LOS ANGELES (AP) – As hundreds of names scrolled up the screen after 2012’s “The Avengers,” moviegoers who remained glued to their seats for a taste of the next treat in Marvel’s superhero universe didn’t know one name was missing – that of John Suttles, a truck driver who died helping bring the $1.5 billion blockbuster to theaters.
Every year, workers on both sides of the camera are maimed, burned, break bones and even die striving to deliver entertainment that packs multiplexes and commands top TV ratings. Injuries come not just from obvious risks such as stunts and explosives, but from falls off ladders, toppled equipment and machines without safety guards.
Yet in an industry where virtually everything is tallied and every success is touted, set accidents remain largely hidden and the consequences usually amount to mere thousands of dollars in fines paid out of multimillion-dollar budgets.
The Associated Press determined that, since 1990, at least 43 people have died on sets in the U.S. and more than 150 have been left with life-altering injuries, numbers derived by combing through data from workplace and aviation safety investigations, court records and news accounts. And those figures almost certainly don’t tell the entire story: The AP found several instances in which major accidents either weren’t reflected in investigation records or did not appear in an Occupational Safety and Health Administration database of the most serious set accidents.
Several fatal accidents in the U.S. – all outside of the traditional production centers of California and New York – were missing from the database, the most glaring being the 1993 shooting death of actor Brandon Lee during the filming of the movie “The Crow.” That omission came despite OSHA officials in North Carolina amassing a 1,500-page investigative file on Lee’s death. An agency spokesman blamed a clerical error.