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The Dallas Morning News
5/14/94

THE CURSE OF `THE CROW' : Production was beset by accidents, injuries and the death of its star

The Crow may have the last laugh.

The movie's first rush of reviews have been favorable, with some outright raves. Observers might comment that it's the first positive publicity the movie has received in its year of headlines, spurred by the on-the-set death of its star, Brandon Lee, on March 31, 1993.

But The Crow's history always has been haunted. Its heritage has been called macabre, tragic and ironic.

The death of Brandon

When Brandon Lee was cast as Eric Draven, the spectral hero of The Crow, producer Edward R. Pressman said he "hadn't felt so right about an actor since I cast Arnold Schwarzenegger as Conan the Barbarian. We signed Brandon to a three-picture contract, just as we had Arnold."

Of course, that three-picture deal will never meet fruition. When the 28-year-old actor died of a wound from a .44-caliber bullet fired from a prop gun, it seemed the extension of a sad family legacy. His father, t! he legendary martial arts expert and "chop-socky" star Bruce Lee, died unexpectedly at 32 of an edema, or swelling of the brain, on July 30, 1973.

But rumors persist that such mysterious factors as organized crime and drug abuse may have been involved. More than 25,000 mourners attended funeral services in the senior Mr. Lee's native Hong Kong. Actors Steve McQueen and James Coburn were among the pallbearers when Bruce Lee was buried in Seattle.

Brandon's death was followed by a frenzy of publicity about a "Lee family curse." Yet if Brandon felt haunted, he kept it to himself.

"Brandon was much more humorous than Bruce," Mr. Pressman says in a telephone conversation. "Brandon's dream was to be like Mel Gibson, goofy and charming and funny. But in quiet moments, when he thought about his father, he could be fatalistic."

The young actor always was careful when speaking publicly of the father, who died when Brandon Lee was 8. When talking to! The Dallas Morning News at the time of the release of his action flick Rapid Fire, he said, "I've always remembered the time we spent training together. . . . My dad said that time was the most valuable thing a person had. I've made a conscious effort not to waste it."

At the time of his death, Mr. Lee was engaged to Eliza Hutton, a story editor for a film company who once referred to her fiancée as "invincible." They were to be married the month after his death. They had planned to marry in April 1993. The closing credits for The Crow read: "For Brandon and Eliza."

Troubled filming

Even before Brandon Lee's death, the Wilmington, N.C., filming of The Crow had more than its share of problems.

With ironic timing, in the week of Mr. Lee's accidental demise, Entertainment Weekly magazine recounted the accidents that had plagued the filming, stating, "The production has been beset by so many disasters, there's talk of `the curse of The Crow.' "

Early in the production, a carpenter was severely burned when ! power lines hit his crane on a studio back lot. It will take years for him to recover. Another worker drove his car through the studio's plaster shop. An equipment truck caught fire. When a construction worker accidentally slipped, he drove a screwdriver through his hand. A vicious storm on March 13, 1993, destroyed sets.

Mr. Lee's death occurred eight days before filming was completed. His mother, Linda Lee Cadwell, sued Mr. Pressman's company alleging negligence; the suit was settled out of court. Yet Mr. Lee's mother and fiancée were among those who prevailed upon the producer to finish the film. After two months, production resumed, with some scenes rewritten.

After the death, Premiere magazine published an article saying that the emphasis on cost-consciousness on the film's set may have compromised safety. The article also stated that drugs were being used in abundance.

Mr. Pressman is critical of both the Entertainment Weekly and Premiere stories. He calls the former "a lot of rubbish," adding, "And they kept hitting us even after the accident. We were a very tight unit; there was a real together feeling. But the article sent everyone into a funk, even before Brandon died. Of course it's human nature to blame the production company when you're looking for a cause or reason. Still, there were many, many inaccuracies in the Premiere article. The writer never talked to me or the director."

If there was a "curse" to making The Crow, it had at least one benign effect by adding a mellow tone to one of the film's relationships. At the time of his death, virtually all of Mr. Lee's scenes had been shot, except for one with Rochelle Davis, the 13-year-old actress who plays Sarah, a street urchin who bonds with Eric, Mr. Lee's character.

"We shot the scene from behind Eric, using a great many circular movements and shadows," Mr. Pressman says. "The whole character of Sarah was given fresh emphasis. She became the narrator. We added a scene of reconciliation between her and! her mother. The movie always was dark; it still is dark and surreal. But there's much more sentiment in it now than there had been. There was a much more conscious enhancement of the emotional center between Eric and Sarah."

Love and death

Christian Slater was among those interested in portraying Eric Draven, The Crow's unorthodox protagonist, but producer Pressman always felt Mr. Lee was Eric. And in several tragic ways, he was.

Consider the parallels: Mr. Lee was killed accidentally before he could marry his fiancée. The character Eric Draven is a rock musician, engaged to marry his beloved Shelly. On Devil's Night, the night before Halloween, Eric and Shelly are murdered by a gang of Detroit thugs. As Eric dies, he watches Shelly being gang-raped and slain.

A year later, Eric rises from his grave, which is next to Shelly's, and seeks vengeance on those responsible for their deaths.

One of the grim ironies of The Crow is that it ! features a dead actor portraying a ghost.

Yet love and death, literary partners in such "required-reading" classics as Wuthering Heights and Romeo and Juliet, always were connected with The Crow. The Crow was published as a graphic novel in 1981, written and drawn by James O'Barr as a catharsis for his grief after his girlfriend was killed by a drunken driver. That was the latest tragedy in a life that appeared to be haunted.

"My mother was a schizophrenic alcoholic who spent most of her life in a mental institution," Mr. O'Barr told the Knoxville News-Sentinel recently.

His mother had eight children, all by different men, and the artist to this day does not know who his father is. For the most part, he grew up in Detroit orphanages. However, according to the News-Sentinel, today he is happily married to a woman he calls his "lifesaver."

So from its conception, The Crow has been fraught with drama in all its incarnations. Someday someone might make a movie about the various, tormented talents involved in The Crow. It has all the makings of a bittersweet story.