PicoBlog

I didn’t see Tommy Cooper the night he died on Live At Her Majesty’s. In fact,
I didn’t see the footage until perhaps 40 years on from the tragedy, and then only by complete surprise. For there, in a documentary about the American too-much comedian/magician The Amazing Johnathan was Wales’ greatest funny man falling backwards mid-act, sat in a heap with nothing but the curtain to hold him upright.

And what’s this got to do with the tragedy that engulfed the big screen version of The Twilight Zone? Well, with the film something of a childhood favourite and a new book on the disaster - Fly By Night: The Secret Story Of Steven Spielberg, Warner Bros. And The Twilight Zone deaths - just out, I was keen to see whether author Steven Chain had anything to add to what Marc Green and Stephen Farber had to say in the brilliant - if bloody hard to get hold of - Outrageous Conduct: Art, Ego And The Twilight Zone Case.

Without giving too much away, Fly By Night adds layers of context and horror to our understanding of what happened in the wee small hours of July 23rd 1982. For those unfamiliar with the whole ghastly business, an on-set explosion caused a helicopter to crash, in the process killing child actors Myca Dinh Le (aged 7) and Renee Shin-Yi Che (6) and veteran character actor - and Jennifer Jason Leigh’s father - Vic Morrow. The accident, and the subsequent court case, ought to have spelt disaster for John Landis - the Animal House director upon whose watch the crash occurred - and his fellow producer and co-director Steven Spielberg.

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