Alec Baldwin: Hollywood's King of Menace

this is bad

it's about what I expected

not a 'random accident', more a 'safety was being treated as optional' scenario

If you’re doing a play which climaxes with a 15-minute “mexican standoff” in which the participants keep changing who they’re standing off against, without moving their feet/stage position (and then a direct held-to-temple killing), wouldn’t it make more sense to use fake guns that you can point at people (and hold against their temples) anyway? The realism gained from using real guns has to be drastically undermined by swinging them from pointing at nobody to pointing at nobody somewhere else, without ever even crossing any of the other three actors that you’re facing

xp oh shit

normally yes, this show was in a tiny black box so fakey guns would have looked worse up close (or I guess that's the reason we made that decision). some of the guns that were given to characters that didn't fire weaopns or do anything but show them for a few seconds were indeed props in the sense that they could not fire anything.

many xps Harbl I wasn't intending to be arsey either, it was a good article!

we also used real guns in a live production of Annie Get Your Gun in high school, and there was several days of training done, but a) the guns were pieces of garbage and b) Annie and Frank weren't good at using them, so they jammed all the time.

this is of course during the "Pull! Hit!" scenes, where they're shooting at clay pigeons, so one would assume good actors, if the gun didn't go off, would simply pretend it did, and the actor that confirms "Hit!" or "Miss!" would do so accordingly, but instead, they kept trying to fire, and a few times the one actor went to the other and said "gimme your gun", while the audience was lead to believe that gravity stopped working and the clay pigeon was still somehow airborne, 2 minutes later.

In conclusion, all of this would have been avoided if we simply hadn't done the terrible and racist show Annie Get Your Gun.

I directed a play with a prop gun (never fired in the show but used extensively), and it was a real gun whose chambers had been filled in, in some way, so it couldn’t fire or take a cartridge.

the clay pigeon was still somehow airborne, 2 minutes later.

ha ha

re Dogs, “STOP POINTING THAT GUN AT THE CEILING SEVERAL METRES AWAY FROM MY DAD!!!”

lol

Public intellectual JD Vance chimes in:

Today in the Ohio GOP Senate Primary. pic.twitter.com/x8HQIiTiLg

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) October 22, 2021

if only there was a good guy with a prop gun

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2021-10-22/alec-baldwin-rust-camera-crew-walked-off-set?fbclid=IwAR2BUqsbGwYxgovgAwBYSmmPrnUjYlejkvdLVTuCqo-P69dxsUqqhOjz8L8

More details

Ugh

actually felt pretty bad for Alec at first but yeah this does not look good

(As publicists start crafting a narrative, remember that of course firing the prop gun wasn't the error, being the producer on a movie and hiring a nonunion propmaster and not having safety meetings after 2 misfires from the same gun on set was the error and she should be alive.)

— Bess Kalb (@bessbell) October 22, 2021

he was very fucking quick releasing the "tragic accident" statement. More like a politician or a corporate spokesperson doing damage limitation than a human being.

its weird how many celebrities have actually killed people

it's tragic, but it wasn't an accident, and Alec is in fuckin' trouble

then again, Jonathan Landis never saw a cell so....who knows if he'll ever be held accountable other than settlements he issues

When I got shot at during a robbery at work the company gave me and my co-workers a £100 each on the strict condition we didn't start thinking about putting any "silly claims" that might affect their liability insurance or something. We were joking in the pub later: could have got a grand if we got shot!

I have a buddy who works at a factory and they have very specific dollar amounts they pay out depending on what parts of your body get maimed...one dude lost 2 fingers and was bummed he didn't lose his index since that was like six grand more

I'm really hoping this doesn't turn into a "I looooove 30 Rock, poor Alec" thing amongst my friends.

I mean A) he *is* a dick IRL but b) this is the big guy fucking the little guy to a tee.

well, KILLING the little guy

Relieved Joel Souza is alive.

i don't know what it's like everywhere else on social media but on the movies subreddit (home of the dumbest and most impressionable posters alive) baldwin is the main character of this story..... the two big threads on this are just packed with posts about how traumatized he must feel, how he's "a victim too", just openly fantasizing about his state of mind and his actions going forward. the PR works.

barf.

That's gross, though I'd argue he kind of is the main character?

