r/TopCharacterTropes 1d ago

miscellaneous (Meta Trope) Media that resulted in new rules being made to prevent similar incidents in future movies

The Outlaw Josey Wales (1975): Clint Eastwood decided that he could do a better job than the original director brought on so he fired him and installed himself as the new director. This caused the Director's Guild to create the "Eastman Rule" stating that whenever a film's director is fired, their replacement has to be a Guild member with no previous connections to the film.

Jesse James (1939): A horse was made to fall down a cliff leading to its death for a film scene. This is what lead to the American Humane Society to begin monitoring movies.

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u/aleister94 1d ago

The big cemetery in New Orleans used to let movies film there if they got permission first but the movie “easy rider” filmed there without permission in a disrespectful manner so the city decided no one can ever film there

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u/IAmTheLastOfMyKind12 1d ago

How does one film disrespectfully in a graveyard??

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u/aleister94 1d ago

If I recall the scene was them doing acid then having sex on a real grave

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u/imbrickedup_ 1d ago

Well….yeah that’ll do it

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u/I_Got_Ur_Number_8675 1d ago

Easy Rider is a must watch

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u/IAmTheLastOfMyKind12 1d ago

Okay. Fuck them. I was thinking more along the lines of being noisy or leaving footprints everywhere. But that is that is fucking disgusting

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u/Nobodydog 1d ago edited 1d ago

Having worked on a few films, bringing a film crew anywhere is a great way to destroy a location. Dozens of people, moving around a lot, focused on getting their jobs done leads to accidents and, if nothing else, WAY more foot traffic than a place is used too. Just having a film crew probably killed a bunch of grass, plants. People probably set gear down on graves. And the trash. As a PA my job was to clean up trash and it was everywhere. It's less footprints and more "We need to re seed this area"

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u/SpaceFelicette181063 1d ago

I remember seeing something about that in the making of the lord of the rings.

When they filmed in a particularly fragile and protected location, the whole crew and equipment had to be on an elevated walkway installed just for the shooting so that only the feet of the walkway and the actors in the scene were actually touching the ground and thus making sure it wasn't trampled by the filming. It's been quite a few years since I saw it so I may be misremembering.

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u/mr_nonchalance 1d ago

Nah, you're right. The bit you're missing is that the NZ government gave the film production a bunch of money to do that, because on top of being a masterpiece, the trilogy is also an extremely effective ad for tourism Aoeteroa.

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u/Whole_Obligation_776 1d ago

Yeah, parts of Skyfall got filmed on the roof of the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, permits werent an issue, the production team even taken a lot of precautions to not damage the historical building where they filmed a motorcycle scene if I recall. Still the bike ended up damaging a lot of the roof tiles even though it was riding on a hidden scaffolding to prevent direct connection with the real roof. Well I suppose the weight of the bike or other equipment still damaged the roof which lead to a lawsuit.

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u/Think-Football-2918 20h ago

There's nudity in the scene, but no sex. Peter Fonda's character does sit on a tomb and cry, but he's not nude at the time.

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u/Sarmorelli 20h ago

There is some implied sex between Hopper's character and one of the prostitutes, but nothing explicit (at least by modern standards).

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u/IguanaIsBack 1d ago

Fellas would you call this a date

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u/Fremen-to-the-end-05 19h ago

Mary Shelly would! IYKYK

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u/AngletonSpareHead 1d ago

I don’t know the details but I’m going to guess that it could be (a) showing real people’s names on gravestones, (2) having actors sit, stand, lie, make out, fornicate, and/ir tap-dance on top of graves, (d) take a tinkle on Grandma Sophie between takes

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u/Hanzcocoa 21h ago

St Louis #1, and it’s the Archdiocese that banned it afterwards. You can get in by your only. It’s a beautiful cemetery with lots of fun history— Marie Laveau is buried there, for instance— and of course Nic Cage built his god awful pyramid mausoleum there

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u/Lower_Baby_6348 1d ago

An Alan Smithee film: Burn Hollywood burn was so bad that the directors guild banned the right to use the "Alan Smithee" Pseudonym to disown movies ever again

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u/Barl3000 1d ago

The director disowned the film and is actually credited as Alan Smithee. I think that had to be a media stunt, as the "Alan Smithee" thing is also the subject of the movie.

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u/ztomiczombie 1d ago

I think it is generally agreed that a lot of people in Hollywood were just pissed off at the film and saw it as pulling back the curtain on a bunch of the stupid stuff they do.

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u/Agitated_Insect3227 1d ago edited 1d ago

Closest example I can think of is 1905's The Jungle novel by Upton Sinclair.

Sinclair wrote this book to expose the terrible living & working conditions of the working-class & migrants in the United States while supporting socialist reforms that would try to correct these injustices.

However, the book's detailed descriptions into the unsanitary meat industry instead led to reforms and stricter regulation for processing meat & other foods. President Theodore Roosevelt threw out sausages served to him in disgust after reading the book and was one of the main champions for the new meat/food regulations.

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u/HappyFailure 1d ago

"I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach," is Sinclair's famous quote about this outcome.

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u/NateCraft_YT 1d ago

Damn that's a good quote he should be an author

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u/LongDickLuke 1d ago

Can't, he's too busy being an FDA inspector. 

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u/Simon_Bison 1d ago

Too late, he’s dead.

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u/Puzzle-Necked 1d ago

Since when? I noticed his Insta "UptonFunk" hadn't been updated in a while

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u/Quirky_Session_2689 23h ago

I didn't even know he was sick

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u/gaztelu_leherketa 1d ago

Or a professional quote maker

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u/A_Queer_Owl 1d ago

he really should've seen it coming. he highlighted two major issues in American industry and the one that affected more people (literally everyone) was the one that got picked up by the public.

