MARCH 7, 2015
SAVANNAH, GEORGIA
(AP)
Randall Miller had
just begun shooting the Gregg Allman biographical movie "Midnight
Rider" when the production turned into a nightmare - a freight train
traveling 55 mph plowed into the director's crew on a Georgia railroad bridge,
injuring six film workers and killing a young camera assistant.
A year later, Miller
is scheduled to stand trial along with his business partner wife and the
movie's executive producer in a rare case of filmmakers being prosecuted for
deaths on their sets. A jury in rural
Wayne County will have to decide if the train collision that killed 27-year-old
Sarah Jones was an accident or the result of a criminal act. And if a crime
occurred, which of the defendants, if any, should take the blame?
"It may be
difficult for the prosecutor to sort out exactly who is responsible," said
Ron Carlson, a law professor emeritus at the University of Georgia who
specializes in criminal law.
Miller, his wife
Jody Savin and executive producer Jay Sedrish face up to 11 years in a Georgia
prison if convicted of involuntary manslaughter and criminal trespassing. They
have all pleaded not guilty.
CSX Transportation,
the railroad company that owns the bridge where the crash occurred, has said it
twice denied the filmmakers permission to shoot footage on its tracks in rural
southeast Georgia. Under state law, someone can be convicted of involuntary
manslaughter for committing a misdemeanor - in this case trespassing - that
unintentionally causes another person to be killed.
Jury selection is
scheduled to start Monday morning in Wayne County Superior Court, about 70
miles southwest of Savannah. The judge has set aside a week for the trial.
It was the first day
of shooting on "Midnight Rider" when Miller and his crew stepped onto
the railroad bridge spanning the Altamaha River on Feb. 20, 2014. Actor William
Hurt was on the set in his role as the Allman Brothers Band singer in his later
years. A metal-framed bed was pulled across the tracks as a prop. When the
train struck, it smashed the bed and hurled metal fragments at the fleeing
crew.
The fast-moving
train struck and killed Jones, a young camera assistant from Atlanta who had
worked on TV series including "Army Wives" and "The Vampire
Diaries." Her death galvanized behind-the-scenes film workers nationwide
to push for improved safety standards on sets.
A sobbing Miller
called Jones' parents to tell them she was dead. The director, whose previous
films included "Bottle Shock" and "CBGB," testified last
May in a related civil case that he had been told only two trains a day crossed
the bridge and he only set out with his crew onto the trestle after a pair of
trains had passed. Asked if the crew had obtained permission from the railroad
to film on its tracks, Miller said that wasn't his job. But he bristled at the
suggestion he recklessly put his crew in danger.
"I was in the
middle of the track and I almost died," Miller said in civil court May 12.
Carlson, the law
professor, said he expects Miller's attorneys will try to persuade the jury
that "this was a mistake but it was an innocent mistake."
"He wasn't
sending other people into a place where he thought it was dangerous to go and
that was evidenced by his own presence there," Carlson said.
A fourth
"Midnight Rider" defendant, assistant director Hillary Schwartz, has
also been charged but prosecutors plan to try to her separately. That means she
could be called as a witness to testify against the others.
The last
high-profile prosecution of a filmmaker in an on-set death occurred after a
helicopter crash killed actor Victor Morrow and two children during filming of
the "Twilight Zone" movie in 1982. Five years later, director John
Landis and four others stood trial on manslaughter charges. A jury acquitted
them all.
In March 2011, a
stunt coordinator on the Batman movie "The Dark Knight" was cleared
by a British jury in the death of a camera man killed in an on-set vehicle
crash.
The "Midnight
Rider" movie has been in limbo since the Georgia train crash. Allman sued
Miller to prevent the director from reviving the film. They settled out of
court last year and terms were not disclosed.
//---------------------------//
CSX: Film crew
denied track access before crash
AP News | Sep 03, 2014
SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP)
CSX Transportation twice denied producers of a biographical movie about singer
Gregg Allman permission to shoot on its railroad tracks before a freight train
slammed into the film's crew in south Georgia, killing one worker and injuring
six, the company said in court documents.
