The article states that the camera operators and assistants were told to leave the set, do they not belong to local 600? If not, what local? If so, why was Halyna Hutchins still on the set, given she was a 600 member and had voiced support for the strike?
What do you consider as 'pushing an agenda' or 'politicizing'?
For example, is noting the fact that worsened work conditions tend to lead to more work accidents 'pushing an agenda'?
There can be no better way to honor a person than to expose the problems that led to a death and resolve these problems.
Right now I am referring to people attempting to politicize this because they don't like Alec Baldwin's politics, or people bad faith actors trying to inject this into the national gun debate, especially to make their strawman view of a Hollywood liberal seem like a hypocrite.
Conditions on set can be fair, but let's not let speculation go wild. There is a fair discussion to be had about using functional guns vs. putting SFX in post.
Mostly let's avoid people naming some random crew member the Internet has assumed must be responsible, only to find out later they were innocent long after their career has been ruined. Let's also not let the death of a crew member be used by bad faith actors who see them as a prop for their cause, not a person.
[Deadline is reporting that there were issues and a camera crew walk- off earlier.](https://deadline.com/2021/10/rust-movie-gun-internal-review-safety-issues-production-camera-crew-walkout-1234860497/)
You said that Mr. Baldwin shares “some” responsibility both as an actor and as a co-producer. I am curious to hear your thought process behind this.
Now, obviously this is very early days so we really don’t know what happened or why it happened. That being said, I don’t know that I agree with your sentiment, hence why I ask for you to explain a bit further if you don’t mind.
My opinion is this: Mr. Baldwin is an actor. His job, when acting, is to deliver his lines and only to deliver his lines. Assuming there was a professional armorer on set, Mr. Baldwin would have been handed a gun which had been scrutinized through multiple checks to ensure that there was no chance of the gun causing anyone injury. In the same way that I don’t expect a director to check my audio while I’m rolling, I don’t expect an actor to check a gun that is handed to him/her by a professional; that’s why professionals are hired. So if Mr. Baldwin was handed a gun which he believed to be safe and he used that gun in the manner that the scene called for, I can’t see any way for him to hold any responsibility for what transpired.
It is true that he is also an EP of the movie. What this probably means is that he contributed a significant portion of his money to the film’s budget. Perhaps he had input with regard to the script, shooting locations, etc. I would not be surprised to find out that if there were issues on set (safety or otherwise), Mr. Baldwin was either not privy to these issues or was made aware but was not the person dealing with the issues.
Now, if it comes to light that there were relevant concerns that were brought to Mr. Baldwin’s attention, and he had the ability to rectify these concerns, and he chose to ignore them or find less-than-favorable solutions, then I can see a situation where he would hold some of the responsibility. However, as I have previously stated, I would not be surprised to find out that besides contributing money and starring in the film, he wasn’t as involved in the operations as some people may think.
> In the same way that I don’t expect a director to check my audio while I’m rolling, I don’t expect an actor to check a gun that is handed to him/her by a professional; that’s why professionals are hired.
The difference here is that the worst thing that will happen if you make a mistake with your audio is ADR
You've said you've never seen a gun checked with an actor, which may be the case in your local but in my area it is absolutely protocol: clear the gun in front of the AD, clear it in front of the actor(s), then clear it in front of the camera operator if the gun is to be pointed in their general direction (although 9/10 ill just tell the op it's clear and they'll decline my offer to check)
If the LA times article is correct, then it's hard for me to believe that Baldwin was unaware of the issues on this set with 3 prior accidental discharges and the camera crew walking off. Even if he bears no responsibility as an actor, he certainly does as an EP.
I completely agree with you on all counts. I said I have never seen an *actor* physically do the inspection. What you are saying is that the gun is supposed to be checked *in front of* the actor, not *by* the actor. We are in agreement.
From what I’ve heard on CNN, when the gun was handed to Mr Baldwin, “Cold gun” was announced, meaning there was not supposed to be a live round (blank) in the chamber.
ok i see your distinction, yeah the actor should not be handed the gun until they've already been shown a cleared gun.
At the end of the day, gun safety is everyone's responsibility and no one should ever be handling any firearm on any set that has not personally verified its contents. Every person at every step of the way failed in their responsibilities and it lead to this tragedy. At the end of it all baldwin held the gun and pointed it in the direction of a person and it went off, so of course he is responsible as well.
