A Train, a Narrow Trestle and 60 Seconds to Escape:
2:21 PM PST 3/4/2014 by Scott Johnson
The Feb. 20 death of 27-year-old camera assistant
Sarah Jones on the set of
Midnight Rider
outside Doctortown, Ga., spread grief and anger through Hollywood. It
has led to an industrywide reckoning on safety standards and inspired
some Oscars attendees to
wear black ribbons on their lapels in her memory. Many of the details of the accident remain murky and unknown. But now a
THR
reconstruction, based on an exclusive eyewitness account and interviews
with Jones’ parents and others, reveals harrowing new details of what
happened when a 20-person film crew tried to shoot a scene on a live
train track.
Joyce Gilliard, a 42-year-old hairstylist working on
Midnight Rider, an indie biopic about
Gregg Allman featuring
William Hurt
as the 1970s rocker, began feeling anxious about the shoot from the
moment she arrived at the 110-year-old bridge trestle over the Altamaha
River in Wayne County, a wild, untamed land full of rivers, Spanish moss
and gnats. “As soon as I got to the location, I started to feel funny,”
she said during a series of interviews. “It didn’t feel right. I didn’t
feel safe there.”
The 110-year-old bridge over the Altamaha River, Wayne County, Ga.
Jones, already known in the local production community as an
indefatigable worker with a cheery disposition, apparently didn’t reveal
any concerns to co-workers. But her father,
Richard Jones,
says that in a phone conversation the night before she died, his
daughter told him she was “nervous about a few things.” He says, “She
was a little bit surprised about it being low-budget. … She made a
comment that some of the people asking her questions should have known
more than her, and she thought that was odd.” The day she died, says her
father, was her first on the set. (For the full, exclusive interview
with Jones' parents,
click here.)
As a barefoot Hurt paced, rehearsing his lines, Gilliard watched
nervously. She was responsible for the actor’s hair, and as the wind
picked up, she darted in and out of shots before retreating behind the
cameras, where she traded small talk with Jones.
As the day wore on, director
Randall Miller
moved the shoot from the land beside the river onto the narrow gridwork
of the trestle itself, which extends over the edge of the Altamaha. The
trestle’s wood and metal bottom was covered with pebbles and had gaping
holes in some places. The blustery wind rang through the girders,
making it hard to stay steady, says Gilliard.
From shore, several dozen yards away, a voice shouted to the crew
that in the event a train appeared, everyone would have 60 seconds to
clear the tracks. “Everybody on the crew was tripping over that,” says
Gilliard. “A minute? Are you serious?” By now, she and two other
crewmembers were nervous enough that before shooting, they gathered in
an informal prayer circle. “Lord, please protect us on these tracks,”
murmured Gilliard. “Surround us with your angels and help us, Lord.”
While Gilliard prayed, Jones helped load film, monitor the cameras
and transport gear. A fresh-faced South Carolinian with a passion for
travel and books, Jones wasn’t really the type to fret much. The crew
was filming a dream sequence, and they had placed a twin-size
metal-framed bed and mattress in the middle of the tracks.
Then, Gilliard looked up and saw a light in the distance, followed by
the immense howl of a locomotive. It was a train — and it was hurtling
toward them.
Two stories high, screaming with the sound of a blast horn and
possibly brakes, the train was nearly as wide as the trestle. Gilliard
says Miller yelled at everyone to run. Jones, several bags slung over
each shoulder, shouted something about what to do with the expensive
camera equipment. “Drop it!” Gilliard and others yelled. “Just drop it!”
The only viable escape route to the closest shore lay in running
toward the approaching train, now traveling, by one estimate, at almost
60 mph. Gilliard tried to make her way onto the metal gangplank parallel
to the tracks. Miller and another crewmember began tugging at the bed,
trying to remove it from the train’s path, fearing it might cause a
derailment. But as the train approached, Gilliard says, they abandoned
their efforts.
