Alec Baldwin: Hollywood's King of Menace

all the producers, including Baldwin, deserve blame for responding to a crew walkout over safety practices by hiring scabs and continuing to shoot. many union crew members rely on uninterrupted set days to pay for the rest of their year, have pretty high risk tolerance, and tend to make excellent, well-informed technical assessments, so when they say shit is unsafe, shit is unsafe.

that he pulled the trigger on a gun that was called cold by the AD is significantly less relevant to his culpability than that

^

otm.

It’s what the media cares about though.

damned “the media”

A lot can be said about the Nicholas Cage vehicle Mandy, which was almost freakishly hyper-violent; however, I don't believe there was a single firearm in the film. Crossbow, hand-forged battleaxe, etc., but it didn't rely on guns. If we have a gun problem in this country (we do), then maybe Hollywood can start to leave them out of the picture, like cigarettes in every scene.

If you take away the guns from good actors, only the bad actors will carry guns

A lot of people are messaging me about yesterday's tragedy that was an on-set firearms death (because I am a film armorer, for those who don't know).

As both a human and a professional, it is extremely upsetting. My thoughts are with Halyna Hutchins' loved ones

— SL Huang 黄士芬 (@sl_huang) October 23, 2021

detailed thread with lots of info about gun safety on set

that was a great thread, thanks for that.

particularly the clarifications on how real guns are used vs props

Wow, very well done, thanks

supposedly an assistant director shouldn't be the one handing the gun to an actor. it makes sense. the armorer had three guns on a cart, who's to say if the assistant director merely picked up the wrong one.

also I imagine it should have been shown to the assistant director first by the armorer to prove it was not loaded.

even eerier is this movie is about an accidental killing. ick

That was a great thread. It does sort of broach a different debate, especially in the CG age: when or why should *anything* dangerous be done in a movie? Car or motorcycle stunts (which have injured or killed people), helicopter stunts (which have injured or killed people), horse stunts (which have injured or killed people), explosions, guns, and so on. I just learned about this, re: Sam Fuller's "Shark!:"

During production, one of the film's stuntmen, Jose Marco, was attacked and killed on camera by a white shark that broke through protective netting. The attack was captured on film and prompted a photo spread in Life magazine. The title was changed to Shark! to cash in on the controversy

Not only did they change the name to "Shark!" they allegedly moved the alleged scene to the start of the movie. I say "allege" because I also read this, which introduces several layers of questions:

Marco was allegedly a stunt double for Burt Reynolds who was brutally attacked by a shark in 1967 while shooting an underwater scene near Manzanillo, Mexico, for a film appropriately titled Shark. According to Life Magazine, which did a story in 1968 on the filming, Marco was in the water in scuba gear alongside a subdued bull shark when a great white managed to make it through the nets protecting the area from the rest of the sea. It charged at the camera crew before launching at Marco and disemboweling the actor where he swam. Crew members tried to steer the shark away from Marco with spears, but the animal was undeterred, and the stuntman's resulting injuries were so severe that he later died at a hospital. Producers allegedly used the footage of Marcos' death in the opening scene in the movie, along with publicizing the incident as a marketing push. Director Samuel Fuller unsuccessfully attempted to have his name removed from its credits because he was dissatisfied with the editing of the film. However, a detailed investigation revealed that there was no official record of the attack, no record of a stuntman named Jose Marco, and no hospital records of the incident, although Marco was allegedly in a hospital for two days before he died. LIFE magazine had no comment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resident_Evil:_The_Final_Chapter#Stuntwoman_injury_and_crew_fatality

i love this movie and this still lurks in the back of my mind when i watch it

Exclusive reporting: Before the incident, a number of crew members had taken prop guns, including the gun that killed Hutchins to go “plinking" - shooting at beer cans with live ammo to pass the timehttps://t.co/TMYy00xZzv

— TheWrap (@TheWrap) October 25, 2021

there it is. answers a lot of questions.

I have seen that headline a few times now and I still can't wrap my head around it because how fucking STUPID do you have to be to do this

I was figuring something like that might have happened.

If true, I can't think of anything more irresponsible on a movie set. That's actually infuriating.

Yeah.

You'd think that blank firing guns for films could just be reserved exclusively for that use. i.e. NEVER EVER put real bullets in them. It’s not like there’s a shortage of guns out there.

Was gonna speculate that some of those crew members were gonna wind up doing time for this but it sounds like there should've been so many redundancies in place to prevent this that it's hard to know how many people are ultimately to blame. This is like a full-blown systemic collapse.

