Deadline.com article: Stunt Person Seriously Injured On The Set Of Transformers 3!!!
Paramount Reacts To Film Extra Seriously Hurt By ‘Transformers 3’ Stunt Gone Wrong
EXCLUSIVE UPDATE 5 PM: Paramount just weighed in with me to say that the injured extra was not involved in the stunt, 
that her car was not involved in the stunt, that a “freak accident caused her injury”, that she and her car were more than 500 feet from the stunt, that she was struck by a flying metal object whose welding had come apart and not by a steel towing cable, that the stunt from Tuesday had to be repeated Wednesday because of a “timing issue” and not because it had failed, and that “nobody has done movies more safely than Michael Bay”. The studio, however, could not explain why its version of events was so at odds with the local police and media reports. “We feel horrible that anyone was injured and will take all appropriate action,” a Paramount exec told me.
9:30 AM: Safety questions on Michael Bay’s set are being forwarded to me after an actress employed as a movie extra was “critically” injured during a Transformers 3 stunt that went wrong in Northwest Indiana. According to news reports quoting local police, the movie was filming a stunt involving multiple vehicles and drivers and flying cars when a metal object struck Gabriella Cedillo’s personal 2006 Toyota. It went through the windshield and hit the 24-year-old driver who was not a stunt professional or member of the stunt personnel. The Toyota hit the inner median concrete barrier wall and had extensive damage to the driver’s side. UPDATE: WLS-TV reports a similar tow-rig setup broke the day before.
Cedillo was airlifted to the hospital with a serious head injury. News reports quoted another extra as saying that Cedillo’s Toyota was being towed by a second vehicle and that the steel cable between the two vehicles broke, then whipped around, and sliced through the woman’s car and cut her head. Sources on the Indiana set told media outlets that extras like Cedillo were paid $25 for the use of their personal cars. I received this email from a confidential informant: “An extra doing stunts in her own car with a tow rig? Holy shit is somebody’s head gonna roll over this one. SO many things against industry standards, don’t know where to start! Bay should be starting to sweat right about now. 30yrs of motion pictures and never seen stunts fuck up this bad.” (Photo: T3 set in Chicago.)
Globe & Mail Article: Oscar Winning Actress Jennifer Hudson’s Winnie Mandela Biopic Currently Being Filmed In South Africa!
Clare F. Byrne, Johannesburg
Globe and Mail Update
On the east side of Johannesburg, a pivotal scene in the history of South Africa is playing out. About 60 people are lined up on either side of a prison gate, singing and dancing. As the winter sun squints through the trees lining the drive, Nelson and Winnie Mandela appear, walking hand-in-hand toward the exit, their free hands raised in a clenched-fist wave.
“Sibatshelile wema helelema, uyeza umkhonto wesizwe,” the euphoric crowd chants. “We told them the spear of the nation is coming.”
But the celebrations are short-lived. Just as Nelson Mandela has been sprung from 27 years behind bars, he and his wife are ordered back inside.
“Okay, let’s do it again. And this time, can the women ululate when they go through the gate?” requests Darrell Roodt. The South African director is calling the shots at a former dynamite factory (standing in for Victor Verster Prison) for the film Winnie, currently shooting across South Africa.
The biopic, slated for release later this year or early next, has plenty of Hollywood power behind it: The principles are played by Jennifer Hudson (Dreamgirls) and Terence Howard (Hustle & Flow).
But it took a Canadian company to make the first major film about the controversial first lady of the anti-apartheid struggle. Without money from Montreal’s Equinoxe Films, co-producer along with South Africa’s Ma-Afrika films, Roodt says, “it would have been extremely difficult to make.” Winnie has a budget of more than $14-million.
Equinoxe’s involvement has less to with any special link between Canada and South Africa than with good old-fashioned networking. Michael Mosca, who owns Equinoxe and has produced such films as A Sunday in Kigali and Mommy is at the Hairdresser’s, was approached by way of a friend who knew the biopic was looking for financing. “It’s very difficult to put together a movie that’s over $12-million, $13-million independently without having two or three countries involved,” he notes.
