Customer Reviews

Outrageous Conduct: Art, Ego, and the Twilight Zone Case

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This book not only delves into the Twilight Zone disaster but also examines the history of stunts-gone-wrong in Hollywood. It also examines the background of John Landis which reveals much about his motivations.

Farber & Green do an amazing job of detailing this totally preventable, horrific accident that occurred because of the egomaniacal whims of a creative but short-sighted director, John Landis. It's the story of how a very talented has-been actor (Vic Morrow) and two illegally hired Asian children met their deaths amidst the cowardice and dereliction of filmmaking professionals. It is a damning indictment of the mentality of Hollywood that exists to this day. Of course, now the book is all but forgotten, and everybody got off scott free. The only previous amazon.com customer review was written eleven years ago!

What happened on the set of "Twilight Zone: The Movie" is nothing short of criminal. If you read this book, you will find out how there was an organized conspiracy to evade California laws and safety regulations. And after the accident? The swaggering "auteurs" and studio heads showed their true colors. It's a complete moral vacuum except for a few people on the set who walked on eggshells for fear of losing their career they had spent years trying to develop. How truly pathetic.

Hollywood is a cutthroat place and it is quite disturbing to see what people will subject themselves to, how far they will sell out. Outrageous Conduct is one of the best books I have read about the sleazy world of American filmmaking. Beyond that, it is relevant to anyone who dreams of unleashing their creativity through the artform of film, where one has to come to grips with the enormous time, money, preparation, and other factors that go into creating memorable images. Seldom talked about but always a huge issue on any picture involving action sequences is the element of safety -- on many sets there are dangerous circumstances that go under-reported and this was an example where that tendency lead to a brutal multiple manslaughter. Read about some of the things Sergio Leone did, or most of the "do it yourself" books and there are plenty of examples of the John Landis approach to cast & crew.

Some time ago, I accidentally came across some gruesome footage of the tragic accident on the set of "Twilight Zone: The Movie". I had seen the movie years ago, as a kid, although I didn't really want to - because I'd heard of the horrible accident that occurred during its making. But my friends talked me into seeing it, and so I did, and it was a traumatic experience to say the least. I'll never forget Vic Morrow's last scene - which of course was NOT the scene he was killed in. It was a scene where he, playing a bigot, finds himself on a train headed to Auschwitz, the Nazi concentration camp. The scene ended with him being closed into a cattle car with Jewish prisoners, and you hear his voice crying out and then fading away as the train leaves the station. It was chilling to say the least.

And then, years later, I stumbled upon a video on Youtube concerning the accident (I did NOT know it would be so explicit until after the fact - I thought it was about the trial that followed the accident) that showed several angles of the terrible death scene. It was pathetic, appalling and made me furious, which is why I read the book "Outrageous Conduct" and am writing this review. The scene involved Vic Morrow carrying two children through water and away from a burning Vietnamese village, while helicopters (which were waayyyy too close to the people, and tragically too close to the pyrotechnics) hovered overhead. Even before the helicopter came down, Vic Morrow and those 2 kids were already in danger because of the huge explosions booming all around them. At one point, an explosion is so big that Vic, with a child under each arm, goes down on his knees. As he struggles back up, a helicopter goes out of control, falls down beside him, crushes one of the children and decapitates Vic and the other child.

All for the sake of a movie and a director's overinflated ego.

John Landis had been warned over and over how horribly dangerous the scene, as planned, was going to be. But Landis wouldn't listen to warnings and broke several laws during the filming of the scene. All of this was brought up at the trial - BUT LANDIS GOT OFF SCOT FREE. He should have been declared guilty for child endangerment (the children were hired illegally) and involuntary manslaughter, at the very least! And he has reportedly never shown much remorse, blaming everyone else for the accident but himself.

John Landis is a douche. Hollywood is full of egotistical bastards. If you don't believe that, watch footage of that terrible accident and then read this book. You'll never be in awe of Hollywood "royalty" ever again.

I found this book useful enough to appease my curiosity. The author is somewhat biased but objective enough to serve my purposes.