..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..R.J. Matson
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Michael Wilmington

Safety Last … and forever

Making movies has often been described as a brutal business. Egos are bashed, friendships are bruised and even long standing relationships can vaporize when opening day figures come on-line Saturday morning.

Years ago a friend (a stage director) returning from a meeting in Los Angeles talked about a business dinner at a chic restaurant. He was amazed by the general conviviality of the repast; of the table-hopping and networking. He also recalled a couple sitting in a corner - the equivalent of Siberia - who appeared to have been shunned from the festivities. The producer he was dining with shrugged and said, “oh, their picture opened last Friday.” My friend subsequently discovered the movie the pair had made was Best Defense.

However, there’s a far greater killing factor in the current filmmaking environment. It is the industry’s darkest secret. It’s worse than the glass ceiling women encounter or the short shrift minorities experience on and off the screen. People are literally being worked to death.

The movie biz is famous for stories of go-getters who work long hours, abuse their bodies with drugs and alcohol and think nothing of stabbing you in the front. In sharp contrast, one doesn’t hear a lot about the “little people” who work 80-hour weeks for just OK wages (not quite Dickensian conditions), often in unsafe work environments. The first group actually opts for a certain lifestyle; the latter more often cower in silence, frightened that should they speak up, they will be shown the door.

From time to time the grueling working conditions receive the media spotlight. I’m thinking of the night in July 1982 when Vic Morrow and two children were killed by a helicopter blade during the filming of The Twilight Zone or the day in March of 1992 when Brendan Lee’s life came to an end when an improperly packaged gun blast proved fatal on The Crow. The first incident culminated in a very public trial and a jury decision that absolved its defendants of criminal wrongdoing. Receiving considerably less ink was an investigation by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration that found the production in violation of 36 safety regulations.

In the past three decades, hundreds of people have died on the job making movies. They’ve included a stuntmen whose parachute didn’t open, a workman electrocuted by an improperly fastened wire and a set decorator who fell from an obviously poorly secured scaffold. In most instances (The Crow being an exception) these deaths occurred on union films where a safety officer was employed. And though there are routinely 10 to 15 deaths of this nature annually, little more than band-aid remedies have been instituted to improve the situation.

On the night of March 6, 1997, Brent Hershman, a camera assistant working on the film Pleasantville, completed a 19-hour work day and headed home to be with his 8-year-old daughter who was sick. En route, he fell asleep at the wheel of his car and drove off the road into a utility pole. He was killed instantly. The day prior Hershman had an 15-hour work day and the day before was the first day of filming.

Hershman’s death six years ago seemed, at the time, like an industry wake up call. The Guilds and unions all stepped up to the plate, recognizing that the long hours that had become de rigeur jeopardized the health and safety of its members. Brent’s Rule was created which pressed for a 12-hour (14 with meal breaks) daily cap. For a brief period of time it appeared as if change would occur.

But the galvanizing moment passed and as time has elapsed, the momentum’s been stalled by other factors on both sides of the negotiating table. One recent example sheds just a bit of light on why the equivalent of seat belts haven’t been installed on this careening vehicle.

A year ago, the board of directors of the American Society of Cinematographers was presented with a resolution from Conrad Hall. It read, in part: “Our responsibility is to the visual image of the film as well as the well-being of the crew. The continuing and expanding practice of working extreme hours can compromise both the quality of our work and the health and safety of others.” In February, a month after Hall died, the resolution finally received board approval. A number of things had retarded the progress of this non-specific, non-binding action. Concerns were raised that the ASC was not the negotiating body for cinematographers (they fall under the umbrella of the International Alliance) and this might be viewed as a labor issue beyond its jurisdiction. Several board members believed a legal challenge could be filed that would threaten its non-profit status and an anti-trust suit waged by opponents. It took months of legal investigation to convince the organization it was protected from those threats by the First Amendment’s right of free speech.

So, in the course of six years, all that has transpired in response to the shock and manner of Hershman’s death is a statement not dissimilar to the ones voiced in the media at the time of the tragedy. Inter-union support of Brent’s Rule hasn’t solidified at the bargaining table where reps of the studios and networks have told negotiators not to press the issue because it threatens their “managerial flexibility,” according to a union source.

True or not, senior management believes that long hours and pushing crews to the breaking point and beyond is more cost efficient. I have no doubt that some studio bean counter has done an analysis that concluded that payments for crew overtime amounted to less than salaries to star performers and their entourage on an extended shooting schedule. The analysis likely even included a healthy sum for settling wrongful death suits.

Oscar-winning cinematographer Haskell Wexler, who was partnered with Hall in a commercial production company, is trying to drum up support for workday caps. He’s currently filming a documentary about the impact of sleep deprivation on the way people function. A recent study out of Stanford listed among its conclusions that a person experiencing extreme fatigue displayed similar patterns to someone who was inebriated.

When Wexler visited Hall on the set of The Road to Perdition he was shocked by the combination of long hours and brutal weather conditions. One shoot day had to be suspended because director Sam Mendes was physically exhausted from the grueling schedule. So much for the notion of cutting costs.

Yes, theoretically longer hours and shorter schedules save the industry money. However, off the page other factors come into play. The extended and oddball hours involved in making movies quickly impact on anyone’s ability to perform their crew task efficiently. That can cause accidents or worse. In one scenario, you run over schedule and eat up all the presumed savings. Or, something perhaps more insidious occurs. A filmmaker is told to cut scenes and stay on course and neither he nor the audience gets to see the picture he wanted to make.

The tales of crews working on little more than adrenaline and just barely skirting fatal accidents are becoming commonplace. On a recently completed big budget studio production, the safety officer finally quit on location when the precautions he was laying out were routinely ignored. After his departure a sequence in the water he advised against as too dangerous under the filming conditions was only stopped when the star threatened to walk off and tell the press of the peril of the sequence for a supporting player. It was subsequently filmed in a studio tank.

Still, the blame for this escalating situation cannot be solely placed on the studios’ shoulders. Complicity on the part of timorous crew members and incautious union leaders plays a significant part in the on-going scenario. What’s be forgotten by individuals in the line of fire is that overtime is supposed to be a penalty to the bosses. The 40-hour work week isn’t some cavalier concept even if it doesn’t apply to the production of motion pictures where 60-hour weeks are contractually sanctioned. But this is an industry where very few know what or when they will do next and, as a result, often work for less than their experience commands and rationalize it away with the prospect of making it up when the clock passes hour twelve.

Fear is a factor that cannot be dismissed and a major component in preventing changes that would turn back the clock and reintroduce a work environment human beings could sustain and still maintain the semblance of a personal and family life. Under present conditions those toiling in the trenches of the film industry live under the cloud that they will lose jobs to someone who will work for less money or see opportunities evaporate when producers favor cheaper labor forces in another country. The irony of the latter prospect is that if a movie shoots in Canada, Australia or Western Europe, government labor laws are considerably more strict and observed than in the home of the brave.

- by Leonard Klady