Movie Sets

* March 31, 1993: Actor Brandon Lee was accidentally killed by a .44-caliber slug during the filming of "The Crow." The slug was fired from a prop gun that was supposed to be loaded with blanks. * Jan. 3, 1992: A worker was crushed to death between two lighting equipment cranes on the set of the Kevin Costner movie "The Bodyguard." * Aug.

Being the son of an obsessive filmmaker means your life already has a destiny, whether intended or not. That was certainly the case for Jonás Cuarón, the eldest son of Mexican filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón. Young Jonás spent weeks on his father's first feature, 1991's "Love in the Time of Hysteria. " He had a small role in his father's second film, 1995's "A Little Princess," and attended school on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank. "He was so happy," remembered Alfonso. "He was the only boy surrounded by 20 girls.

Bob Willoughby, who created iconic portraits of his muse, Audrey Hepburn, and dozens of other celebrities as one of the first still photographers assigned to capture life on Hollywood film sets, has died. He was 82. Willoughby died Friday of cancer at his home in Vence, France, said Claire Willoughby, a daughter-in-law. The rise of Life and Look magazines created a demand for more than routine photo stills from movie sets and led to a career for Willoughby that spanned three decades.

Margaret Pellegrini, one of the last of the 124 little people who played Munchkins in the 1939 film "The Wizard of Oz," died Wednesday at her Glendale, Ariz., home. She was 89. The 4-foot-tall Pellegrini, a frequent guest of honor at "Oz" festivals around the U.S., had been in declining health since a stroke in March, said Colleen Zimmer, an organizer of the annual Oz-Stravaganza festival in Chittenango, N.Y., birthplace of "Oz" author L. Frank Baum. Illness kept Pellegrini from serving as grand marshal at this year's event.

Seeking to regulate what some contend is a police force within the police force, the Los Angeles Police Commission on Tuesday approved a plan that would allow Chief Daryl F. Gates to select the police retirees and off-duty officers who moonlight as guards on movie sets. The commission's unanimous vote represented the first tangible step in ending a controversy that has embroiled police administrators and the entertainment industry for more than a decade.

Hold the mayo. And the pastrami. Even--gasp--the cappuccino? Fearful of rumblings from the Los Angeles County health department, movie and TV production companies around town are thinking twice about putting out the traditional spread of finger foods and beverages for grazing by cast and crew members.

This is the unlikely story of how a public school finagled a movie-set house to make its dream library. The tale of the house from the film "Life as a House" is a sweet story of perseverance that bears some parallels to the plot line of the film. In the movie, terminally ill architect George Monroe, played by Kevin Kline, wants to build his dream house before he dies.

Buzz Gamble made his way down from the sawtooth mountains, across the wash and onto the dusty cattle path that ran from Big Bear down to the Morongo Basin. Dried out and craggy, Gamble's face wasn't so different from the desert around him. He had spent the last few months hiding out in the remote wilderness, tending a crop of high-grade marijuana. "Everything came off," he recalls. "Everything went well. And I had done my part . . . I had an old beat-up horse named Buck.

Public health officials have suspected for weeks that a hepatitis A outbreak among 19 workers on a San Marino movie set might be linked to lettuce that came from a prominent Northern California grower. But a contractor for the San Benito County company, Pride of San Juan, said this week that it had never been notified of the outbreak, let alone investigated as a possible source of tainted produce.

Since her death on Aug. 5, 1962, hundreds of books about Marilyn Monroe have been published by various writers, ranging from famous names such as Norman Mailer, Gloria Steinem and Joyce Carol Oates, to people who worked with her on movie sets. With so many choices, its hard to navigate through the Monroe oeuvre, but here are 10 volumes that should nourish the soul of her most ardent fans. "Marilyn: A Biography" (1973). Norman Mailer's controversial, lavish, coffee-table exploration of Monroe includes stunning images by several noted photographers as well as the author's rather grandiose prose.

School's out, your parents are annoying and suburban Ohio is totally boring. For the three teenage protagonists in "The Kings of Summer," there's only one antidote: Build a house in the woods. For the CBS Films coming-of-age comedy, which premieres in Los Angeles and New York on Friday and will roll out across the U.S this summer, director Jordan Vogt-Campbell envisioned a scrap-pile sanctuary -- one that young people could have realistically built on a bare-bones budget. The result is a charming, patchwork example of ingenuity and craftiness.

