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Wednesday, October 24, 1984
The issue of "blank" ammunition safety is expected to get a thorough going-over by Hollywood's Industrywide Labor-Management Safety Committee in the wake of last week's death of actor Jon-Erik Hexum.
Hexum was pronounced dead Thursday (18) at Beverly Hills Medical Center nearly a week after he had suffered a self-inflicted "blank" gunshot wound to his head on the set of 20th Century Fox's "Cover Up" tv series.
According to Fox's own in-house accident report, a witness to the shooting described the accident this way: "John (sic) (Hexum) was sitting there playing with the gun, took out all the blanks but one, he spun the barrel. John said, 'Let's see what would happen,' (put the gun to his head), pulled the trigger, the gun went off -- Jon slumped over."
The gun -- reportedly a .44 Magnum -- Hexum had put to his head had reportedly fired a three-quarter load blank (the second most powerful explosive "load" used to fire blank cartridges). The impact fractured his skull, sending a quarter-inch skull fragment into his brain.
Hexum was then rushed in a studio stationwagon to the nearby Beverly Hills medical facility, where he underwent several hours of brain surgery. Six days later, Hexum was pronounced "brain dead," and Friday morning his body, still attached to a respirator, was taken to Northern California, where his vital organs were removed for purposes of donation.
Los Angeles Police Dept. detectives have closed their investigation into the "accidental shooting," but the incident is still under investigation by the Screen Actors Guild's safety investigating team, and will be taken up at the next meeting of the Industrywide Labor-Management Safety Committee.
A member of the committee said, "this committee is going to have to address the issue of blank ammunition," noting the issue was "apparently overlooked" by the committee in recent deliberations that for the first time established extensive guidelines for safety on Hollywood's sets.
Ironically, the first of those guidelines established by the committee set down extensive rules and standards governing the safe use of "live" ammunition (real bullets) on motion picture sets, though no mention at all was made of blanks -- a dangerous and widely used prop now known to be potentially lethal.
According to one Hollywood safety expert familiar with blanks, the type that killed Hexum "could put an eye out" at 10 feet, for though the blank does not fire a bullet, it projects a "wad" of burning cardboard or paper from the barrel of the gun at very high velocities.
"That's why they put clear plastic in front of the camera when the gun is shooting at the camera," the safety expert stated. "And the cameraman will, most of the time, wear goggles to protect the eyes."
Many Hollywood safety experts, it should be noted, have long called for the use of much safer blanks that shoot no projectiles, but many propmasters have reportedly been slow in catching up with the "new technologies" available.
The SAG safety investigating team is also known to be looking into the circumstances surrounding Hexum's death. A question known to be troubling the SAG investigator is why "live" blanks were being used in the gun in the first place. One source familiar with the script said, "the gun was not to be fired at all."
If indeed that were the case, the question remains: why were potentially dangerous "live" blanks, charged with gun powder, used in the gun rather than "dummy" blanks that could be neither accidentally nor intentionally detonated?
Whatever the answer to this and other questions involved in the on-going investigations, the printed introduction to the industrywide safety committee's guidelines should serve as a warning to all those engaged in hazardous activity on Hollywood's sets. That introductory warning states, in part, that "in the final analysis, the guideline central to all of the (safety) bulletins issued by the committee is -- stop and think and then use good common sense."
October 31, 1984
Two crew members on the set of "Cover Up" had received "very minor injuries" from blanks fired during the filming of the tv weries only months before the accidental shooting death of actor Jon-Erik Hexum, Variety has learned.
Both incidents, sources say, resulted when debris (known in the special-effects trade as "the wad") discharged by blank-loaded guns inadvertently struck the crew members.
One of those crew members, sources say, was "stung" during the making of the show's pilot when a blank, fired by Hexum at one of the cameras, missed a plastic barrier (used to protect the camera and the cameramen from the discharged debris) and struck the crewman in the stomach.
Another crew member, also standing behind a plastic barrier, was struck on the hand by a discharged wad in a separate incident.
Neither incident caused serious injury, and neither required medical treatment. However, in the wake of Hexum's death last week from a self-inflicted blank gunshot wound to the head, these and other blank-related injuries point up the need for safer handling of blanks on motion picture and tv sets.
One of the most serious recent blank-related injuries, Variety has learned, took place on the set of "French Quarter Undercover," an indie film which recently completed shooting in New Orleans.
"French Quarter" exec producer Mark Hebert has confirmed that an extra recived a two-inch gash on the cheek after having been shot in the face last August by a 12-gauge blank shotgun blast.
The scene, Hebert recalled, involved a shootout between the film's star, Bill Holliday, and an unidentified extra. According to Hebert, Holliday fired four or five blasts from the shotgun at the extra from a range of "at least 15 feet." The wad from the last blast caught the extra in the face.
"The buy (the extra) fell," Hebert said, "and we noticed he was bleeding." The extra was rushed to a nearby hospital, where he received several stitches for his wound.
Had the wad, which Hebert said failed to disintegrate properly due to humidity, struck the extra's cheek "a little bit higher, it would have been very serious."
The dangers of blanks however, are not new.
*Stuntman Bob Terhune, who said that he's seen full-load blanks "blow up a coke bottle at 10 feet," was seriously injured 22 years ago when a shotgun loaded with blanks accidentally discharged in his face on the set of the "Rawhide" tv show. Terhune said that the blast "blew the corner of my upper eyelid away," "shredded" the eye's cornea and ruptured the eyeball itself. Full vision in the eye, he said, did not return until a year later.
*Stuntman Bob Herron spent a week in a Mexican hospital after having been accidentally shot in the back with blanks while filming "Major Dundee" in Mexico in 1965, Herron had to undergo back surgery to remove debris from the blast, which had been fired at pint-blank range.
*Stuntman Jesse Wayne, who still has the scars from a blank accident 26 years ago, was accidentally shot in the face with a blank revolver during a live show at the old Calico Ghost Ranch. He too was nearly blinded by the accident, though his vision returned after two days.
One Hollywood safety expert noted that blank-related injuries are "very common" and urged the industry to adopt safer forms of blank ammunition, which though already fully developed and tested, have yet to be widely used in the industry.
Hollywood's official safety arm, the Industrywide Labor-Management Safety Committee, is expected to give blank safety a thorough going-over at its next meeting.
The committee, which recently approved industry safety guidelines for a wide
range of potential safety trouble-spots -- including recommendations governing
"live" ammunition (real bullets), helicopters, smoke inhalation, venomous
snakes, scuba diving and insert cars -- "apparently overlooked" the issue of
blank safety, according to one of the committee's members.
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