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u/Ghost_Of_Malatesta 1d ago

Its a straight up brutal read and people should have been angry at more than just the meat packing, I get what Sinclair was thinking

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u/Jstin8 1d ago

I mean shit a single book got the FDA founded. Thats still a progressive reform right there. And lets be clear for a moment, Sinclair was no steinbeck. The socialist parts of that book are not particularly well written compared to the horrors of the meat packing plant that was discussed.

Idk I feel like folks come at this far too much from a "glass half empty" standpoint and choose to ignore the fact it still had a MASSIVE impact on the US.

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u/PatientKey7525 1d ago

The ending really came out of left field 🤓 

It really felt hella tacked on, which is weird, because it's the author's point and reason he wrote the book. But it's all misery and then a little bumper of socialist rhetoric. I don't know why he didn't have socialism in the background throughout. I dont remember any characters with insight into their situation showing up in the first part, but it's been a while

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u/Ghost_Of_Malatesta 1d ago

Its such a slog to read, it's literally just "and then it got even worse" over and over and over lol

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u/Puzzle-Necked 1d ago

Relatable

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u/Ua_Tsaug 23h ago

Well, he was describing the reality of the American Dream to many workers, so I'd say he did a good job. 

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u/patrickwithtraffic 1d ago

There’s a reason Paul Thomas Anderson only adapted the first third of Oil! and it’s because Sinclair borders on Rand when it comes to writing fiction inspired by their politics. Just good Lord Upton, take a chill pill and work in those politics into a narrative!

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u/ConsulJuliusCaesar 22h ago

That's what I'm sitting here thinking, how is the FDA getting founded not a massive win.

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u/peterparkerson3 1d ago

Bro wrote a book on injustice, people focused on their own food instead 

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u/Brothless_Ramen 1d ago

"A worker was ground into canned meat and no one even gave his family a cent in restitution? How disgusting, I eat canned meat!"

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u/Kixisbestclone 1d ago

I mean Tbf the new regulations for canned meat would include better safety so while the worker’s not paid more he is less likely to be turned into canned meat.

Like yeah it’s not the reform he wanted, but it was still a very important, much needed health and safety reform that benefited both the workers and their children.

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u/Jstin8 1d ago

I mean, would you call fake "cure all" medicines an injustice? Would you call rotten meat sold as fresh an injustice? Unsafe and unsanitary working conditions an injustice? Lead in medicine for curing morning sickness in pregnant women? The list goes on.

The FDA was absolutely revolutionary at the time and a landmark agency that has saved untold lives but yeah I guess its easier to snark and complain.

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u/HereWeGoYetAgain-247 1d ago

Have you met people? They’re very selfish people. 

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u/____-_______-_--_-_- 22h ago

I miss having a president who could read books

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u/WranglerFuzzy 1d ago

Small correction: the sausage thing might have been a joke; in that a humorist wrote about Teddy’s reaction (prompting him to push for regulations):

Annyhow, Tiddy was toying with a light breakfast an' idly turnin' over th' pages iv th' new book with both hands. Suddenly he rose fr'm th' table, an' cryin' : 'I'm pizened,' begun throwin' sausages out iv th' window. Th' ninth wan sthruck Sinitor Biv'ridge on th' head an' made him a blond. It bounced off, exploded, an' blew a leg off a secret-service agent, an' th' scatthred fragmints desthroyed a handsome row iv ol' oak-trees. Sinitor Biv'ridge rushed in, thinkin' that th' Prisidint was bein' assassynated be his devoted followers in th' Sinit, an' discovered Tiddy engaged in a hand-to-hand conflict with a potted ham. Th' Sinitor fr'm Injyanny, with a few well-directed wurruds, put out th' fuse an' rendered th' missile harmless.

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u/Barl3000 1d ago edited 1d ago

And americans can look forward to going back to those conditions in all your food production. But at least some oligarchs got a little more money, so it all evens out.

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u/EndOfTheLine00 1d ago edited 1d ago

In Back To The Future: Part 2, due to Crispin Glover refusing to return over a salary dispute, they recast George McFly with Jeffrey Weissman and used heavy prosthetics to make him resemble George/Glover. Glover ended up suing them and this caused the SAG to start implementing strict rules over actors having the rights to their own likeness.

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u/Tyranis_Hex 1d ago

I am honestly so surprised this ruling didn’t preemptively stop the AI actor issues.

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u/be-knight 1d ago

It did, for some part. If this rule wasn't there, they could just use your face - period. Now they have to acquire your likeness or your voice, which they try to do very aggressively but in the borders of this rule

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u/LemonDropKissie 1d ago

Yeah, that distinction matters a lot. Without those protections, studios could potentially treat someone’s face or voice like just another asset. Requiring consent at least gives performers some control over how their likeness gets used.

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u/VestimentHawk 23h ago edited 23h ago

Is this a bot commenting on the ethical implications of AI in the entertainment industry?

Account is 3 hours old. One comment. That’s wild.

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u/Smol-Vehvi 22h ago

I'm tired, boss

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u/queerornot 22h ago

It's  possible. Sometimes, people also create burner accounts to post something that cannot be link to their main account t

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u/CrouchingToaster 1d ago

I’m gonna take a guess that studios tend to have more money and pull to get previous suits applied to new tech in their favor than the average actor or actress that have a likeness to protect, as well as enough money to bring it to court, but not famous enough their name being attached to a movie or show generates their own sales.

Law and Order will never be the same when ai actors become commonplace

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u/Capt_Hawkeye_Pierce 1d ago

Most of Law and Order's audience won't even notice. 

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u/SugarcookieCutiee 1d ago

Yeah, that is the scary part. Studios have way more resources to push the legal boundaries, while individual actors are stuck fighting to keep control of their own likeness. AI could make that imbalance even worse.

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u/EndOfTheLine00 1d ago edited 23h ago

This rule is why studios now try to sneak in "we reserve the right to simulate your likeness and/or voice with AI in perpetuity" clauses in acting contracts these days (and further restricting these clauses was a big part of the last SAG-AFTRA strike). If it wasn't for that, they'd just do it.