Legal filings in
Chatham County State Court mark the first time Florida-based railroad operator
CSX has made any publicly available statement about the Feb. 20 crash involving
one of its trains and the crew of the movie "Midnight Rider."
Lawsuits have been filed against CSX and the film's producers by the parents of
Sarah Jones, a camera assistant killed in the collision, and two injured crew
members. Director Randall Miller and two other top executives on the production
have also been indicted on criminal charges.
In its response
Tuesday to the Jones family's lawsuit, attorneys for CSX denied the company was
negligent or otherwise responsible for the crash that killed her. The film
workers, including actor William Hurt in the role of the Allman Brothers Band
singer, was shooting on a railroad bridge spanning the Altamaha River in rural
Wayne County when a train traveling 55 mph plowed through them and a hospital
bed placed on the tracks as a prop.
The railroad company
also sued the film's producers in the same court for trespassing. CSX
Transportation said that days before the crash the filmmakers twice asked for
permission to shoot on its train tracks and the company "unequivocally
denied each request in writing, citing a company policy which prohibits filming
on CSXT's property due to safety and security reasons."
The lawsuit said
filmmakers decided to trespass onto the railroad's property "despite
knowing that CSXT had twice, in writing, denied them permission."
Matt Stone, an
attorney for Miller and the director's wife and business partner, Jody Savin,
declined to comment Wednesday. So did William Hunter, an attorney for
"Midnight Rider" executive producer Jay Sedrish. All three are named
as defendants in CSX's lawsuit, along with Miller and Savin's production company,
Unclaimed Freight Productions. Prosecutors charged Miller, Savin and Sedrish
with involuntary manslaughter and criminal trespassing.
In a prepared
statement July 17, Miller and Savin said the crash and Jones' death "will
haunt us forever" and insisted that "we would never knowingly or
intentionally put anybody's safety at risk."
Sheriff's
investigators have previously said the film producers were denied access to the
railroad tracks by CSX, but had permission to be on surrounding property owned
by Rayonier, the forest-products manufacturer that has a nearby mill.
The Jones family's
lawsuit says CSX should have taken precautions because it knew the film crew
planned to shoot in the area and operators of two passing trains saw the
workers before the crash. CSX said its operators saw "unidentified
persons" in the area "but not on or immediately near" the
tracks.
CSX also said
27-year-old Jones was partly to blame for her own death because she
"failed to exercise ordinary and responsible care for her own safety."
A spokeswoman for the family did not immediately return an email seeking
comment.
//----------------------------------//
DIRECTOR, 2 MORE
INDICTED IN FATAL GA. TRAIN CRASH
Russ Bynum
Associated Press
Posted:
07/03/2014 09:05:03 AM MDT
SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) —
The director of a movie about singer Gregg Allman and two other executives on
the project were indicted Thursday on felony charges stemming from a fatal
crash in which a freight train plowed into the film's crew in southeast
Georgia.
A grand jury in
rural Wayne County returned charges of involuntary manslaughter and criminal
trespassing against "Midnight Rider" director Randall Miller as well
as his wife and business partner, Jody Savin, and the film's executive
producer, Jay Sedrish.
If they are
convicted, the filmmakers each could face up to 11 years in prison for the Feb.
20 death of Sarah Jones. The 27-year-old camera assistant from Atlanta was
killed and six other crew members were struck by a train while shooting footage
on a railroad bridge spanning the Altamaha River southwest of Savannah.
Authorities say the train was traveling at 55 mph when it crashed into the crew
and a bed that had been placed on the tracks as a movie prop.
Jones' parents, who
have filed a civil lawsuit against the three indicted filmmakers and others,
stopped short of praising the decision to seek a criminal prosecution.
