Hurt describes film set death
Actor shares eyewitness account of railway collision that led to the death of camera assistant Sarah Jones
Actor William Hurt has revealed his perspective on the incident that led to the death of camera assistant Sarah Jones during the filming of the Gregg Allman biopic Midnight Rider.
Hurt had been cast in the lead role of musician Allman in the now-suspended production, and was present at the scene of the crash that killed Jones.
Speaking to the Canadian Press news agency, Hurt said: “I just had an unsettled feeling from the very time I got there. I stopped everything and I said in front of everybody, I said, ‘Stop.’ And I asked [assistant director] Hillary [Schwartz] in front of the whole crowd, ‘Are we safe?’ Because it’s her job as the first AD to tell us that. She said, ‘Yes.’”
Schwartz was later sentenced to 10 years’ probation and a $5,000 (Dh18,360) fine, as well as being banned from working in a responsible position in a film crew for 10 years, for her part in the incident.
Jones’s death occurred when a train struck a hospital bed placed across a railway track near the Altamaha river in Wayne County, Georgia, in February 2014; she was hit by debris from the bed and knocked into the train’s path. Filmmakers had been denied permission to film there by CSX, the company who owned the railway, and the film’s director, Randall Miller, received a two-year jail sentence and eight years’ probation for involuntary manslaughter and criminal trespassing.
“I was barefoot and I turned around, I twisted my head and I said, ‘Someone’s going to die now,’” he said. “I tried to yank the bed up, my feet were getting clobbered by the splinters in the ties [sleepers]. I couldn’t move the bed at all, I just started screaming, ‘You can’t stop it, you can’t stop it, you can’t stop it, you can’t stop it.’” — Guardian News & Media Ltd