The Crow: Rapid Fire director on the series of mistakes that led to Brandon Lee’s tragic death

A few months ago, director Dwight H. Little – the director of such films as Rapid Fire (starring Brandon Lee), The Phantom of the Opera (starring Robert Englund), the Steven Seagal vehicle Marked for Death, Free Willy 2, the Wesley Snipes mystery Murder at 1600, Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid, Tekken, and my favorite of the Halloween sequels, Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers – released a memoir called Still Rolling: Inside the Hollywood Dream Factory (copies can be purchased at THIS LINK). In one passage of the book, Little discusses the series of mistakes and oversights that led to Brandon Lee’s tragic shooting death on the set of The Crow. With a remake of The Crow set to reach theatres in June and Rust armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed having just been found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the case of the shooting death on the set of that film, this seemed like a fitting time to look back on what happened to Lee in 1993.

Little writes, “The tragedy was so eerie with the death of his father, also at such a young age. I went to the memorial service where Melissa Etheridge sang ‘Ain’t It Heavy.’ On top of everything else, Brandon was engaged to be married. … All these years later, these are the ‘facts’ that I have been able to gather, though I’m not sure I have the full story. The night before the accident, the second unit was doing some shots on a different set from the main unit. There was a big (close-up) shot looking up the barrel of a gun. The camera people were worried that the barrel might seem to be empty, so a ‘slug’ or ‘dummy bullet’ of some kind was put into the barrel to keep light from getting through. When the second unit wrapped, the gun was put away for the night. No one remembered to take out the slug.

When the first unit needed the gun the next day, it was taken out and a blank charge was put in for a set-up. No one from the first unit crew knew that the slug had been put in the night before and no one checked. When the actor aimed the gun at Brandon, the blank went off and the slug discharged. The slug hit Brandon in a main artery in his abdomen and he lost consciousness almost immediately.

Two things. One, the prop man or AD always looks down the barrel of the gun to see that it is clear. (The prop man is obliged to show the director that the gun barrel is empty.) Two, the actor with the gun is instructed to never aim the gun at the other actor directly. The shot is always supposed to be ‘off angle’ and the lens and composition makes it ‘look like’ the gun is aimed properly. How all these mistakes could have been made in succession is almost impossible to imagine. The odds of Brandon being shot and killed by this forgotten slug were so long that of course the speculation about a ‘curse’ began.“

You can read more about the series of mistakes and oversights that led to Brandon Lee’s death on The Crow Wikipedia page. At the root of it all: time and money constraints, with executives making cost-cutting decisions like replacing the firearms specialist with an inexperienced prop assistant.

I still remember the day Brandon Lee died. I was only nine years old at the time, but already a fan from seeing him in movies like Laser Mission, Showdown in Little Tokyo, and Rapid Fire. It’s a heartbreaker that we lost him at such a young age for such stupid reasons… and that a similar accident could still occur on the set of Rust so many years later.