There needs to be a system in place in order for it to collapse

Ugh

Weapons handler defense doesn't seem like a particularly good defense:

https://deadline.com/2021/10/alec-baldwin-shooting-rust-hannah-gutierrez-armorer-statement-halyna-hutchins-1234864743/

It's tantamount to saying "this is not my fault, because I didn't always know what was going on."

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/alec-baldwin-charged-manslaughter-fatal-shooting-set-rust-d-says-rcna7189

thread title looking prophetic

Charges against Baldwin were dismissed and production is resuming on the movie. Sooooo looking forward to when this thing hits Redbox.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/18/entertainment/alec-baldwin-rust-filming-to-resume/index.html

if i had shot and killed someone on the set of a movie i would simply not resume production under any circumstances

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/alec-baldwin-indicted-manslaughter-charge-rust-shooting-rcna134564

SANTA FE, N.M. — Alec Baldwin is headed to trial over the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, who was killed in 2021 after the actor's prop gun fired a live round of ammunition on the "Rust" film set.

The decision to indict Baldwin was announced Friday after a New Mexico grand jury heard evidence presented by special prosecutors Kari Morrissey and Jason Lewis. He was charged with one count of involuntary manslaughter.

---

If convicted, Baldwin could face up to 18 months in prison. A trial date has not been set.

The grand jury's indictment comes after the same New Mexico prosecutors dismissed the involuntary manslaughter charges against Baldwin in April.

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/rust-prosecutors-allege-armorer-hannah-211536642.html

yeah, it's kind of shocking that there was even a single round of live ammo on set

Baldwin can probably share some blame for running a shoddy production, but I honestly don't see how he could've known there was a live round in the chamber

Hannah Gutierrez found guilty of Involuntary Manslaughter

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/06/rust-shooting-hannah-gutierrez-reed-verdict

The state also claimed that she was using marijuana during the production. Gutierrez-Reed’s defense said that the prosecution had failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that she brought live rounds on to the set and argued that Hutchins’ death was the result of Baldwin pointing the weapon at the cinematographer.

“It was not in the script for Mr Baldwin to point the weapon,” defense attorney Jason Bowles said. “She didn’t know that Mr Baldwin was going to do what he did.”

...

look I definitely think more than just Gutierrez-Reed is responsible here, and Baldwin likely lied about not pulling the trigger, but she really needed some better defense attorneys.

such a weird case.. why in the hell were there live rounds on a movie set to begin with? Though Brandon Lee was killed by a blank I think, or at least that was the story at the time

it was a dummy cartridge that was made from a live round and got lodged in the barrel and essentially pushed out and into Lee by the blank when fired

xp
The most believable story is that some of the cast/crew would go out shooting with live ammo when the movie was not being made, using the production's guns, and that the separation of live ammo from blanks was done poorly.

this was a very good interview with Chad Stahleski and he talks a bit about guns on movie sets.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/john-wick-filmmaker-chad-stahelski-sequels-oscar-stunt-snubs-firearms-1235343132/

So much of your job is about safety, and you started your career in 1994 doubling for Brandon Lee after he died in an on-set accident with a gun while filming The Crow. How did you process the Rust shooting?

What happened on Rust … I wasn’t there, but the accidents that I’ve been around, seen or been part of have always been human error. It’s never mechanical. So, let’s just talk about firearms. Back in the day, when it all started, they came up with blanks. A blank is a bullet without the projectile, but they couldn’t put you and me in the same shot, 5 feet apart, and one of us pull the trigger. The concussive force coming out at the end of the barrel would be enough to shatter your skull. Accidents like that did happen and people died because of it. But in the past 10 years, they’ve come out with electronic guns, plug guns where it is impossible for anything to come out of the barrel and total CG. That’s the way we do it. That technology is out there for everybody.

Why isn’t everybody using it?

My feeling is that there’s no reason to have a live firearm on set. We can create cities and spaceships and Godzilla and all these things. We have the technology to do the same with firearms. But, for the last 100 years, Hollywood’s been using real firearms. And for prop houses, armorers or supply houses to switch over, it would make their entire stock of real firearms useless. It comes down to the fact that it would cost certain people a great deal of money to switch over. No one wants to say that, but that’s the real reason. You don’t need firearms. The alternative is just going to cost you more money

Sentenced to 18 months

https://deadline.com/2024/04/hannah-guitierrez-reed-sentenced-rust-shooting-1235885923/

i'd be a lot more sympathetic if she hadn't been reported as reckless and aloof on the set and continued to double down that it wasn't her fault even days before sentencing

otoh, that doesn't mean she's wrong that working conditions were awful and that it didn't play a role.

Baldwin saying he didn't pull the trigger was gross, esp since it's now been proven that he obviously did