"Elizabeth and
I are comfortable that the authorities were both careful and meticulous in
investigating and bringing charges related to the incident that took our
daughter's life," Richard Jones, the young woman's father, said in a
statement. "We must allow the criminal justice process to proceed
unhindered. Our mission remains the same: to ensure safety on all film
sets."
Wayne County
sheriff's investigators have said filmmakers had permission to be on property
surrounding the tracks from the landowner, forest-products company Rayonier,
but lacked permission from CSX Railroad to be filming on the actual train
tracks.
The indictment
charges Miller, Savin and Sedrish with unintentionally causing Jones' death by
trespassing onto the railroad bridge. The filmmakers went onto the train
trestle even after CSX denied them access, the indictment says.
Donnie Dixon, an
attorney for Miller and Savin, said Thursday that he had no comment on the
charges. It was not immediately known whether Sedrish had an attorney.
Three civil
lawsuits, including the one by Jones' parents, related to the train crash are
pending. Miller bristled at the suggestion that he was cavalier about his
crew's safety when he took the witness stand during a court appearance in May.
He said his assistants were in charge of securing location permits, and that
crew members were along the track to look out for trains during filming.
"I did not know
it was a live train trestle," Miller said. "We were told there were
two trains from Rayonier coming through, and no more trains that day."
Involuntary
manslaughter is a felony carrying a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison under
Georgia law. Criminal trespass is a misdemeanor punishable by no more than a
year in prison.
None of the accused
filmmakers, who live in California, have been arrested. They will likely be
allowed to travel to Georgia and turn themselves in at a later date, said Joe
Gardner, the lead sheriff's investigator in the case
//---------------------------------------//
OSHA CITES ALLMAN
FILM COMPANY IN GA. TRAIN CRASH
Posted: Aug 14, 2014 6:34 PM EST
SAVANNAH,GEORGIA
(AP)
A production company
formed to make a biographical film about singer Greg Allman was cited by
federal regulators Thursday for workplace safety violations stemming from a
train crash in rural Georgia that killed a camera assistant and injured six
others.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration proposed $74,900 in fines against Film Allman LLC, a company incorporated in 2013 to make the movie "Midnight Rider." The company was cited for two safety violations saying it willfully put workers in danger of being struck by a live train and put them at risk of falling off a railroad bridge where they were shooting a scene.
Filming had just begun on "Midnight Rider" when a freight train plowed into the crew Feb. 20 on a railroad trestle spanning the Altamaha River in rural Wayne County southwest of Savannah. The collision killed 27-year-old Sarah Jones. Investigators say fellow crew members were injured either by the train itself or flying shrapnel from a bed that had been placed across the tracks as a movie prop.
"It is unacceptable that Film Allman LLC knowingly exposed their crew to moving trains while filming on a live track and railroad trestle," David Michaels, the assistant labor secretary who heads OSHA, said in a statement.
The citations don't name any individual officers associated with Film Allman LLC. The company's incorporation papers list the same Pasadena, California, address as Unclaimed Freight Productions, which is owned by "Midnight Rider" director Randall Miller and his wife, Jody Savin. Their attorney, Don Samuel, declined to comment.
Film Allman has 15 business days to contest OSHA's findings and proposed penalty.
On July 3, a grand jury indicted Miller, Savin and executive producer Jay Sedrish on charges of involuntary manslaughter and criminal trespassing in connection with the crash. Sheriff's investigators say the filmmakers took their crew onto the railroad bridge despite being denied permission to film there by CSX railroad. All three defendants have pleaded not guilty.
In a statement released through their attorney July 17, Miller and Savin said the crash and Jones' death "will haunt us forever" but they insisted they had committed no crimes.
"We would never knowingly or intentionally put anybody's safety at risk," Miller and Savin's statement said. "This was a horrible tragedy and a horrific accident."
