Variety: “Midnight Rider” director Randall Miller and producer Jody Savin’s Film Allman are pointing to a newly discovered email to show that they were not expressly denied permission to shoot on a CSX trestle on Feb. 20, 2014, when a train plowed through their shooting location and killed a camera assistant, Sarah Jones, and injured eight others.
7 comments:
I can’t believe that this is still in the news, and that the makers of Midnight Rider are still trying to shirk the responsibility they had for the safety of their crew. The production killed a person, and injured eight others, all because these people weren’t supposed to be filming on an active railroad. I don’t care if they had an email that says they weren’t allowed permission or not, they don’t have any documentation that says that they were allowed to film there. If they did, then there wouldn’t have been an incident. Randall Miller is a weasel, who through negligence and incompetence ended the life of an employee, got a ridiculously short sentence for his crimes, and then only served half of it. If this person had any sense of dignity or humility, then he would accept the consequences of the actions that he had taken, and stop trying to get other people to pad the loss that he took on when he messed up. Sorry, fucked up.
So after getting a ridiculously light sentence and then not even serving all of it they’re going back to this whole mess? Aside from that how does any part of their case make sense? They seem to be trying to argue that since they weren’t explicitly told no it’s okay that they were filling on that bridge without any kind of safety measures. That’s ridiculous and it only gets more so later on in the article. They claim this email was hidden from them but it was sent to their location manager, wouldn’t he have told his bosses about it? Especially since it would seem to be a reversal of the refusal to let them use the space? That’s what leads to the part that seems really weird to me. Assuming they’re telling the truth and are only finding out about this email now that means when they started filming they were working off the original email from CSX, the one denying them permission to film there. To me that seems like them admitting they did what everyone is accusing them of in an attempt to prove their innocence.
It is ridiculous that Film Allman is trying to extricate itself from the consequences of this incident. Not being expressly denied is not the same thing as permission! Without express permission it IS trespassing. And a recalled email doesn’t necessarily negate the information in the email: there were a number of reasons that email could have been recalled. And regardless, no working professional, especially under circumstances that led to injury and death should ever respond with essentially, “Well, they didn’t actually say no.”
It was a terrible decision to film on working train tracks. Period. How could an adult possibly misunderstand the dangers of that situation? How could you possibly ask someone to go up there on those tracks without first being certain you had permission and that the tracks were shut down. I can’t fathom how these individuals and this company haven’t accepted the responsibility and consequences of their actions.
Are. You. Serious. HOW IS THIS STILL IN THE NEWS?! I can't believe there is any possible argument or backtracking over the gross wrongdoing that occurred here. You were shooting on an active railroad. On a bridge. What did you think was going to happen?! So many things to go wrong, before they go right. And now to attempt to walk back the blame to get some insurance money. Oh my god. And the director got off with such a light sentence anyways! Not expressly denied does not mean yes!! The email in question sounds so weak anyways! They recalled their email that said "we cannot support your request". That does not equate to actually supporting their request?
And this whole conversation is so far from the actual written documentation that would exist if these filmmakers had actually gone through the process of getting approval from CSX to shoot on their tracks. But because of some silly shortcuts, there were fatal consequences.
This whole situation is utterly ridiculous. How could you possibly ask your crew to go stand on a railroad bridge, knowing that there could be a train at any time. This is just completely on another level of negligence although I’m hesitant to use that work because it makes it seem as though mere incompetence was at work here rather than a clear disregard of the safety of your crew. To be let off with half of a very generous sentence and then fight for insurance money on the grounds that someone might not have told you no. I mean come on. It makes me irrationally angry to see this slimeball try to shift the blame onto someone else. I’m sure there are others who do share the blame for allowing this work to happen but we should be prosecuting them, not using evidence of their incompetence as a way to lessen the blow.
This article is extremely confusing and I am honestly unsure of what is going on here. I understand that a movie was filming on a train bridge, train came through, one person killed eight additional injured. The director was then sentenced to two years in jail and was released after one. Now that they are fighting the insurance company they say that the email from the train people was not entirely clear on whether they could use the bridge or not? I don’t know, but if I were to be trying to film something on a live train bridge, I would want to be 100% sure that no train is going to be coming before sending people out there; however, I think that I see where they are coming from. If the only reason that the insurance is not giving them money is that they trespassed, then this could show that there was no clear response from CSX on whether they were permitted or not. I would feel like it would be CSX’s policy that it is trespassing unless there is a clear yes, but I guess we will see what it is as this case progresses.
I hadn’t heard of this case prior to this article but it’s really quite surprising. It is a bit hard to believe how unsafe this situation was, and while the producers/director are clearly most at fault, I think CSX could have done a better job here as well. The fact that the communication was unclear is one thing – but then for the filmmakers to continue on with the shoot without a clear YES is just foolish. CSX on the other hand should have made themselves more clear in their communications. At the end of the day, though, I think the filmmakers put their crew in danger and that is infuriating. I would not have wanted to film on the tracks without a representative from CSX present to be able to ensure complete safety. It just seems a bit odd to me that this type of permission/use of the tracks would be handled completely over email communication, with no in-person monitoring on the day of filming. I think that while CSX may have been unclear in their communication, the filmmakers should have required a higher level of security and safety. All the intricate details of who emailed who and who said what that they’re trying to argue in this case doesn’t really matter because they should have had a rep from CSX present and had an in-writing PLAN for when, how, and where the tracks would be used, signed-off by both CSX and the filmmakers.
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