THE ACCIDENT

Brandon Lee died during a mishap on the set. In between scenes, one of the prop crew was testing one of the guns for a future scene. He fired the gun, and heard a thud of some sort, but nothing happened. He thought nothing of it. For some reason, none of the guns were cleaned between scenes, as they are usually supposed to be. Filming began on the "flashback", where you see the red/yellow colored scene of Eric coming home to his apartment to find T-Bird's gang attacking Shelley. Blanks (which usually contain double or triple the powder of a normal bullet to make a loud noise), were loaded into the gun. The scene called for Eric to walk into the apartment, and startle the bad guys. Funboy would then turn around and fire at him. A squib (a small device placed on an actor that explodes to give the impression of a gunshot or wound) was placed inside a bag of groceries that Eric was supposed to be bringing home. When shot at, Eric was to fall backwards, and the rest of the scene to be filmed. Tragically, the uncleaned gun had a lodged shell stuck in the barrel. When shot with a blank, the effect was that of a real bullet: the shell was shot out of the barrel at a high rate of speed. The shot accidentally hit Brandon in the stomach, and he doubled over on his knees and collapsed. Although the scene called for him to fall backwards, everyone just thought that he was over-acting. They continued shooting the scene, until they realized something was wrong. He was bleeding badly from the abdomen. The footage of his death was destroyed without being developed. Lee is the son of martial arts legend Bruce Lee, who died on July 20, 1973, under mysterious circumstances just after making Enter the Dragon (1979)

The Last Interview