Production on "Midnight Rider" was halted after the crash. Allman filed a civil lawsuit against Miller and Savin seeking to prevent them from restarting the project. They settled out of court without disclosing terms
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration proposed $74,900 in fines against Film Allman LLC, a company incorporated in 2013 to make the movie "Midnight Rider." The company was cited for two safety violations saying it willfully put workers in danger of being struck by a live train and put them at risk of falling off a railroad bridge where they were shooting a scene.
Filming had just begun on "Midnight Rider" when a freight train plowed into the crew Feb. 20 on a railroad trestle spanning the Altamaha River in rural Wayne County southwest of Savannah. The collision killed 27-year-old Sarah Jones. Investigators say fellow crew members were injured either by the train itself or flying shrapnel from a bed that had been placed across the tracks as a movie prop.
"It is unacceptable that Film Allman LLC knowingly exposed their crew to moving trains while filming on a live track and railroad trestle," David Michaels, the assistant labor secretary who heads OSHA, said in a statement.
The citations don't name any individual officers associated with Film Allman LLC. The company's incorporation papers list the same Pasadena, California, address as Unclaimed Freight Productions, which is owned by "Midnight Rider" director Randall Miller and his wife, Jody Savin. Their attorney, Don Samuel, declined to comment.
Film Allman has 15 business days to contest OSHA's findings and proposed penalty.
On July 3, a grand jury indicted Miller, Savin and executive producer Jay Sedrish on charges of involuntary manslaughter and criminal trespassing in connection with the crash. Sheriff's investigators say the filmmakers took their crew onto the railroad bridge despite being denied permission to film there by CSX railroad. All three defendants have pleaded not guilty.
In a statement released through their attorney July 17, Miller and Savin said the crash and Jones' death "will haunt us forever" but they insisted they had committed no crimes.
"We would never knowingly or intentionally put anybody's safety at risk," Miller and Savin's statement said. "This was a horrible tragedy and a horrific accident."
Production on "Midnight Rider" was halted after the crash. Allman filed a civil lawsuit against Miller and Savin seeking to prevent them from restarting the project. They settled out of court without disclosing terms
//-------------------------------------//
A TRAIN, A NARROW
TRESTLE AND 60 SECONDS TO ESCAPE: HOW 'MIDNIGHT RIDER' VICTIM SARAH JONES LOST
HER LIFE
The Feb. 20 death of
27-year-old camera assistant Sarah
Jones on the set of Midnight Rider outside Doctortown, Ga., spread grief
and anger through Hollywood. It has led to an industrywide reckoning on safety
standards and inspired some Oscars attendees to wear black ribbons on their lapels in her memory. Many of
the details of the accident remain murky and unknown. But now a THR
reconstruction, based on an exclusive eyewitness account and interviews with
Jones’ parents and others, reveals harrowing new details of what happened when
a 20-person film crew tried to shoot a scene on a live train track.
Joyce Gilliard, a
42-year-old hairstylist working on Midnight Rider, an indie biopic about
Gregg Allman featuring William Hurt as the 1970s rocker, began feeling anxious
about the shoot from the moment she arrived at the 110-year-old bridge trestle
over the Altamaha River in Wayne County, a wild, untamed land full of rivers,
Spanish moss and gnats. “As soon as I got to the location, I started to feel
funny,” she said during a series of interviews. “It didn’t feel right. I didn’t
feel safe there.”
The 110-year-old
bridge over the Altamaha River, Wayne County, Ga.
Jones, already known
in the local production community as an indefatigable worker with a cheery
disposition, apparently didn’t reveal any concerns to co-workers. But her
father, Richard Jones, says that in a phone conversation the night before she
died, his daughter told him she was “nervous about a few things.” He says, “She
was a little bit surprised about it being low-budget. … She made a comment that
some of the people asking her questions should have known more than her, and
she thought that was odd.” The day she died, says her father, was her first on
the set.
As a barefoot Hurt
paced, rehearsing his lines, Gilliard watched nervously. She was responsible
for the actor’s hair, and as the wind picked up, she darted in and out of shots
before retreating behind the cameras, where she traded small talk with Jones.
