Actor Brendan Fraser apologized to a San Francisco audience — 25 years after the fact — for a movie stunt that had inadvertently caused chaos in the city, stopping traffic and even causing breaking news reports to pre-empt “Oprah.”
Fraser, who is perhaps best known for his turn opposite Rachel Weisz in the 1999 film “The Mummy,” made an appearance at a screening of his new film “The Whale” at the Mill Valley Film Festival — and he first mentioned the story during a red carpet interview with SFGate. He later repeated it to the audience after they viewed a highlight reel showcasing his career.
His return to the big screen in “The Whale” has brought critical acclaim, Oscar buzz, and a six-minute standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival — but Fraser said he was just trying to draw more attention to how much words can hurt the people around us.
“What we say to one another, what we say to our children, how we speak with one another, it can do harm. A movie’s never going to solve anyone’s problems, but it can possibly help influence the culture, how we think, how we feel, how we speak to one another … So I felt a moral obligation to give everything that I had,” he explained.
“One more quick thing — I just want to make a quick apology,” Fraser told the audience, retelling the story he told SFGate on the red carpet. “A couple years back I made a film called ‘George of the Jungle’ …”
Fraser went on to set the scene — a dramatic rescue atop the Bay Bridge (the outlet noted that Fraser mistakenly named the Golden Gate Bridge), performed by George.
“When we were doing ‘George of the Jungle,’ George goes to rescue a parachutist tangled in the Golden Gate Bridge. That means Disney put a mannequin hanging by a parachute from the uprights,” Fraser explained.
“It brought traffic to a standstill on either side of the bridge. My trailer was on the other side in a parking lot. I just remember watching the Golden Gate Bridge. There’s this dummy parachutist hanging from it,” Fraser continued. “I had the TV on, and ‘Oprah’ got interrupted because there was a special news report with helicopters saying a parachute is dangling on the bridge. And I’m going — wait a minute, I’m looking at the helicopters and TV — somebody didn’t pull a permit, somebody’s going to get in trouble with the mayor’s office. So I can only apologize for that.”
“So, that said — my bad, it won’t happen again,” the actor laughed.
See how the stunt turned out:
