If you just stood there and yelled BANG . . .
October 21, 2021 9:36 PM Subscribe
Alec Baldwin fired a prop gun while filming a scene in New Mexico on Thursday, causing the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and wounding director Joel Souza. An on-set tragedy ends in the death of the DP and and an injured director. Too soon to place blame, but in the face of IATSE labor issues and intense focus on dangerous work conditions, is it time to reconsider real guns on movie sets.
Sincere condolences to all . . .
This news is absolutely horrifying. Mr. BlahLaLa has more than 45 years as an IATSE propman, and has the entertainment industry version of the federal firearms license, and does the semiannual firearms safety training that's required of anyone cleared to use or provide weapons on set. His first questions are: Who is the propmaster? Who handed the gun to Baldwin and in what context? Was this a rehearsal or not? Was every single person on that set aware that a hot firearm was in play? Nobody should ever be shot on a movie set, that's for goddamn sure. But there are a lot of safety steps that are supposed to happen. The fact that they didn't is more than just an Alec Baldwin problem.
I'll just add: Was this a union or nonunion crew?
posted by BlahLaLa at 10:02 PM on October 21, 2021 [113 favorites]
I'll just add: Was this a union or nonunion crew?
posted by BlahLaLa at 10:02 PM on October 21, 2021 [113 favorites]
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posted by Coaticass at 10:14 PM on October 21, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by Coaticass at 10:14 PM on October 21, 2021 [2 favorites]
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This kind of thing is rare in Hollywood precisely because actors by now are well versed in the dangers. I have to think that the fact that the victims were crew means that everyone assumed a level of safety that wasn't actually there for a particular setup.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 10:17 PM on October 21, 2021 [1 favorite]
This kind of thing is rare in Hollywood precisely because actors by now are well versed in the dangers. I have to think that the fact that the victims were crew means that everyone assumed a level of safety that wasn't actually there for a particular setup.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 10:17 PM on October 21, 2021 [1 favorite]
What an absolute tragic nightmare and senseless loss of Halyna Hutchens' life. To hit the cinematographer and director I'm assuming it was a shot where Baldwin was probably quickly shooting multiple rounds directly towards the camera. There are a lot of links in the chain that could have caused this tragedy and it's entirely possible none of them were his fault at all.
As an actor you get handed a gun (or one gets shot at you) and you just have to trust that it's gonna be safe. They do take precautions, like showing you the gun mechanism beforehand, and explaining how it's been altered or designed to be safe, and a little training session, and the gun is kept with either the actor or the firearms person at all times, and locked in a box when not in use... but it's still very much possible for mistakes to be made somewhere along the way.
I've done a bunch of scenes where realistic guns are fired at me and I've never once felt safe. I actually felt kind of shaky reading this story and thinking back to some weapons and pyro experiences I've had on sets that really didn't feel good at the time but nobody cared and when I balked, I was yelled at for slowing things down. (Union sets, too). I don't know if I'd do them any more reading this.
Our industry needs to reconsider prop guns, I think. Why aren't there prop guns that recoil using a different mechanism than an explosion? Why are we playing around with actual weapons?
posted by nouvelle-personne at 10:19 PM on October 21, 2021 [93 favorites]
As an actor you get handed a gun (or one gets shot at you) and you just have to trust that it's gonna be safe. They do take precautions, like showing you the gun mechanism beforehand, and explaining how it's been altered or designed to be safe, and a little training session, and the gun is kept with either the actor or the firearms person at all times, and locked in a box when not in use... but it's still very much possible for mistakes to be made somewhere along the way.
I've done a bunch of scenes where realistic guns are fired at me and I've never once felt safe. I actually felt kind of shaky reading this story and thinking back to some weapons and pyro experiences I've had on sets that really didn't feel good at the time but nobody cared and when I balked, I was yelled at for slowing things down. (Union sets, too). I don't know if I'd do them any more reading this.
Our industry needs to reconsider prop guns, I think. Why aren't there prop guns that recoil using a different mechanism than an explosion? Why are we playing around with actual weapons?
posted by nouvelle-personne at 10:19 PM on October 21, 2021 [93 favorites]
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For Jon-Erik Hexum, Brandon Lee, Halyna Hutchins, and to all those who didn't know, when they arrived to work that day, they wouldn't be going home.
posted by otherchaz at 10:20 PM on October 21, 2021 [81 favorites]
For Jon-Erik Hexum, Brandon Lee, Halyna Hutchins, and to all those who didn't know, when they arrived to work that day, they wouldn't be going home.
posted by otherchaz at 10:20 PM on October 21, 2021 [81 favorites]
Are movie blanks different than normal blanks, which are bullets with the slug removed and the end crimped shut (or this was normal when I fired blanks in the army 30 years ago)? Normal blanks are dangerous but only at very short range, where you're dealing with the force of the powder discharge. To hit two other people who would have been off camera, implying they were at least 10s of feet away, suggests that there was some kind of projectile in the prop bullets.
posted by fatbird at 10:30 PM on October 21, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by fatbird at 10:30 PM on October 21, 2021 [1 favorite]
>off camera, implying they were at least 10s of feet away
Cameras can be just inches away from the actor.
posted by nouvelle-personne at 10:35 PM on October 21, 2021 [5 favorites]
Cameras can be just inches away from the actor.
posted by nouvelle-personne at 10:35 PM on October 21, 2021 [5 favorites]
I don't fathom why there were live bullets on the set. I don't know anything about film but if I was making rules that'd be one of the first.
posted by Keith Talent at 10:41 PM on October 21, 2021 [6 favorites]
posted by Keith Talent at 10:41 PM on October 21, 2021 [6 favorites]
If you're even a couple of feet away from the barrel of a gun firing normal blanks, you're unlikely to be injured at all--the greatest risk is the wadding from the cartridge hitting you in the eye, otherwise your skin is very unlikely to be broken, especially under normal clothes. So it would seem that there was something non-standard about these rounds, and I'm wondering whether movie blanks are sometimes very different (and differently dangerous) from normal blanks. Or does the fact that two were killed mean some massive fuckup like live rounds being used (a scenario I can't imagine ever legitimately existing on a movie set with any mildly competent props master).
posted by fatbird at 10:45 PM on October 21, 2021
posted by fatbird at 10:45 PM on October 21, 2021
I swear I read here or here-adjacent about how guns on a movie set are in theory always under the control of a specialist (meaning their eyeball at least) and any loss of that control meant the assumption that the weapon was "live" and shooting had to stop and the weapon checked. When I worked in a gun shop donkey's years ago we certainly treated all guns that way when handed to a customer. Still pretty scary and I'm sure nowhere near as safe as we hoped.
posted by maxwelton at 11:29 PM on October 21, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by maxwelton at 11:29 PM on October 21, 2021 [2 favorites]
IIRC Brandon Lee's death was because blanks were loaded into a gun that still had a prop bullet (slug with powder removed) loaded from a closeup shot. Prop bullet + blank resulted in an effect akin to a real bullet. Absolute nightmare scenario. Two victims here, so possibly something else went wrong, or a single shot went through both of them.
posted by I claim sanctuary at 11:48 PM on October 21, 2021 [9 favorites]
posted by I claim sanctuary at 11:48 PM on October 21, 2021 [9 favorites]
I claim sanctuary, Brandon Lee's death came about because they did a close up with the prop bullet, which had no powder, but the force of the hammer pushed the slug into the barrel. When they switched to blanks, the force of the charge pushed the slug in the barrel out as if it had been a regular bullet with a powder charge. No one thought to check the barrel after the close up shot.
posted by Ghidorah at 12:00 AM on October 22, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by Ghidorah at 12:00 AM on October 22, 2021 [2 favorites]
I'd be curious to learn from movie biz folks why prop guns are even still a thing, when computer graphics are ridiculously cheap to add in post-production. Guns seem a remarkably unsafe thing to have anywhere near anyone on either side of the camera in 2021.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 12:01 AM on October 22, 2021 [13 favorites]
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 12:01 AM on October 22, 2021 [13 favorites]
Are movie blanks different than normal blanks, which are bullets with the slug removed and the end crimped shut
Many blanks contain a "wad"—something to fill the empty space in the cartridge and keep the relatively small powder charge compressed back against the primer so it burns correctly. I always assumed most modern wadding was styrofoam or similar.
The military uses devices called "blank firing adapters" (BFAs), which have the dual purpose of letting gas-operated firearms function using blanks, and also offering a last-ditch safety mechanism against something flying out of the barrel. But they are, by design, very visible.
posted by Kadin2048 at 12:02 AM on October 22, 2021 [6 favorites]
Many blanks contain a "wad"—something to fill the empty space in the cartridge and keep the relatively small powder charge compressed back against the primer so it burns correctly. I always assumed most modern wadding was styrofoam or similar.
The military uses devices called "blank firing adapters" (BFAs), which have the dual purpose of letting gas-operated firearms function using blanks, and also offering a last-ditch safety mechanism against something flying out of the barrel. But they are, by design, very visible.
posted by Kadin2048 at 12:02 AM on October 22, 2021 [6 favorites]
For those who know, is CGI gunfire more expensive than using prop guns?
posted by Beholder at 12:05 AM on October 22, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by Beholder at 12:05 AM on October 22, 2021 [1 favorite]
Not as of now, it isn't.
What a crying shame.
posted by flabdablet at 12:17 AM on October 22, 2021 [9 favorites]
What a crying shame.
posted by flabdablet at 12:17 AM on October 22, 2021 [9 favorites]
For those who know, is CGI gunfire more expensive than using prop guns?