I mean gtfo with the hand-wringing over his "feels" when someone is dead, but as the guy who not only pulled the trigger but was also the one responsible for the failed safety measures and requirements on set, he is pretty much the central character here - though decidedly not in the manner his PR team and those folks are trying to spin it. Sometimes the main character is the villain.

Rightfully the narrative is going to have to spiral around him, if for nothing else to get some fucking accountability.

I saw tweets last night scolding media outlets for the usual headlines that use passive voice or otherwise minimize human agency in a shooting death ("did the gun fire itself???"). At the time, I thought it was actually one of the few times when the person firing the gun mattered less than the people who failed to prevent the accident from happening. But yeah, seeing now that Baldwin seems to have been closely involved as a producer, he seems more responsible than most.

That's gross, though I'd argue he kind of is the main character?

I mean gtfo with the hand-wringing over his "feels" when someone is dead, but as the guy who not only pulled the trigger but was also the one responsible for the failed safety measures and requirements on set, he is pretty much the central character here - though decidedly not in the manner his PR team and those folks are trying to spin it. Sometimes the main character is the villain.

― a superficial sheeb of intelligence (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Friday, October 22, 2021 6:22 PM (fifteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

otm

sure, the narrative is going to default to be about him but he isn't being treated as the villain is my point - he is garnering more sympathy than the actual woman who died

aaand just came across this
https://i.postimg.cc/nr3fXkKY/image.png

Who are ye all posting about then

a 16 yo thread about alec baldwin tbf

Tru, tru

just talking about how low budget Bruce Willis movies are good now because they only have the budget for 3d printer shells of sawn-off Winchesters.

Before reviving this, I did check to see if we had any "celebs who have killed ppl" threads. Just "US presidents...," tho.

Vince Neil 2 thred

Phil Spector

Gig Young

Keith Moon

Claudine Longet

Matthew Broderick

("In 1987, Broderick accidentally killed two people when he steered his car across the centerline of a road in Ireland; he was convicted of causing death by reckless driving.")

Spade Cooley

Jack Kirby

LA Times wouldn't let me past subscription sign-up, but think this goes w that:
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/alec-baldwin-fired-prop-gun-that-killed-crew-member-movie-set-authorities-2021-10-22/ Re conditions on set etc

Not absolving him, but I'm sure we'll get a clearer sense if he was a producer in any hands-on/managerial sense vs. being a primary funder of a movie he wanted to make.

Was wondering about that, too. I guess I feel like, with the misfiring incidents that preceded the fatal one and union crew members walking off the set, Baldwin was in a position to put a pause on production in either case. But maybe I'm assuming too much.

From that Reuters article:

Cano said the incident took place at the Bonanza Creek Ranch, south of Santa Fe, during a rehearsal and it was not clear whether it had been filmed.

He said the prop gun was one of three on a cart outside a building. One of them was taken by the assistant director on the movie who went inside and handed it to Baldwin.

"As the assistant director handed the gun to the actor Alec Baldwin, (he) yelled 'cold gun', indicating the prop gun did not have any live rounds," the affidavit said.

As the investigation proceeded, questions were raised about working conditions on the set of "Rust", a small budget Western movie of which Baldwin was both star and a co-producer.
Cano said the incident took place at the Bonanza Creek Ranch, south of Santa Fe, during a rehearsal and it was not clear whether it had been filmed.

He said the prop gun was one of three on a cart outside a building. One of them was taken by the assistant director on the movie who went inside and handed it to Baldwin.

"As the assistant director handed the gun to the actor Alec Baldwin, (he) yelled 'cold gun', indicating the prop gun did not have any live rounds," the affidavit said.

As the investigation proceeded, questions were raised about working conditions on the set of "Rust", a small budget Western movie of which Baldwin was both star and a co-producer.
"We cited everything from lack of payment for three weeks, taking our hotels away despite asking for them in our deals, lack of Covid safety, and on top of that, poor gun safety! Poor on-set safety period!" one camera crew member wrote on a private Facebook page, according to Deadline.

Reuters could not immediately confirm the accounts. Rust Movie Productions did not respond to a request for comment on Friday but said in a statement it was investigating.

"Though we were not made aware of any official complaints concerning weapon or prop safety on set, we will be conducting an internal review of our procedures while production is shut down," the company said in its statement.

..."I don't understand why we would still use blank rounds in a day when you could simulate them," indie film director and producer Ben Rock told Reuters on Friday.