As the day wore on,
director Randall Miller moved the shoot from the land beside the river onto the
narrow gridwork of the trestle itself, which extends over the edge of the
Altamaha. The trestle’s wood and metal bottom was covered with pebbles and had
gaping holes in some places. The blustery wind rang through the girders, making
it hard to stay steady, says Gilliard.
From shore, several
dozen yards away, a voice shouted to the crew that in the event a train
appeared, everyone would have 60 seconds to clear the tracks. “Everybody on the
crew was tripping over that,” says Gilliard. “A minute? Are you serious?” By
now, she and two other crewmembers were nervous enough that before shooting,
they gathered in an informal prayer circle. “Lord, please protect us on these
tracks,” murmured Gilliard. “Surround us with your angels and help us, Lord.”
While Gilliard
prayed, Jones helped load film, monitor the cameras and transport gear. A
fresh-faced South Carolinian with a passion for travel and books, Jones wasn’t
really the type to fret much. The crew was filming a dream sequence, and they
had placed a twin-size metal-framed bed and mattress in the middle of the
tracks. Then, Gilliard looked up and saw a light in the distance, followed
by the immense howl of a locomotive. It was a train — and it was hurtling toward
them.
Two stories high,
screaming with the sound of a blast horn and possibly brakes, the train was
nearly as wide as the trestle. Gilliard says Miller yelled at everyone to run.
Jones, several bags slung over each shoulder, shouted something about what to
do with the expensive camera equipment. “Drop it!” Gilliard and others yelled.
“Just drop it!”
The only viable
escape route to the closest shore lay in running toward the approaching train,
now traveling, by one estimate, at almost 60 mph. Gilliard tried to make her
way onto the metal gangplank parallel to the tracks. Miller and another
crewmember began tugging at the bed, trying to remove it from the train’s path,
fearing it might cause a derailment. But as the train approached, Gilliard
says, they abandoned their efforts.
Before Gilliard knew
it, the train was upon her. She found herself clinging to one of the girders.
But the blast of pressure and wind from the train’s passing ripped Gilliard’s
left arm away from her body and straight into the train. It snapped like a
stick. With one hand still on the girder, Gilliard looked down and saw bone sticking
out of her sweater. And then she saw blood. She grabbed a sheet that had come
loose from the mattress and wrapped her bleeding arm inside it. With the train
howling past just inches behind her, Gilliard threw herself onto two metal
wires that stretched between the girders and along the gangplank, thrust her
head out over the river below and shut her eyes. “I saw my life, my kids, my
family, all of it before me,” she says. “I was sure I was going to die.”
One of the first
things she saw when she opened her eyes again was a lifeless Jones, her body
and face mangled. Like Gilliard, Jones had tried to find shelter on the
gangplank. But when the train hit the bed and mattress, it sent debris flying.
Something may have hit Jones, possibly propelling her into the train’s path. In
the melee, Miller also fell on the tracks. A still photographer nearby managed
to pull him away just in time. He was sobbing, Gilliard says, trying to cope
with the disaster. Hurt also survived unscathed. The traumatized crew helped
collect Jones’ body. A team of paramedics arrived within 20 minutes, and a
helicopter touched down shortly after.
Within an hour after
the incident, Gilliard was airlifted to a Savannah hospital to be treated for a
compound fracture in her arm and other injuries. Five other crewmembers also
required medical care. A police investigation was opened, and federal officials
soon were swarming the marshy countryside asking about permissions, permits,
easements and the complex language of film contracts.
The multiple
investigations since have widened to include the federal Occupational Safety
and Health Administration and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Georgia law
enforcement authorities are treating the investigation into Jones’ death as a
negligent homicide, setting the stage for the biggest safety-related scandal to
rock Hollywood in at least a decade.
