Gathered around a table stacked with battery-operated candles inside plastic cups, Hollywood crew members traded memories of their late colleagues and vented about their working conditions. When a property assistant posed the question, “How many of you have had a near-miss driving home from work?” the hands of every person in the Burbank parking lot sprang up. Dozens of below-the-line workers participated last month in an intimate vigil honoring the lives of “9-1-1” studio grip Rico Priem , “Wonder Man” lighting technician J.
C. “Spike” Osorio , “Rust” cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and other crew members who have died in work-related incidents. When Priem, 66, died on the freeway after pulling two 14-hour overnight shifts in a row on the Pomona set of the TV series “9-1-1” in May, a common refrain among crew members became, “That could’ve been any of us.
” “We are dying to entertain people,” Lisa Gardner — a costumer whose credits include Disney’s live-action remake of “Mulan” and “Hocus Pocus 2” — said at the vigil. “It doesn’t have to be that way.” The circumstances surrounding Priem’s death — the marathon shooting schedule that led to his driving home at 4:30 a.
m. on a Saturday — has struck a nerve among the tight-knit community of Hollywood craftspeople who long have expressed concerns about the number of hours they are expected to work per day, often deep into the night. “No one should be put in unsafe circums.