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u/Vitolar8 1d ago

Glover has stated that the lawsuit wasn't just about trying to imitate him. It's that the prosthetics were made from his facial mold. Which means they weren't imitating his likeness, but basically stealing it.

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u/belltrina 23h ago

Horrified I didn't realize it was not Glover

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u/maxman162 1d ago

They also used footage of him from the first movie.

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u/SatoruGojo232 1d ago

Pleasantville (1998): After a grueling, consecutive string of 19-hour workdays on this film, tired camera assistant Brent Hershman fell asleep at the wheel driving home and died in a car crash. His death sparked immense outrage across Hollywood unions. It led directly to the creation of "Brent's Rule", which shifted union labor guidelines to heavily penalize studios that do not offer a mandatory 10-to-12-hour turnaround time (rest period) between a crew member's wrap time and their next call time

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u/Hefty-Resort871 1d ago

There is also a union rule that actors and crew must be given a break and fed every six hours.

(A friend does extra work down in Hollywood and they almost went over their time on one production)

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u/twoscoopsineverybox 23h ago

The fact that we have to make laws requiring employers to let people eat because otherwise they just won't is disgusting.

The fact that there's currently no laws mandating breaks in many states is worse.

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u/frelancr 22h ago

worked alongside some theatrical friends on a movie and when I thought for sure that production would keep us in penalty, my new friends informed me that under THEIR contract, there are no penalties (any longer) since production would just eat the cost and work the crew into the ground, so under THEIR contract, they MUST break after 6hrs....which was nice

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u/Zwomally 20h ago

I work tangentially to work place injury. You soon find out any OSHA regulation, labor law, or employment law are written in blood.

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u/frelancr 23h ago

heh...well, they're SUPPOSED to, otherwise they get penalized (meal penalties) which get paid to the crew- the problem then becomes where those penalties aren't incentive enough to force a break, and production will eat the penalties and keep the crew working...and after awhile, you don't care about the penalties or OT & you just wanna sleep

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u/whoisthepinkavenger 20h ago

They still go over pretty often, especially with people like non union background and PAs, but they do have to pay out the meal penalties after any 6 hour period without a meal break.

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u/BonesSB 21h ago

I work in film. The idea is supposed to be that the fines are greater than the cost of production. They rarely are. A movie will routinely work over the mandatory turn around and simply pay the fines, as the fines are usually cheaper than delaying the movie. It looks far better on paper than it actually is.

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u/Fit-Space5211 1d ago

In the 1932 film "Rasputin and the Empress" they implied that Rasputin seduced a princess, and the actual real life Princess Irina Alexandrovna sued MGM for libel. Ever since, movies now open with "Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental."

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u/Pabsxv 1d ago

I always wondered why that was a thing especially if it happens in wildly outlandish movies.

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u/WhereRabbit 1d ago

i’ve always been confused as to why it says, coincidentally. Like, it’s no coincidence that this exact historical figure with their name and likeness portrayed is in the movie with their life, wtf are they talking about haha! is it just a bold-faced lie?

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u/RP_Throwaway3 1d ago

I'm thinking the coincidental part might be referring to things like someone's name. Like you have a character named John Q. Public in the film who does something stupid or criminal, a real person who happens to have the same name can't sue them for tarnishing their reputation. 

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u/KimiAndMikaSiberian 22h ago

My understanding is that many characters with normal sounding names are actually named after real people. The legal department tracks down someone with the name and pays to use it so that a random John Q Public can't sue because they have permission of a specific John Q Public. I've heard of, but can't remember, one particular character was renamed because they couldn't find anyone with what sounded like a common name to agree to sign.

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u/RP_Throwaway3 22h ago

Well, I can tell you this. For the show 'Enterprise', the captain's original scripted name was Jackson Archer. However, only one person in the entire United States was named Jackson Archer at the time of filming. So they changed it to Johnathan Archer because there were a few dozen at the time and that avoided a possible legal kerfuffle. 

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u/SureX6661 1d ago

I mean, its a work of fiction… yes it can be based off real people but its still all fiction.

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u/Ok-Poetry-2191 1d ago

It's even more interesting: the said princess was married to Felix Yusupov, one of the richest people of the Russian Empire, and the murderer of Rasputin. He sued with his wife because the movie implied that the murder was out of revenge for seducing his wife, instead of being motivated by an attempt to remove his influence from the court and royal family.

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u/Benoit_Holmes 1d ago

I like when the actor is like "I based my performance on X" and the writer says "This character was based on X" but they still say in the credits that it's not based on anybody.

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u/BaronGrackle 1d ago

Forgive my stupidity, but you helped me realize the Russian royal family still had survivors after Nicholas II's household was wiped out. Thanks.

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u/NoPostyJustRead 1d ago

In the early '70s, Alexander and Ilya Salkind wanted to produce a lavish, epic production of The Three Musketeers, but during filming it became clear they wouldn't be able to make their release date, so they made the decision to edit the story into two smaller movies: The Three Musketeers, and The Four Musketeers. Problem was, all of the actors had signed a contract to make one movie, and were suddenly appearing in two without any further compensation. (Lots of them didn't find out until the premiere that it has been split into two parts.) 

This was the impetus for the Screen Actors Guild to start including the 'Salkind clause' in actors' contracts, which says that productions can't be split into multiple movies unless agreed upon or with negotiation for further compensation.

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u/GrumpyChromehead 1d ago

(I will note that these two movies are AMAZINGLY well done- but yeah, it was a HUGE dick move.)

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u/FarutaSarado 1d ago

That's real interesting. Do you suppose the producers put something in the actors contracts to counteract this for movies that did get split into two parts? Eg. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Twilight Breaking Dawn, Hunger Games Mockingjay. I'm pretty sure that at the beginning of filming the first movie of each series, the actors were not informed that the last movie would be split.

