Tonight or early tomorrow morning in the Los Angeles area, hundreds of sleep-deprived film workers will be driving home after work in a state equivalent to legal drunkenness. Their unnecessary fatigue threatens their health and safety and the community at large.
When you hear the word "Hollywood" it's easy to think of the so-called rich and famous, the ones on Entertainment Tonight. But in fact most of the people who make up the film industry -- the cameramen and gaffers and editors and all the others -- are not "celebrities." The vast majority are the people behind the scenes -- the ones who routinely work 70+ hour weeks. These long hours are the industry standard -- scheduled and on the call sheet. If someone balks at that overload, there are 20 others standing by ready take the job.
Fifteen years ago this month, Brent Hershman, an assistant cameraman on the film Pleasantville, drove home after working a 19-hour day. Exhausted, he fell asleep at the wheel and crashed his car. He was killed. Brent's preventable death led me to begin my documentary Who Needs Sleep? which I finished in 2006.
Since his death, Brent's crew and friends have lobbied the film industry to "limit our workday to 14 hours, beginning at the call and ending when the last person is wrapped," saying that "the workforce in our industry has persevered for too long without such a vital safety guideline in place."
I've tried to carry on their message. On the Internet and with my camera in Washington, D.C., I have been calling attention to the fact that working long hours takes a toll on our health, safety, and family lives.
The medical evidence on sleep deprivation is alarming.
In Who Needs Sleep, Dr. William Dement, a psychiatrist at Stanford University School of Medicine, warns that sleep deprivation and long hours form a lethal combination. Sleep deprivation has been linked to high blood pressure, obesity, cognitive and mood changes, and heart disease.
Col. Gregory Belenky, M.D. of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, was assigned to find ways to keep soldiers awake. Because of the extensive resources of the military, he was able to discover compelling evidence demonstrating how critical sleep is to health and safety. In the film, he shows us an example of sleep-deprived pilots who crashed their plane because of their diminished cognitive abilities due to lack of sleep.
But government regulators seem afraid or unwilling to confront Hollywood, and they have fallen short on protecting workers' hours in our industry. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is chartered "to help workers come home alive and healthy at the end of the day." But OSHA tries to dodge the issue -- they've told me that perhaps we should take it up with our union, or with the employer.
We wouldn't want the Food and Drug Administration to let supermarkets sell rotten meat, yet somehow grossly overtired workers are asked to operate machinery on movie sets and public highways, where nearly one in five fatalities is related to drowsy driving. That's the fault of government regulators. When OSHA ignores its charter and fails to oversee safety, the agency leaves the well being of workers and the public to market forces. That allows producers to take the cheapest way out. Long hours and disregard for the human need for sleep is a case of corporate values outweighing human values.
But nothing has changed in our industry. Long hours are still as routine as when Brent was killed. Back-to-back 16+ hour days are still routine. We work late on Fridays deep into Saturday -- it's what we call the Lost Weekend.
There's nothing I love more than making films. But the health of my fellow film workers and citizens is more important than anything on the silver screen. Long hours can be an acceptable part of our work, but repeated excessively-long shifts and short turnaround times that leave us chronically sleep deprived are not.
This is about our lives and the threat to public safety. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration paints a dark picture of tired and distracted driving deaths, citing texting, emailing, surfing the Web, eating meals. In accident reports, police check for alcohol and drugs -- and now they include "asleep at the wheel" as a cause. People who sleep six to seven hours a night are twice as likely to be involved in such a crash as those sleeping 8 hours or more, while people sleeping less than 5 hours increased their risk four to five times, according to a AAA report.
To stay awake on a late-night set, we down gallons of coffee and Red Bull -- or reach for the medicine cabinet. Common pills are Vivarin, NoDoz, Stay Alert, and Provigil. With quick turnaround time, we are obliged to shortchange our families and ourselves. Sleeping fast requires help: Alluna, Lunesta, or Ambien are common among the sleep deprived.