The exact details of
what precautions were — or were not — taken on the set that day and whether the
production even had permission to film on the tracks are being sorted out. But
in the days following the disaster, recriminations of shockingly lax safety
protocols began to emerge.
“This was no
accident,” says Ray Brown, president of the Motion Picture Studio Mechanics
union local 479 in Atlanta and a Jones colleague, suggesting the incident was
avoidable. “When I have done train work or around trains for smaller
productions up to major blockbusters, there are always several railroad
personnel there with their hard hats, glasses and radios, and I can’t imagine a
more structured safety protocol even beyond airlines than the rail system.”
Jones’ parents are
reluctant to cast blame until investigations are complete. A shaken Miller
called them after the incident to express his condolences. “I don’t know myself
really what part Randy Miller played in all of this, but he was very upset that
day,” says Richard Jones. “He was saying he was so sorry.” Since then, the
Joneses have heard nothing from top execs associated with the film.
Their daughter’s
death prompted a tidal outpouring of grief and anger from around the world. The
filmmaking team has received death threats (though executive producer Nick Gant,
who was attacked on Facebook for appearing to have posted insensitive comments,
is telling friends that his account was hacked and that he deleted the hacker's
comments when he discovered them). By Sunday night, more than 60,000 had signed an online petition demanding that the Academy of
Motion Picture Arts and Sciences include Jones in its “In Memoriam” video
segment. Instead, the Academy recognized her in an onscreen photo and caption
just before it went to a commercial.
But for Gilliard and
the other members of the crew that day, the death of Jones always will be
inextricably linked to a lonely patch of Georgia railroad.
The day felt strange
from the very beginning, says Gilliard. She and the rest of the crew had
gathered at a studio in Savannah that morning, when they were told they’d be
traveling to a location to shoot a “camera test.” The crew was quiet and
reserved as they passed fields and railroad tracks, arriving about two hours
later at the massive metal trestle that spans a portion of the Altamaha River.
CSX, the
Florida-based railway company that owns the tracks, easement and trestle where
Jones died, told the Wayne County Sheriff’s Office in the early hours of the
investigation that it never granted Midnight Rider’s producers
permission to film on the tracks in the first place.
“According to the
CSX employee,” Sgt. Ben Robertson wrote in a report obtained by the media, “the
production company had previously been denied permission to film on the
trestle, and there was electronic correspondence to verify that fact.”
Robertson’s report noted that a member of Miller’s crew, when asked whether
permission was granted, replied, “It’s complicated.”
Miller, who has
engaged noted Savannah defense attorney Donnie Dixon, declined through a New
York public relations firm to provide specifics about what safety precautions
were taken. Other senior managers on the film, including the line producer,
first assistant director and location manager, did not respond to requests for
comment. Lee Donaldson, a friend of Jones and a local Georgia union official,
put it bluntly. “It’s not complicated; you either have permission or you
don’t.”
Several Hollywood
producers question whether there were shortcuts or oversights in the
production. “Every train, every airplane, every airport, every shoot I’ve ever
done, there’s always been a coordinator that you hire on your staff to
coordinate it all, to communicate to crew, to any train operators, linemen,
whatever,” says Harry Bring, a producer of one of the first television shows
Jones worked on, Lifetime’s Army Wives. Gilliard says she saw no such
officials. “It doesn’t seem like precautions and procedures, both legal and
common sense, were taken,” adds Bring. “If they didn’t have permission to be on
the tracks, why in the hell were they there?”
In addition to
railway safety personnel monitoring the set, Brown, the Atlanta union official,
says all crew and cast should have been provided with call sheets with detailed
notes on safety. Gilliard claims no such call-sheet notes were provided and no evidence
that they existed has emerged.
Ordinarily,
producers say, a location shoot like this also would have included an on-site
medic. But Gilliard recalls that when Hurt required a Band-Aid for a minor
abrasion, he had to get one from a costume designer who happened to have one in
her bag. “That’s when we all knew that there was no medic,” recalls Gilliard.