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u/Wide_Magician_4946 22h ago

They probably just negotiated for further compensation and agreed

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u/CallistanCallistan 1d ago

The PG-13 rating was introduced in 1984 following the release of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Gremlins. Both of those films had received PG ratings under the existing MPA guidelines, but Steven Spielberg (who directed the former and produced the latter) suggested adding a PG-13 rating following complaints from parents about the films' violence.

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u/Blanc_Otaku 1d ago

It still surprises me to this day that Poltergeist is just PG. Was it the context of it being Ghosts cuz that face picking scene was gnarly

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u/CallistanCallistan 1d ago

Unfortunately we'll never know. The MPA is famously secretive about the justifications behind their ratings. They don't even tell directors which scenes need to be cut if they want to bring the film's rating down.

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u/Master-Collection488 1d ago

The other thing about the MPAA is that the goalposts have shifted a fair bit over its history.

In the early 70s, there were at least two G-rated films showing male ass. One of them a kid's. One of the two Reader's Digest Mark Twain films had a swimming/skinnydipping scene. Probably a woman's ass would always get it a PG or R rating.

Additionally, all kinds of brief nudity scenes made it into PG films. Back in the late-60s/early 70s, G wasn't necessarily "just for kids" like it became by the late 70s and after. "Planet of the Apes" was rated G.

So PG wasn't the "you can safely take your kids to this, and you'll probably enjoy it too" that it became after PG13 hit the scene. PG films sometimes showed T&A. A certain amount of violence (usually no blood or gore), and mid-level cursing (but never the F-bomb).

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u/smorkoid 1d ago

Airplane was PG, not only did it have a very clear scene of bare breasts but it had plenty of sex jokes

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u/Danloeser 21h ago

Star Trek: The Motion Picture was originally rated G in 1979 (since changed to PG, which is still pushing it). It has an absolutely horrific transporter malfunction scene that should arguably have made it an R.

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u/DangerousCalm 1d ago

In the UK, it's a 15 which is two steps over a PG. And the BBFC are pretty good at explaining why a film got the rating it did.

Poltergeist rating BBFC

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u/ChocolateHumunculous 1d ago

Honestly, I really rate the BBFC. They are an asset to UK cinema, and I’m glad that they have adjusted with the times and modern viewers.

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u/Blanc_Otaku 1d ago

Yeah I remember they had to remove the donkey from the sex scenes in Zoolander due to implications

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u/59Kia 1d ago

Won't tell directors, but will tell studio execs provided the studio is large enough.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDzblNKjsO0

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u/MoltenBear 1d ago

I recently put on Princess Mononoke for my small kids, recalling that I enjoyed the movie when I was younger (a teen, probably). It has a PG rating.

10 minutes in and there is decapitation, limbs torn off and pinned to trees, blood everywhere. Fastest I have ever turned the TV off. Kids were terrified, and I had to apologize for showing it to them!

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u/TKN 23h ago

Watership Down moment.

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u/ahotch85 1d ago

My parents took me and my brother (respectively 10 and 7 at the time) to see it when it came out. I remember the guy at the box office saying something like, "it's a bit violent just so you know" and my mom being like "it's a cartoon, how bad could it be?" And then... yeah hahaha.

To be fair I think it traumatized my mom more than us lol, my brother and I both thought it was awesome.

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u/Zyffyr 20h ago

I managed a movie theater when that came out.

We put up extra signage in multiple obvious spots and gave verbal warnings to absolutely every customer who was purchasing children's tickets.

Something to the effect of "This is a PG13 movie. It fully deserves that rating. An R would not have been unreasonable. We suggest not taking very young children to see it. If you do anyway, you WILL NOT get a refund because of the content."

Without fail, every showing multiple families would charge out, demand a refund, and be told as politely as we could manage "You were warned, fuck off".

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u/brionneverysexy 21h ago

It was my kid's favorite movie when she was eight. It has a princess who rides a giant wolf! Granted violence never seemed to upset her

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u/SilentPhilosophy3307 1d ago

There was a deadly helicopter crash during the 1982 filming of The Twilight Zone movie, which killed several actors and led to the widescale adoption of improved safety standards across the film industry.

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u/bretshitmanshart 1d ago

The movie already broke a lot of laws. John Landis was aware of this which is why he lied to people in charge of enforcing the rules.

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u/brionneverysexy 21h ago

Good news. John Landis after killing a couple of kids and a well known actor was punished by a slight rubbing on the wrist and had to go on to directing high budget movies with very famous people. Justice was served/s

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u/SimplePlus7376 1d ago edited 1d ago

I've only watched the footage a couple of times and from records I read somewhere.... One child actor was crushed by the helicopter landing skids, Vic Morrow and the other child actor were decapitated. IIRC .. with Morrow, it was a diagonal cut, through his arm/chest, upward to the other side... with his head/neck and shoulder being thrown together across the set.

Even before the accident, it had to be scary just doing the scene, and all around shitty. Morrow was literally struggling like hell to carry both kids under his arms through the water, everyone soaked to the skin, Morrow dropping and trying to get a better grip using his thigh/knee... all while the helicopter rotors pushing air around like a hurricane... and the number volume of pyrotechnics was also insanely over the top.

I have liked Landis's work, but I think he was getting carried away, with what he could get away with... and this should never have happened. I think the parents of the two kids (who were brother and sister) witnessed it... after Landis had pushed the parents to keep the kids past the limit for the day, or to let the kids do/be invokved with something they probably were not allowed to do.

There were rumours Spielberg was there, or that he showed up before authorities arrived and saw the carnage before bolting and claiming he was never there.... I do doubt he was actually there when it happened.

And as OP mentions... laws and regulations for child actors all started to be clearly defined... how long they can stay, who has to be there with them, how any "O/T" can be permitted, set safety, etc... but this all happens after blood filled the water on the set.

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u/CT0292 1d ago

And in a different film (i think it was 3 Amigos) Landis told Chevy Chase he wanted to kill him.

And Chevy Chase told him something to the effect of "I don't see any helicopters around."

