Water. Bridger. Death.
Authorities say a crew member who died working on a set for the upcoming Johnny Depp film The Lone Ranger is a 48-year-old man from Redondo Beach, California.
The coroner's office announced on September 24, 2012, the man's name was Michael Andrew Bridger.
(This Michael Andrew Bridger is not be confused with Michael Andrew Bridger, who was born on October 5, 1943, with that name but today employs the name Michael Morpurgo, OBE, FKC, AKC, an English author, poet, playwright and librettist, best known for his work in children's literature about the coastline and the sea. Indeed, his contributions to Oxfam's Ox-Tales were in the "Water" selection.)
The Lone Ranger's Bridger was pronounced dead on September 21, 2012. The 48-year-old was in scuba gear cleaning a pool to be used on the film set in Acton, which is in northeast Los Angeles County, California. Early indication is that Bridger may have suffered a heart attack, but the final coroner's report is forthcoming.
A spokesman for producers Walt Disney said: “We regretfully confirm that a Lone Ranger crew member has passed away after being taken to a local hospital. Our full support is behind the investigation into the circumstances of this terrible event.”
Walt Disney Studios is producing the film The Lone Ranger as an upcoming action Western film directed by Gore Verbinski. The film stars Armie Hammer in the lead role and Johnny Depp as Tonto. It is due for release on July 3, 2013. Source.
Tonto
The character of Tonto was portrayed most famously on television by Jay Silverheels, a Canadian Mohawk First Nations actor.
Johnny Depp, who plays Tonto in the new film, was born in Owensboro, Kentucky, and raised in Florida, as the youngest of four children of Betty Sue Palmer (née Wells), a waitress, and John Christopher Depp, a civil engineer. Nick Barratt, a researcher for the BBC genealogical TV program Who Do You Think You Are?, stated in 2011 he had traced Depp's family name, Deppes, to 14th-century French Huguenots living in England. Depp has surmised that he is part Native American, saying in 2011, "I guess I have some Native American [in me] somewhere down the line. My great-grandmother was quite a bit of Native American, she grew up Cherokee or maybe Creek Indian. Makes sense in terms of coming from Kentucky, which is rife with Cherokee and Creek." Source.
The Lone Ranger is a fictional character, a masked ex-Texas Ranger who, with his Native American companion Tonto, fights injustice in the American Old West. The character has become an enduring icon of American culture. He first appeared in 1933 in a radio show conceived either by WXYZ radio station owner George W. Trendle and by Fran Striker, the show's writer. The radio series inspired a spin-off called The Green Hornet, which depicts the son of the Lone Ranger's nephew Dan, Britt Reid, originally played by Al Hodge, who in contemporary times fights crime with a similar secret identity and a sidekick, Kato. In the Green Hornet comic book series published by NOW Comics, the Lone Ranger makes a cameo through a portrait in the Reid home. Contrary to most visual media depictions, and acknowledged by developer/original scripter Ron Fortier to be the result of legal complications, his mask covers all of his face, as it did in the two serials from Republic Pictures. However, the properties have been acquired by separate owners and the familial link has been ignored in the Western character's various incarnations. The Lone Ranger-Green Hornet connection is part of Philip Jose Farmer's Wold Newton Universe, which connects disparate fictional characters.
I’d actually seen a painting by an artist named Kirby Sattler, and looked at the face of this warrior and thought: ‘That’s it’. The stripes down the face and across the eyes… it seemed to me like you could almost see the separate sections of the individual, if you know what I mean. There’s this very wise quarter, a very tortured and hurt section, an angry and rageful section, and a very understanding and unique side. I saw these parts, almost like dissecting a brain, these silvers of the individual. That makeup inspired me. ~ Johnny Depp(Depp's statements sound like the introspective transfiguration comments of Bob Dylan, detailed by Andrew Griffin and myself, recently.)
The Lone Ranger is The Green Hornet's Great-Uncle
The Green Hornet is an American radio and television masked vigilante created by George W. Trendle and Fran Striker, with input from radio director James Jewell, in 1936. The name of Captain Reid's son, the Lone Ranger's nephew, a later character first introduced in the radio series, who became a sort of juvenile sidekick to the Masked Man, is also Dan Reid. When Trendle and Striker later created The Green Hornet, they made this Dan Reid the father of Britt Reid, alias the Green Hornet, thereby making the Lone Ranger the Green Hornet's great-uncle.
The Green Hornet's Kato on television was played by Bruce Lee.
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Hollywood must be pretty hard up for decent movie scripts when all they can do is keep on resurrecting comic book superheroes. Once resurrected they seem to not do so well lately for a catharsis in a cape:
ReplyDeletethe Spiderman accidents during the play, Aurora and Batman, the Superman curse, and now a death of a worker on one of Depp's movies.
I came across a short article about comic book superheroes. One paragraph jumped out at me and I inserted three words, in brackets, that kind of explain for me why the resurrecting of superheroes isn't working anymore and is not likely to ever work again:
"But [in real life] madness isn't so tidy. No reason will satisfy; no reason can, because the act occurred in reason's absence. We are left in its wake to guess and blame and, ultimately, finally, helplessly, to mourn. "
http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2012/07/20/157115707/catharsis-in-a-cape-on-comic-book-heroes-and-real-world-violence
Catharsis In A Cape: On Comic-Book Heroes And Real-World Violence
I think Reality has outgrown comic book superheroes.
