Brendan passed out and ultimately woke up with the stunt coordinator hovering over him: “He’s clapping in my face, going, ‘Brendan! Brendan! Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!’ And I did, and he goes, ‘Hey. Congratulations. You just joined the club with Mel Gibson. He got choked out on Braveheart, too.’” Leo then added that his second chute didn’t work as planned either. He said it got tangled for “about 20–30 seconds” before the instructor who was attached to him was able to untangle it, just before hitting the ground: “He untangled it, and then he told me, ‘Oh, you’re probably gonna break your legs now because we’re going too fast.” Leo said it was “one of the worst experiences of my life,” and he’ll absolutely never go skydiving again. Leo said he immediately started screaming because he was so freaked out. The plane dumped fuel for 45 minutes before having an emergency landing, which caused all of the tires to explode. Jackie landed on a rock and tried to get up but immediately felt a pain in his back. Everyone on set kept telling him to stay down, and that’s when his body went numb. There was blood coming out of his ear. The crew had to carry him down the mountain to the hospital where “surgeons tended to his cracked skull and the bone that had penetrated his brain as a result of the fall.” Jackie said he came very close to dying. Everyone on the flight was screaming, and then Tracey and Meryl turned to each other, held hands, and Meryl said, “Oh, damn. That woman who’s writing that horrible unauthorized biography on me will have a terrific ending.” Luckily the pilots were able to make an emergency landing in France, and everyone was okay. According to Danko, it “felt as though my scalp was coming off. The explosion blew me off the broomstick.” Among other injuries (like damage to her internal organs, which required a hysterectomy), there was also a “two-inch-deep wound that nearly circled Danko’s leg, which was full of bits of her costume.” Danko made only $35 for completing the broomstick stunt and $790 for everything else she did in the movie. Statham tried to compose himself, pulled himself out of the truck’s window, and started swimming to the surface as quickly as possible. When he got to the surface, Sylvester Stallone was on the edge of the dock with his iPhone out, capturing the whole thing on camera. Thankfully no one was injured. Angus somehow managed to climb out, even with a few broken fingers, and he took a bus to his mom’s house. His vision was blurry and his speech was stunted, so she thought he was high on something: “I was 14 or 15. She thought I was on drugs ’cause my pupils was hella dilated. I was trying to tell her what happened, but I could only start a sentence — I couldn’t finish it. So I was like, ‘I’m just gonna go sleep in my bed.’” Thankfully, she refused to let him sleep and instead gave him water, which caused him to throw up “hella mouthfuls of crimson red blood,” before taking him to the hospital: “That’s what the scar’s from. They cut my head open, they put some screws and a plate over where I broke my skull and — sht, sealed me back up, and that was that.” However, his worst crash was in 2015 after needing to land on a golf course. Ellen DeGeneres asked him about the injuries he sustained from it, to which he joked, “A dislocated right ankle, a shattered pelvis, a broken back, and a serious bump on the head with major lacerations. Other than that, nothing.” Ford has also used his pilot’s license to volunteer over the years. For example, in 2001, he joined a group in Wyoming to search for a Boy Scout who had gone missing in Yellowstone National Park. Ford ended up spotting the boy and rescuing him. Ebsen spent months trying to get better but was replaced by MGM without an explanation, which he considered “the worst personal and professional disaster” of his life. Jack Haley took over as the new Tin Man, and they replaced his aluminum dust makeup with safer aluminum paste. Ebsen claimed to have breathing problems for the rest of his life because of “that damned movie.” Several precautions were in place in case of an emergency: aside from the quick-release chains, there was a button that could empty the giant tank of water in 70 seconds, and there was also a man standing off to the side with an air tank for her. However, no one thought to come up with a hand signal beforehand to alert the crew if she needed help. Luckily someone caught on and was able to save her. Oliver almost choked to death and literally turned purple, and that’s when Steven Spielberg noticed that something was off. Spielberg ran up to Oliver and pried off the clown’s arm from his neck, saving him. The studio was hoping to resume filming in May of 2016, but they didn’t pick up production until March of the following year. O’Brien hasn’t gone into detail about the actual incident (and he has no desire to), but throughout the years he’s been vocal about its long-lasting effects, saying this in 2020: “I had a rough and long road back from that, probably more than people realize. It was a very private and personal thing for me. I was going through that sht for a long time.” Ryan Murphy turned to the flight attendant and said, “You really need to prepare me if I’m going to die,” and everyone on board started sobbing…except Jessica Lange. Instead, Ryan said she was casually on her email: “She was very still. She was elegant in doom, even. I was so amazed that I finally said, ‘Jessica, what the hell?! How can you be so calm?!’” Jessica took a beat, shrugged, and replied, “What the hell…it’s been a good run.” A true legend!