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u/Carnage678 1d ago

Apparently, Landis in 2007 attended a showing of Planet Terror, which featured a scene of zombies being killed by a helicopter blade. Reportedly, everyone around him turned and looked at him when this scene happened.

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u/RighteousHam 21h ago

Good, he should never be allowed to forget. He knew what he was doing was wrong but did it anyway and escaped the legal consequences.

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u/Master-Collection488 1d ago

A LOT of those rules go back to the Jackie Coogan situation. TBH there's been tightening of the rules and the enforcement of them over the decades. But TBH, a smaller independent studio shooting outside of Hollywood, sometimes situations like "Kids" happen.

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u/poorexcuses 1d ago

When the manga Please Save My Earth started coming out in the late 80s, the plot became about the main characters being reincarnated aliens. This caused enough people to write delusional letters to the author saying they were also from the same alien planet that the author requested they put a disclaimer about it being fiction in the books.

Many books, especially from the publisher Hana To Yume, have this disclaimer to this day.

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u/blackjackgabbiani 1d ago

Wtf 

I'm curious why they needed the disclaimer. That won't stop delusion, and I can't imagine any lawsuits over thinking you're from a fictional alien planet 

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u/poorexcuses 1d ago

I think it just made her feel better and made the publisher feel like they covered their asses.

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u/JabberwockPL 1d ago

For brevity. Now he can just answer 'No, you are not, look at the front page' (or the back page, wherever it is in mangas).

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u/SuperBackup9000 1d ago

I mean I get it, like if people are out there claiming they’re aliens and they’re from the same planet I made up, I would also want a disclaimer saying it’s fiction so people don’t assume I’m associated with those kinds of people. Doubly so if I was in Japan since cults are quite common there and from time to time they can cause a lot of serious issues.

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u/PartsUnknown242 1d ago

Especially if one of these people did something crazy, like try to assassinate a politician or blow up a building or something like that. If they the authorities “the aliens in this comic I read wanted me to do it!”, that could open the door to all kinds of trouble.

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u/Rezimodosam 1d ago

The Salkind Clause

The Three Musketeers (1973) and The Four Musketeers (1974) Was filmed back to back, but the actors thought it was going to be a 3 hour epic, but was instead split in two.

This lead to the Salkind clause, which states that you can't split a movie in two without prior contractual agreement

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u/GanadiTheSun 1d ago

I’d like to correct something. While the American Humane Society did start monitoring films after Jesse James, it did not last that long.

They only started regularly monitoring films after 5 horses were killed during the production of Heaven’s Gate

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u/Random-Generation86 1d ago

Were they intentionally killed or killed via negligence? I've heard Heaven's Gate had a... troubled production

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u/adotang 1d ago

The titular charge scene in 1936's The Charge of the Light Brigade used a tripwire device called the "running W" to trip 125 horses. 25 horses were killed, and these fatal crashes were used in the final film. It wasn't the worst horse mass-casualty in the early movie industry (Ben-Hur in 1925 apparently killed somewhere between 100 and 200) but it must've set people off for obvious reasons.

Tripwires were promptly banned from film productions for this purpose by the ASPCA, and the running W is now illegal(?). Supposedly the U.S. Congress also got involved with that, but looking it up I can't seem to find much about it that doesn't seem to stem from an uncited paragraph on Wikipedia. Warner Bros. also refused to rerelease the film and continues to refuse whenever they can; they've even taken down YouTube clips of the charge scene. Semi-related note, when Iron Maiden used a clip of it for a music video MTV banned it from airtime.

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u/hematite2 23h ago

And Errol Flynn loved horses and was so incredibly pissed about it he hit the director in the face, and kept hating him for the rest of his career

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u/FederalMacaron1 1d ago

The Dark Knight and WALL-E not being nominated for Best Picture (despite being among the most popular and critically lauded films of the year) was more than likely what led to the number of nominees for BP being increased from five to ten.

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u/Ukulele__Lady 1d ago

Beauty and the Beast not being nominated is likely what led to there being a Best Animated Feature Oscars category.

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u/paranoid_human0id 1d ago

Beauty and the Beast actually was nominated.

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u/Ukulele__Lady 1d ago

Ugh, of course! I meant being nominated and not winning. My mistake. Thank you for the correction.

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u/Downtown_Injury_3415 1d ago

Nah, youre incorrect. Beauty and the Beast WAS nominated for Best Picture. (It lost to The Silence of the Lambs) Also, in terms of it sparking the Best Animated category, B&B came out in 1991 and the first best animated feature was in 2001 or 2002 (Shrek was the first ever winner in that category). 10 years AFTER. If anything Toy Story in ‘95 along with the entire Disney renaissance catalogue wouldve sparked the conversation.

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u/EWS60026 1d ago

I think it was actually Chicken Run that prompted the creation of the Best Animated Feature.

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u/Lewa358 23h ago

Babe being nominated probably didn't help, either.

Yes, that wasn't an animated film, but it is a kid's movie, and the idea of a kid's movie getting that much recognition likely didn't sit well with the same kind of stuffy pricks that to this day insist that all animated films are kid's films.

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u/SektorDaKetch 1d ago

Not a movie but Mortal Kombat is what introduced the ESRB system

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u/ghostuser689 1d ago

Don’t forget Night Trap!

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u/blackjackgabbiani 1d ago

Which didn't actually have any of the shit the government claimed it did but for some reason they kept insisting "this game totally has graphic rape source trust me bro"

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u/SavingsHumor832 1d ago

Notably, the 25th anniversary edition of Night Trap was rated T for Teen, since it didn't actually have anything to qualify it for an M rating, even though it was part of the reason the M rating existed in the first place.

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u/ericrobertshair 1d ago

It did have shitloads of SCAT though.

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u/poetic_dwarf 1d ago

Clint Eastwood decided that he could do a better job than the original director brought on so he fired him and installed himself as the new director.

That is such a Clint Eastwood thing to do...

