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I'm torn over the Landis case.

On the one hand, Landis did not personally shoot Vic Morrow and the kids, nor did he personally fly the helicopter into them.

The case against Landis was that the explosives were too powerful, the helicopter was too close to the ground, the parents were not aware that explosives would be used. The explosives kicked up debris into the helicopter which broke the tail rotor and caused the helicopter to lose control and crash.

Landis was found guilty of violating child labor laws by not having the required permits for the children, but not guilty of causing the crash.

Was it negligence on his part, or was it a sequence of events that combined into a terrible tragedy? Landis was heard to call for the helicopter to go lower during the chaos of the shoot, does that make him guilty?

I don't know. Sometimes it really is just a terrible accident and not reckless endangerment or manslaughter.

Also, this was 1982... I don't think we had the concept of "elite" yet (except maybe the Kennedys), at least not as it's defined today. The "elite" as a class didn't really emerge until Bill Clinton merged with Hollywood celebrities as the pendulum swung away from the Reagan/Bush decade and the "new money" started to spread around. The "new money" elite were started by Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and the players who grew out of their sphere. The blockbuster movies created the rise of the activist actor, such as Robert Di Niro, Jack Nicholson, Brangelina, George Clooney, etc. These all came later, after the John Landis Twilight Zone incident.

-PJ