind of, you, it already feels like a surreal, not VFX shot, but right, composite shot or something like that. Yeah, it would have been anyway. Right. Exactly. So it doesn't feel out of place. his face looks a hair off, you know what I mean, in a flash of lightning.

It doesn't, but that was, I mean, this was pretty early technology. One of the only other places where it had appeared on screen at this point was actually in Jurassic Park. That's right, when she's hanging above the raptors. Yep, when Lex is dropping and it's actually a very jacked stunt person. Super big arms. Not a 12-year-old girl, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Chad Sehalski would later tell Yahoo News, UK, when asked about the crow, quote, You know where it leads to? John Wick is 90% guns, firearms. A lot of the safety or the methodology we use, it came about because of that accident. It's retroactive, which sucks. It's like most fucking things in life. No one wants to change anything until something bad happens. But I know a great deal about that story, and there's no one thing that you could point a finger at. It was a lot of little dumb mistakes that shouldn't have happened. So it's like what Larry said as well, there were about 14 things that they could have stopped and they didn't. DreamQuest Images, the Academy Award-winning VFX company behind some of the effects in The Abyss, was brought on to handle the face replacement as well as a couple of other shots where they actually rotoscoped out unused close-ups of Brandon and dropped them into the necessary scenes. These are pretty impressive. You can watch some little featureettes of them doing this, particularly impressive because they're working with handheld footage. This is not locked off shots. there's one where you can see him in the film and he's walking shirtless and he kind of enters into a building. The footage they took, he's actually walking shirtless through the alley in the rain. And they managed to take that and have him actually enter a building through a doorway. I think one of the things that helps, too, is everything's so high contrast in this movie that you're playing with silhouettes in so many instances.

And so it makes the lighting semi-consistent across all of these different environments. and so you can match things probably more easily. That one was hard because it went from the outside, which was almost black and white, into something that was a much warmer sort of interior lighting. So what they did is really pretty impressive, and I never would have known that that's one of the shots. The only things I noticed were like the stuff when his hand reforms, you know,

and it's like kind of a wonky morph cut, you know. Right. That's one of the only, like, you know, quote-unquote CGI shots in the film. Yeah. That and when the helicopter shot, those were the ones that stuck out to me. I think the hand is a form of stop motion. Now, despite all the work that the cast, crew, and post-production team were putting into the film, Paramount had other plans. They saw a very early cut of the movie, and despite seeming to agree that it was really good, they deemed it too disturbing.

And six months after Brandon Lee's death in September of 1993, Paramount pulled out of the project. Now, they had the right to back out due to the fact that the crow was obviously no longer on target for its August release date. However, it seems more likely this was due to the fact that they were being acquired by Viacom and were very nervous about the press surrounding the film. Interesting.

The press had run wild with the curse of the crow and misinformation about the shooting was swirling everywhere. In an eerily similar mirror to his father, rumors about him having been murdered by the triad, again, we're popping up as was the family curse. Rumors would in fact persist for years that you could see the shooting in cuts of the film

or deleted scenes. I heard that growing up. I want to be very clear about this. That is not true. That is completely false. They destroyed the footage of the incident as soon as the investigation was closed. They went to great lengths

to make sure it was nowhere near any cuts of this film that were ever viewed by anybody. Good. So with no distributor and many other studios concerned about the press and potentially disturbing nature of the film,

the crow seemed dead in the water. That is, until, I can't believe I have to say this, but Harvey Weinstein saves the day. Miramax, the logo at the beginning that you see. Miramax, right on the cusp of breaking out in a huge way with pulp fiction, snapped up the distribution rights to the film. They also gave the crow an additional $8 million to finish the movie.

So it ends up coming out to about a $23 million. million dollar budget. Got it. Now, the film allegedly had to go through multiple edits in order to downgrade from an NC17 rating to an R. Hmm. They were, as I said, very careful to remove any shots showing bullet holes in Eric's back and costumes and drastically re-edited the scene in which he was killed so that you don't see anything

even close to it happening. And again, that scene is actually the opening sequence. Miramax then engaged in really a pretty tasteful publicity campaign. and they did not market this movie using Brandon's death or really him at all and instead chose to focus on the film itself. They did give it a pretty big push, particularly on TV, which makes sense, since they were gearing the film very much to an MTV generation. The Crow opened on either May 11th or 13th, 1994, on around 1,500 screens. It was Miramax's biggest opening to date, and it would go on to be number one at the box office. opening weekend, bringing in almost $12 million.