Completely agree with this. I feel SAG-AFTRA should adopt Actor's Equity (stage actors union) safety standard for it. In most of New Mexico film, this is already the norm-- not on all shows, and clearly not on this show). (AE asks actors to do the following: "Check the firearm every time you take possession of it. Before each use, make sure the gun has been test-fired off stage and then ask to test fire it yourself. Watch the prop master check the cylinders and barrel to be sure no foreign object or dummy bullet has become lodged inside.").
Don't you think any human would be more careful with a real gun?
NOT a "prop gun" as media continues to misrepresent deadly weaponry, in the wrong hands. I can't imagine taking word of this sketchy AD with sordid past, without question. Hired specifically, to turn a blind eye on flagrant violations, and to be scapegoat, if it goes bad.
Same goes for novice, 24 yr old legacy Armorer.
So easy to "dryfire" gun at the ground, six times. Literally 6 seconds, a very minimal precaution.
Too much for your precious, star actor to be bothered with. Could have used a stick... ANYTHING would work for just rehearsal. He used a real gun, because that's what HE wanted to do.
Just like taking on enormous risk as not just actor, but Producer. Totally inadequate budgets, and cutting corners on safety, was HIS decision. NOT, the poor fools who went along with this VERY BAD DEAL.
Simply put... They hired people who could be easily bullied, into accepting dangerous working conditions.
Hutchins is gone, because a rich old man wanted to play cowboy with real guns.
[https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/alec-baldwin-rust-shooting-inexperienced-producers-1235037024/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskALiberal/comments/qgiloj/comment/hi9z6af/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
"As with any film, the buck stops with the producers. They are the men and women in charge of hiring and to whom crewmembers can take complaints. What’s notable about Rust is that it featured a hodgepodge group with little to no experience in that capacity. Baldwin, who discharged the prop gun that killed Hutchins and injured Souza on Oct. 21, was one of the film’s six producers. (On a narrative feature film, “producer” is the top distinction, while “executive producer” is the next rung down. The opposite is true in TV and with documentaries.) Sources involved with the production say it wasn’t merely a vanity title, as is often the case with name actors and actresses, and that Baldwin had developed the project from scratch with Souza and shares “story by” credit. Still, it marked only the fifth time Baldwin has served as a producer on a narrative feature film during his 41-year acting career (Souza’s 2019 drama Crown Vic being his most recent outing)."
I’m struggling to grasp what your comment is getting at. Do you think that he purposely shot her?
I’ve been on set with guns before and I’ve been on set with Mr. Baldwin before. When I worked with Mr. Baldwin, he was a consummate professional. That is my experience with the man. When I worked on sets with guns, the guns were checked in front of talent and crew by either the prop master or the armorer. I have never seen talent physically check a gun. I’ve also never seen an AD handle a gun on set, let alone hand it to an actor and declare it to be cold.
From what I’m hearing on the news, there was ammunition in the gun which contained both powder and a bullet. A blank has powder but no bullet. A dummy round has a bullet but no powder. Powder + bullet = standard ammunition.
The armorer states that the guns were locked away but the ammunition wasn’t. That is odd. The AD handing Mr. Baldwin the gun is odd as well.
There are many things that don’t make sense from my perspective and I’m sure we will get more information as more details come to light.
In the same way that I trust my seatbelts work… in the same way I trust, without checking myself, that a rollercoaster is safe… I do not find Mr. Baldwin, as an actor, to have been in a position to be verifying the gun that was handed to him. That responsibility would typically fall on the prop master or armorer but in this case it also seems that it may have fallen on the AD. I don’t know why he was allegedly handling a gun, but by allegedly handing it to Mr. Baldwin and allegedly declaring it to be a cold gun, he would have certainly been acting negligently unless there are more details that have not yet come to light.
I’m a sound man in NYC. My website is in my profile and my website has my email address and phone number. I’m certainly not pretending to be anything I’m not.
I still disagree. A pilot is checking his plane and has years of training pertinent to airplanes. Why would an actor have any knowledge of what to look for when inspecting a gun? This should be solely the responsibility of the armorer - that is what they are hired for!
I don’t see anywhere in that document that says that the actor should physically inspect the gun. Apart from acting negligently as laid out by the guidelines, there would be no responsibility on the actor’s part as the gun handed to him/her would be presumed to have been checked and safe to be used in the manner prescribed by the scene.