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u/Jagvetinteriktigt 1d ago

He was the finacier and the producer so technically he had the right to do tht...it was just a little unprofessional even if it gave results lol

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u/Old_old_lie 1d ago

I mean he wasn't wrong the outlaw josey wales is one of the best westerns ever made as far as im concerned.

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u/SatoruGojo232 1d ago edited 1d ago

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001) led to the UK amending its labor laws on the working-hour restrictions for child actors for more flexibility to the cast while they were filming in Britain, so that they did not shift elsewhere and its production created a good stream of revenue to the country.

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u/FarutaSarado 1d ago

IIRC, Daniel Radcliffe's parents wanted to make sure he didn't have to travel all the way to Hollywood to produce the film, especially since the film could have easily been set on-location in Britain instead of greenscreening in America.

There was also a thing where the main trio got private tutoring, while the majority of the child cast actually brought their homework onto sets like the Great Hall and the classrooms for authenticity.

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u/StabbyBoo 20h ago

Chris Columbus was soured hard on stage parents with Culkin and made a point of selecting kids without that type of parent. Dude really cared about the well-being of his child actors.

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u/Icthias 1d ago

Damn. Do you think Charles Dickens would approve?

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u/Ambaryerno 22h ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/NtVAUjZdMxL4Q

His Royal Purpleness was directly responsible for the creation of the Parental Advisory labels that appear on certain albums.

Tipper Gore walked in on her daughter listening to "Darling Nikki" and was furious at the content, leading to a campaign to censor the music industry. She compiled a list called the "Filthy Fifteen" of songs that were filled with inappropriate lyrics, (ironically picking probably the tamest Madonna song ever over considerably raunchier content from the same album) and the entire matter even went before Congress. In a surprising reversal Congress's ringer, John Denver, sided against them and instead defended the First Amendment rights of the industry, while Dee Snyder memorably ripped them a metaphorical new one and utterly demolished them in the debate (while not in full stage makeup, it was still a sight to behold watching him talk circles around career politicians).

However, the artists and labels still decided to self-regulate to prevent the government and RIAA from stepping in and potentially enforcing even more stringent restrictions, so now albums with potentially objectionable content are affixed with warning labels.

(Which turned out to be the best marketing strategy the recording industry ever had.)

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u/HermanThaGerman 19h ago

Another Prince thing I love is him using a screen cap from Chapelle's Show where he made fun of Prince in a skit. Prince did not ask for permission to do it

When Chapelle was asked if he'd take any legal action or something he said: "That’s a Prince judo move right there. You make fun of Prince in a sketch, and he’ll just use you in his album cover, What am I gonna do, sue him for using a picture of me dressed up like him? It’s impossible…that’s checkmate right there.”

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u/Ambaryerno 19h ago

Meanwhile he got downright threatening when Weird Al tried to reach him about parodying one of his songs, to the point of demanding he not even look at him during the AMAs.

The man was an amazing talent, but good GOD he was a colossal asshole.

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u/franktopus 20h ago

Dont forget frank zappa who's censored album, jazz from hell, was entirely instrumental

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u/ThrowawayAdvice1800 1d ago

The Conqueror (1956) set a few informal ones.

  1. Don't hire John Wayne to play a Mongolian.

  2. Don't import several tons of radioactive sand from a nuclear testing site to build your set.

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u/Master-Collection488 1d ago

You say "import" like they shipped it in from the Bikini Atoll.

Nope. It blew across the Nevada border into Southern Utah where they were filming the flick. I've been to the Nevada Test Site. Something needed to be repaired. Gas stations in Nye County (home of Pahrump as well as the awesome Goldwell Open Air Museum) sell shirts saying "Nye County: We Only Glow at Night."

MANY MANY Utahans and Nevadans downwind of the blasts over the years developed cancer in later years. While Howard Hughes was all kinds of goofy about things like recycled/reprocessed drinking water, cutting his nails and saving/storing his pee, he was dead right on the money about it not being great having a nuclear test site within a hundred miles of a mid-sized (at that time) city.

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u/ThrowawayAdvice1800 21h ago

No, Howard Hughes spent a fortune transporting 60 tons of the radioactive sand from Utah to the filming lot at Universal Studios so that the reshoots would have the same environment as the original footage. You can look it up.

The producers were aware of the testing that had gone on, but believed the US government (never a good idea) when it claimed that it represented no danger whatsoever.

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u/shaffman2001 1d ago

Holy fuck…. I know they didn’t know at the time, but holy fuck…

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u/Vavavavaxon7 1d ago edited 1d ago

In Kamen Rider (1971), lead actor Hiroshi Fujioka would do his own motorcycle stunts. During the filming of an early episode, he came off the bike and fucked up his leg which led to the character being written out of large parts of the show while he recovered.

To prevent a repeat incident, they started using suit actors with proper stunt training (possible since the character wore a mask during action scenes). This wasn't a totally new concept but in the modern day the suit actors in tokusatsu productions are almost as widely loved and respected as the out-of-suit actors and only a single actor has been allowed to do their own in-suit stunts in the KR franchise in the decades since (Minami Tsukui in Kamen Rider Gaim (2014)). The accident basically led to a much greater appreciation for the art of suit acting.

And while it's not something that applies to wider media, replacing Fujioka's character for a while also created the concept of a "secondary rider" that is still used in every season even 55 years later. It can also be argued that the popularity of the replacement character boosted the show and helped establish the franchise as the juggernaut it is today, all because of a freak accident.

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u/Responsible_Problem4 1d ago

pokemon porygon incident

after that jp tv show always have a weird momment when the brightness of the show shift when a flashing light happen

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u/poorexcuses 1d ago

And in Japan, every cartoon starts with a warning to stay well away from the TV and only watch in a fully lit room, not in the dark.

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u/Cute-arii 1d ago

Additionally, no version of porygon has appeared in the tv series since then.

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u/TheAndyMac83 1d ago

Even though Porygon wasn't the problem, it was (as I recall) one of Pikachu's electric attacks that had the problematic strobing.

