OUTRAGED : Landis Relieved but Calls Prosecution Dishonest

“Twilight Zone” director John Landis said Monday that, although he is relieved about his acquittal last week, he remains deeply outraged that he was prosecuted for the 1982 film set deaths of actor Vic Morrow and two children.

“I think it was a terribly and completely dishonest prosecution,” Landis said in a wide-ranging half-hour interview with The Times. “The district attorney saw this as a political opportunity. I think certain people saw this tragedy as a career opportunity.”

Indeed, the prominent director charged, the district attorney’s office created a melodrama in which he was assigned the starring role as the arrogant villain.

Prosecutor’s Scenario

“Something that I realized during the course of the trial when the prosecutor (Deputy Dist. Atty. Lea Purwin D’Agostino) was ranting was . . . She is not talking about me, she is not talking about John Landis. She is talking about a character she has created to fit a scenario . . . .

“It was my set, and believe me, I feel that accident very strongly. . . . But I realized this has nothing to do with me, this has nothing to do with John Landis. This has to do with their drama, their melodrama.

“Candidly, instead of being a relief, that was much more frightening. I learned a hell of a lot through this whole experience, not everything good. I’m not happy but I’m obviously relieved.”

Landis, 36, and four fellow film-making associates were acquitted Friday on involuntary manslaughter charges at the end of a vitriolic 10-month trial in which he was accused by D’Agostino of having acted as a “tyrannical dictator” and “master puppeteer” on the film set.

Morrow, 53, Renee Chen, 6, and Myca Dinh Lee, 7, were killed when a helicopter struck by the fireball of a special effects explosive struck them in a filming sequence.

Sharp Criticism

In the interview Monday, Landis, who rarely spoke on the record during the lengthy trial, got his own feelings about D’Agostino and her superiors off his chest.

“Candidly,” he said, “Mrs. D’Agostino is a grotesque, an aberration. And she is very unimportant. What is important is the Los Angeles district attorney’s office spending this kind of money pursuing something that they know damn well is bogus.

”. . . I became more and more cynical as I listened to deception after deception.”

Landis, director of such box-office smashes as “Animal House” and “Trading Places,” was the first Hollywood director ever to be criminally charged for deaths on a set, according to authorities.

Although he admitted from the start that he illegally hired the children, he was instead charged with five counts of involuntary manslaughter stemming from alleged criminal negligence and child endangerment. If convicted, he faced a maximum six-year prison sentence.

Praise for Jurors

At times during the trial, Landis acknowledged Monday, he felt worried that the jurors, who sat impassively through the proceedings, might have been swayed by D’Agostino’s arguments that the director acted recklessly.

“When you’re sitting there looking at the jurors, you don’t know what they were hearing, what they were understanding,” the director said. “. . . But every single accusation, every single claim of the prosecution was answered by the jury and that was thrilling. . . . I’d like to again express my gratitude to the jurors for their patience and their compassion.”

“It was like a Frank Capra movie. These people were remarkable, forthright and intelligent and that was very, very moving to me.”

Landis emphasized that the accident, for which he still faces civil court suits, “obviously changed my life.”

“It’s changed everyone’s life connected with it,” he continued. “No deceptions, no lies, no overt chicanery is going to change the fact that three people died in a terrible accident.”

Cost of Legal Services

But the decision of the district attorney’s office to prosecute him, he acknowledged, has affected his career only in terms of time constraints and the need to earn enough money to pay for the hefty legal fees of Nashville-based defense attorney James Neal.

Court costs for the trial came to about $6,500 a day or more than $700,000 over its course. The figure does not include the bills for the privately retained defense attorneys, which ran well over the $1-million figure it cost to produce the “Twilight Zone” film segment in which the actors were killed, according to the defense.

After taking a vacation with his wife, Landis said, he will begin working on a new, as yet undetermined, film project.

In reflecting on his first-time close-up look at the legal system, the longtime politically liberal Beverly Hills resident said it was “an eye-opening experience.”

Concern for Justice

“I saw blacks and Latinos shuffled through there,” Landis said. “Clearly, the criminal justice system as it functions in Los Angeles County is overcrowded. . . . So what happens is these people become grist for the mill. It becomes a processing plant and . . . justice is not served. I am one of the fortunate ones who could afford (private) counsel.”

Landis also took issue with statements by the prosecution that the case might serve as a warning to any film directors who consider undertaking reckless stunts on their film sets.

“The film industry has an excellent record of safety, always has, always will,” Landis said. “It’s a much safer industry than the car business, the steel business, the transportation industry and all the other major American industries.

“If the accident makes people more aware and safer that’s a good thing. But I think the idea of danger in the film business is grossly exaggerated.”