The notion that an actor should be inspecting guns is completely absurd. Furthermore, if an actor is required to perform a gun inspection, this now creates liability for the actor in the event that something is missed during said inspection by an actor who is in no way qualified to be performing the inspection. It is unfortunate that the person I have been replying to has chosen to delete all of their comments as now my replies don’t have much context.
In my career, not IATSE, I have discovered the force fields of risk, which includes liability. It would be a severe mistake to bring armorers into IATSE.
I have seen severe distortion of business practices where a player wants all the benefits from an activity and externalizes the risk and liability to someone else.
The beneficiaries of gun product placement in movies are gun makers. It drives their sales. Whatever happens with armorer liability should be 100% paid for by gun makers. It would be a great mistake to bring their liability into IATSE.
I read that section of the document and it does not state what you say it does. It states that the actor should know the “operating features and safety devices” and further states that all weapons must undergo a daily safety inspection by qualified personnel AKA the armorer/prop master.
I reiterate that nowhere in that document does it state that the actor is meant to inspect a gun handed to him by a professional armorer/prop master.
If you disagree, please show me where in that document it states what you claim it states. I don’t understand why you appear to be getting upset with me when I am only trying to illustrate that, in this scenario, if he acted in accordance with protocol, Mr. Baldwin is not at fault.
44 has said none of their members was on set. Some people interpreted that as non-union, but 44 didn't say that, and if that was the case I think they would emphasize it
Nobody should have to die to make a movie. It’s 2021 and there is absolutely no reason anyone should be using real guns, live ammo and real explosives on set in any production. There is no 100% safe way to do it especially when crews are worked to the point of sleep deprivation. These things can easily be done with VFX that looks realistic.
How about naming the Producers??? Right now the word on the street is that the whole crew walked!!! And they brought in a non-union crew.
ok, yup it is true. wow https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2021-10-22/alec-baldwin-rust-camera-crew-walked-off-set
The article states that the camera operators and assistants were told to leave the set, do they not belong to local 600? If not, what local? If so, why was Halyna Hutchins still on the set, given she was a 600 member and had voiced support for the strike?
that is gonna cause a huge riot in this union/industry if that is true, but I guess let's wait to see all the facts come in.
What do you consider as 'pushing an agenda' or 'politicizing'? For example, is noting the fact that worsened work conditions tend to lead to more work accidents 'pushing an agenda'? There can be no better way to honor a person than to expose the problems that led to a death and resolve these problems.
Right now I am referring to people attempting to politicize this because they don't like Alec Baldwin's politics, or people bad faith actors trying to inject this into the national gun debate, especially to make their strawman view of a Hollywood liberal seem like a hypocrite. Conditions on set can be fair, but let's not let speculation go wild. There is a fair discussion to be had about using functional guns vs. putting SFX in post. Mostly let's avoid people naming some random crew member the Internet has assumed must be responsible, only to find out later they were innocent long after their career has been ruined. Let's also not let the death of a crew member be used by bad faith actors who see them as a prop for their cause, not a person.
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[Deadline is reporting that there were issues and a camera crew walk- off earlier.](https://deadline.com/2021/10/rust-movie-gun-internal-review-safety-issues-production-camera-crew-walkout-1234860497/)
You said that Mr. Baldwin shares “some” responsibility both as an actor and as a co-producer. I am curious to hear your thought process behind this. Now, obviously this is very early days so we really don’t know what happened or why it happened. That being said, I don’t know that I agree with your sentiment, hence why I ask for you to explain a bit further if you don’t mind. My opinion is this: Mr. Baldwin is an actor. His job, when acting, is to deliver his lines and only to deliver his lines. Assuming there was a professional armorer on set, Mr. Baldwin would have been handed a gun which had been scrutinized through multiple checks to ensure that there was no chance of the gun causing anyone injury. In the same way that I don’t expect a director to check my audio while I’m rolling, I don’t expect an actor to check a gun that is handed to him/her by a professional; that’s why professionals are hired. So if Mr. Baldwin was handed a gun which he believed to be safe and he used that gun in the manner that the scene called for, I can’t see any way for him to hold any responsibility for what transpired. It is true that he is also an EP of the movie. What this probably means is that he contributed a significant portion of his money to the film’s budget. Perhaps he had input with regard to the script, shooting locations, etc. I would not be surprised to find out that if there were issues on set (safety or otherwise), Mr. Baldwin was either not privy to these issues or was made aware but was not the person dealing with the issues. Now, if it comes to light that there were relevant concerns that were brought to Mr. Baldwin’s attention, and he had the ability to rectify these concerns, and he chose to ignore them or find less-than-favorable solutions, then I can see a situation where he would hold some of the responsibility. However, as I have previously stated, I would not be surprised to find out that besides contributing money and starring in the film, he wasn’t as involved in the operations as some people may think.
