Normally, I don't go too upset when Hollywood talks about rebooting a particular film or a film franchise. Except, I read today that Hollywood is hell bent on remaking or rebooting 1994's "The Crow." For those of you unfamiliar with that film and that tragedy that surrounded it, here's a bit of context from Wikipedia regarding the accident that claimed the life of the film's star Brandon Lee.
On March 31, 1993, at EUE Screen Gems Studios in Wilmington, North Carolina, Brandon Lee sustained an accidental gunshot wound on the set of the film. He was taken to an area hospital, where he later died. There were eight days left before shooting of the film was to be completed. The scenes involving Lee and Sofia Shinas' characters in their apartment had been saved for the end of filming so that Lee could work the final week without makeup.[3] In the story, Lee's character Eric Draven comes home to find a gang of thugs raping his girlfriend, and he is shot and killed by Michael Massee's character Funboy.
Weeks prior to the event, a scene had been filmed that required shells to be shown being loaded into the handgun. Rather than using dummy rounds, inexperienced crew members, pressured by time constraints, purchased live ammunition, removed the bullets, dumped the gunpowder, and then replaced the bullets back into the empty cartridges with the live primers still in place.[3][4] Unbeknownst to the crew, the bullet from one of the rounds became lodged in the barrel of the gun. It is believed that someone on set was playing with the gun, pulled the trigger and inadvertently caused the live primer to fire; this would have resulted in the bullet moving a couple of inches into the barrel of the gun.
When the time came to film the scene where Funboy shoots Eric, the same gun was loaded with blank cartridges. As the production company had sent the firearms specialist home early, responsibility for the guns was given to a prop assistant who was not aware of the rule for checking all firearms before and after any handling. Therefore, the barrel was not checked for obstructions when it came time to load it with the blank rounds.[3][4] When the gun was fired, the propellant in the blank round – which is used to give the visible effect of a gunshot – dislodged the bullet and propelled it through Lee's abdomen and into his spine, where it lodged. The injury caused massive blood loss.
Soon after the accident, Lee was taken to the New Hanover Regional Medical Center in Wilmington, where he died about 12 hours later, at 1:04 p.m. After Lee's death, the producers were faced with the decision of whether or not to continue with the film. Sofia Shinas, who had witnessed the accident, did not want to continue and went home to Los Angeles. The rest of the cast and crew, except for Ernie Hudson, whose brother-in-law had just died, stayed in Wilmington. Paramount, who were initially interested in distributing The Crow theatrically (originally a direct-to-video feature), opted out of involvement due to delays in filming and some controversy over the violent content being inappropriate given Lee's death. However, Miramax picked it up with the intention of releasing it in theatres and injected a further $8 million to complete the production, taking its budget to approximately $23 million.[2] The cast and crew then took a break for script rewrites of the flashback scenes that had yet to be completed.[3]
Now let me say this. I am a HUGE fan of the 1994 film. I thought Brandon Lee's turn as the murdered rock star Eric Draven was star making. To watch that film is to be in awe of Lee's performance. To watch that film is to lament on what might have been or better yet, what SHOULD HAVE been. One of the producers on the reboot is Edward R Pressman. Edward R Pressman was also involved in the production of the original film and for clarity's sake, was named in a lawsuit for criminal negligence after Lee was killed on set on that fateful day in 1993. Now Pressman is running around telling anyone who will listen that he wants to re imagine a film that, quite frankly, doesn't NEED to be re imagined. It's one thing to covert dollars in Hollywood, I get that. Hollywood is Hollywood and film concepts are there to be used and abused and recycled until a given audience yells stop. But this is a different circumstance entirely. Pressman was one of the people who failed Brandon Lee on that fateful day in 1993. It wasn't a curse and it wasn't happenstance, it was simply a case of cutting corners and it turned deadly. To go back and wipe Brandon Lee's last film from existence is not only callous, it's a slap in the face to the work he brought to the production itself. I remember an article in EW that was titled "How The Crow Flew Without Brandon Lee." The piece chronicles an under the weather Brandon Lee doing fight scenes in the rain, trying to not complain when even he himself felt unsafe as the producers dangerously cut corners at every turn, But I guess this is how you get rewarded in Hollywood. You give your all to capture your big break and you give your all to a production and then one act of un necessary negligence makes you a tragic foot note in film history. And then after the smoke clears and memories dim, a man like Edward Pressman comes along and conveniently covets his own sense of callous greed by saying that he wants to honor the memory of an actor he only viewed as a dollar sign on a balance sheet. How does Edward R Pressman honor Brandon Lee? He goes to court and fights for the right to profit even further off of a senseless tragedy that he could've avoided in the first place. Doing the right thing Mister Pressman, don't go through with this reboot. Find another avenue in which to make a profit, there are plenty of film franchises to reboot. Let "The Crow" stand on its own. Let Brandon Lee's legacy, the legacy you took away, be this one film that he worked so hard on; the labor of love he never got the chance to enjoy in terms of the stardom that was surely coming his way Let your conscience be your guide Mister Pressman, let your conscience be your guide.
No comments:
Post a Comment