I’d be shocked if using real guns isn’t the more expensive option, chosen for realism (recoil etc. as somebody already mentioned).
posted by atoxyl at 12:28 AM on October 22, 2021 [3 favorites]
I’d be shocked if using real guns isn’t the more expensive option, chosen for realism (recoil etc. as somebody already mentioned).
posted by atoxyl at 12:28 AM on October 22, 2021 [3 favorites]
All throughout this awful evening, I've been flashing back to when I was a kid and my clearly devastated dad (who watched and loved "Showdown In Little Tokyo" with me and my brothers maybe nine months before) told me what happened to Brandon Lee before I went to the bus and my brain refused to accept what had happened. It seemed ridiculous: How could something like that happen? How could a person get shot in a movie and die in real life?
posted by HunterFelt at 12:37 AM on October 22, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by HunterFelt at 12:37 AM on October 22, 2021 [4 favorites]
recoil etc. as somebody already mentioned
though I guess with blanks there’s really not much anyway
posted by atoxyl at 12:46 AM on October 22, 2021 [2 favorites]
though I guess with blanks there’s really not much anyway
posted by atoxyl at 12:46 AM on October 22, 2021 [2 favorites]
Awful story- it reminded me of the autostraddle article (here) recently about Ruby Rose leaving the Batwoman show because the set was unsafe for them and the stunt doubles.
posted by Braeburn at 1:10 AM on October 22, 2021 [11 favorites]
posted by Braeburn at 1:10 AM on October 22, 2021 [11 favorites]
I think they are union - they posted recently with I stand with IATSE stuff.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 1:22 AM on October 22, 2021
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 1:22 AM on October 22, 2021
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Absolutely horrible news.
Here's a twitter thread from last year about Halyna Hutchins and her work.
I hope someone's looking after Alec as well, he's strongly personally and politically anti-gun (he's criticised Dick Cheney and the NRA on many occasions and was a supporter of NoRA). This is going to be devastating for him. I wouldn't be surprised if it's the end of his career.
posted by fight or flight at 1:25 AM on October 22, 2021 [34 favorites]
Absolutely horrible news.
Here's a twitter thread from last year about Halyna Hutchins and her work.
I hope someone's looking after Alec as well, he's strongly personally and politically anti-gun (he's criticised Dick Cheney and the NRA on many occasions and was a supporter of NoRA). This is going to be devastating for him. I wouldn't be surprised if it's the end of his career.
posted by fight or flight at 1:25 AM on October 22, 2021 [34 favorites]
IATSE means International Association of Theatrical Stage Employees in case I'm not the only one who didn't know that.
posted by bendy at 1:36 AM on October 22, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by bendy at 1:36 AM on October 22, 2021 [5 favorites]
Mod note: A few deleted. Let's please stick to the topic of the post and relevant, actual information rather than make this into some sort of prosecution of Baldwin's entire life.
posted by taz (staff) at 3:36 AM on October 22, 2021 [30 favorites]
posted by taz (staff) at 3:36 AM on October 22, 2021 [30 favorites]
It sounds like the director, Joel Souza, has now been discharged from hospital, so that's some small good news.
I've seen speculation that Souza sustained shoulder injuries and Hutchins was shot in the stomach, possibly because she was holding the camera while the scene was being rehearsed, with the gun presumably pointed into the camera. If that's true, it sounds as though it must have been a pretty big mistake with a blank, or possibly some really unfortunate angles, to be able to cause such injuries to two people.
Hopefully this will lead to some changes on film sets to protect cast and crew. There has been too much of this in the news recently.
posted by fight or flight at 3:50 AM on October 22, 2021
I've seen speculation that Souza sustained shoulder injuries and Hutchins was shot in the stomach, possibly because she was holding the camera while the scene was being rehearsed, with the gun presumably pointed into the camera. If that's true, it sounds as though it must have been a pretty big mistake with a blank, or possibly some really unfortunate angles, to be able to cause such injuries to two people.
Hopefully this will lead to some changes on film sets to protect cast and crew. There has been too much of this in the news recently.
posted by fight or flight at 3:50 AM on October 22, 2021
When I studied theater, one of the classes I took was a class in stage combat. Most classes were very hands-on, jump-right-in physical - we started with physical warmups every class, and then we were up on our feet practicing whatever fake punches or stunt barrel rolls or rapier techniques we'd been taught that particular day. One of the coolest things we learned how to do was to fling ourselves into a dive, doing a somersault AND picking up a rapier on the ground on the way, and come up out of the somersault brandishing the rapier. (And the teacher even indulged me wanting to say Inigo Montoya's famous "You killed my father, prepare to die..." thing before I tried.)
The one exception to the pattern was the day that the teacher was showing us about prop guns - for that class, as we arrived he waved us each in towards him, where he sat on the floor. No warmup, no nothing that day. We sat in front of him in a semicircle; he had a disassembled starter's pistol on the floor in front of him. And when we had all arrived, he showed us each and every part of the pistol and how it worked, slowly assembling it as he did, and when he had assembled it, he loaded it with a single cap and pointed it in the air and fired. And then he started dis-assembling it again - but this time, he was telling us about how each and every part could malfunction, and what could happen if it did.
He then told us precisely what had malfunctioned with the gun that had killed Brandon Lee. And precisely why and how Jon-Erik Hexum was killed. And how another actor who was standing too close to the wrong part of a prop gun fortunately lived, but was left with several disfiguring powder burns on his face and his acting career was over.
Whenever there was a gun on set, he concluded, it behooved each of us to stay WELL CLEAR of the gun in question, and if we were to be the one firing it, to inspect it carefully and find out how it operated, where the gas escaped, if there was a wad in it, how secure the wad was, and suchlike, and to double check that EACH AND EVERY TIME. And even still, for safety's sake, NEVER POINT IT at anyone, because things still go wrong. And for the love of God, NEVER to fuck around with it between takes.
None of what I just said, mind you, is a castigation of Alec Baldwin specifically - I cannot and do not know what he might have been taught about guns over the course of his career, after all, or what he might have been taught about this specific gun on set. The gun might have been perfectly safe on prior days as well.
I do know, however, that not everyone in the entertainment industry receives that particular level of safety training. There was a director I worked with on a play where there was supposed to be an offstage gunshot, and he didn't like any of the recorded gunshot sound effects we'd found. So he came in to one rehearsal with an idea - we would use a cap gun that one of the actors would fire offstage.
I IMMEDIATELY said no - because I knew a cap gun would still require far more space around it than we would have in our cramped wings. There was literally no way we would have been able to do it safely. And he and I STILL had a three-day debate over it - a calm and polite debate, but a debate nonetheless, and one which I ultimately won, simply by repeatedly telling him of the safety requirements we had to have in place just to bring the gun into the theater. He kept trying to think of corners to cut, but ultimately realized that he couldn't cut them, and gave in.
Too few people are taught precisely how dangerous a gun can be. Too many people - understandably, mind you - put a little too much faith in "oh, it's just a prop gun it's okay". This isn't necessarily their fault either - they weren't taught, and their profession doesn't always call for them to be this fully taught. This, and the accidents that killed Jon-Erik Hexum and Brandon Lee, are why it should be fully taught.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:15 AM on October 22, 2021 [144 favorites]
The one exception to the pattern was the day that the teacher was showing us about prop guns - for that class, as we arrived he waved us each in towards him, where he sat on the floor. No warmup, no nothing that day. We sat in front of him in a semicircle; he had a disassembled starter's pistol on the floor in front of him. And when we had all arrived, he showed us each and every part of the pistol and how it worked, slowly assembling it as he did, and when he had assembled it, he loaded it with a single cap and pointed it in the air and fired. And then he started dis-assembling it again - but this time, he was telling us about how each and every part could malfunction, and what could happen if it did.
He then told us precisely what had malfunctioned with the gun that had killed Brandon Lee. And precisely why and how Jon-Erik Hexum was killed. And how another actor who was standing too close to the wrong part of a prop gun fortunately lived, but was left with several disfiguring powder burns on his face and his acting career was over.
Whenever there was a gun on set, he concluded, it behooved each of us to stay WELL CLEAR of the gun in question, and if we were to be the one firing it, to inspect it carefully and find out how it operated, where the gas escaped, if there was a wad in it, how secure the wad was, and suchlike, and to double check that EACH AND EVERY TIME. And even still, for safety's sake, NEVER POINT IT at anyone, because things still go wrong. And for the love of God, NEVER to fuck around with it between takes.
None of what I just said, mind you, is a castigation of Alec Baldwin specifically - I cannot and do not know what he might have been taught about guns over the course of his career, after all, or what he might have been taught about this specific gun on set. The gun might have been perfectly safe on prior days as well.
I do know, however, that not everyone in the entertainment industry receives that particular level of safety training. There was a director I worked with on a play where there was supposed to be an offstage gunshot, and he didn't like any of the recorded gunshot sound effects we'd found. So he came in to one rehearsal with an idea - we would use a cap gun that one of the actors would fire offstage.
I IMMEDIATELY said no - because I knew a cap gun would still require far more space around it than we would have in our cramped wings. There was literally no way we would have been able to do it safely. And he and I STILL had a three-day debate over it - a calm and polite debate, but a debate nonetheless, and one which I ultimately won, simply by repeatedly telling him of the safety requirements we had to have in place just to bring the gun into the theater. He kept trying to think of corners to cut, but ultimately realized that he couldn't cut them, and gave in.