AP
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela in 2004
It was the screenplay that sold him on the project. “I loved the script because I found it quite educational. On this side of the Earth, sometimes we don’t know what’s going on on the other side,” he says. This film “was very interesting because it’s controversial. There’s a love story there that’s amazing. You’re looking at a couple, the Mandelas, that had to sustain a love [while] not seeing each other for almost 27 years on and off.”
Mosca, in turn, approached his own long-time friend, Toronto actor Wendy Crewson, to play the part of Mary Botha, a social worker and activist who befriends the Mandelas and accompanies them through their many trials, both literal and figurative. A composite character, Botha contains elements of all the famous white women (including recently deceased parliamentarian Helen Suzman) who broke ranks with the apartheid establishment and agitated for democracy.
“When I read the script, I thought, ‘This has to be done,’ ” said the 54-year-old actress, in between sips on a latte, during a break from shooting. Based on an unauthorized biography by South African journalist Anne Marie du Preez Bezdrob, Winnie reverses the “short shrift” Mandela’s famous partner has been given, says Crewson, who feels Winnie Mandela was “shunted aside” as soon as it was uncomfortable to have her around.
That discomfort related mainly to the Stompie Moeketsi affair: In 1991, the year after Nelson Mandela’s release, Winnie was convicted of kidnapping the 14-year-old activist. Cajoled by Archbishop Desmond Tutu into appearing at the 1996-98 Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Winnie grudgingly admitted “things went horribly wrong.” Her six-year sentence was reduced on appeal and she paid a fine.
Crewson admits she had a very different view of Winnie before working on Winnie – “as a sort of evil, conniving, power-hungry person.” Now, she holds the African National Congress
chiefly responsible for Winnie’s transgressions. “She allowed [Mandela] to stay above the fray, but she got sucked down into it,” she says. “I think she should have been better protected – by the cause, by everybody.”
Clad in a loose white shirt, baggy black trousers and dark-rimmed glasses, Crewson cuts a bohemian figure among the ornate balconies and fountains of Johannesburg’s Michelangelo Hotel. It’s certainly a far cry from the impoverished townships where much of the action in the movie takes place – among the many signs of inequality that in turn drive high crime rates in South Africa.
When her friends heard she was heading to Johannesburg, Crewson says they were alarmed. “Oh no,” they told her, “it’s really dangerous.”
For her part, the actress – who has worked on more than 100 TV and film projects, including her famous turn as the jolly man’s ex-wife in the Santa Clause films with Tim Allen – was more alarmed at the level of security for those taking part in the shoot. “You’re given a driver – and you’re expected to use him,” she says.
Crewson, the mother of a 20-year-old daughter and 17-year-old son, was most shocked by the condition of kids in Kliptown, a shantytown in Soweto, where some of the film is set. “There were children running barefoot among broken bottles and trash, and untreated sewage flowing in the street. And you could barely see – there was so much smoke [from wood fires] in the air. I bet you all the kids have asthma.”
Still, Crewson adds that there have been many pleasant experiences while filming in South Africa – including the World Cup. “It was just great,” she says, even if the blaring of vuvuzelas made it feel “like your head was being invaded by a swarm of bees.”
Between shoots on Winnie, she also found plenty of time to explore. Her son, Jack, joined her for a safari near the border with Botswana. They also took a trip to the Cape Town area, where they spotted whales and sharks off the coastline.
Of course, there’s some irony to be found in the fact that a film that sets out to buff Winnie’s memory is being made with Canadian money. When Winnie Mandela applied for a visa to travel to Canada in 2007 to attend the opening of an opera documenting her life, Ottawa turned her down because of her criminal record. “Maybe the officials will be able to look at [the film] and rethink it,” says Crewson.
In the meantime, Madikizela-Mandela, as she has called herself since her divorce from Nelson Mandela in 1996, will have to take solace in a sympathetic portrayal. Roodt, who was nominated for a best foreign-language-film Oscar for his 2004 film Yesterday, about an HIV-positive mother, says the film is “a tale all about forgiveness and redemption.
“I think ultimately I’d be very surprised if Winnie saw this film and didn’t cry.”
Gayblackcanada 