It’s just an awful situation with Alec Baldwin’s Rust movie and production company. More details are coming out via Daily Mail, and while they exonerate Baldwin to some degree personally… his production team and company are perhaps far more culpable.
One of the things we’re learning is the crew on the small-budget film had already walked off set earlier in the day of the shooting. That’s because of both working conditions and the fact that firearms had went off improperly already twice in prior filming. We’re also learning that the firearms handler for the movie was a twenty-four year old who doubted her own abilities in public. Hannah Gutierrez-Reed self-reported that she was scared while loading blanks into the guns she was supposed to be an expert on.
Though Baldwin may be — perhaps — off the hook for any sort of negligence, his company is going to have to answer for the above issues. But then, additionally, we’re finding out that the way in which a film director was killed was by Baldwin being directed to fire a perceived prop gun directly towards the camera for a scene. That’s highly irregular. So the way in which the director was shot is that Baldwin literally fired directly at her because she was standing at the camera.
In any sort of competent production, this would not have happened. It is foolish to have a gun, of any sort, pointed at a camera with human beings standing unshielded. In a safe production, everyone except the camera operator would be cleared away from the action, and the camera personnel would be behind bulletproof material to protect them from an accidental bullet discharge.
Unfortunately, because things were not managed properly on the set of Rust, people will have to live with this tragedy for the rest of their lives. Should more details emerge, or should the judicial system file charges of negligent homicide or manslaughter, we’ll cover it here on That Park Place. In the meantime, this is a reminder to practice gun safety protocols whenever around a firearm and never point a gun (real or pretend) at another person or pet.
