One of Birdy’s most technically ambitious sequences was filmed in 1984 at the Newby Island landfill in Santa Clara County, where the production attempted to create the sensation of Birdy flying like a bird. The location was not merely unpleasant: exposed garbage and the smell of methane made it a recognized health concern for cast and crew. Alan Parker’s team initially planned to have Birdy land in a reservoir roughly 30 feet from the landfill, but water testing showed that the reservoir itself was hazardous and forced the filmmakers to abandon the idea. They instead experimented with a roughly 100-foot wire suspended from a helicopter to carry the performer toward a specially constructed pond at the bottom of the garbage hill. The production’s aerial work also attracted heightened scrutiny from the Federal Aviation Administration, in the aftermath of the fatal helicopter accident during the 1982 filming of Twilight Zone: The Movie. Birdy’s sequence did not produce a comparable catastrophe, but its combination of toxic landfill conditions, aerial rigging, explosives used elsewhere in the Vietnam sequences, and strict aviation oversight made it one of the production’s most hazardous undertakings.
Preparing the daily feature…
AI concept artworkArchive Record · 1980s
Birdy’s Flight Was Filmed Over a Methane-Filled Landfill
Birdy / 1980s
One of Birdy’s most technically ambitious sequences was filmed in 1984 at the Newby Island landfill in Santa Clara County, where the production attempted to create the sensation of Birdy flying like a bird. The location was not merely unpleasant: exposed garbage and the smell of methane made it a recognized health concern for cast and crew. Alan Parker’s team initially planned to have Birdy land in a reservoir roughly 30 feet from the landfill, but water testing showed that the reservoir itself was hazardous and forced the filmmakers to abandon the idea. They instead experimented with a roughly 100-foot wire suspended from a helicopter to carry the performer toward a specially constructed pond at the bottom of the garbage hill. The production’s aerial work also attracted heightened scrutiny from the Federal Aviation Administration, in the aftermath of the fatal helicopter accident during the 1982 filming of Twilight Zone: The Movie. Birdy’s sequence did not produce a comparable catastrophe, but its combination of toxic landfill conditions, aerial rigging, explosives used elsewhere in the Vietnam sequences, and strict aviation oversight made it one of the production’s most hazardous undertakings.
The daily feature is taking an intermission. There’s still an entire archive to explore.