Wow. And 1500 screens is a lot. Boys in the Hood 91 was, I think, 850. And that was a wide release, too. This is a big opening. It expanded after that, too. They went big with this. Yeah.

You got to give them, I do give them credit. Sure. The crow would go on to earn close to $100 million worldwide and would continue to see success with its home video release. Yeah, I had no idea. It was such a huge rental. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I didn't know at the box office, but I knew by the time I saw it, I saw it on VHS. And it was, you would see it at the video store. Yeah. That poster. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I remember the poster for sure. The VHS cover, the vertical shaft of light and him walking through in the middle. Yeah.

That is the one thing. They, you know, they say that they didn't lean into it in the press, but the poster, I believe, says believe in angels on it with Brandon walking towards the camera. I think also if you watch it on Amazon now, it says, as something along the lines of like the tragic final role of Brandon Lee. Like they push it harder now than they did at the time. Yeah, I think that's right. However, success was understandably bittersweet for the cast and crew. James O'Barre donated almost all of the money he made from the crow to charity.

Wow. At Chicago Comic Con in 2009, he said he did buy his mama car and himself a Sony surround sound system, but he didn't keep the rest as it felt like blood money. It's not something he's talked about frequently. He said, quote, it's not charity if you get credit for it. Jesus. Yeah. I mean, good for him, but that's just brutal to, you know, that's your leg, you know,

and he had nothing to do with it. Absolutely nothing. Literally. He had absolutely nothing to do with the chain of mistakes. No. Alex Proyas would go on to make Dark City, which was not a box office smash, but has a cult following of its own, as well as some big budget swings and misses like I Robot and Gods of Egypt, but he is still best known, I would say, as the director of The Crow.

Obviously, Brandon's death impacted everyone who worked with him on the film, but perhaps no one more so than poor Michael Massey, who, by the way, this was not his fault in any way. We're going to talk about it in the minute. I know that, you know, Alec Baldwin is implicated in the rest shooting. That's a very different situation. this was not something that this guy had control of. There's no reason he would have had anything to do with even checking the gun. Yeah.

After filming wrapped, he took a year off from acting, went back to New York and spent time trying to process the trauma. He didn't speak about it publicly until 2005 in an interview with Extra, and I want to play you a little clip of that now. It was a tragedy. The only difference with this tragedy is that it happened with Kemparkin. cameras rolling and it was a big media thing. And which I think is too bad, you know.

The thing is it wasn't supposed to happen. It absolutely wasn't supposed to happen. I wasn't even supposed to be handling the gun in the scene until we started shooting the scene and the director changed it. It wasn't supposed to happen for a myriad of reasons. He was so far off that it had been a real gun, we wouldn't have been able to hit the side of a barn with it, you know? He, it, there was, what the bottom line is, it did happen.

Like any accidents aren't supposed to happen. The car accident isn't supposed to happen, if you look at it in retrospect. It did happen. It did happen in the media spotlight. And I don't feel as someone who is closely involved with Brandon, with the film, and the accident, to me, it's just never come up as something to talk about it, because why would you do it? It's not something that I feel,

it's a very personal thing. But you have gotten over it. I don't think you ever get over something like that and say, no, I've gone through it a lot and things keep changing. I know Brendan's fiancé, I was married to somebody else and has a little girl, and I see she shops in this store,

at my wife's store, and I see her in the park with a little girl, and I, you know, I get all sorts of joy and thoughts about that, and it's not Brendan's kid. I don't know how you recover from that. Yeah, I don't either. Maybe you don't. Massey died on October 20th, 2016, and despite an incredible career across TV and film that any actor would be jealous of,

almost every headline that I found I deeded him as the actor who shot and killed Brandon Lee 23 years earlier. Yeah. Something interesting I do want to call out from that little piece of tape that I just played is that this is something that everyone else has been very tight-lipped about, but he explicitly says I wasn't even supposed to handle the gun in the scene. The director changed it. Mm-hmm. I get the impression that was happening a lot across this movie. You know, they were moving fast. It was move fast and break things. Like they were, he was making changes on the fly. They sent the weapons specialist home. Like, there's just so many things that now looking back, you realize you never should have done. Thanks to the success of the film, it spawned multiple absolutely atrocious sequels and a TV show that we don't have time to talk about here, but they're really bad. There is also a reboot, which has spent years in development hell and is now set to premiere in June.

