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To: Squantos
Nope. His name was John Erik-Hexum, a TV actor, I believe. He was one of those good-looking guys in their early 20's playing a 'Nam vet back in the late 80's. It actually happened off-camera. After that, the prop-gun rental service, Stembridge Gun Rentals, instituted a policy of immediatly collecting up the weapons between takes, and safety training for the actors using their guns. They also started using rubber "dummy guns" in any take that did not require shooting.

Brandon Lee was killed accidently when he, during filming, got in front of a blank machine-gun burst at close range. He was, I believe, hit multiple times and died at the scene.

The story of Stembridge Gun Rentals goes back almost a hundred years in pictures. Their collection of Blank-only guns is a sight to behold. Someday, I hope someone there writes a book...it'd be a hoot to read all the stories they must have. Also, they still have weapons used in the '20s and '30s by the classic stars of the time. They all still work, too.

52 posted on 10/18/2003 12:19:37 AM PDT by Long Cut ( "Diplomacy is wasted on Tyrants.")
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To: Long Cut
Brandon Lee has to be one of the few people to die in a life-imitates-art way on the set of a movie. The movie was "The Crow". From Snopes.com (full story here):

"According to newspaper and magazine accounts, the scene in question was staged early in the morning of March 31, 1993, in Wilmington, North Carolina. The scene was the death of Lee's character, Eric Draven, at the hands of street thugs, and was a pivotal plot element to the movie. Lee was to walk in through a door carrying a bag of groceries. Actor Michael Massee, who played Funboy, fired a revolver loaded with blanks at Lee. To complete the illusion, a small explosive charge was to go off in the grocery bag. Unfortunately, a fragment of a dummy bullet, used earlier in close-up shots, was lodged in the barrel, and the blank charge propelled the fragment into Lee's side, fatally wounding him."

57 posted on 10/18/2003 8:31:04 AM PDT by TrappedInLiberalHell (Hillary walks into a bar. Let's hope it leaves a nice bump on her forehead.)
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