Hairstylist Joyce Gilliard, injured on the set of "Midnight Rider," at her home. (Photo credit: Terry Manier)
Before Gilliard knew it, the train was upon her. She found herself
clinging to one of the girders. But the blast of pressure and wind from
the train’s passing ripped Gilliard’s left arm away from her body and
straight into the train. It snapped like a stick. With one hand still on
the girder, Gilliard looked down and saw bone sticking out of her
sweater. And then she saw blood. She grabbed a sheet that had come loose
from the mattress and wrapped her bleeding arm inside it. With the
train howling past just inches behind her, Gilliard threw herself onto
two metal wires that stretched between the girders and along the
gangplank, thrust her head out over the river below and shut her eyes.
“I saw my life, my kids, my family, all of it before me,” she says. “I
was sure I was going to die.”
One of the first things she saw when she opened her eyes again was a
lifeless Jones, her body and face mangled. Like Gilliard, Jones had
tried to find shelter on the gangplank. But when the train hit the bed
and mattress, it sent debris flying. Something may have hit Jones,
possibly propelling her into the train’s path. In the melee, Miller also
fell on the tracks. A still photographer nearby managed to pull him
away just in time. He was sobbing, Gilliard says, trying to cope with
the disaster. Hurt also survived unscathed. The traumatized crew helped
collect Jones’ body. A team of paramedics arrived within 20 minutes, and
a helicopter touched down shortly after.
Within an hour after the incident, Gilliard was airlifted to a
Savannah hospital to be treated for a compound fracture in her arm and
other injuries. Five other crewmembers also required medical care. A
police investigation was opened, and federal officials soon were
swarming the marshy countryside asking about permissions, permits,
easements and the complex language of film contracts.
.
The multiple investigations since have widened to include the federal
Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Georgia Bureau of
Investigation. Georgia law enforcement authorities are treating the
investigation into Jones’ death as a negligent homicide, setting the
stage for the biggest safety-related scandal to rock Hollywood in at
least a decade.
The exact details of what precautions were — or were not — taken on
the set that day and whether the production even had permission to film
on the tracks are being sorted out. But in the days following the
disaster, recriminations of shockingly lax safety protocols began to
emerge.
“This was no accident,” says
Ray Brown,
president of the Motion Picture Studio Mechanics union local 479 in
Atlanta and a Jones colleague, suggesting the incident was avoidable.
“When I have done train work or around trains for smaller productions up
to major blockbusters, there are always several railroad personnel
there with their hard hats, glasses and radios, and I can’t imagine a
more structured safety protocol even beyond airlines than the rail
system.”
Jones’ parents are reluctant to cast blame until investigations are
complete. A shaken Miller called them after the incident to express his
condolences. “I don’t know myself really what part Randy Miller played
in all of this, but he was very upset that day,” says Richard Jones. “He
was saying he was so sorry.” Since then, the Joneses have heard nothing
from top execs associated with the film.
Their daughter’s death prompted a tidal outpouring of grief and anger
from around the world. The filmmaking team has received death threats
(though executive producer
Nick Gant, who was attacked
on Facebook for appearing to have posted insensitive comments, is
telling friends that his account was hacked and that he deleted the
hacker's comments when he discovered them). By Sunday night, more than
60,000 had
signed an online petition demanding that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences include Jones in its “In Memoriam” video segment. Instead, the
Academy recognized her in an onscreen photo and caption just before it went to a commercial.
But for Gilliard and the other members of the crew that day, the
death of Jones always will be inextricably linked to a lonely patch of
Georgia railroad.
The day felt strange from the very beginning, says Gilliard. She and
the rest of the crew had gathered at a studio in Savannah that morning,
when they were told they’d be traveling to a location to shoot a “camera
test.” The crew was quiet and reserved as they passed fields and
railroad tracks, arriving about two hours later at the massive metal
trestle that spans a portion of the Altamaha River.