There's a line in Who Needs Sleep that goes like this: "the only thing we own is our time." Dr. Eve Van Cauter points out that "sleep deprivation is unique to the human. There is no other animal that sleep-deprives itself." Stretched thin, on little sleep at our jobs, I wonder if we really own our time anymore.
While making Who Needs Sleep, I was driving home after 14 hours of work. I knew I was tired, but I opened the windows and played the radio, confident I stay keep awake. But sometimes you can't will yourself to stay up if you're overtired. The lights went out. My beautiful '87 El Camino was totaled. Hanging upside down by my seatbelt, I could hear the paramedics ask each other, "You think he's alive?"
During the course of making my documentary, there were three deaths. One of them was my friend Conrad Hall, the Oscar-winning cinematographer.
From the hospital, he gave Roger Deakins, a mutual friend and cinematographer, and me a statement that he wanted to make public:
As Directors of Photography, our responsibility is to the visual image of the film as well as the well-being of our crew. The continuing and expanding practice of working extreme hours can compromise both the quality of our work and the health and safety of others.
He knew I was making the film, and he urged me to finish it and to get it out.
That's what led me to form 12 On 12 Off, a nonprofit organization aimed at raising awareness of the lives of film workers and the risks of long hours and sleep deprivation. Our credo begins: "As individuals, we believe every human being working in the film industry has a right to enjoy a life outside of their work, including family, friendships, and sleep."
As I write this, I believe I am honoring Conrad's pledge, which is now mine.
Haskell Wexler is an Academy Award-winning cinematographer (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf; Bound for Glory) and director of the groundbreaking film Medium Cool. For more information on workers' hours in the film industry, go to his blog at 12 On 12 Off. He's working on a variety of film projects and was recently shooting on location in Northern California on the Yurok Indian reservation on Kevin McKiernan's new film, Line in the Sand.
Claire Caruso PhD RN
Research Health Scientist
National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health
I do not work in reality TV, but I do have friends who are some of the most veteran editors in the business and -for the most- could be considered the pioneers of the format. The stories they tell are unreal, and the behaviour of the producers -often people with absolutely no training in any aspect of TV or film production - is among the worst.
And less not even START with the net-payment schemes and the chronic syndrome of delaying payments...sometimes for up to 3, 6 , 9 months. I have assisted friends who worked for MAJOR companies and whose producers simply do not care WHATSOEVER about paying on tiime or paying without getting sued. One of the WORST companies as far as payment dalying tactics and brutal work ethics is The Discovery Channel. They stories I have heard coming from them are truly disgusting,
Or just hire more people and cut hours to reasonable. I'm sure there are plenty jobless that would be thrilled to take those jobs.
But what was within the context of the article, however, was about being overworked to the detriment of themselves and the others. Train more people to do the job. It's not rocket science and in a lot of cases does not require four years of college or more.
As the years have gone by and I'm better at what I do, I have decided to pay more attention to my life outside of work.
Every so often when I'm leaving work after an 8 hour day someone will make a crack about me working banker's hours. I usually respond, "Hey, it's not my fault you aren't good enough at your job to get all your work done in 8 hours."
That usually shuts them up.
I'm glad to see people speaking out about it. This issue really needs attention, and I always felt like it was just too big for me to make waves. Even if people aren't killing themselves with heavy machinery, health is a major factor. My husband developed condition after condition on this one film, whereas 2 yrs before he had been completely healthy. The life expectancy of these sorts of industry positions is in the 50's. I want my husband to keep working at his calling, but I need him around for longer than that.
I now live in Minnesota and was in shock when I went to work on a production and they would try to wrap after 10 -12 hrs!!!!!! I told someone that I was so surprised by this and the response back was, "We all have families at home that we want to be with." The midwest is a different and welcomed difference in my life! Mind you we do have LONG days on some productions but they are respectful of your time...or maybe I just think they are after so many years of 14 hrs. as a 'normal day"! There is NO THER INDUSTRY LIKE SHOWBIZ!