Too few people are taught precisely how dangerous a gun can be. Too many people - understandably, mind you - put a little too much faith in "oh, it's just a prop gun it's okay". This isn't necessarily their fault either - they weren't taught, and their profession doesn't always call for them to be this fully taught. This, and the accidents that killed Jon-Erik Hexum and Brandon Lee, are why it should be fully taught.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:15 AM on October 22, 2021 [144 favorites]
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posted by Mister Bijou at 6:18 AM on October 22, 2021
posted by Mister Bijou at 6:18 AM on October 22, 2021
I know it's a total polyanna thought, but do we really need a culture where guns show up everywhere?
The more I think about it, I am shocked at how central guns are to everything in our mind space. And movies + TV are the path to our minds. A couple years ago, scrolling through what was on Netflix or some such, I noticed like ¾ or more of the poster for movies or shows had a gun in them. That realization has made it easier to eliminate choices from what I would watch, but it has made it harder to find anything to watch.
XTC's "Melt the Guns" was 1982: we were only getting warmed up.
Maybe going 'soft' in my old age, but it seems to me that we have been taken over by a mindset that says, just blow it away, instead of living with something we don't like. We've become numb to the profundity of what guns actually do.
I know, I know; you don't need to hammer me on this. Throw it on the pile of life's disappointments.
posted by nothing.especially.clever at 6:29 AM on October 22, 2021 [55 favorites]
The more I think about it, I am shocked at how central guns are to everything in our mind space. And movies + TV are the path to our minds. A couple years ago, scrolling through what was on Netflix or some such, I noticed like ¾ or more of the poster for movies or shows had a gun in them. That realization has made it easier to eliminate choices from what I would watch, but it has made it harder to find anything to watch.
XTC's "Melt the Guns" was 1982: we were only getting warmed up.
Programmes of violence
As entertainment
Bring the disease into your room
We know the germ
Which is man-made in metal
Is really the key to your own tomb
Maybe going 'soft' in my old age, but it seems to me that we have been taken over by a mindset that says, just blow it away, instead of living with something we don't like. We've become numb to the profundity of what guns actually do.
I know, I know; you don't need to hammer me on this. Throw it on the pile of life's disappointments.
posted by nothing.especially.clever at 6:29 AM on October 22, 2021 [55 favorites]
Sweet jesus, this is horrible. How the fuck could this happen? What are live rounds doing on set?
Did Baldwin fire two shots?
posted by Thorzdad at 6:32 AM on October 22, 2021
Did Baldwin fire two shots?
posted by Thorzdad at 6:32 AM on October 22, 2021
Why can't we have prop guns that shoot nothing but vibrate or shock the way modern video game controller does? It's insane we still risk people's lives this way for film.
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:34 AM on October 22, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:34 AM on October 22, 2021 [5 favorites]
How the fuck could this happen? What are live rounds doing on set?
They may not have been live rounds. It may simply have been the thing that was blocking the muzzle that somehow came loose, and when Baldwin fired, the thing blocking the muzzle was itself turned into a projectile.
Even a cap gun or a starters' pistol can be dangerous, because they both involve small explosions, and that gas has to escape somehow, and if you block its only point of egress it will force itself out however it can. That's what happened with Jon-Erik Huxum - the gun he was clowning around with on set was just loaded with either blanks or caps, but the gasses were being channeled down the barrel - and so when he put the gun barrel to his head and pulled the trigger, the force of the shot pushed A PIECE OF HIS OWN SKULL into his head, and THAT is what killed him.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:11 AM on October 22, 2021 [17 favorites]
They may not have been live rounds. It may simply have been the thing that was blocking the muzzle that somehow came loose, and when Baldwin fired, the thing blocking the muzzle was itself turned into a projectile.
Even a cap gun or a starters' pistol can be dangerous, because they both involve small explosions, and that gas has to escape somehow, and if you block its only point of egress it will force itself out however it can. That's what happened with Jon-Erik Huxum - the gun he was clowning around with on set was just loaded with either blanks or caps, but the gasses were being channeled down the barrel - and so when he put the gun barrel to his head and pulled the trigger, the force of the shot pushed A PIECE OF HIS OWN SKULL into his head, and THAT is what killed him.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:11 AM on October 22, 2021 [17 favorites]
I was surprised to read that real guns are still commonly used -- I had always thought that they were using prop guns, or real guns modified to no longer really shoot. Using real guns adds verisimilitude I guess, but clearly introduces a level of risk that wouldn't be there otherwise.
This sounds like a terrible and needless tragedy, and must be devastating for everyone.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:14 AM on October 22, 2021
This sounds like a terrible and needless tragedy, and must be devastating for everyone.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:14 AM on October 22, 2021
Surely they could use computer graphics to insert realistic (or hyper-stylised futuristic or whatever) guns into footage of actors wielding appropriately weighted water pistols. This would add to the expense of making a film, though if it's a safety regulation that applies to everyone, it would become part of the costs of making a film with potentially dangerous shoots, and would be vastly superior to the occasional death one would expect from actual firearms on set.
posted by acb at 7:19 AM on October 22, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by acb at 7:19 AM on October 22, 2021 [3 favorites]
First of all, a moment for this young DP, her friends and loved ones, the entire crew and cast, and Baldwin.
Yesterday I knew little to nothing about firearms on film sets. Now I know enough to know how much misinformation is out there.
One film person on Twitter said it's incorrect to even call anything that fires at all a prop gun, as that would be something like a fake solid block.
Then I learned more about "blanks" by remembering John-Erik Hexum and the horrific details of his death. It's so obvious that no one ever explained to that actor what he was holding.
As of this writing, we don't even know for sure whether this tragedy happened while rolling, or rehearsal. It might not have been while rolling, and him shooting toward the camera, but rehearsal. That's often just actors, DP and director walking and talking through a scene, sometimes without others around. At that point, they could've been standing closer, or in a different spot from where they'd be while rolling.
(But there again, someone on Twitter said that during rehearsal an actor might not be holding the same gun, but rather a true plastic prop.)
Finally, I read filmmakers like using something that really fires because it kicks more realistically in the actor's hand. But movie gunfire is often amplified for "dramatic effect," so why not focus on faking the look too?
Actors spend weeks learning accents or how to fake playing a musical instrument, but on even medium budget films aren't given training about firearms?
posted by NorthernLite at 8:12 AM on October 22, 2021
Yesterday I knew little to nothing about firearms on film sets. Now I know enough to know how much misinformation is out there.
One film person on Twitter said it's incorrect to even call anything that fires at all a prop gun, as that would be something like a fake solid block.
Then I learned more about "blanks" by remembering John-Erik Hexum and the horrific details of his death. It's so obvious that no one ever explained to that actor what he was holding.
As of this writing, we don't even know for sure whether this tragedy happened while rolling, or rehearsal. It might not have been while rolling, and him shooting toward the camera, but rehearsal. That's often just actors, DP and director walking and talking through a scene, sometimes without others around. At that point, they could've been standing closer, or in a different spot from where they'd be while rolling.
(But there again, someone on Twitter said that during rehearsal an actor might not be holding the same gun, but rather a true plastic prop.)
Finally, I read filmmakers like using something that really fires because it kicks more realistically in the actor's hand. But movie gunfire is often amplified for "dramatic effect," so why not focus on faking the look too?
Actors spend weeks learning accents or how to fake playing a musical instrument, but on even medium budget films aren't given training about firearms?
posted by NorthernLite at 8:12 AM on October 22, 2021
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What is the prop gun Alec Baldwin used, and why are they still on film sets?
(Washington Post)
There's a lot of information and technical detail. Some excerpts:
I'm not going to take a stand on whether they should be outlawed, but after reading this I'd never ever agree to be fired at with a prop gun.
posted by mark k at 8:30 AM on October 22, 2021 [8 favorites]
What is the prop gun Alec Baldwin used, and why are they still on film sets?
(Washington Post)
There's a lot of information and technical detail. Some excerpts:
“There’s no reason to have guns loaded with blanks or anything on set anymore,” tweeted director Craig Zobel, whose credits include the 2020 film “The Hunt” and HBO’s “Mare of Easttown.” “Should just be fully outlawed. There’s computers now.”They also say Brandon Lee was killed by a real round, something I didn't remember.
[ . . . ]
So, what is a prop gun? While it’s thought of as a nonfunctional weapon often used in theater productions, the term “prop gun” also refers to real guns on TV and film sets that are loaded with blank cartridges, which are essentially modified bullets.
“Prop guns are guns,” tweeted TV writer David Slack, whose credits include “Magnum P.I.” and “Person of Interest.” “Blanks have real gunpowder in them. They can injure or kill — and they have. If you’re ever on a set where prop guns are treated without proper caution and safe handling, walk away.”
[ . . . ]
“They’re supposed to be built in a way to prevent them from even being able to accept real ammunition,” tweeted Stephen Gutowski, a gun-safety instructor and firearms reporter for TheReload.com.
These prop guns with blanks are used on Hollywood sets because of the authenticity they add to filming. Firing a blank with a prop gun will produce three things that computer-generated imagery sometimes struggles to match: a recoil, a loud bang and a muzzle flash, which is the light created when the propellant powder combusts. Dave Brown, a Canada-based professional firearms instructor who has worked on films and TV shows, wrote in American Cinematographer magazine that although visual effects and CGI can help with close-range gunshots that cannot be filmed safely, firing guns with blanks makes a scene look as real as possible.
I'm not going to take a stand on whether they should be outlawed, but after reading this I'd never ever agree to be fired at with a prop gun.
posted by mark k at 8:30 AM on October 22, 2021 [8 favorites]
I have another weapons-related anecdote about how sometimes, Shit Just Happens.
