On the last night of his life, Brandon Lee decided to stop off at Wilmington's Fitness Today health club for a quick workout before heading to Carolco Studios for what promised to be an arduous evening of filming. Lee looked exhausted; in the three months since the 28-year-old actor had arrived in North Carolina to star in The Crow, his punishing schedule had taken a toll. The movie, a bleak, dark action melodrama about a rock musician who returns from the dead to avenge his and his girlfriend's murders, had been a brutal shoot even for an actor in Lee's superb physical condition. Almost all of the filming took place at night, with Lee outdoors and sometimes shirtless and barefoot in subfreezing temperatures. The script called for so much rain that when the skies didn't cooperate, stagehands would turn mechanical rainmakers on the shivering actors. On top of that, the $14 million production had been plagued by a series of freakish incidents that ranged from the near electrocution of a carpenter to a storm that inflicted costly damage on the sets. The stress of making The Crow had thrown Lee's body clock into havoc; he would wake up at four in the afternoon, work all night, and collapse into bed at 9 a.m., six days a week, ''and on the seventh day,'' he joked, ''I drink.'' His workouts-half an hour or so on the StairMaster, then some light barbells-kept him relaxed without turning him into the kind of muscle-bound action-film actor he detested. Lewis E. Davis Jr., the health club's owner, walked over to greet the young man. ''You look tired,'' he said. ''How you doing?'' ''Great,'' said Lee. ''I thought you'd be gone by now.'' ''No,'' said Lee, ''I've got until April 8.'' Lee and Davis chatted a while longer, mostly about the actor's upcoming marriage to Eliza Hutton, a onetime story editor for Kiefer Sutherland's Stillwater Productions, who had been shuttling between L.A. and Wilmington so that the couple could spend time together. Their wedding was to take place % April 17 in Mexico, a week after The Crow wrapped. In just a few more days, Lee's work would be done, and the coming week looked to be blessedly easy. Most of the scenes left were flashbacks to happier times for the character Lee was playing-meaning no rain, no freezing outdoors in the middle of the night, and less of the heavy black-and-white death- mask makeup he had to wear for much of the movie. But the shoot awaiting Lee on the night of March 30 promised something more difficult-a scene in which his character was to be gunned down by Funboy, one of The Crow's villains. After finishing his workout, Lee left Fitness Today and headed to Carolco's soundstage 4. Less than 24 hours later, he was dead. Coroners in Wilmington removed what appeared to be a .44-caliber bullet that had lodged against his spine, then released the body to his family. Earlier in the making of The Crow, one of Lee's friends had quizzed him about the film's plethora of complex action sequences. ''No, man,'' Lee reassured him. ''Nobody ever gets hurt doin' that stuff. They've worked it out.''
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