The Twilight Zone Movie Accident

There’s a lot to this story – here are some of the more interesting tangents that I couldn’t find space for in the video

John Landis and Eddie Murphy

After the trial, John Landis’s career was in serious trouble. Nobody wanted to hire him as a director (quite reasonably, you might say). But he still had some friends in Hollywood. Actor Eddie Murphy spoke up for him and got him a job directing Coming to America.

To be clear, Murphy didn’t think that Landis was blameless. In fact Murphy refused to come to Landis’s trial and show support because he didn’t feel it would be right to do so. But still, Landis was a friend, so Murphy got him the job to help him out.

Unfortunately there was a lot of tension between the two on set, as told in this Playboy interview with Murphy. Landis was angry that Murphy hadn’t supported him during the trial. Murphy was angry that Landis would hold that against him even though he’d gone out of his way to help the man.

The whole thing came to a head with a physical fight; Murphy put Landis in a headlock, and Landis tried to punch Murphy. The pair vowed never to work together again after that, with Murphy saying in a later interview, “Vic Morrow has a better chance of working with Landis than I do.”

Working with child actors today

Since this accident, the laws ensuring the welfare of children on film sets have gotten even more strict. Now, as well as getting the correct permits and permissions, there are strict limits on how long children can work for, and what they can be exposed to.

In some places, it’s not permitted to film scenes where children hear explicit language or violent descriptions. If the script calls for explicit language to be used around a child character, filmmakers have to find creative ways to shoot the scene that don’t expose the actor – for example, by having actors mouth words but not speak them out loud, then dubbing in the audio later.

And, on top of that, children who are on long shoots have to be able to keep up with their schoolwork. There’ll often be a tutor on set to provide age-appropriate lessons for kids who have to miss school in order to be in a film or TV production.

All in all, it’s pretty complicated to work with children… but for a good reason. The system we have ensures that, if everything is done properly, kids on film sets are comfortable and well looked-after.