I worked on a play where there was a scene where two guys fought for control of a knife, ending with one finally grabbing it and slashing the other one. We had trouble finding a prop knife that wasn't either super-fake looking or outrageously overbudget - and then one of the actors, the one who was also our fight director (and therefore in charge of ensuring fights would be done safely), said that he knew how to blunt the blade on an actual knife, and could do that. The other actor, the director, and I all looked dubious and we all had doubts, but he immediately said "no, I know, but the process I'll use will be [blah blah blah] to avoid [blah blah blah], and I will let you check it over first for safety's sake and any one of you can reject it for any reason." And with that assurance, we all said "go ahead". And all four of us checked over the blunted blade, and it seemed okay, so we went ahead.
But as it turns out, he had missed one EXTREMELY TINY spot, one which would have been hard to see unless you were EXTREMELY THOROUGHLY examining it - and during one of the dress rehearsals, the other actor caught the web of his hand between the thumb and fingers on that EXACT spot, and cut himself badly enough that we had to send him to the ER where he ended up getting a couple stitches.
We of course immediately switched to a fake prop knife for the show. And all four of us fell all over ourselves trying to accept the blame ("It was my fault, I should have said no!" "No, me!" "No, it was me!") but all of us had done everything right, and all of us had done the responsible thing by asking the right questions and all four of us had checked that knife and all four of us missed that one very-easy-to-miss sharp spot. This was just that one in a thousand scenario where even if you do everything right you still get tripped up, and we chalked it up to us just getting off really, really easy. (The fight director also took the knife back, reblunted it like 3 more times, and then engraved it with the name of the show and presented it to the injured actor in a velvet-lined box as a closing night gift.)
This could have happened because of neglect or carelessness, or it could have happened because of a lack of training - or it could have happened because it was a freak accident kind of situation. Only the investigation can tell us for sure whether anyone did or didn't do what they were supposed to or not supposed to do.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:50 AM on October 22, 2021 [41 favorites]
I worked on a play where there was a scene where two guys fought for control of a knife, ending with one finally grabbing it and slashing the other one. We had trouble finding a prop knife that wasn't either super-fake looking or outrageously overbudget - and then one of the actors, the one who was also our fight director (and therefore in charge of ensuring fights would be done safely), said that he knew how to blunt the blade on an actual knife, and could do that. The other actor, the director, and I all looked dubious and we all had doubts, but he immediately said "no, I know, but the process I'll use will be [blah blah blah] to avoid [blah blah blah], and I will let you check it over first for safety's sake and any one of you can reject it for any reason." And with that assurance, we all said "go ahead". And all four of us checked over the blunted blade, and it seemed okay, so we went ahead.
But as it turns out, he had missed one EXTREMELY TINY spot, one which would have been hard to see unless you were EXTREMELY THOROUGHLY examining it - and during one of the dress rehearsals, the other actor caught the web of his hand between the thumb and fingers on that EXACT spot, and cut himself badly enough that we had to send him to the ER where he ended up getting a couple stitches.
We of course immediately switched to a fake prop knife for the show. And all four of us fell all over ourselves trying to accept the blame ("It was my fault, I should have said no!" "No, me!" "No, it was me!") but all of us had done everything right, and all of us had done the responsible thing by asking the right questions and all four of us had checked that knife and all four of us missed that one very-easy-to-miss sharp spot. This was just that one in a thousand scenario where even if you do everything right you still get tripped up, and we chalked it up to us just getting off really, really easy. (The fight director also took the knife back, reblunted it like 3 more times, and then engraved it with the name of the show and presented it to the injured actor in a velvet-lined box as a closing night gift.)
This could have happened because of neglect or carelessness, or it could have happened because of a lack of training - or it could have happened because it was a freak accident kind of situation. Only the investigation can tell us for sure whether anyone did or didn't do what they were supposed to or not supposed to do.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:50 AM on October 22, 2021 [41 favorites]
We had trouble finding a prop knife that wasn't either super-fake looking or outrageously overbudget
EmpressCallipygos' story reminds me of one of my own. I take martial arts classes that sometimes include knife defense. The instructor bought about a dozen super-fake looking knives from a Halloween store -- the blades are relatively soft plastic that bend easily. They have no edge at all.
On more than one occasion, I've been slashed with one of those knives during knife defense hard enough to draw a welt and even blood. Even a blunt blade can cut if it's moving fast enough. And all too obviously, even a "prop" gun can kill.
posted by Gelatin at 9:15 AM on October 22, 2021 [11 favorites]
EmpressCallipygos' story reminds me of one of my own. I take martial arts classes that sometimes include knife defense. The instructor bought about a dozen super-fake looking knives from a Halloween store -- the blades are relatively soft plastic that bend easily. They have no edge at all.
On more than one occasion, I've been slashed with one of those knives during knife defense hard enough to draw a welt and even blood. Even a blunt blade can cut if it's moving fast enough. And all too obviously, even a "prop" gun can kill.
posted by Gelatin at 9:15 AM on October 22, 2021 [11 favorites]
The following comment is one I found on Drew Curtis' FARK website. It was posted by a user called "FightDirector" who claims to work in the industry, and his statement seems to bear that out. It addresses the issue of whether or not real guns should be banned from movie sets. The answer, he claims, is a definite "no!"
Comment: there shouldn't be REAL guns on a movie set, and it sounds like that's what happened.
OK, this is my literal, actual job. Almost all my recent credits have been as a gun wrangler instead of a full fight director, because there's a lot more call for guns over swords in films and plays these days.
Your statement is wrong.
There are, occasionally, instances where blank-adapted (i.e., live) firearms are on set. This is very often the case for firearm models where no substitute is available (blank-firing weapons, electric non-guns, etc.), or a prop house is unwilling to make modifications to a live firearm. All of the military firearms at the end of The Avengers 2012, for example (to use a film I worked on that you may have seen) were live firearms. The M2HB, in particular, was just a National Guard-issue M2HB which fired full-load .50BMG blank rounds.
There are, occasionally, instances where CGI cannot be used to fake everything about firearms. Having the actor stand there with a rubber prop and pretend to feel recoil always looks fake, for example, and if no electric non-gun is available for the model of firearm being used (which is hugely common), then you end up with a live gun. In such instances, blank firearms of various loads (usually the minimum load to let the action cycle, if needed) are used. Likewise, slide action and brass are particularly irritating for VFX houses, and there are several relatively high-budget things (TV shows, mostly) which get routinely eviscerated by people who care, because they just CGI in muzzle flash and nothing else; this is where the famous shots of The Walking Dead which show an M4 firing with its ejection port closed and with no ejecting brass come from.
There are, occasionally, instances where the director, production staff, and actors are all on board with making things as real as possible, which necessitates the use of blanks. And sometimes, live firearms (usually with interior threading inside the muzzle to fit a blank-firing adaptor which will still allow the action to cycle with the lower pressure incurred by the blank) are the best solution to that. At a minimum, live guns adapted for blank fire are universally more reliable than purpose-built blank guns. If we're on a theatre stage and a blank gun malfunctions, we improvise and go on. On a film set, if a blank gun malfunctions, the studio is out a huge amount of money as the shot is reset, so there's a strong incentive to use blank-adapted guns on film if you can't use CGI for some reason.
But here's the thing. There are strong, stringent, should-not-be-farking-broken safeties in place on a film set or stage play in order to keep things safe. There are multiple layers of safeties and cutouts at all times** to ensure that this shiat doesn't happen, and what it means here is that not only did multiple someone's screw up prior to the actor ever handling the weapon (oh, and there will be consequences about that), but it means that is Alec Baldwin a farking moron - because no matter what else happened, he still pulled the trigger while pointing a weapon directly at a person. No matter how bad anyone screws up along the line, if the actor doesn't do that, nobody gets hurt. This is something that gets hammered into the actors I train over and over and over again. The actor with his hand on the weapon is the final safety cutout in EVERY SINGLE SCENE, and if he doesn't have the mental wherewithal to understand the concepts of trigger discipline and muzzle awareness, then he doesn't belong onscreen handling weapons in the first place.
**Rule 7: Live ammunition NEVER appears on the same set with any sort of non-rubber firearm. If a firearm capable of firing any sort of ammunition (blank or not) is on set, live ammunition is forbidden. (The Theatrical Firearms Handbook, Kevin Inouye, 2014)
Glossary:
Blank: An explosive cartridge with an explosive propellant in various quantities (full, 3/4, 1/2, 1/4, primer only), a primer to set off the propellant, and a casing to hold it all, with no explicit projectile.
Blank Firing Gun: A prop which resembles a weapon, built explicitly to fire blanks and cannot be loaded with real ammunition.
Blank-adapted Gun: A real firearm, capable of firing actual ammunition, which has been adapted with a (usually hidden) device to partially block the barrel and create enough chamber pressure to cycle the action. Is loaded with blank ammunition, but in the same caliber as real ammunition (ie, 5.56x45mm quarter-load blank; .30-06 full load blank). These tend to be "Hero Props"; used for close-ups and/or shots showing the disassembly or loading of the weapon.
Electric Non-Gun: Electrically actuated prop which has a motor which moves the slide, kicks out empty brass cartridges, and ignites flash paper contained within the muzzle to simulate muzzle flash. These are custom-built by prop houses, not commercially available, and are often the target of legal action by the real firearm companies since they necessarily resemble the real thing. H&K is particularly bad in this regard.
Rubber Gun:a rubber or silicone casting of a real firearm, painted to look genuine. Use of these is preferable at all times, unless there is a specific reason to use anything else.
posted by Quasimike at 9:22 AM on October 22, 2021 [24 favorites]
Comment: there shouldn't be REAL guns on a movie set, and it sounds like that's what happened.
OK, this is my literal, actual job. Almost all my recent credits have been as a gun wrangler instead of a full fight director, because there's a lot more call for guns over swords in films and plays these days.
Your statement is wrong.