Ann>I think Reality has outgrown comic book superheroes
ReplyDeleteI have a question for Ann--
Superman first appeared around 1932, and Batman around 1939. "Reality" in that time period gave rise to WW2 and all the genocides during that conflict and reshuffling of the world after.
Superheroes were entertainment during all that. And the 1960s even saw culture turn to "flower power" and hippies after all that real life horror.
Do you think the current world compares in any way to the world of the late 30s? As bad as things are now, is there any global issue as evil as teh eugenics movement, the global war against the weak?
Sure, there's conflict now. There are crazy people now. But isn't there always?
Why would anyone look at our world today, and believe things are worse than, say, the 30s and 40s?
Is it? Or does some group or coalition of groups want people to believe things are SO BAD because desperate people are more easily swayed?
I don't think reality has outgrown comic book superheroes. Really, do you?
These freaky deaths on movie sets have always intrigued me.
ReplyDeleteHere's a post I wrote about Brandon Lee's death and this freaky joker doll scene in the movie "Dragon",
http://brizdazz.blogspot.com.au/2012/01/dragon-precognition.html
which was alraedy made before Brandon died on the set of "The Crow".
As far as I know,I was the only one who had spotted this freaky scene shot and made the connection,because try as I may,I couldn't find anything on the net about this doll scene from the movie.I had to snap a photo on my cell camera of the DVD paused to show other bloggers what I was talking about.
Feel free to use what you like out of the post Loren.
Mark> 'I don't think reality has outgrown comic book superheroes. Really, do you?'
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely, Mark. At least for adults. Kids, on the other hand, will buy into anything with enough marketing.
We are no longer in the 30's, 40's, 50's, or 60's. We are in a New Paradigm -- one where we are completely controlled via computer databases. The reason why this has occurred has mostly to do with the fact this world has gone light-years away from the innocence of the 40's and 50's. Plus the technology was there. The world today is now totally and completely dangerous. A lot of the danger comes from ordinary people themselves -- as we read in so many of Loren Coleman's articles. So people now need to be tracked for everybody's safety. I don't like being tracked and everything I do known, but it's part of the Paradigm Shift and there's nothing I can do about it.
In the 21st Century, complexity is increasing, along with a folding of complexity on top of itself, the increase becoming greater than the exponential.
Thinking of Reality as a debate between A or B appears futile. In an increasingly complex system, Reality does not express itself as A or B. Only in the economic, political, and religious world does Reality express itself as A or B. But these are systems of artificial constructs, ego, and laws, policies, doctrines and dogmas.
You ask about the Powers That Be,
Mark> 'Or does some group or coalition of groups want people to believe things are SO BAD because desperate people are more easily swayed?'
Some think the PTB are the aliens of the movie 'Prometheus', but more likely the alphabet organizations like the Bilderbergs, the Trilaterial Commission, and a number of others. These are the groups actually running the world. Personally I don't believe they are trying to influence desperate people. The alphabet organizations, whatever they do, they are more likely to understand limited resources and whatever else they deal with, better than the average joe.
I am not sure which aspect of the Eugenics movement you are thinking of that worries you. One aspect, the right to die, is often written in hysterical terms usually by right-wing Christians. But right to die is grassroots, and has nothing to do with the PTB.
All I know is that sitting in a darkened theatre, in front of a mega screen, watching superheroes do completely unrealistic things 'to save the world' is an activity best suited for the dreaming mind.
No, I don't believe in superheroes anymore. I once did. I use to believe in Good vs. Evil. You know, some people still await JC to come and set everything right. I use to wait also.
He never did show up and he had plenty of opportunities in the past 2,000 years.
I can only hope that like the Infant in '2001 Space Odyssey', that somehow Humanity is growing up, on some level at least.
RE:
ReplyDelete"The Lone Ranger is The Green Hornet's Great-Uncle"
Interesting connection considering the Lee/Kato,Brandon Lee/The Crow,Depp/The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus,Ledger/The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus,Ledger/Joker,The real Green Hornet cameo in "Dragon" the movie about Bruce Lee and that weird Joker doll next to the movie 'Brandon' in "Dragon",before Brandon's actual death in real life on the set of "The Crow".
And Johnny even looks like
"The Crow" with that make-up in "The Lone Ranger".
Spooky stuff indeed.
Many years ago... the winter of 1963, by my recollection. I was four years old. On a cold slushy day in some grey suburb of Denver, Colorado, i was playing in a nearby school soccer field with some other children. Approaching from across the field was a masked man in a spiffy white cowboy suit on a handsome white horse. He came up to our group of children and engaged in polite greetings and proceeded to demonstrate the abilities of his horse and himself as a rider.
ReplyDeleteI was thrilled. It was very unexpected and larger than life through my four year old eyes.
After he concluded his tricks with his horse, he reared it up it's hind legs and yelled Hi Ho Silver... Away. Proceeding away from us towards a bermed rise of the school grounds, the horse as it ascended the short, sharp rise; slipped on the slushy slope; and the lone ranger and white steed slid backward and sideways into a mud hole at the bottom.
Tonto wasn't there to provide a stoic and obvious observation of the precipitating conditions. I did not even know about the Lone Ranger for years after that cold damp day. But the image of his graceful entrance and the muddy, steaming mess that hobbled away into the distance stayed with me.
@Mark, surely you're joking. Things are infinitely worse today than in the 30's or 40's. Do you own a TV, computer or radio? The world is dominated by psychopaths and murderers but, instead of them wearing silly costumes like the Nazi's, they wear bespoke suits.
ReplyDelete