CSX, the Florida-based railway company that owns the tracks, easement
and trestle where Jones died, told the Wayne County Sheriff’s Office in
the early hours of the investigation that it never granted
Midnight Rider’s producers permission to film on the tracks in the first place.
“According to the CSX employee,” Sgt.
Ben Robertson
wrote in a report obtained by the media, “the production company had
previously been denied permission to film on the trestle, and there was
electronic correspondence to verify that fact.” Robertson’s report noted
that a member of Miller’s crew, when asked whether permission was
granted, replied, “It’s complicated.”
Miller, who has engaged noted Savannah defense attorney
Donnie Dixon,
declined through a New York public relations firm to provide specifics
about what safety precautions were taken. Other senior managers on the
film, including the line producer, first assistant director and location
manager, did not respond to requests for comment.
Lee Donaldson,
a friend of Jones and a local Georgia union official, put it bluntly.
“It’s not complicated; you either have permission or you don’t.”
Several Hollywood producers question whether there were shortcuts or
oversights in the production. “Every train, every airplane, every
airport, every shoot I’ve ever done, there’s always been a coordinator
that you hire on your staff to coordinate it all, to communicate to
crew, to any train operators, linemen, whatever,” says
Harry Bring, a producer of one of the first television shows Jones worked on, Lifetime’s
Army Wives.
Gilliard says she saw no such officials. “It doesn’t seem like
precautions and procedures, both legal and common sense, were taken,”
adds Bring. “If they didn’t have permission to be on the tracks, why in
the hell were they there?”
In addition to railway safety personnel monitoring the set, Brown,
the Atlanta union official, says all crew and cast should have been
provided with call sheets with detailed notes on safety. Gilliard claims
no such call-sheet notes were provided and no evidence that they
existed has emerged.
Ordinarily, producers say, a location shoot like this also would have
included an on-site medic. But Gilliard recalls that when Hurt required
a Band-Aid for a minor abrasion, he had to get one from a costume
designer who happened to have one in her bag. “That’s when we all knew
that there was no medic,” recalls Gilliard. In fact, she says, there was
not one safety meeting for the shoot on the tracks that day.
According to one media report, Miller may have cut corners before. A
local news station released a DVD made by Miller’s production company,
Unclaimed Freight, in which crewmembers bragged about their “guerrilla
style” filmmaking during the production of the 2013 movie
CBGB,
which included allowing a small child to roam in a field of cows and
another scene in which a piano was dropped down a staircase. In the DVD,
Miller says, “I don’t think it’s dangerous at all to have a little kid
running with cows, do you think? No. No.”
Director Miller, whose company, Unclaimed Freight, was producing "Midnight Rider." (Photo credit: Dan Steinberg/Invision/Ap)
Gilliard relaxed a little as the initial filming got underway. Two
trains rumbled past without incident. When she and others asked whether
any more trains were expected, the answer came back: a definitive “No.”
The warm weather and camaraderie on the set was a pleasure. But when
Miller directed everyone to move out onto the trestle, Gilliard’s
stomach tightened once again. She was afraid of heights and never had
learned to swim. Jones and Gilliard had worked together before, and
Gilliard was happy to see the younger woman. A native of Columbia, S.C.,
now living in Atlanta, Jones was gifted with optimism, a knack for
following instructions and a can-do attitude that endeared her to nearly
everyone she encountered. As a kid, she swam and did gymnastics. Later,
she attended a local technical college and became interested in the
film industry during an internship on
Army Wives. In her off time, she traveled.
“If she had a second off, she left the country, she had to see the world,” says one of her best friends,
Amanda Etheridge. “She was unstoppable, always wanting to learn a new hobby, a new craft.”
Bobby LaBonge, the director of photography for two seasons of
Army Wives,
says Jones had a disarming naivete. “You felt re-invigorated around
her,” he says. “You saw the fresh wildness of making movies again, and
you saw a sparkle in her that was fun.”