There are, occasionally, instances where blank-adapted (i.e., live) firearms are on set. This is very often the case for firearm models where no substitute is available (blank-firing weapons, electric non-guns, etc.), or a prop house is unwilling to make modifications to a live firearm. All of the military firearms at the end of The Avengers 2012, for example (to use a film I worked on that you may have seen) were live firearms. The M2HB, in particular, was just a National Guard-issue M2HB which fired full-load .50BMG blank rounds.
There are, occasionally, instances where CGI cannot be used to fake everything about firearms. Having the actor stand there with a rubber prop and pretend to feel recoil always looks fake, for example, and if no electric non-gun is available for the model of firearm being used (which is hugely common), then you end up with a live gun. In such instances, blank firearms of various loads (usually the minimum load to let the action cycle, if needed) are used. Likewise, slide action and brass are particularly irritating for VFX houses, and there are several relatively high-budget things (TV shows, mostly) which get routinely eviscerated by people who care, because they just CGI in muzzle flash and nothing else; this is where the famous shots of The Walking Dead which show an M4 firing with its ejection port closed and with no ejecting brass come from.
There are, occasionally, instances where the director, production staff, and actors are all on board with making things as real as possible, which necessitates the use of blanks. And sometimes, live firearms (usually with interior threading inside the muzzle to fit a blank-firing adaptor which will still allow the action to cycle with the lower pressure incurred by the blank) are the best solution to that. At a minimum, live guns adapted for blank fire are universally more reliable than purpose-built blank guns. If we're on a theatre stage and a blank gun malfunctions, we improvise and go on. On a film set, if a blank gun malfunctions, the studio is out a huge amount of money as the shot is reset, so there's a strong incentive to use blank-adapted guns on film if you can't use CGI for some reason.
But here's the thing. There are strong, stringent, should-not-be-farking-broken safeties in place on a film set or stage play in order to keep things safe. There are multiple layers of safeties and cutouts at all times** to ensure that this shiat doesn't happen, and what it means here is that not only did multiple someone's screw up prior to the actor ever handling the weapon (oh, and there will be consequences about that), but it means that is Alec Baldwin a farking moron - because no matter what else happened, he still pulled the trigger while pointing a weapon directly at a person. No matter how bad anyone screws up along the line, if the actor doesn't do that, nobody gets hurt. This is something that gets hammered into the actors I train over and over and over again. The actor with his hand on the weapon is the final safety cutout in EVERY SINGLE SCENE, and if he doesn't have the mental wherewithal to understand the concepts of trigger discipline and muzzle awareness, then he doesn't belong onscreen handling weapons in the first place.
**Rule 7: Live ammunition NEVER appears on the same set with any sort of non-rubber firearm. If a firearm capable of firing any sort of ammunition (blank or not) is on set, live ammunition is forbidden. (The Theatrical Firearms Handbook, Kevin Inouye, 2014)
Glossary:
Blank: An explosive cartridge with an explosive propellant in various quantities (full, 3/4, 1/2, 1/4, primer only), a primer to set off the propellant, and a casing to hold it all, with no explicit projectile.
Blank Firing Gun: A prop which resembles a weapon, built explicitly to fire blanks and cannot be loaded with real ammunition.
Blank-adapted Gun: A real firearm, capable of firing actual ammunition, which has been adapted with a (usually hidden) device to partially block the barrel and create enough chamber pressure to cycle the action. Is loaded with blank ammunition, but in the same caliber as real ammunition (ie, 5.56x45mm quarter-load blank; .30-06 full load blank). These tend to be "Hero Props"; used for close-ups and/or shots showing the disassembly or loading of the weapon.
Electric Non-Gun: Electrically actuated prop which has a motor which moves the slide, kicks out empty brass cartridges, and ignites flash paper contained within the muzzle to simulate muzzle flash. These are custom-built by prop houses, not commercially available, and are often the target of legal action by the real firearm companies since they necessarily resemble the real thing. H&K is particularly bad in this regard.
Rubber Gun:a rubber or silicone casting of a real firearm, painted to look genuine. Use of these is preferable at all times, unless there is a specific reason to use anything else.
posted by Quasimike at 9:22 AM on October 22, 2021 [24 favorites]
Apparently IATSE sent out a letter that claimed the gun contained a “live round” (and also noted that it was not a union crew) but I don’t know whether that phrasing is meant to include blanks (or whether the live round part is accurate, otherwise). It certainly does feel possible that somebody cut corners on the “weapon-handling professionals” budget here.
posted by atoxyl at 9:30 AM on October 22, 2021
posted by atoxyl at 9:30 AM on October 22, 2021
there are several relatively high-budget things (TV shows, mostly) which get routinely eviscerated by people who care, because they just CGI in muzzle flash and nothing else; this is where the famous shots of The Walking Dead which show an M4 firing with its ejection port closed and with no ejecting brass come from.
Oh who the fuck cares? Fuck those far be nitpickers. I have seen cosplayers make amazing replica guns out of cheap plastic toys so "there are no substitutes for this firearm model" thing also seems like crap.
Interesting coverage at Pajiba.
posted by See you tomorrow, saguaro at 9:32 AM on October 22, 2021 [37 favorites]
Oh who the fuck cares? Fuck those far be nitpickers. I have seen cosplayers make amazing replica guns out of cheap plastic toys so "there are no substitutes for this firearm model" thing also seems like crap.
Interesting coverage at Pajiba.
posted by See you tomorrow, saguaro at 9:32 AM on October 22, 2021 [37 favorites]
but it means that is Alec Baldwin a farking moron [...] if he doesn't have the mental wherewithal to understand the concepts of trigger discipline and muzzle awareness, then he doesn't belong onscreen handling weapons in the first place.
The rest of what you excerpted tracks with what I learned elsewhere about firearm safety on set, but this part irks me. The actor should have the expectation that they can rely on the work of their fellow professionals around them.
Is Baldwin also expected to investigate rigging, go over electrical safety with the lighting crew, and make sure the transportation trucks have had their brakes checked? Any of those things could contain flaws that could kill crew members, but if one of those went wrong on a set you wouldn't blame the actor.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 9:35 AM on October 22, 2021 [65 favorites]
The rest of what you excerpted tracks with what I learned elsewhere about firearm safety on set, but this part irks me. The actor should have the expectation that they can rely on the work of their fellow professionals around them.
Is Baldwin also expected to investigate rigging, go over electrical safety with the lighting crew, and make sure the transportation trucks have had their brakes checked? Any of those things could contain flaws that could kill crew members, but if one of those went wrong on a set you wouldn't blame the actor.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 9:35 AM on October 22, 2021 [65 favorites]
Seriously. Risking death or injury for people who care if an ejection port is closed is absurd. There will always be things in movies that are noticeably wrong if you're an expert.
posted by Mavri at 9:36 AM on October 22, 2021 [35 favorites]
posted by Mavri at 9:36 AM on October 22, 2021 [35 favorites]
I would think after the Brandon Lee tragedy there would be a strict separation between guns used for shots with realistic dummy rounds and guns used for shots with fired blanks. More than one accident I’ve heard of with blanks played out similarly to that one - some sequence resulting in both powder and projectile being unintentionally “loaded” into the gun.
posted by atoxyl at 9:38 AM on October 22, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by atoxyl at 9:38 AM on October 22, 2021 [2 favorites]
Ugh, let's stress that's an anonymous person boasting about Avengers films he's allegedly worked on. And coming across as a jerk.
which get routinely eviscerated by people who care,
Well sure, I'm a classically trained musician who's been rolling my eyes at people faking the fiddle and piano for decades, and I know medical people who do same at how their field is portrayed, but by all means, let's have dangerous weapons on set because gun nuts can't stand if gunfire doesn't look "real" in a movie about superheroes.
posted by NorthernLite at 9:39 AM on October 22, 2021 [82 favorites]
which get routinely eviscerated by people who care,
Well sure, I'm a classically trained musician who's been rolling my eyes at people faking the fiddle and piano for decades, and I know medical people who do same at how their field is portrayed, but by all means, let's have dangerous weapons on set because gun nuts can't stand if gunfire doesn't look "real" in a movie about superheroes.
posted by NorthernLite at 9:39 AM on October 22, 2021 [82 favorites]
routinely eviscerated by people who care
I'm beginning to think there might be something to the idea of blatantly violating a detail like this up front (see: straight-faced jokes about the "AR" in "AR-15" standing for "Assault Rifle") to set the tone. People-who-care (and in this context, end up the loudest voices for "if you don't cover every last detail to our satisfaction, you shouldn't be allowed to have any opinion on the subject") lose perspective quickly.
Worrying about ejection ports doesn't resolve anything, it just means they move on to something else that's equally disqualifying in their eyes.
posted by CrystalDave at 9:41 AM on October 22, 2021 [4 favorites]
I'm beginning to think there might be something to the idea of blatantly violating a detail like this up front (see: straight-faced jokes about the "AR" in "AR-15" standing for "Assault Rifle") to set the tone. People-who-care (and in this context, end up the loudest voices for "if you don't cover every last detail to our satisfaction, you shouldn't be allowed to have any opinion on the subject") lose perspective quickly.
Worrying about ejection ports doesn't resolve anything, it just means they move on to something else that's equally disqualifying in their eyes.
posted by CrystalDave at 9:41 AM on October 22, 2021 [4 favorites]
Well sure, I'm a classically trained musician who's been rolling my eyes at people faking the fiddle and piano for decades, and I know medical people who do same at how their field is portrayed,
Yes, CPR always looks incredibly faked because they don't want to break actors ribs. And I've spent my whole life riding horses... you know how many times I've seen people on film who look like they've never sat on a horse before? A lot. (Actually, you could really make an argument that training those actors to ride horses better would be the safer choice in addition to improving authenticity. Some productions do that, but lots of them don't.)
