Posted on 10/22/2021 4:39:44 PM PDT by Copernicus
Red Flag warning! Blue Bloods Gun Safety Amateur Hour!
David Codrea highlights an incident on the set of Tom Selleck’s television show “Blue Bloods” wherein Mr Selleck chastises a bit player for “waving a real gun around with his finger on the trigger”.
In news reports NRA Director Tom Selleck is cast heroically for his response to the extra’s faux pas.
Aside from the well established notion it is bad juju to publicly humiliate “the little people” the larger point should not be ignored as well: if you have joined a ship of fools about to wreck in the shoals it may make you feeeeel better to yell at the cabin boy but it sure will not keep the ship from capsizing!
As one message board commentator observed– it was the worst kind of Hollywood celebrity prima donna temper tantrum–all sound and fury with no productive outcome.
Yes, hardly a poster boy for on-screen displays of gun safety, hero Selleck has pretty big feet of clay. At the end of the day he is just one more Hollyweird drama queen who does not know squat about which he rants.
Finger on the trigger when he slaps in the magazine! Good thing the slide was not locked back!
If the situation on his show has gotten to the point an extra in costume is “waving a gun around” many, many highly paid staffers failed in their appointed duties before the extra even auditioned for the role.
While Mr. Selleck was correct to react with alacrity, his fury more properly is, and ought to be, directed toward both the prop master and producer of his show.
This is a clear-cut case of Pot. Kettle. Black.
(Excerpt) Read more at johnjacobh.wordpress.com ...
Didn’t Brandon Lee kill himself with a blank round thinking it was safe ?
There is some speculation that it was sabotage by a union member, because they were replaced by a non-union members.
“Didn’t Brandon Lee kill himself with a blank round thinking it was safe ?”
Nope.
A fully functioning “prop” gun loaded with live rounds did not kill the female cinematographer and wound the male director. Ignorant, arrogant, worthress Arec Barrwin did.
He was absolutely right to dress someone down for waving a prop gun around on set. That should be reserved for the replicas that are just mockups. Who cares if it was a “little person”? If I saw my son doing that he would get my “Boot System Gun Training Lesson”. Mishandle a gun - get the Boot.
Didn’t Brandon Lee kill himself with a blank round thinking it was safe ?
Brandon was killed in a scene where he was shot by “Funboy”. The prop gun had a a piece of a 44cal lodged in the barrel from weeks before. It was a complete failure or safety protocol.
If the "cabin boy" is the one at the wheel, it is perfectly correct to yell at him.
What idiocy.
Aparrently there was another gun accident I. The set too.
That was Jon-Erik Hexum.
Brandon Lee was a little different.
“On March 31, 1993, the 28-year-old died after being hit by a .44-caliber slug while filming a death scene. The gun was supposed to have fired a blank, but an autopsy turned up a bullet lodged near his spine.”
There's several versions but the short story is the remains of a live round was in the gun barrel and no one cleared it before loading a blank. It killed him.
This wagon has no horses.
Arec killed more people than John Wayne and Clint Eastwood combined.
Lock him up.
Correct. A further excerpt from the aforementioned 10 YEAR OLD COMMENTARY.
Lest a gentle reader think this is some idle armchair critique of the Hollywood dream factory revisit the tragic death of Brandon Lee.
CLICK LINK HERE
Mr. Lee died when the propmaster of “The Crow” never cleared a “dummy projectile” from the barrel of a “blank gun” which was unused for over a week.
When said gun was loaded with a blank cartridge the projectile was propelled with sufficient force to kill Mr. Lee.
From Wikipedia:
Weeks prior to the event, a scene was being filmed that required dummy rounds to be shown loaded into the handgun. 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.
When the time came to film the scene where Michael Massee shoots Lee’s character, the same gun was loaded with blank cartridges.
Unknown to the crew, the bullet from one of the dummy rounds had become 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 gun was operated, the propellant in the blank rounds — which is used to give the visible effect of a gunshot — dislodged the bullet, which penetrated Lee’s abdomen and lodged in his spine. The injury caused massive blood loss.
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
I was reading an article today on DM regarding the number of fatalities on movie sets. It was pretty surprising actually and there were a couple of instances the article didn’t mention. Most of the time, no one is held accountable. It seems that hollywood sets/crews are littered with dumbasses (not to mention the actors).
Brandon Lee, John Eric Hexum.
CC
Thanks for seconding with additional details and facts. I have heard all sorts of ‘stories’ blaming Brandon for being careless to the it was a hit by the Chinese mafia theory. In the end it was just poorly executed safety standards.
Then there was the set of “The Twilight Zone” where one of the leads and 2 child extras got a helicopter dropped on their heads.
CC
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