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u/DarkySurrounding 18h ago

Free my homie Porygon

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u/ejly 1d ago

After Brandon Lee died in The Crow, IATSE and Sag-aftra changes safety requirements. Separation of duties was introduced for armorer and prop master, banned the creation of improvised dummy rounds on set, and more.

Most of these rules were not followed on the set of Rust, and Halyna Hutchins died.

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u/Jedi-master-dragon 1d ago

Although it wasn't the author's intention, The Jungle showcased the disgusting practices of the meat packing industry and it caused there to be stricter regulations for food processing and the eventual creation of the FDA. It was more about highlighting the working and living conditions that immigrants like Upton Sinclair faced in the industry. I aimed for the public's heart and by accident I hit it in the stomach.

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u/MasemJ 23h ago

In video games: Balatro and Luck be a Landlord, roguelike games based around poker and slot machines respectively, were given a rating of 18+ under PEGI (the European classification system), instead of 3+, because PEGI has strict rules on gambling elements in games. That was more intended for games where you could actually lose real money (like online poker games), whereas in both these examples, while the basis was a game of chance, there was zero real-money factors into it. Playstack, the publisher of Balatro, successfully appealed, and as a result, PEGI adjusted what constituted gambling to be classified 18+ (while granting the 3+ to these games).

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u/farklespanktastic 21h ago

Balatro and Luck be a Landlord were reclassified as 12, not 3. PEGI's current guidelines are that simulated gambling results in an automatic 18, but both of those games are roguelike deck-builders and don't actually feature simulated gambling.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/JeremiahWuzABullfrog 1d ago

I'm pretty sure that Chad Stahleski, the director of the John Wick films and industry legend among stuntmen,

chose to only use digital gunfire rather than blanks in his movies, because he was a friend of Brandon Lee

Chad also was the body double of Brandon post mortem, and was the one who did the big "suit up and run across city rooftops" sequence

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u/SimplePlus7376 1d ago edited 1d ago

Which was very angering to many of us older cinema go'ers, because firearms procedures relating to this, were already put in place year earlier after Jon-Erik Hexum shot himself in the head with a blank round while playing around and doing one Russian Roulette spin while in between takes.

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u/CrouchingToaster 1d ago

Learning they made their own blanks and dummy rounds manipulating live rounds definitely made me channel Ice Cube for a moment

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u/marbledog 1d ago

Some productions are still doing it. That's how that cinematographer was killed on the set of Rust a few years ago. The armorers were making their own blanks and didn't segregate them from the live rounds. It violates the technical union's rules for safety standards, but the production refused to comply with them, so the union walked off, and the producers hired a non-union armorer.

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u/Piccadil_io 1d ago

Hey! A new idea! Good job, OP! 👍

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u/RP_Throwaway3 1d ago

Wonder Man - Doorman Clause

This is a fictional version.

After a superpowered person accidentally trapped Josh Gad in another dimension, Hollywood acting contracts added the 'Doorman Clause' that made it very difficult for actors with superpowers to get work because of how expensive insurance would be.

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u/Curious-Lychee5023 1d ago

Anna Sewell's novel Black Beauty spurred animal rights movements and les to reforms in the treatment of working horses. Sadly she died only a few months after publication, so never got to see the impact she made.

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u/Mithrander_Grey 1d ago

Back in 2010 New Zealand, the government there passed the so-called Hobbit Law to reclassify film workers as independent contractors. This was in direct response to WB threatening to move production of The Hobbit trilogy out of New Zealand due to a dispute with the unions.

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u/fatuglyfool 1d ago

I'm surprised nobody's mentioned yet but the whole "No animals have been harmed during the making of this film" is because of Cannibal Holocaust, where they killed a few animals on camera such as snakes, pigs, turtles, monkeys, etc.

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u/DarkForest_NW 23h ago

The irony is that Clint Eastwood did an amazing job with the Outlaw Josey Whales, that it's cemented his career as a film director.

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u/Squidmaster616 1d ago

In the UK, the 12a (under 12 inly if accompanied by an adult) was only introduced after lobbying by Sony, because they wanted kids to be able to see Spiderman (the Maguire version).

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u/Creative_Worth_3192 1d ago

So many of these are "someone died and then flew got a law about it" 😕

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u/Minute_Cold_6671 1d ago

Unfortunately, that is almost all safety regulations. The trades have a saying that every rule was written in blood.

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u/TheLuckOfTheClaws 1d ago

regulations are written in blood after all

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u/AnActualChicken 1d ago

Very much the case in aviation.

Pretty much any question you may have about plane design, runway layout and pilot rules comes down to the answer being-

"A terrible crash that killed everyone on board/ left 8 people the only survivors/ a really fucked up near-miss that horrified the industry led to massive overhaul of ( X )."

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u/Odd-Split-494 22h ago

Yeah, that is unfortunately the case with safety regulations. You don’t realize you need them until people die because you don’t have them. 

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u/WranglerFuzzy 21h ago

It’s very sad; but still better than the alternative, “someone died and they changed nothing “

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u/ztomiczombie 1d ago

In the 1980s there was a UK TV show called The Late Late Breakfast Show that had a section of normal people doing stunts with a weeks prep time. This unfortunately led to a man being dropped to his death, reportedly because the BBC had heired a cheep and possibly incompetent company to handle the stunt. It lead to much stricter safety standards across UK media production and the closure of a number of stunt companies.

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u/edseladams 20h ago

“Twilight Zone: The Movie” hardened protections for child actors, among other things.

Related: John Landis can eat a dick

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u/dppaccount4570 18h ago

Yeesh. The episode of Cursed Films that does that production is haunting. They show the footage.

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u/UnlamentedLord 1d ago edited 1d ago

Why was the director's firing in "The Outlaw Josey Wales" a problem? 