But you know what, I just sort of shake my head and move on with my life because I recognize that at the end of the day, it's just a TV show/movie.
I'm not remotely swayed by the argument that "authenticity" is worth risking the lives of cast and crew.
posted by litera scripta manet at 9:44 AM on October 22, 2021 [32 favorites]
Yes, CPR always looks incredibly faked because they don't want to break actors ribs. And I've spent my whole life riding horses... you know how many times I've seen people on film who look like they've never sat on a horse before? A lot. (Actually, you could really make an argument that training those actors to ride horses better would be the safer choice in addition to improving authenticity. Some productions do that, but lots of them don't.)
But you know what, I just sort of shake my head and move on with my life because I recognize that at the end of the day, it's just a TV show/movie.
I'm not remotely swayed by the argument that "authenticity" is worth risking the lives of cast and crew.
posted by litera scripta manet at 9:44 AM on October 22, 2021 [32 favorites]
I'm not remotely swayed by the argument that "authenticity" is worth risking the lives of cast and crew.
I mean, for zero risk that means there shouldn't be any car chases or staged car crashes or any stunts in a movie or TV show at all.
posted by FJT at 9:48 AM on October 22, 2021 [3 favorites]
I mean, for zero risk that means there shouldn't be any car chases or staged car crashes or any stunts in a movie or TV show at all.
posted by FJT at 9:48 AM on October 22, 2021 [3 favorites]
Is Baldwin also expected to investigate rigging, go over electrical safety with the lighting crew, and make sure the transportation trucks have had their brakes checked?
Speaking of car chases, I was reading today that Dylan O'Brien (Teen Wofl, Maze Runner series) does obsessively check all of his rigging and stunt conditions nowadays, but of course, he was run over and almost killed by a prop car during a stunt gone wrong and ended up with traumatic brain injury, so I suppose he has his reasons.
I really agree with IATSE that long hours and abusive set conditions need to be remedied to help the crew keep everyone safe.
posted by See you tomorrow, saguaro at 9:50 AM on October 22, 2021 [14 favorites]
Speaking of car chases, I was reading today that Dylan O'Brien (Teen Wofl, Maze Runner series) does obsessively check all of his rigging and stunt conditions nowadays, but of course, he was run over and almost killed by a prop car during a stunt gone wrong and ended up with traumatic brain injury, so I suppose he has his reasons.
I really agree with IATSE that long hours and abusive set conditions need to be remedied to help the crew keep everyone safe.
posted by See you tomorrow, saguaro at 9:50 AM on October 22, 2021 [14 favorites]
I've felt frightened on a set where a giant diffuser panel on a crane (similar to this but NOT from that company, just using the photo as an example) was swaying alarmingly over my head on a windy day - a tool the audience wouldn't even see. Film sets have lots of dangerous things and you have to trust each department to keep everyone safe. Knowing that most of them are working 16 hour days. If they strike? Support them.
posted by nouvelle-personne at 9:52 AM on October 22, 2021 [16 favorites]
posted by nouvelle-personne at 9:52 AM on October 22, 2021 [16 favorites]
Yes, CPR always looks incredibly faked because they don't want to break actors ribs.
And chopping vegetables! Has any actor ever prepared a meal before in real life? We have to get to a world that stops worshipping guns.
posted by snofoam at 9:55 AM on October 22, 2021 [14 favorites]
And chopping vegetables! Has any actor ever prepared a meal before in real life? We have to get to a world that stops worshipping guns.
posted by snofoam at 9:55 AM on October 22, 2021 [14 favorites]
Alec Baldwin voices ‘shock and sadness’ over shooting of Halyna Hutchins on film set
One Hollywood website, quoting a witness, said a distraught Baldwin had asked why he had been given a firearm apparently loaded with real ammunition. “In all my years, I’ve never been handed a hot gun,” he exclaimed, according to the site, Showbiz 411.posted by mumimor at 10:11 AM on October 22, 2021 [1 favorite]
Has any actor ever prepared a meal before in real life?The Best TV Scene Of 2021 Is Paul Giamatti Cooking Eggs In Silence
posted by joeyh at 10:18 AM on October 22, 2021 [19 favorites]
I wish he had not described her as a wife and mother before "deeply admired colleague," but this is Alec Baldwin and I think he's doing his best.
posted by tiny frying pan at 10:19 AM on October 22, 2021 [6 favorites]
posted by tiny frying pan at 10:19 AM on October 22, 2021 [6 favorites]
> but it means that is Alec Baldwin a farking moron [...] if he doesn't have the mental wherewithal to understand the concepts of trigger discipline and muzzle awareness, then he doesn't belong onscreen handling weapons in the first place.
The rest of what you excerpted tracks with what I learned elsewhere about firearm safety on set, but this part irks me. The actor should have the expectation that they can rely on the work of their fellow professionals around them.
The actor should have the expectation that they can rely on the work of their fellow professionals, but the actor should also avoid pointing the gun directly at a person because, sometimes, Shit Happens Nevertheless (exhibit A - my knife story above). That's something that does get drilled into actors, usually.
But a) we don't know with 100% clarity yet that this is what happened, because the investigation is still ongoing; he may have pointed it off to the side like he was supposed to, but the muzzle may have exploded in some weird way and the projectile went out on a diagonal trajectory; we don't know yet. And b) a tired actor, or an actor who's "in the moment", may space out on that one detail. Another gig I did, I was the ASM and I was asked at one point to stand in for another actor while someone was running a scene; she was meant to draw a gun and point it at the person I was standing in for, and she had been told to aim about 1 foot upstage of that actor. But in that moment, as I was standing in for her scene partner, she forgot, and pointed the gun right at me. (The gun was not loaded, but I still instinctively flinched and threw myself down to the floor and that actress never forgot where to aim again after seeing how freaked out I had been.)
Maybe Baldwin spaced during his gun safety training. Maybe he was caught up in a super-intense Stanislavkian sense memory. Maybe he wasn't trained properly. Maybe the barrel had a hole in it where it shouldn't. Maybe the glue that they used when they were blocking the barrel had some quality control issues. We don't know yet. Any one of a number of things could have gone wrong.
And that is why "trust your colleagues have your back, but also do the right thing yourself" should be the watchword - because any one of the many people involved could have had a down day, and the other people doing their checks will help catch that.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:21 AM on October 22, 2021 [23 favorites]
The rest of what you excerpted tracks with what I learned elsewhere about firearm safety on set, but this part irks me. The actor should have the expectation that they can rely on the work of their fellow professionals around them.
The actor should have the expectation that they can rely on the work of their fellow professionals, but the actor should also avoid pointing the gun directly at a person because, sometimes, Shit Happens Nevertheless (exhibit A - my knife story above). That's something that does get drilled into actors, usually.
But a) we don't know with 100% clarity yet that this is what happened, because the investigation is still ongoing; he may have pointed it off to the side like he was supposed to, but the muzzle may have exploded in some weird way and the projectile went out on a diagonal trajectory; we don't know yet. And b) a tired actor, or an actor who's "in the moment", may space out on that one detail. Another gig I did, I was the ASM and I was asked at one point to stand in for another actor while someone was running a scene; she was meant to draw a gun and point it at the person I was standing in for, and she had been told to aim about 1 foot upstage of that actor. But in that moment, as I was standing in for her scene partner, she forgot, and pointed the gun right at me. (The gun was not loaded, but I still instinctively flinched and threw myself down to the floor and that actress never forgot where to aim again after seeing how freaked out I had been.)
Maybe Baldwin spaced during his gun safety training. Maybe he was caught up in a super-intense Stanislavkian sense memory. Maybe he wasn't trained properly. Maybe the barrel had a hole in it where it shouldn't. Maybe the glue that they used when they were blocking the barrel had some quality control issues. We don't know yet. Any one of a number of things could have gone wrong.
And that is why "trust your colleagues have your back, but also do the right thing yourself" should be the watchword - because any one of the many people involved could have had a down day, and the other people doing their checks will help catch that.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:21 AM on October 22, 2021 [23 favorites]
this is Alec Baldwin and I think he's doing his best.
I would be very shocked if Alec actually wrote that tweet. It's almost certainly his PA, I strongly doubt he's presently interested in interacting with social media given what his mental state is likely to be right now.
This sounds like a horrific accident that will end up landing (as it should) on the shoulders of whoever authorised that live round (if that's correct) and apparently didn't tell Baldwin about it.
posted by fight or flight at 10:22 AM on October 22, 2021 [11 favorites]
I would be very shocked if Alec actually wrote that tweet. It's almost certainly his PA, I strongly doubt he's presently interested in interacting with social media given what his mental state is likely to be right now.
This sounds like a horrific accident that will end up landing (as it should) on the shoulders of whoever authorised that live round (if that's correct) and apparently didn't tell Baldwin about it.
posted by fight or flight at 10:22 AM on October 22, 2021 [11 favorites]
And chopping vegetables! Has any actor ever prepared a meal before in real life? We have to get to a world that stops worshipping guns.
Don't even get me started about computing in movies... If I have to accept the fact that Holllywood either doesn't understand or won't understand how computers work and how humans use them, the gun nuts can get over the imperfections of firearm depictions in entertainment.
There's so much we accept that isn't quite right about movies and TV shows. DNA results don't come back from the lab in 24 hours. Nobody's hair or makeup would look that perfect in many scenarios.
The entire premise of shows like The Walking Dead require you to suspend disbelief on so many levels[1], we could and should just accept that gunfire in shows won't be a perfect or even close-to-perfect simulation and get over it.
