Alec Baldwin: Hollywood's King of Menace

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