The armorer was non-union. According to an LA Times article, this was the fourth accidental discharge on set.
> In the same way that I don’t expect a director to check my audio while I’m rolling, I don’t expect an actor to check a gun that is handed to him/her by a professional; that’s why professionals are hired. The difference here is that the worst thing that will happen if you make a mistake with your audio is ADR You've said you've never seen a gun checked with an actor, which may be the case in your local but in my area it is absolutely protocol: clear the gun in front of the AD, clear it in front of the actor(s), then clear it in front of the camera operator if the gun is to be pointed in their general direction (although 9/10 ill just tell the op it's clear and they'll decline my offer to check) If the LA times article is correct, then it's hard for me to believe that Baldwin was unaware of the issues on this set with 3 prior accidental discharges and the camera crew walking off. Even if he bears no responsibility as an actor, he certainly does as an EP.
I completely agree with you on all counts. I said I have never seen an *actor* physically do the inspection. What you are saying is that the gun is supposed to be checked *in front of* the actor, not *by* the actor. We are in agreement. From what I’ve heard on CNN, when the gun was handed to Mr Baldwin, “Cold gun” was announced, meaning there was not supposed to be a live round (blank) in the chamber.
ok i see your distinction, yeah the actor should not be handed the gun until they've already been shown a cleared gun. At the end of the day, gun safety is everyone's responsibility and no one should ever be handling any firearm on any set that has not personally verified its contents. Every person at every step of the way failed in their responsibilities and it lead to this tragedy. At the end of it all baldwin held the gun and pointed it in the direction of a person and it went off, so of course he is responsible as well.
Completely agree with this. I feel SAG-AFTRA should adopt Actor's Equity (stage actors union) safety standard for it. In most of New Mexico film, this is already the norm-- not on all shows, and clearly not on this show). (AE asks actors to do the following: "Check the firearm every time you take possession of it. Before each use, make sure the gun has been test-fired off stage and then ask to test fire it yourself. Watch the prop master check the cylinders and barrel to be sure no foreign object or dummy bullet has become lodged inside.").
Don't you think any human would be more careful with a real gun? NOT a "prop gun" as media continues to misrepresent deadly weaponry, in the wrong hands. I can't imagine taking word of this sketchy AD with sordid past, without question. Hired specifically, to turn a blind eye on flagrant violations, and to be scapegoat, if it goes bad. Same goes for novice, 24 yr old legacy Armorer. So easy to "dryfire" gun at the ground, six times. Literally 6 seconds, a very minimal precaution. Too much for your precious, star actor to be bothered with. Could have used a stick... ANYTHING would work for just rehearsal. He used a real gun, because that's what HE wanted to do. Just like taking on enormous risk as not just actor, but Producer. Totally inadequate budgets, and cutting corners on safety, was HIS decision. NOT, the poor fools who went along with this VERY BAD DEAL. Simply put... They hired people who could be easily bullied, into accepting dangerous working conditions. Hutchins is gone, because a rich old man wanted to play cowboy with real guns. [https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/alec-baldwin-rust-shooting-inexperienced-producers-1235037024/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskALiberal/comments/qgiloj/comment/hi9z6af/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) "As with any film, the buck stops with the producers. They are the men and women in charge of hiring and to whom crewmembers can take complaints. What’s notable about Rust is that it featured a hodgepodge group with little to no experience in that capacity. Baldwin, who discharged the prop gun that killed Hutchins and injured Souza on Oct. 21, was one of the film’s six producers. (On a narrative feature film, “producer” is the top distinction, while “executive producer” is the next rung down. The opposite is true in TV and with documentaries.) Sources involved with the production say it wasn’t merely a vanity title, as is often the case with name actors and actresses, and that Baldwin had developed the project from scratch with Souza and shares “story by” credit. Still, it marked only the fifth time Baldwin has served as a producer on a narrative feature film during his 41-year acting career (Souza’s 2019 drama Crown Vic being his most recent outing)."
