SPECIAL EFFECTS: Disaster at Twilight Zone: The Tragedy and the Trial

by Ron LaBrecque ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1988

Second book this year about movie director John Landis' trial, tied to the deaths of actor Vic Morrow and two Vietnamese children during a helicopter crash on the set for Twilight Zone: The Movie. LaBrecque, an investigative reporter for Newsweek and the Miami Herald and author of Lost Undercover: An FBI Agent's True Story (1987), concludes much the same as did Stephen Farber and Marc Green in Outrageous Conduct: Art, Ego and the Twilight Zone Case (p. 589): that Landis was in the wrong and his exoneration a fault of the prosecution. Some rare information that Father and Green missed but which turns up here is a copy of a 147-page transcript of a private early meeting between Landis and his attorneys in which he denies that he is responsible for safety on the movie set, while his lawyers try to persuade him that he is. Landis, a seeming egotist, rebutts them ingloriously: ""What is shocking to me and my capacity for naivetÉ, is how ignorant people are. About how fucking movies are made. This issue has incredible potential to totally fuck the industry."" A second fresh area of information is an American Film Institute tape of Landis' talk to a film studies group six months before he shot Twilight Zone, during which he defends his outrageous avoidance of safety standards in filming the 300 car crashes in his picture The Blues Brothers. As the same bending of safety standards witnessed by many coworkers during the fatal helicopter shoot, this was admissible evidence. LaBrecque also gets fresh material from lawyers on both sides, the bench, and the jurors. Prosecutor Lea D'Agostino is still found wanting for her merciless overkill, which forced jurors to seek some sensible balance in favor of Landis--too much so, as it happens. A better read--focused, intense, personal--than Outrageous Conduct.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1988

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Scribners

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1988

Categories: NONFICTION