In fact, she says, there was not one safety meeting for the shoot on the tracks
that day.
According to one
media report, Miller may have cut corners before. A local news station released
a DVD made by Miller’s production company, Unclaimed Freight, in which
crewmembers bragged about their “guerrilla style” filmmaking during the
production of the 2013 movie CBGB, which included allowing a small child
to roam in a field of cows and another scene in which a piano was dropped down
a staircase. In the DVD, Miller says, “I don’t think it’s dangerous at all to
have a little kid running with cows, do you think? No. No.”
Gilliard relaxed a
little as the initial filming got underway. Two trains rumbled past without
incident. When she and others asked whether any more trains were expected, the
answer came back: a definitive “No.” The warm weather and camaraderie on the
set was a pleasure. But when Miller directed everyone to move out onto the
trestle, Gilliard’s stomach tightened once again. She was afraid of heights and
never had learned to swim. Jones and Gilliard had worked together before, and
Gilliard was happy to see the younger woman. A native of Columbia, S.C., now
living in Atlanta, Jones was gifted with optimism, a knack for following
instructions and a can-do attitude that endeared her to nearly everyone she
encountered. As a kid, she swam and did gymnastics. Later, she attended a local
technical college and became interested in the film industry during an
internship on Army Wives. In her off time, she traveled.
“If she had a second
off, she left the country, she had to see the world,” says one of her best
friends, Amanda Etheridge. “She was unstoppable, always wanting to learn a new
hobby, a new craft.” Bobby LaBonge, the director of photography for two seasons
of Army Wives, says Jones had a disarming naivete. “You felt
re-invigorated around her,” he says. “You saw the fresh wildness of making
movies again, and you saw a sparkle in her that was fun.”
By her early 20s,
Jones was making headway in an industry discipline overwhelmingly male,
physically grueling and tough to sustain for very long: camerawork. LaBonge
remembers her huffing with lots of gear, always smiling, never complaining. On
the set, she was known as “The Ant” because of her ability to carry heavy
objects that dwarfed her.
On March 2 in Jones’
hometown, nearly 900 people gathered in the Ashland United Methodist Church,
where Jones spent many Sundays as a child. Her father sat down at the piano and
began to play “Andy’s Song,” a tune about his own father he had composed and
had played for Sarah only a few weeks before, when he found himself stranded in
Atlanta by an epic snowstorm. It was the last time he saw her in person. The
church filled with the sounds of weeping. As mourners began spilling out of the
church, a common refrain was heard: “Never again.” Sarah, everyone agreed,
would not die in vain.
Now, the global film
industry is undergoing a widespread reckoning of what Jones’ death means. “This
incident has rippled its devastation of people all the way to the top of our
world,” says Brown. “We have a firm commitment that we will never forget. We
will never let this happen again.”
The most
high-profile case in which a director was criminally charged in an on-set death
was the 1982 helicopter crash during the filming of Twilight Zone: The Movie
that killed Vic Morrow and child actors Myca Dinh Le and Renee Chen. Director John
Landis and his four co-defendants were found not guilty of involuntary
manslaughter after a lengthy 1987 trial, but the deaths did lead to significant
improvements in production safety protocols.
Meanwhile, filming
of Midnight Rider, which was to be distributed in the U.S. by Open Road
Films, has been suspended indefinitely.
“Sarah was a strong,
powerful, beautiful woman,” says Gilliard, who now will commit herself to the
promotion of safety and welfare on sets. Doctors have told her she will never
straighten her arm again. She has metal pins in her elbow, and she says she
wakes up several times each night crying, with one horrible final image of
Jones burned into her consciousness.
After Richard Jones
and his daughter talked by phone the night before the shoot, the two exchanged
texts. She expressed her excitement about working with Hurt, and then she was
out of range, and their exchange ended. A few minutes later, at 7:57 p.m., he
sent her one final text: “Lost you.”
Source: www.hollywoodreporter.com