Dorkman wrote:A bastard, maybe. Liable for the accident, no. If he'd had the kids in during legal hours and told the parents what was going to happen, that wouldn't have much changed how it went down, so those two items are immaterial to the question of liability.
But the issue was, they did the shoot late at night, and downplayed the danger to the parents because what they were doing was illegal. Having actual minors involved with a helicopter and pyro effects was a violation of a half-ton of really good laws, and the prosecution's case was that Landis (and co. - there were three co-defendants) deliberately and intentionally circumvented those laws.
Witnesses testified that they had informed Landis the scene must be done with stunt doubles or dummies, but that Landis wanted the real kids and Vic Morrow there, to make the scene look all awesome and stuff. There were also stories of other, earlier safety violations that just happened to not end in death. I wasn't there, so I don't know the truth of it... but I have been on sets where corners were cut jussst a little because, hey, what could happen? Never on that scale, though.
So if they'd done the scene legally and stunt performers had been killed, that would have been a tragedy. Or if there had been some terrible mishap on set that killed three actors, again - tragic. But these things can happen. It was the apparent premeditated breaking of numerous rules in order to PUT a name actor and two children in harm's way that made it a criminal trial.
As I recall, Dorsey Wingo (the helicopter pilot and one of the co-defendants) almost requested a separate trial - because Landis and the other two (the production manager and pyro guy)were sorta leaning toward blaming it all on him for missing his mark and getting caught in the pyro blast. But the takes clearly included Landis' voice yelling "Lower, lower!" so that argument probably didn't stand much of a chance. And for Wingo, "I knew it was dangerous but the director told me to do it" isn't a great defense either.
At the time, I was shocked that Landis and co. didn't go to prison . Not that I wanted them to do time, I just assumed it was inevitable. The trial was a very big deal for a very long time, and it looked like they were gonna be the scapegoats for getting caught doing something that everybody in the industry had done at one time or other.
Cocaine, hell of a drug.