By her early 20s, Jones was making headway in an industry discipline
overwhelmingly male, physically grueling and tough to sustain for very
long: camerawork. LaBonge remembers her huffing with lots of gear,
always smiling, never complaining. On the set, she was known as “The
Ant” because of her ability to carry heavy objects that dwarfed her.
On March 2 in Jones’ hometown, nearly 900 people gathered in the
Ashland United Methodist Church, where Jones spent many Sundays as a
child. Her father sat down at the piano and began to play “Andy’s Song,”
a tune about his own father he had composed and had played for Sarah
only a few weeks before, when he found himself stranded in Atlanta by an
epic snowstorm. It was the last time he saw her in person. The church
filled with the sounds of weeping. As mourners began spilling out of the
church, a common refrain was heard: “Never again.” Sarah, everyone
agreed, would not die in vain.
Now, the global film industry is undergoing a widespread reckoning of
what Jones’ death means. “This incident has rippled its devastation of
people all the way to the top of our world,” says Brown. “We have a firm
commitment that we will never forget. We will never let this happen
again.”
The most high-profile case in which a director was criminally charged
in an on-set death was the 1982 helicopter crash during the filming of
Twilight Zone: The Movie that killed
Vic Morrow and child actors
Myca Dinh Le and
Renee Chen. Director
John Landis
and his four co-defendants were found not guilty of involuntary
manslaughter after a lengthy 1987 trial, but the deaths did lead to
significant improvements in production safety protocols.
Meanwhile, filming of
Midnight Rider, which was to be distributed in the U.S. by Open Road Films, has been suspended indefinitely.
“Sarah was a strong, powerful, beautiful woman,” says Gilliard, who
now will commit herself to the promotion of safety and welfare on sets.
Doctors have told her she will never straighten her arm again. She has
metal pins in her elbow, and she says she wakes up several times each
night crying, with one horrible final image of Jones burned into her
consciousness.
After Richard Jones and his daughter talked by phone the night before
the shoot, the two exchanged texts. She expressed her excitement about
working with Hurt, and then she was out of range, and their exchange
ended. A few minutes later, at 7:57 p.m., he sent her one final text:
“Lost you.”
A production slate remembering Jones. (Photo credit: Brooke Brunson)
VIA; http://www.hollywoodreporter.com
Personal note; Not long ago I worked on a (abysmal...) 2nd tier production that had somehow roped in the participation of a lovely A-list movie star. Throughout the production several fairly serious but non-life threatening injuries had occurred to various cast members (including the lovely A-list movie star...) as a result of poorly supervised stunt-work. Usually, the Stunt Coordinator is the most safety conscious guy on the set, but it became apparent that this was far from the case where our film was concerned. I had by (lucky) coincidence overheard a conversation between the Stunt Coordinator and a totally green (and eager) stunt man who was scheduled to do a full burn the next day (a very dangerous, fully engulfed event that requires stone-cold precision and specialized training to avoid injury). The young man to be 'burned' very clearly stated he had never before worked with fire but he was 'psyched'. The Stunt Coordinator kept slapping him on the back and saying, 'Yeah, I've done it a few times with my dad, it's going to be great!' I knew at that moment that the kid was going to die. I called the executive producer that night and told him about the conversation I'd overheard, very clearly reminded him about the laundry list of injuries that had occurred on his set and without mixing words stated that in my opinion he would be speaking to a coroner at the end of the next day if he didn't get in the pros. The next day the eager kid was nowhere to be found and our Barney Fife stunt guy had been replaced by experts. Later that day I watched as the flames fully engulfed a seasoned stuntman and shot 10 feet above his head. The burn was spectacular and no one got hurt.
I wish I had been on the set with Sarah Jones. I would have been the voice that kept everyone off that bridge.
Photo;Shandra Beri 
Photo;Shandra Beri 
Photo;Shandra Beri 
Photo;Shandra Beri 
Photo;Shandra Beri 
Photo;Shandra Beri
Photo;Shandra Beri 
Photo;Shandra Beri 
