Brandon Lee's death brought to a grimly abrupt conclusion the production of a film that had already seen more than its share of disasters. "Pictures have personalities, and there are some that don't want to get made," The Crow's executive producer, Robert L. Rosen, said last month. "I would certainly put this one into that category." Indeed, "the curse of The Crow," as some of the film's crew members labeled it, had cast a pall over the set since Feb. 1, the first day of principal photography, when Jim Martishius, a 27-year-old carpenter, was severely burned by a live power line that hit his crane. That same evening, the production's grip truck, parked on the Carolco backlot, caught fire. "After that," says the film's unit publicist, Jason Scott, "people started keeping track of everything that happened." The list of bizarre incidents quickly grew. A construction worker accidentally put a screwdriver through his hand; a disgruntled set sculptor rammed into The Crow's plaster-sculpture studio with his car; a drive-by shooting occurred just blocks from a Crow location. Soon after, some crewmen on The Hudsucker Proxy, a dark comedy starring Tim Robbins and Paul Newman that was sharing studio space with The Crow, began keeping tabs on all of the catastrophes that were emanating from the set next door. ("It was kind of a hobby here for a while," says one Hudsucker crew member.) On occasion, the Crow crew even joined in the smiling-through-chaos spirit. "I told them our unit photographer had broken a tooth on a craft service bagel," says production coordinator Jennifer Roth. Just when the man-made accidents seemed to abate, natural disasters joined in to make the remainder of the shoot as difficult as possible-notably a March 13 storm that destroyed the set. "My next movie," joked producer Rosen after that, "is gonna be two people in a phone booth." But none of the rigors of shooting The Crow fazed its energetic star in the least. "I'm really enjoying it," said Brandon Lee in one of his final interviews. "It's an opportunity for me a plum role. It's got a haunted quality that I really like." Ten years after dropping out of high school, Lee was on the verge of realizing his dream-a chance to star in a movie in which his role did not depend on the martial artistry he had been learning since he was 2 years old. By last summer, Lee had become so determined to build a reputation on his own that he turned down a chance to play his father in Universal's biopic Dragon-The Bruce Lee Story (the film opens in May with Jason Scott Lee-no relation-in the title role). The Crow promised Lee something different-a brooding, mood-heavy adaptation of a cult comic book (see sidebar) that would rest more heavily on his acting skills than on his athletic prowess. Lee, who had been working hard on scenes from David Rabe's play Hurlyburly in his acting class, longed to portray what he described as "a character driven to the edge of his capabilities who has so much to deal with (that) he can't respond rationally anymore." Among those under consideration for the role had been River Phoenix, Christian Slater, and singer-guitarist Charlie Sexton. But Lee's affinity for the part was so evident that executive producer Edward R. Pressman began to think of The Crow as the potential opener to a whole series of films starring the darkly handsome actor. Standing 6 feet tall and weighing a lean, tautly muscled 160 pounds, Lee had a physical resemblance to the agile, dark-browed comic-book character that was astonishing. Beyond that, he had a bent for a kind of brashly morbid wit that suited The Crow perfectly. Lee used the 1986 earnings from his first film, the Cantonese Legacy of Rage, to buy himself a 1959 Cadillac hearse. His attitude, however, was jaunty rather than doomstruck: When a reporter asked him where he'd like to end up, his reply came casually: "Oh, in a little urn about this big." Arriving in Wilmington in January, Lee first rented a house on Figure Eight Island and then moved to Carolina Beach, which was closer to the set and enabled him to travel without a chauffeur. As filming began, he did his best to accommodate himself to the long nights and sound-asleep days of The Crow's schedule. "In the past few months, I've been realizing that I'd like to see the sun for once," he complained late in the shooting, adding wistfully, "I haven't done anything here except make the movie." When Lee did have free time, he would sometimes drop by The Mint Julep, a downtown hangout favored by the film's crew and extras, who would often show up still in costume as menacing motorcycle thugs; there, he would shoot a game or two of pool, keeping to himself. Lee also spent a good deal of time at the health club, where he would indulge his delight in macabre humor for a small but impressed audience. "He came in one morning," says owner Davis, "with a bloodstain on him, and he said, 'Oh, look, I've been shot!' He held up his shirt and said, 'I can't get this stuff off my stomach!' They'd put dye on it or something." On another day, Lee came in still wearing the latex scars that The Crow's makeup men had glued to his torso and arms. "He worked out all that night," says Davis, "and all the stuff fell off onto my floor. To help him, we had to pick up his scars." Lee also spent time with J.K. Loftin, a local musician and teacher who helped the actor prepare for a couple of scenes in which he had to play the guitar. "He was always wearing black jeans and a black T-shirt, and he had this guitar-actually kind of a cheap guitar-that they got him," says Loftin. "I gave him three months' worth of lessons in two weeks, and he sucked it up. He was just so sharp. He was very aware of where he came from-how could you not be?-but he was really a regular guy." Loftin and his wife, Cathy, became friendly with Lee and Hutton, who told them of their plans for a large and festive wedding in Ensenada, Mexico: They wanted to charter a bus, take 45 of their friends over the border, and marry on a walkway to the beach. "They'd rented an entire hotel in Baja California," says Loftin. "They were very sweet together. But she was handling most of the day-to-day preparations so he could work." In fact, Lee was devoting most of his energy to the role he felt would be his professional breakthrough, and was evidently touched by The Crow's themes of loss and resurrection. "It's a great part," he said a few weeks before his death. "My girlfriend keeps telling me that (my character) Eric is the symbol of a man who can come back and get justice for all the people who never got it. I don't know-that sounds a little heavy to me-but in a way I guess it's true. Eric and (his girlfriend) Shelly were engaged, and at a crucial moment, it was taken away. There are wonderful people everywhere who have awful things ! happen to them, who are never given a chance to do anything about it."
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