Hollywood Reporter: Warner Bros. has been hit with a lawsuit over an alleged stunt-gone-bad on the Bangkok, Thailand set of Hangover 2 that left a man with significant brain injuries.
Scott McLean alleges that he was acting as a stunt double for actor Ed Helms during a sequence filmed on Dec. 17, 2010 where automobiles were traveling at high speeds. McLean was a passenger in one of those cars. A production source told THR last December that McLean was in a moving truck leaning out the window when the car driving towards it to pass skidded suddenly and hit.
This is a very sad occurrence, and I'm sure stunt-related injuries happen fairly often, and I wonder what sort of rules are in place to lessen these types of injuries. It seems that a stunt-double would operate on a different safety standard than other actors, and I would love to know which of those standards were overlooked when this injury occurred.
ReplyDeleteI think that in general stunt doubles are treated poorly. They obviously aren't payed as much as the well-known actors. This doesn't seem fair to me. I'm not discounting the work that leading ladies and men put into their performance; anyone truly familiar with the entertainment can recognize the intensity with which professional actors approach their roles. However, comparatively, the work an actor puts into a typical scene doesn't equate to the life-risking feats that stunt-doubles do for a living. It doesn't make sense to pay them as much as the leading actors are payed (then no movies would ever get made). I still think that stunts should be given as much attention as possible, and if something terrible does happen, families should be immediately compensated.
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