[1] The whole "everybody is infected & comes back a zombie when they die but you turn into a zombie faster if you're bitten even on your big toe" never made sense to me. Fix that, IDGAF if the gunfire looks perfect.
posted by jzb at 10:23 AM on October 22, 2021 [7 favorites]
Don't even get me started about computing in movies... If I have to accept the fact that Holllywood either doesn't understand or won't understand how computers work and how humans use them, the gun nuts can get over the imperfections of firearm depictions in entertainment.
There's so much we accept that isn't quite right about movies and TV shows. DNA results don't come back from the lab in 24 hours. Nobody's hair or makeup would look that perfect in many scenarios.
The entire premise of shows like The Walking Dead require you to suspend disbelief on so many levels[1], we could and should just accept that gunfire in shows won't be a perfect or even close-to-perfect simulation and get over it.
[1] The whole "everybody is infected & comes back a zombie when they die but you turn into a zombie faster if you're bitten even on your big toe" never made sense to me. Fix that, IDGAF if the gunfire looks perfect.
posted by jzb at 10:23 AM on October 22, 2021 [7 favorites]
this is Alec Baldwin and I think he's doing his best.
I would be very shocked if Alec actually wrote that tweet. It's almost certainly his PA, I strongly doubt he's presently interested in interacting with social media given what his mental state is likely to be right now.
Either way, it's misogynist as hell and I wish whoever writes things like this would take a minute to make it better.
posted by tiny frying pan at 10:25 AM on October 22, 2021 [6 favorites]
I would be very shocked if Alec actually wrote that tweet. It's almost certainly his PA, I strongly doubt he's presently interested in interacting with social media given what his mental state is likely to be right now.
Either way, it's misogynist as hell and I wish whoever writes things like this would take a minute to make it better.
posted by tiny frying pan at 10:25 AM on October 22, 2021 [6 favorites]
The order of words in a tweet is hardly the most pressing problem about this whole mess.
posted by fight or flight at 10:26 AM on October 22, 2021 [41 favorites]
posted by fight or flight at 10:26 AM on October 22, 2021 [41 favorites]
This sounds like a horrific accident that will end up landing (as it should) on the shoulders of whoever authorised that live round (if that's correct) and apparently didn't tell Baldwin about it.
I don't think we know that it WAS a live round yet, do we?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:27 AM on October 22, 2021 [1 favorite]
I don't think we know that it WAS a live round yet, do we?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:27 AM on October 22, 2021 [1 favorite]
I wish he had not described her as a wife and mother before "deeply admired colleague," but this is Alec Baldwin and I think he's doing his best.
tiny frying pan
I get it, I do. I even suspect you are correct. But it's such a shitty and deeply sad story, it's not about us or our order-of-description preferences.
posted by Jody Tresidder at 10:27 AM on October 22, 2021 [5 favorites]
tiny frying pan
I get it, I do. I even suspect you are correct. But it's such a shitty and deeply sad story, it's not about us or our order-of-description preferences.
posted by Jody Tresidder at 10:27 AM on October 22, 2021 [5 favorites]
I don't think we know that it WAS a live round yet, do we?
As pointed out above it depends what the IATSE define as a "live round" in the statement they made (quoted in the Guardian link mumimor posted):
As pointed out above it depends what the IATSE define as a "live round" in the statement they made (quoted in the Guardian link mumimor posted):
Detectives are likely to examine why the prop gun went off with such catastrophic consequences. In an email to its members on Friday, the entertainment union IATSE claimed the gun had contained a “single live round”. The weapon was “accidentally fired” by the “principal actor”, it added.posted by fight or flight at 10:29 AM on October 22, 2021
People can be upset about more than one thing at once, and describing women by their relationship to other people is sexist, and something I also noticed and disliked.
posted by Mavri at 10:30 AM on October 22, 2021 [22 favorites]
posted by Mavri at 10:30 AM on October 22, 2021 [22 favorites]
Here's more on the IATSE statement:
In the email that IATSE Local 44 sent to its membership, Secretary-Treasurer Anthony Pawluc described the event as an “an accidental weapons discharge” in which “A live single round was accidentally fired on set by the principal actor, hitting both the Director of Photography, Local 600 member Halnya Hutchins, and Director Joel Souza … Local 44 has confirmed that the Props, Set Decoration, Special Effects and Construction Departments were staffed by New Mexico crew members. There were no Local 44 members on the call sheet.”posted by fight or flight at 10:32 AM on October 22, 2021 [1 favorite]
If the order was reversed, I suspect people would lambaste him for prioritizing his work relationship with her over the mourning family.
posted by zamboni at 10:33 AM on October 22, 2021 [39 favorites]
posted by zamboni at 10:33 AM on October 22, 2021 [39 favorites]
Yeah, I was also thinking about the whole Ruby Rose thing and maybe doing an post on it since nobody else has so far.
This whole thing sounds unreal. Like I could see it as the start of a mystery novel plot, even. It just seems weird that live ammo would even BE around, but clearly I'm not an expert on the topic and thankfully, never did any shows with prop weaponry.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:38 AM on October 22, 2021
This whole thing sounds unreal. Like I could see it as the start of a mystery novel plot, even. It just seems weird that live ammo would even BE around, but clearly I'm not an expert on the topic and thankfully, never did any shows with prop weaponry.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:38 AM on October 22, 2021
Hmm. Upon reading the IATSE statement, I think that some of us might be reading things into it which may not be what the IATSE means.
Here's what they said:
It COULD mean that, sure - it could mean "a live round somehow snuck in among the blanks and no one knew that until Alec Baldwin pulled the trigger". Or it could mean "they swapped the blanks out for a live round and never told Alec Baldwin". But it could also mean "this was the first time they loaded it with blanks after rehearsing with it unloaded, and something went SERIOUSLY wrong and Alec Baldwin stopped right away after that one shot because holy shit".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:48 AM on October 22, 2021 [2 favorites]
Here's what they said:
Secretary-Treasurer Anthony Pawluc described the event as an “an accidental weapons discharge” in which “A live single round was accidentally fired on set by the principal actor..."Based strictly on what that says, there's nothing to indicate a) what they mean by "live round", b) whether the gun had only that one round in it or more than one, or c) that they were saying anyone in particular did something they weren't supposed to.
It COULD mean that, sure - it could mean "a live round somehow snuck in among the blanks and no one knew that until Alec Baldwin pulled the trigger". Or it could mean "they swapped the blanks out for a live round and never told Alec Baldwin". But it could also mean "this was the first time they loaded it with blanks after rehearsing with it unloaded, and something went SERIOUSLY wrong and Alec Baldwin stopped right away after that one shot because holy shit".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:48 AM on October 22, 2021 [2 favorites]
I wish he had not described her as a wife and mother before "deeply admired colleague,"
I'm not sure the site with the quote is very legit anyway.
And without derailing this topic, or being disrespectful to where anyone else might be coming from, I'm an old school feminist (Baldwin's generation), and I'm not sure, but perhaps if I'd just accidentally killed a colleague, the first thing I might think of is their family.
for zero risk that means there shouldn't be any car chases or staged car crashes or any stunts in a movie or TV show at all.
But it seems the analogy here more correctly would be asking an actor who doesn't even drive to do a dangerous car stunt.
As someone who is not part of the thrill-seeking action-movie audience, I could do without as many dangerous stunts in any form anyway.
posted by NorthernLite at 10:55 AM on October 22, 2021 [13 favorites]
I'm not sure the site with the quote is very legit anyway.
And without derailing this topic, or being disrespectful to where anyone else might be coming from, I'm an old school feminist (Baldwin's generation), and I'm not sure, but perhaps if I'd just accidentally killed a colleague, the first thing I might think of is their family.
for zero risk that means there shouldn't be any car chases or staged car crashes or any stunts in a movie or TV show at all.
But it seems the analogy here more correctly would be asking an actor who doesn't even drive to do a dangerous car stunt.
As someone who is not part of the thrill-seeking action-movie audience, I could do without as many dangerous stunts in any form anyway.
posted by NorthernLite at 10:55 AM on October 22, 2021 [13 favorites]
I wish he had not described her as a wife and mother before "deeply admired colleague,"
I'm sure she had good relationships with her colleagues, but it's her spouse's and children's loss that takes priority at this moment. And, believe me, normally I'm the first person to yell about that sort of thing.
posted by praemunire at 11:02 AM on October 22, 2021 [42 favorites]
I'm sure she had good relationships with her colleagues, but it's her spouse's and children's loss that takes priority at this moment. And, believe me, normally I'm the first person to yell about that sort of thing.
posted by praemunire at 11:02 AM on October 22, 2021 [42 favorites]
Yeah, it's too soon to say, but my read of that IATSE statement along with the Guardian article was that the gun was accidentally discharged, meaning that Baldwin didn't mean to fire the gun, and there was a live round, meaning an actual bullet in the gun. Someone handed him a gun with live round, he didn't know it was live, and it accidentally went off. He wasn't pointing it at people on purpose, but he also wasn't being careful because he thought it was a prop.
posted by team lowkey at 11:02 AM on October 22, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by team lowkey at 11:02 AM on October 22, 2021 [1 favorite]
Halyna was married to a friend from middle school / high school that I have not kept up with. They had an 8 year old kid. Just awful.
posted by lazaruslong at 11:04 AM on October 22, 2021 [13 favorites]
posted by lazaruslong at 11:04 AM on October 22, 2021 [13 favorites]
Yeah, it's too soon to say, but my read of that IATSE statement along with the Guardian article was that the gun was accidentally discharged, meaning that Baldwin didn't mean to fire the gun, and there was a live round, meaning an actual bullet in the gun.