Angry Birds will be flying into movie theaters in July 2016 with Sony announcing Wednesday that it has acquired the worldwide rights to the ubiquitous game franchise. The 3-D CG-animated movie will be developed and financed by Rovio Entertainment, the Finnish gaming company that created "Angry Birds. " John Cohen, who most recently produced Illumination Entertainment/Universal Pictures' "Despicable Me," will produce.  Since its debut in December 2009, the "Angry Birds" game and its offshoots have been downloaded more than 1.7 billion times.

You know the Hugh Jackman rumor: The married, muscled actor is supposedly gay, according to - well, according to your friend who has a friend who is certain he's gay. Jackman sang a different tune to the Hollywood Reporter in an article published Wednesday that goes into detail about the actor's life, weight, work, friends and more. It also mentions the gay rumors. Turns out the person most upset by the rumors is Jackman's wife of 16 years, Deborra-Lee Furness. "Just recently, it bugs her," he told the mag, explaining that she uses the Internet more than he does.

Many industry pundits underestimated the prospects of "Texas Chainsaw 3D," the horror tale that finally knocked "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" from the top spot at the box office. Expected to gross about $16 million in its debut, the Leatherface sequel fared much better than predicted , selling an estimated $23 million of tickets. The film's commercial appeal wasn't the only part of "Texas Chainsaw" that people sold short. Producer Christa Campbell, a former pin-up girl and B-movie actress, said that Hollywood executives also assumed someone best known for her body couldn't have any moviemaking brains.

Voters told public health officials to begin monitoring the filming of sex scenes in pornographic movies. On Wednesday, the county was trying to figure out how. The new law requires porn actors to wear condoms and establishes a permitting system similar in some ways to how Los Angeles County inspects restaurants. Porn producers are required to purchase health permits from the county, which will do spot inspections on porn sets to make sure condoms are being used. The inspectors can close production if the filmmakers don't comply with the rules.

The gig: Veronika Kwan Vandenberg is president of international distribution for Warner Bros., Hollywood's largest film and television studio. She manages the release of more than 20 movies a year in more than 120 countries around the world, selecting release dates, dealing with cinema owners and collecting ticket sales revenue. In addition, as a senior executive in the studio's motion picture group, she helps select which movies Warner makes, with an eye toward potential worldwide popularity.

As director David O. Russell's now infamous "I (Heart) Huckabees" on-set freakout on Lily Tomlin, posted as a Web video, reaches the parody phase, his friends are coming forward to defend his shocking tirade -- and his colorful directing style. Sure, they say, he's "exacting" and doesn't suffer fools; to an outsider, they admit, his tantrum toward the film's costar captured on video might look like a madman's rant.

Being the son of an obsessive filmmaker means your life already has a destiny, whether intended or not. That was certainly the case for Jonás Cuarón, the eldest son of Mexican filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón. Young Jonás spent weeks on his father's first feature, 1991's "Love in the Time of Hysteria. " He had a small role in his father's second film, 1995's "A Little Princess," and attended school on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank. "He was so happy," remembered Alfonso. "He was the only boy surrounded by 20 girls.

Since her death on Aug. 5, 1962, hundreds of books about Marilyn Monroe have been published by various writers, ranging from famous names such as Norman Mailer, Gloria Steinem and Joyce Carol Oates, to people who worked with her on movie sets. With so many choices, its hard to navigate through the Monroe oeuvre, but here are 10 volumes that should nourish the soul of her most ardent fans. "Marilyn: A Biography" (1973). Norman Mailer's controversial, lavish, coffee-table exploration of Monroe includes stunning images by several noted photographers as well as the author's rather grandiose prose.

"Tonight You're Mine," set at (and filmed during) Scotland's largest outdoor rock festival, T in the Park, is a "Once"-like attempt at mixing simple romance, off-the-cuff charm and music. When preening American frontman Adam (Luke Treadaway), one-half of a hipster electronic duo, is accidentally handcuffed to Morello, the cheeky lead singer of a punk-lite all-girl band (a frisky, appealing Natalia Tena), it's not hard to figure out what the refrain of this meet-cute two-hander is going to sound like.