And it looks, I don't know. I like Bill Scarsgaard. I like FK.K.A. Twigs. It is not getting a lot of love online from the Crow fans, nor is it getting a lot of love from Alex Proyas. O'Barr also told the Dallas Observer back in 2016 that the production was already troubled and that it had been plagued with legal issues and fights between Relativity Media and Edward R. Pressman, the production company on the original film. He also said no one could agree on a creative direction with the studio pushing for the Twilight crowd and O'Barr insisting what they actually needed was the girl with the dragon tattoo crowd. Is there a girl with the dragon Trachoo crowd anymore? I'm just saying they already tried to make another one of those, and it didn't really work.

I don't know. They keep trying. Well, they keep trying with the Crow, too, so who knows? I guess. Alex Proyas continues to drag the reboot to this day. In a Facebook post from March of this year, he said, quote, I don't really get any joy from seeing negativity about a fellow filmmaker's work.

And I'm certain the cast and crew really had all good intentions as we do on any film. So it pains me to say any more on this topic, but I think the fan's response speaks volumes. It's not just a movie. Brandon Lee died making it, and it was finished as a testament to his lost brilliance and tragic loss. It's his legacy.

That's how it should remain. He also then went on to troll Bill Scarscard's bad hair cut. In the movie. I would never besmirch another movie, but another man's hair is another question entirely. Yeah, he did. I'll leave it here. Brandon Lee himself summed up the general feeling on a crow,

franchised from that same onset interview that I played earlier. So do you think the crow is going to be like a franchise? Is it something that we're going to see Crow 18? Do you think the story is? I hope not. It's a very self-contained story. Like I said, it comes from the graphic novel,

and it really is a pure work. And once it's over, I mean, I haven't even begun to think about what Crow 18 would be. I just hope we shoot it someplace warmer. Yeah, as he said, self-concincter. He was very aware of it. Yeah, I think they all were. They were certainly aware of the possibility of sequels, and that's something that's acknowledged, you know, in the director's commentary. But I don't get the impression they were trying to spawn a franchise here.

So, obviously, we can't talk about The Crow without mentioning the death of Helena Hutchins on the set of Rust on October 21st of 2021. It was another instance where so many things had to go wrong for someone to lose their life. another example of egregious onset negligence and of an extremely bright emerging talent lost long before their time. One week after Hutchins was killed, Brandon Lee's fiancée Eliza Hutton made a statement. Quote, 28 years ago, I was shattered by the shock and grief of losing the love of my life, Brandon Lee, so senselessly. Sorry, it's going to make me cry. My heart aches again now for Helena Hutchins' husband and son, and for all those left in the wake of this avoidable tragedy. I urge those in positions to make change, to consider alternatives to real guns on set.

She also posted the image that Lee had taken of the two of them in the mirror following their engagement with the caption, There's no such thing as a prop gun. Rust trials are obviously ongoing at the time of this episode, with armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed convicted of involuntary manslaughter and Alec Baldwin awaiting his own trial on similar charges after allegedly firing the weapon that killed Helena and injured the director, Joel Sosa. We're not going to go into detail on it here, but you should absolutely listen to our episode with Larry Zanoff. He doesn't talk about Rust, but he does go into such incredible detail

about how armorers are supposed to function and how important their job is on any set in which weapons are used. It definitely helped me understand both what happened on the Crow and on the set of Rust, and that, again, will be available next week. That wraps up our coverage of the Crow. I think we have to do what went right. Let's do it because a lot still went right in this movie. Yeah, it really did.

