Sleepless in Hollywood: 

A Threat to Health and Safety

Posted: 03/29/2012 The Huffington Post

  Sleep , 12 On 12 Off , Sleep Deprivation Driving , Who Needs Sleep , Drowsy Driving , Film Hours , Film Sleep , Film Workers Hours , Film Workers Sleep , Haskell Wexler Sleep , Hollywood Long Hours , Hollywood Sleep Deprivation , Sleep At Wheel , Politics News

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 the 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.”

      – Conrad Hall

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.

These conditions occur on split shifts, where day is night and night is day, resulting in dangerous safety hazards.  This lack of sleep becomes the cause of many of the safety hazards listed by OSHA.

This workplace condition is aggravated by all the time spent getting to and from work.  Although this time may not fall under the specific purview of OSHA, it is part of the overall critical safety factor.

Police, the Auto Club, and insurance companies warn us to be aware that fatigue is a major cause of accidents.

Today, all over America, sometimes morning, sometimes night, sleep-deprived film workers are driving cars in a physical state equal to legal drunkenness. This condition not only threatens their health and safety, but the community at large.

OSHA may have requirements about the safe way to operate a crane control panel, but in the hands of a sleep-deprived worker that eight hundred pound crane becomes a danger to himself and any worker below him.

OSHA has a rule called Injury Prevention #7 listed in the Cal/OSHA Workplace Injury and Illness Prevention of 3/21/01.

No one shall knowingly be permitted or required to work while the employee’s ability or alertness is so impaired by fatigue, illness or other causes that it might unnecessarily expose the employee or others to injury.

There is abundant proof that film employees are required to work while their ability and alertness is impaired by fatigue, and that these conditions have exposed the employees and others to injuries and death.

The American people have mandated you to be concerned with our Occupational Health and Safety.  We believe an urgent statement about the dangers of sleep deprivation is critical.  At this time, specific abatement proposals may not be organizationally practical, but since it is an overriding health and safety concern, a strong statement by OSHA would be a major step toward realizing the OSHA pledge “to help workers come home alive and healthy at the end of the day.”

We understand that you will not mandate against excessive hours.  But if you publicly acknowledge that fatigue is an all-encompassing safety issue, perhaps other organizations representing the people can find ways to a remedy.

Sincerely,

Haskell Wexler, ASC

12on12off Foundation

THE DOCUMENTARY CHANNEL® PRESENTS THE EXCLUSIVE NETWORK PREMIERE OF “WHO NEEDS SLEEP?”

FROM OSCAR® -WINNING CINEMATOGRAPHER HASKELL WEXLER

Documentary Features Interviews With Hollywood Stars Including Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, Annette Bening, Billy Crystal, Paul Newman and Tyne Daily, Among Many Others

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (June 1, 2010) — The Documentary Channel® (DOC) presents the exclusive network premiere of the critically acclaimed feature-length documentary “Who Needs Sleep?” from Academy® Award winner Haskell Wexler on Friday, June 25 at 8:30 p.m. ET/PT. Distributed by Chatsworth, Calif.-based Image Entertainment (NASDAQ: DISK), the

film features intimate interviews with some of Hollywood’s biggest stars, including Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, Annette Bening, Billy Crystal, Paul Newman, and Tyne Daly, as they discuss health risks associated with long production work days surpassing the 14-hour mark.

This is the kind of change Mindful Media strives to achieve and is commensurate with our company philosophy. Central to this ethos is an emphasis on using strategic marketing and social media to help promote positive change. We create programs that have broad outreach potential, with campaigns that cross  platforms, targeting diverse audiences who have a desire for informative, constructive and engaging shows.

We invite feedback from our audiences and you can always contact us with comments and/or ideas at casper@mindfulmedia.com.au

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Several prominent directors speak out about the destructive nature of working long hours and the threat to our health and safety. This video along with other material will be presented to the Directors Guild of America to compel the DGA to re-affirm their commitment to this issue.

- Haskell Wexler

“As members of the ASC and as Directors of Photography, our responsibility is to the visual image of the film as well as the well-being of our crews. The continuing and expanding practices of working extreme hours can compromise both the quality of our work and the health and safety of others.”

- Conrad Hall

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