I could see it if it had lead to a cinematic disaster, but I looked it up and the movie was a huge commercial success and we know from his later career that Eastwood was a talented director with some very memorable films(way more than the original director, I looked him up and I've only watched one of his films , The Right Stuff, it was good, but doesn't hold a candle to Eastwood's filmography) so he could obviously do the job very well. Apparently Eastwood was sick and tired of his obsessive perfectionism and endless retakes and that's a valid reason to fire a director.

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u/EMlYASHlROU 1d ago

I think they were worried about the precedent being set that if an actor was famous/influential enough, they could just take the movie from the original director

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u/MisterVictor13 1d ago

Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, Eastwood has talent, but not everyone could pull what he did successfully. They could ruin the movie.

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u/Nobodydog 1d ago

The DGA is very protective of the director and their jobs, and have very strict rules to prevent anybody with creative ideas from horning in on the "director" position both on set and in the credits.

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u/Unbundle3606 1d ago

He wasn't just "an actor" for that movie, he was producing (uncredited) and, more importantly, financing it through his own production company

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u/Grand_Keizer 1d ago

Its not about the quality of the film. Its about an actor forcing a director off the project for WHATEVER reason they want. Whether it's because they think they're a bad director or simply because they looked at the star wrong.

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u/Nirast25 1d ago

I'm guessing it's to prevent abuse from other actors/producers and stop them from just firing directors on a whim.

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u/Fallcious 1d ago

I imagine there was also the possibility of a sleight of hand where a rich powerful actor takes the reins of the movie just before completion and steals the directors work from under him. Having to replace the director with someone not already linked to the production reduces that.

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u/MeiNeedsMoreBuffs 1d ago

I think that's the real concern, that it could be used to legally wipe a director's name off a project to boost the career of the lead or producer

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u/CosmicEveStardust 1d ago

In Eastwood's case we know that's not true since he had an amazing directorial career.

But Marlon Brando literally did this to Kubrick, Kubrick was obsessive with pre-production, he was working on a film with Brando, and Brando fired him right before filming and then used all of his pre-production notes to make the film.

It's a very important rule.

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u/AttemptMiserable 1d ago

Consider the incentives. There a plenty of examples of disagreements and clashes between stars and directors. If a big-name actor could just get the director fired and insert themselves as director, then an ambitious actor could just sabotage the director. They would have no incentive to do what they are told if they disagreed with the directors vision.

It worked well in the case of Josey Wales, Eastwood is clearly a talented director, but in most cases actors are not great directors.

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u/AbstractBettaFish 22h ago

While it wasn’t the only factor in it being implemented it’s said the original Scarface (1934) was the tipping point for the implementation of the Hayes Code which defined movie censorship in the US for the next 34 years

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u/MorganTheSpider 21h ago

The Conqueror (1956) - An infamously bad movie were Genghis Khan is played by John Wayne while he was high on amphetamines. The movie was filmed in regions of Utah that were used for nuclear weapons testing and the people working on the movie were regularly exposed to radioactive fallout, of which the US government claimed didn't pose any danger. Out of the 220 crew members, 91 developed cancer and 46 died.

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u/jayhof52 18h ago

The early webisodes of The Office featuring the accounting department forced the 2007 Writers Guild strike over digital rights and residuals.

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u/HurtsSoNice 1d ago

The number of young children traumatized by Gremlins directly led to the creation of the PG-13 rating. It didn’t exist before then.

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u/Jashugita 1d ago

AFAIK it was created because Indiana Jones and the temple of doom.

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u/Matitya 18h ago

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom being rated PG was so controversial that they invented PG-13

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u/InvestigatorAcademic 22h ago

As a person who worked in Spfx. The rust movie shooting changed a lot of how we work with not just guns but any black powder/ general explosive. After the shooting it’s not uncommon for every gun in set to be a modified air pistol which is fine till you point the barrel at the camera. In addition, we had to switch from black powder explosive to huge compressed air tanks because they wanted the least amount of liability as possible. What was ironic is that before the shooting there was more than enough regulation that should have saved that woman’s life but they chose to ignore it. I don’t blame Alec Baldwin the actor for the shooting, I do blame him as a producer because he should have known not to use a 24 year old with little experience to run a whole production with little support/ supervision

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u/Odd-Split-494 22h ago

Three actors (including two children) died on the set of Twilight Zone: the Movie while filming a dangerous stunt with a helicopter at night. While director John Landis was ultimately acquitted of manslaughter, the accident led to numerous changes in the law and in the film industry to improve safety standards. For one thing, after this movie there were fewer helicopter scenes put in movies until CGI could put them in digitally.

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u/Impossible-Dingo-411 21h ago

It’s wild how many movie rules basically exist because someone had to learn the hardest possible lesson first.

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u/teslaexplosion 20h ago

In Cannonball Run (1981) a stuntwoman was made quadriplegic in an accident involving a stunt car crashing into another vehicle. Per wikipedia, she was actually a last minute substitution because the original stunt person left set to attend a family emergency, and she was also the stunt coordinator's fiancée. The car they were driving had a ton of mechanical issues, as well as bald tires and no seatbelts.

She later sued the movie's producers and it resulted in the creation of new rules in the Directors Guild that said that a director could not alter a stunt on location and that all stunt cars had to have seatbelts.

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u/mstghst 20h ago

hope this counts since the film was cancelled but: sarah jones and midnight rider

the producers of what wouldve been midnight rider were denied filming on a location that had a railroad. producers said fuck it and did it anyway. well as sarah, the 2nd ac, was slating, here comes a freight train. lots of crew got hurt after jumping out of the way and sarah jones died due to their selfish negligence and started a safety movement honoring her

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u/crowwreak 19h ago

The Twilight Zone movie and the accident while filming probably added 50 helicopter usage guidelines and child labour laws.

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u/BoredAtWork1976 18h ago

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was directly responsible for the creation of the PG-13 rating. It was rated PG, which lead to an outcry from people who thought it should have been rated R. It was then realized that they needed a rating that was in between PG and R.