Too Much Risk on the Set?

By Richard Zoglin

Michael Jackson's fiery mishap renews concerns about safety The elaborate $1.5 million commercial for Pepsi-Cola was being taped in front of 3,000 fans at Los Angeles' Shrine Auditorium. Four times Singer Michael Jackson glided down a staircase toward Jermaine and his three other brothers as a pyrotechnic display was set off behind them.

But the effect was not quite right for Director Bob Giraldi.

According to Jackson's associates, Giraldi asked the singer to move more slowly and ordered the fireworks "heated up" a bit. The combination proved volatile. On the fiery fifth take, as pop music fans the world over swiftly learned, sparks from a smoke bomb ignited Jackson's hair, sending the singer to the hospital with second-and third-degree burns on his scalp. Jackson is expected to recover fully, though he may require cosmetic surgery to replace his hair in the burned area. His physician last week stressed that the injuries could have been much worse if the fire had not been doused so quickly.

While Jackson's attorneys contemplated a lawsuit, friends denied one rumored cause of the injury: the singer's hair, they say, had no flammable pomade or hairspray on it.

Accidents can happen, of course; but when they happen to pop superstars, people take notice. Jackson's mishap has further roiled long-simmering concerns in Hollywood over safety on the set. Many industry observers are questioning whether TV and movie directors have become reckless in their pursuit of ever more dazzling special effects.

On-the-set accidents like Jackson's are hardly unprecedented. Laurence Olivier, while shooting the movie Lady Hamilton in 1940, had his wig accidentally set afire by a torch; he escaped serious injury. But the toll seems to have burgeoned with the technology. Erik Estrada was seriously injured in a motorcycle accident on the set of TV's CHiPs in 1979. Another TV star, Peter Barton, suffered third-degree burns over 18% of his body in 1981 while filming his sci-fi series The Powers of Matthew Star. Dozens of stunt people and technicians have been involved in less publicized mishaps. In all, 214 members of the Screen Actors Guild (which includes stunt people) reported work-related injuries in 1982.

The most horrifying recent incident occurred on the set of Twilight Zone -- The Movie in July 1982. While shooting at 2 a.m., Actor Vic Morrow and two Vietnamese children were killed when special-effects explosions caused a helicopter to crash into them. A hearing is now under way in Los Angeles to determine whether Director John Landis (who, coincidentally, also directed Jackson's Thriller video) and four others should stand trial for involuntary manslaughter.

The rash of accidents can be blamed partly on Hollywood's "Can you top this?" scramble for more daring car chases, more eye-popping special effects, more realistic action scenes. Another problem, especially in television, is rushed shooting schedules. "In episodic TV today," says veteran Director Paul Stanley, "directors are asked to do a scene in two or three days that years ago in feature films they'd have been given weeks to prepare for." To avert accidents caused by fatigue, the Directors Guild of America has proposed that shooting days for TV series be limited to no more than eight hours. The proposal is opposed by the studios, however, since it would stretch out shoot ing time and, they fear, increase costs.

Some directors contend that the safety problem has been overblown. "If you take all the thousands of things we do in a year -- the car crashes, the underwater stuff and everything else -- our safety record is pretty good," insists Hal Needham, director of The Cannonball Run. "There are always going to be accidents."

Still, Hollywood seems to be growing more safety-conscious, if not more cautious. The Screen Actors Guild reports that anonymous calls alerting it to unsafe sets have increased dramatically since the Twilight Zone accident. And stunt people -- traditionally loath to turn down stunts for fear of losing a job, or face -- are becoming more wary. "Ten years ago, we wouldn't have taken a second look before we did a stunt," says Fred Waugh, president of Stunts Unlimited. "Today we take a second or even a third." Many Hollywood officials hope the industry will step up its self-policing efforts, lest state and local governments start taking the closest look of all.

With reporting by Russell Leavitt