Archived Discussion Main / FatalMethodActing

This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.

livettora: Removed the Heath Ledger example. The OT said he died during the filming of The Dark Knight when in fact, he died offstage The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. Not only were they wrong, but the example doesn't even fit the definition of this trope.

Silent Hunter: Indeed, it was accidental death by overdose.

From YKTTW Working Title: Fatal Method Acting

HeartBurn Kid:

• To review, the "proper" means of doing a stunt involving a rapidly descending person would involve multiple lanyards with manual releases. For instance, Sting in his "The Crow" ensemble in late '99/early 2000 was well known for such stunts. The problem was that after his descent, it would often take a full minute or so to completely remove all the lanyards by hand, as well as the protective harness. In Owen Hart's case, he was using a single, automatic lanyard triggered not by unclipping it from the harness, but by the application of a certain amount of pressure. Interestingly enough, he had made it through a full rehearsal of the stunt earlier in the day with no problems. Further investigation of the harness setup revealed that the amount of pressure needed to release the lanyard was higher than that provided by his own body weight by such a small amount that the chest expansion of a deep breath would have been enough to trigger it prematurely.

I know we don't normally need citations, but there's some pretty heavy accusations here that not only violate the Rule Of Cautious Editing Judgment, but might just cross the line into slander if they're not true. Can we get some sort of verification on this investigation?

This article seems to be suffering scope creep—-actors dying while acting isn't particular more notable than other people dying while doing their jobs. They key to the trope is that in this case people mistake the death for acting, e.g. Tommy Cooper's case.