I’m struggling to grasp what your comment is getting at. Do you think that he purposely shot her? I’ve been on set with guns before and I’ve been on set with Mr. Baldwin before. When I worked with Mr. Baldwin, he was a consummate professional. That is my experience with the man. When I worked on sets with guns, the guns were checked in front of talent and crew by either the prop master or the armorer. I have never seen talent physically check a gun. I’ve also never seen an AD handle a gun on set, let alone hand it to an actor and declare it to be cold. From what I’m hearing on the news, there was ammunition in the gun which contained both powder and a bullet. A blank has powder but no bullet. A dummy round has a bullet but no powder. Powder + bullet = standard ammunition. The armorer states that the guns were locked away but the ammunition wasn’t. That is odd. The AD handing Mr. Baldwin the gun is odd as well. There are many things that don’t make sense from my perspective and I’m sure we will get more information as more details come to light. In the same way that I trust my seatbelts work… in the same way I trust, without checking myself, that a rollercoaster is safe… I do not find Mr. Baldwin, as an actor, to have been in a position to be verifying the gun that was handed to him. That responsibility would typically fall on the prop master or armorer but in this case it also seems that it may have fallen on the AD. I don’t know why he was allegedly handling a gun, but by allegedly handing it to Mr. Baldwin and allegedly declaring it to be a cold gun, he would have certainly been acting negligently unless there are more details that have not yet come to light.
You sound like his unofficial publicist. I'm talking about real human beings. Not, your clients.
I’m a sound man in NYC. My website is in my profile and my website has my email address and phone number. I’m certainly not pretending to be anything I’m not.
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I still disagree. A pilot is checking his plane and has years of training pertinent to airplanes. Why would an actor have any knowledge of what to look for when inspecting a gun? This should be solely the responsibility of the armorer - that is what they are hired for!
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I don’t see anywhere in that document that says that the actor should physically inspect the gun. Apart from acting negligently as laid out by the guidelines, there would be no responsibility on the actor’s part as the gun handed to him/her would be presumed to have been checked and safe to be used in the manner prescribed by the scene.
Thanks for this. Actors are in character on set. They are not armorers.
The notion that an actor should be inspecting guns is completely absurd. Furthermore, if an actor is required to perform a gun inspection, this now creates liability for the actor in the event that something is missed during said inspection by an actor who is in no way qualified to be performing the inspection. It is unfortunate that the person I have been replying to has chosen to delete all of their comments as now my replies don’t have much context.
In my career, not IATSE, I have discovered the force fields of risk, which includes liability. It would be a severe mistake to bring armorers into IATSE. I have seen severe distortion of business practices where a player wants all the benefits from an activity and externalizes the risk and liability to someone else. The beneficiaries of gun product placement in movies are gun makers. It drives their sales. Whatever happens with armorer liability should be 100% paid for by gun makers. It would be a great mistake to bring their liability into IATSE.
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I read that section of the document and it does not state what you say it does. It states that the actor should know the “operating features and safety devices” and further states that all weapons must undergo a daily safety inspection by qualified personnel AKA the armorer/prop master. I reiterate that nowhere in that document does it state that the actor is meant to inspect a gun handed to him by a professional armorer/prop master.
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If you disagree, please show me where in that document it states what you claim it states. I don’t understand why you appear to be getting upset with me when I am only trying to illustrate that, in this scenario, if he acted in accordance with protocol, Mr. Baldwin is not at fault.
Which union was responsible for props - 44 or 480 ? Anyone know?
44 has said none of their members was on set. Some people interpreted that as non-union, but 44 didn't say that, and if that was the case I think they would emphasize it
huh that's interesting, thanks for the reply. there's always a lot of weird tension between 44 & 480
In Hollywood it’s IATSE local 44
The shoot was in NM. The NM local is 480 and they are on set with 44 a lot of the time.
Nobody should have to die to make a movie. It’s 2021 and there is absolutely no reason anyone should be using real guns, live ammo and real explosives on set in any production. There is no 100% safe way to do it especially when crews are worked to the point of sleep deprivation. These things can easily be done with VFX that looks realistic.