I will throw out my what went right to a couple of supporting actors. Actually, a trio of supporting actors that I think have not quite, didn't quite have the careers they deserved. I know there's a bigger actor who didn't have the career he deserved, but I'm guessing you might take that one, Lizzie. so I'll leave it. Michael Wincott, who I think is wonderful. He's great. Ernie Hudson, who's great. Tony Todd, who's not in very much of this movie, but obviously was in Candyman. If you all remember, he's a really wonderful actor, a great voice, great voice along with Michael Wincott. Yep, a lot of good voices. I think underused across his career, typecasts in a lot of villainous roles. And anyway, it was just great to see them in this movie.

It was a fun supporting cast, I think, around Mr. Lee. And, you know, the movie's got a comic book feel, so you need big, you know, big swing personalities that can fill in those areas. So I appreciated the supporting cast in this movie. Also, it was interesting watching it just brief sidebar after Boys in the Hood because we were talking with Jonathan Braylock about the hood and the portrayal of the Hood as this lawless place and there are only black people. there, blah, blah, blah. And then we jumped to Detroit. And it is just crazy white people murdering everyone in the streets. So it was a nice, it was a nice antidote and a refreshing follow-up to Boys in the Hood. Yeah. My what went right is going to be obvious, but we have to say it is Brandon Lee. I think he is incredible in this. There's a reason that Heath Ledger's Joker

pulls so much from not just this movie, but his performance in particular. If you haven't looked at comparisons of the two, it's pretty stunning when you go back and look at it. The quality of his movement was incredible and he was a really good actor. I think somebody who absolutely was poised to be able to step out of his father's shadow and do so much more that we're never going to be able to see. So I would absolutely say, Brandon Lee, it's a very, very sad story. There's not much else to say about it. Sorry to end on a bummer. But if you've never watched The Crow, I do recommend that you go watch it. I think it's great. It's free to stream on Amazon right now, if you have Amazon Prime. I paid for it. Why did I pay for it? I don't know why you did. Go to streamed it. And you own the

Blu-ray now, too. Yes, yep, sure did. Lizzie, thank you very much. That was extremely fascinating. And this movie, like you said, it has such a legacy beyond the Brandon Lee. Watch The Matrix, which obviously shot on some of the Dark City sets. But the scene of Brandon Lee running, across the roof. And then you watch Trinity being chased by the agent. It so much pulls from this movie in this time period. So I think it's absolutely worth a watch. I agree. Despite the heavy subject matter. And beyond, if you enjoyed the Batman, you'll love this. And it's a lot shorter. So there's that as well. That's true. With that, we have to do our full stop supporters. Have to. You mean get to. Thank you so very, very much for supporting us.

It means the world to us. Matthew Jacobson. Grace V. Ellen Singleton. Jewish Sri Samant. Lachlan Morrow. Scott Gurwin. Sadie.

Just Sadie. Chris Leal. Matthew Pelton. Leah Bowman. No relation. Just kidding. It's my mother-in-law. Steve Winterbauer.

That is Chris's dad. Oh, no. Don Shibel. Rosemary Southward. Chris's mother-in-law. Tom Kristen. Hannah Tripp. Nathan Orlaw.

Soman Chynani, Michael McGrath, Kang, just Kang, and Andrew, who is also just Andrew. Thank you all so much, especially those of you that are not related to us and don't have a blood bond with which you are required to fund our podcast. But also thank you to those of us who are related. But if you'd like to form a blood bond, you can join our new blood level where we will slit our hands and shake them, meet us, in a dark alley in Detroit, and we will do it with you. All right. Thank you so much to our full stop supporters. Guys, remember, if you want to vote, join our Patreon at the one or $5 levels,

and you can also get an ad-free feed at $5. And Lizzie, we have to announce our next episode. Yes, Chris, do the honors. We are covering M-night Shaman's The Sixth Sense. This is one of my all-time favorites, and it was such a treat to research. I am so excited to share the story of how this movie came to be with you guys. So keep an eye out. That will be dropping in two weeks.

And until then, happy listening. All right. We'll see you next week for the Larry Zanoff interview. And then back in two weeks for Hellraiser. Bye. Bye. Go to patreon.com slash what went wrong podcast to support what went wrong. And check out our website at what went wrongpod.com.

What Went Wrong is a sad boom podcast presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winter Bauer Bauer editing and music by David Bowman.