A small military movie — “Rust” — hit the headlines Tuesday night when a stuntman was shot and seriously injured while shooting a fight scene in the mountains of Washington state. Details of the shooting were unknown early Wednesday, though media reports indicated a person in the film crew had fired a gun during a scene.
The shooting led to an investigation at the command post by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. At least three agencies were involved: the Navy’s Region Northwest, the FBI and the Horizon Air Bombardier Q400 flight crew on standby.
What’s the worst accident you can think of when it comes to set accidents?
Our media partners at KOMO News have published several blog posts from around the country that tell the stories of similar incidents involving military and statewide productions. Here are some of the others and some examples from around the country of similar accidents on film sets.
*In July 2007, about three miles from a set for the just-released sci-fi film “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” members of the Washington State Civil Air Patrol, U.S. Army, U.S. Coast Guard and two members of the Bellingham Fire Department pulled a driver of a wrong-way semi-truck out of a ravine after it struck the set and overturned.
*A 1994 production for “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs” crashed on the “Shawshank Redemption” set. The prison movie shot on a soundstage in Georgia had been set in a bare, empty prison when a car collided with the set and started a chain reaction that brought other cars and a produce truck to a stop. “Houses started shakin’,” production designer Henry Pfister recalled to interviewer Roger Toussaint in 2009.
*A “Training Day” crew member was injured and the team’s pilot suffered a concussion in a 2001 helicopter accident while preparing for a scene involving a helicopter chase on the Hill Air Force Base airstrip in Orem, Utah.
*In 2002, emergency crews responded to a fire that broke out on the set of “Face/Off,” where a propane tank blown by a crashing car destroyed a large prop house on a hillside over the freeway. The prop house was the setting for the scene in which the setting for actor Nicolas Cage’s face escaped his lower body and smashed into a broken car.
*In 2011, Pittsburgh firefighters rescued an actor who jumped down a crevasse on a cold Virginia back lot during filming for “Oz the Great and Powerful.” The actor had been filming a fight scene for the movie, directed by Sam Raimi, that involved a flying helicopter dropping him in to a crevasse. When the actor jumped down to safety, a stuntman on the ground tried to catch him.
*Also in 2011, a stuntwoman was injured when an arm she was trying to use to lift a mounted camera dislodged during a fight scene between Pierce Brosnan and Jessica Biel on a Bermuda beach in the James Bond film “Skyfall.”
*In 2012, a B-movie actor was killed in Georgia when part of a motorcycle he was riding on a film set fell on him. It was “Grindhouse,” a low-budget movie starring co-directors Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, and not an actual action film.
Here are some other examples of similar incidents:
*In April 2015, a stunt worker died in Louisiana while filming a fight scene for the upcoming movie “Mom.” Authorities told local media that a prop machine gun fell on the man’s head and the stuntman was thrown into a fence.
*In 1994, a stuntman died while shooting a fight scene on the set of “Swordfish.” David Irons, a stuntman, was killed by an object that was at least 30 feet in the air and hit him as he ran past the object.
*In December 2010, a shot fired during a scene on the set of “The Expendables” for a scene with Sylvester Stallone cost a stuntman his life. The man had been shot with a gun to the head, police said.
*In May, a stuntman was killed on the set of “Act of Valor,” a U.S. Navy SEAL movie set in real-life Vietnam. Investigators think the man was shot through his shield, where the actor was fighting with another stuntman.
What was the worst one? Does this list leave anything out?
Your questions and comments are appreciated below and can be submitted by email to [email protected].
