Who was the actor who shot himself in the head with a prop / stunt gun - just fooling around - but died from it?
I’d guess it was about 15 years ago …?
Jon Erik-Hexum.
One of my friends worked on Hexum’s first series, “Voyagers!”. She said, after his death, that he was “sweet, but dumb.”
He was a rising star in the '80s. He apparently had no clue that if you put a gun filled with blanks right up to your head (I think it was to his temple) that the blast will be enough to really mess you up. What a sad waste.
Actually, got the hyphen in the wrong place: Jon-Erik Hexum.
Same thing happened to Bruce Lee’s son, Brandon Lee. He of The Crow fame.
This is why the Straight Dope ROCKS!!! Thanks yosemitebabe! Funny, I could remember he was described as ‘dumb’ but I couldn’t remember the poor guy’s name.
S.
Brandon Lee shot HIMSELF with the prop gun? I was under the impression that someone else did it.
Yes, Hexum was fooling around with a gun, fully aware it was loaded with blanks. He had no clue that a blank cartridge carries much the same charge as a real one; the only difference being that the blank has no BULLET stuck in it, but usually some manner of plastic wadding, instead.
I understand Hexum’s autopsy reported that death was due to something akin to blunt force trauma to the temple, caused by the concussion of the shell.
Any Hollywood stuntman will tell you that SOME damn thing is coming out of a gun that’s fired, even if it’s only blanks. Even the wadding can hurt you if it’s traveling at bullet speeds, and quite certainly if you shoot it into your temple at point-blank range…
You’re welcome, Stainz! And yes, the Straight Dope does definitely rock!
I know about this guy because my friend got one of her first big “jobs” on TV working for “Voyagers!” We all heard about her day-to-day adventures on the show. I never met the guy (and wasn’t that huge of a fan, though damn, he was a cutie) but when you hear about him from someone who is working with him, and then one day, he’s dead, well, it makes an impression.
The Brandon Lee death really bothers me as well. It wasn’t due to his own stupidity (which, in Hexum’s case, it was, bless his little heart). And his mom (Bruce Lee’s widow) had already lost her husband at a young age, and now she loses her son? That totally sucks.
Oops. Reading is Fundamental. Here’s the details. It’s really very, very sad and tragic. I’ll use a Spoiler tag so yosemitebabe doesn’t have to read it if she doesn’t want to.
He was to be married on April 17th 1993 to his fiance Eliza Hutton in New Mexico Two weeks after filming wrapped. On March 31st 1993, the 52nd day of a 58 day shoot, Brandon prepared to film his first real scene without make up on. The scene was to explain how he and his onscreen fiance’ were murdered. It was recalled as a strange day because the way the two characters were to be killed was changed several times before they decided that Eric Draven (Lee) was to enter his apartment and come across his fiance’ being beaten by four thugs, upon which one was to turn and shoot Eric and leave him wounded. The cameras began to role and Brandon entered the apartment in character. The Michael Massee character, Fun Boy spots Eric, holds the gun up and shoots as planned, Brandon held his stomach, motioned to the director to ‘Cut’ then fell backwards against the door. Seconds later the director Alex Proyas shouted ‘CUT’, Brandon remained on the floor, Jeff Imada ran over to Brandon with a paramedic to see if he’d hit his head on the door when he fell and knocked himself out. They discovered a thin slit an inch below to the right of his navel, but this didn’t hold any clues as to what happened. They removed Brandon’s jacket and spotted a hole in his T-shirt. By this time Brandon had slipped into unconciousness. An ambulance was called and Brandon was rushed to hospital. He underwent 5 hours of surgery upon which they discovered a bullet had been the cause of the damage. Eliza Hutton made it to the hospital just in time, at 1:04pm Brandon Lee died. 
To further Dooku’s post, going from my own memory of the later investigations:
[spoiler]The gun used in the shoot was a revolver. It was a real weapon, not a plastic prop. There were multiple shots in the scene. In one, shot from Lee’s perspective, the viewer saw the front of the gun. In another, shot from behind the bad guy’s shoulder, the viewer saw the gunshot and Lee’s reaction.
Because it was a revolver, in the first shot the gun was loaded with “fake” rounds – which have no charge but do have a bullet. This was so the gun looked loaded from the front. In the second shot, the gun was loaded with blanks – no bullet, but with a charge.
The prop master did not realize that the bullet (or part of it) from one of the fake rounds was lodged in the barrel. When the blank was fired, there was enough charge to propel the detached piece into Lee[/spoiler]
Again, this is from memory, but I think that’s pretty close to the investigatory findings.
I had a major case of the hots for him – he was a ridiculously handsome man.
He was also, BTW, Joan Collins’s “protege,” IIRC.
The details of the Brandon Lee accident are a little more complex and bizarre but essentially it was a blank half round that lodged a slug in the barrel where no one could see it.
Then later full round blanks were loaded so a form of bullet was created.
Don’t worry, guys, I won’t swoon at the details of Brandon Lee’s death. It simply bums me out terribly. I appreciate the spoiler boxes though. That was very sweet. (But I read them, just so you know!)
Funny, I forgot all about it until just now, but I did an ink drawing of Hexum, way back when. (I quickly uploaded it to my web page.) I never thought it looked that much like him but I guess it’s okay. I must have done the drawing because my friend worked with him—it’s been so long I can’t remember. Or maybe because he was so damned handsome, that would have been a good reason! (twickster, you were not alone in your admiration of him—another friend of mine was absolutely devoted to him.)
As an aside, Jon-Erik Hexum was not a stupid guy. He just made a silly mistake. In fact, after an undergrad degree Hexum went to MSU to do master’s work in biomedical engineering. I don’t know if he graduated or not, but clearly he was no dummy.
It always blows me away when I see some of the talent possessed by other dopers. That’s really impressive. Best I could do is the “hand-turkey” that I made in the 3rd grade.
Wow. I didn’t know that about him.
I think my friend gave me the impression that he had a sort of boylike “goofus” way about him. She liked him pretty well, I think. But what a dumb thing for him to do. How tragically dumb.
Wow…I also had a friend who was working with him at the time…I forget exactly, but I think it was a movie, or movie of the week. Whatever it was, I think it was his last film.
She just said he was a really nice guy and everybody on the film crew was really upset about it. She didn’t mention anything about him being cute-but-dumb, and trust me, that woman would have mentioned it to me if that were the case.
Jon-Erik Hexum was one of the two or three hottest men EVER to walk this earth.
The episode of Voyagers where he had to be a gladiator, and fought a duel wearing nothing but a leather miniskirt, yanked me, quivering and spent, into manhood. For that I will always be gratefull.
“Do you like movies about gladiators?”
I like GOOD movies, irrespective of subject matter. I like “Spartacus”; I hated “Gladiator.”
It matches the report on IMDb.