Hmm. My hunch was more like "we're calling it accidental to acknowledge that Alec Baldwin didn't MEAN to hurt anyone" as opposed to "accidental" referring to whether he meant to pull the trigger at that moment or not. But fortunately, it sounds like Alec Baldwin is cooperating with the investigation into what happened and we will know relatively soon.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:08 AM on October 22, 2021
Hmm. My hunch was more like "we're calling it accidental to acknowledge that Alec Baldwin didn't MEAN to hurt anyone" as opposed to "accidental" referring to whether he meant to pull the trigger at that moment or not. But fortunately, it sounds like Alec Baldwin is cooperating with the investigation into what happened and we will know relatively soon.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:08 AM on October 22, 2021
But it seems the analogy here more correctly would be asking an actor who doesn't even drive to do a dangerous car stunt.
Okay, if someone doesn't want to do something dangerous, they obviously shouldn't be forced to.
But it's not as if it's unheard of for actors to practice the skills or work in the occupation of the character they're portraying. And even skilled stunt people get hurt or even die and it's not always around guns or vehicles. It happens in just doing scenes that involve falling or heights.
And to add another layer, dangerous stunts are being filmed right now and done by amateurs all over the internet: Pranks, backyard wrestling, parkour, urban climbing.
My point is, in this particular case, I don't think guns are the main thing to blame.
posted by FJT at 11:21 AM on October 22, 2021
Okay, if someone doesn't want to do something dangerous, they obviously shouldn't be forced to.
But it's not as if it's unheard of for actors to practice the skills or work in the occupation of the character they're portraying. And even skilled stunt people get hurt or even die and it's not always around guns or vehicles. It happens in just doing scenes that involve falling or heights.
And to add another layer, dangerous stunts are being filmed right now and done by amateurs all over the internet: Pranks, backyard wrestling, parkour, urban climbing.
My point is, in this particular case, I don't think guns are the main thing to blame.
posted by FJT at 11:21 AM on October 22, 2021
Risk is unavoidable, to live is to be at risk. It's really sad that accidents happen. I know many of us energetically comment on MeFi threads relating to series and films, and stunts and dangerous situations are often part of the entertainments we love. A good friend is a professional stunt person and fight choreographer, I'd like to think we can build a world where people can choose to expose themselves to risk if that is what they want to do in life. I know he loves what he does.
Shitty accidents resulting from unsafe workplaces/practices are quite another thing. People should not die this way, and yet this happens in farms, on sets, construction sites, crossing the street.
posted by elkevelvet at 11:27 AM on October 22, 2021 [2 favorites]
Shitty accidents resulting from unsafe workplaces/practices are quite another thing. People should not die this way, and yet this happens in farms, on sets, construction sites, crossing the street.
posted by elkevelvet at 11:27 AM on October 22, 2021 [2 favorites]
When I did work in feature films and scripted television a couple of decades ago, I was taught to assume that ANY firearm-type prop I saw on set was live and to not go near it (and to avoid knives, swords, etc.). Also, before every handling of such weapons by an actor, the prop master/armorer checked it before handing it off to the actor. EVERY TAKE. These were all union shows. I never worked on a set where a real gun was used in rehearsals, and I worked on 3 shows that used guns, and 4 movies that also had cops or bad guys with weapons. The prop master and his chief assistant was always right there (they were always men).
It was my 2nd TV show in 1997 and I was a production secretary when I got screamed at by the prop master and nearly fired by the unit production manager for moving a gun. It was in a box and in the way of a script I was grabbing in the prop office. There were revised pages I had to swap out for the department heads, and the prop master's script was under this box. The first show I'd worked on was a workplace drama, so this was my first exposure to a prop weapon.
But I had been exposed to handguns previously. The cousin I was raised with unfortunately had a few guns that he'd hidden from his mother when we were teens, and I had handled them. "Don't point it at anyone you don't intend to kill," was the only safety lesson he gave me. He also offered me a Glock 9mm right before I moved to NYC, which I refused. As for the TV show, the UPM realized no one had taught me anything about prop weapons safety, so I wasn't fired.
After he'd calmed down, and realizing he should have done this before we'd even started shooting the series, the prop master had a meeting where he explained to me and all the non-prop department PAs (the set and the production office were in the same place) about the weapons used and why we weren't to touch ANY of the weapons we saw. Ever. Not any. Nowhere on set or in the prop area. We were always to assume that a weapon could be live. Then he said that if we needed anything to come to his assistants or to him and not ever come into the prop area unless invited. I never went in his area again.
I can't imagine the guilt Baldwin must be feeling, as well as the prop master and their team. And if this was a non-union crew, the UPM as well. In cooperation with the producers, usually it's UPMs who hire the department heads.
posted by droplet at 11:45 AM on October 22, 2021 [14 favorites]
It was my 2nd TV show in 1997 and I was a production secretary when I got screamed at by the prop master and nearly fired by the unit production manager for moving a gun. It was in a box and in the way of a script I was grabbing in the prop office. There were revised pages I had to swap out for the department heads, and the prop master's script was under this box. The first show I'd worked on was a workplace drama, so this was my first exposure to a prop weapon.
But I had been exposed to handguns previously. The cousin I was raised with unfortunately had a few guns that he'd hidden from his mother when we were teens, and I had handled them. "Don't point it at anyone you don't intend to kill," was the only safety lesson he gave me. He also offered me a Glock 9mm right before I moved to NYC, which I refused. As for the TV show, the UPM realized no one had taught me anything about prop weapons safety, so I wasn't fired.
After he'd calmed down, and realizing he should have done this before we'd even started shooting the series, the prop master had a meeting where he explained to me and all the non-prop department PAs (the set and the production office were in the same place) about the weapons used and why we weren't to touch ANY of the weapons we saw. Ever. Not any. Nowhere on set or in the prop area. We were always to assume that a weapon could be live. Then he said that if we needed anything to come to his assistants or to him and not ever come into the prop area unless invited. I never went in his area again.
I can't imagine the guilt Baldwin must be feeling, as well as the prop master and their team. And if this was a non-union crew, the UPM as well. In cooperation with the producers, usually it's UPMs who hire the department heads.
posted by droplet at 11:45 AM on October 22, 2021 [14 favorites]
Mod note: A few deleted. Please avoid turning the thread into a personal discussion.
posted by loup (staff) at 12:55 PM on October 22, 2021 [7 favorites]
posted by loup (staff) at 12:55 PM on October 22, 2021 [7 favorites]
"Rust" camera crew walked off the set in protest yesterday morning (archive.is link) - excerpts below:
"The camera operators and their assistants were frustrated by the conditions surrounding the low-budget film, including complaints of long hours and pay, according to three people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to comment.
The cinematographer who was accidentally killed, Halyna Hutchins, had been advocating for safer conditions for her team, said one crew member who was on the set.
“Corners were being cut — and they brought in nonunion people so they could continue shooting,” the knowledgeable person said.
There were two misfires on the prop gun and one the previous week, the person said, adding “there was a serious lack of safety meetings on this set.”"
posted by mogget at 1:01 PM on October 22, 2021 [27 favorites]
"The camera operators and their assistants were frustrated by the conditions surrounding the low-budget film, including complaints of long hours and pay, according to three people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to comment.
The cinematographer who was accidentally killed, Halyna Hutchins, had been advocating for safer conditions for her team, said one crew member who was on the set.
“Corners were being cut — and they brought in nonunion people so they could continue shooting,” the knowledgeable person said.
There were two misfires on the prop gun and one the previous week, the person said, adding “there was a serious lack of safety meetings on this set.”"
posted by mogget at 1:01 PM on October 22, 2021 [27 favorites]
There were two misfires on the prop gun and one the previous week, the person said, adding “there was a serious lack of safety meetings on this set.”"
Someone (maybe multiple someones) is going to prison over this.
posted by mr_roboto at 1:06 PM on October 22, 2021 [6 favorites]
Someone (maybe multiple someones) is going to prison over this.
posted by mr_roboto at 1:06 PM on October 22, 2021 [6 favorites]
I was thinking of Baldwin as a hapless actor who got screwed over by a bad prop handoff. But... he's the producer, too, so if corners were cut, he had a hand, either in cutting them, or at least approving them. This is all so awful.
posted by nouvelle-personne at 1:20 PM on October 22, 2021 [10 favorites]
posted by nouvelle-personne at 1:20 PM on October 22, 2021 [10 favorites]
But... he's the producer, too
“Producer” is a really protean term though. He might just be the money man with no executive or supervisory responsibility. Even then, I’m sure the legal implications get complicated fast.
posted by mr_roboto at 1:24 PM on October 22, 2021 [3 favorites]
“Producer” is a really protean term though. He might just be the money man with no executive or supervisory responsibility. Even then, I’m sure the legal implications get complicated fast.
posted by mr_roboto at 1:24 PM on October 22, 2021 [3 favorites]
Follow-up on what a "live round" is.
I'm connected to my old stage combat teacher on Facebook - the one who taught in this class - and this is unsurprisingly being discussed there. I asked him what the actual definition of "a live round" was - and he said "a bullet. Plain and simple."
So yeah, sounds like this is tipping into the "someone behind the scenes was REALLY trying to cut corners" side of the scale.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:36 PM on October 22, 2021 [2 favorites]
I'm connected to my old stage combat teacher on Facebook - the one who taught in this class - and this is unsurprisingly being discussed there. I asked him what the actual definition of "a live round" was - and he said "a bullet. Plain and simple."
So yeah, sounds like this is tipping into the "someone behind the scenes was REALLY trying to cut corners" side of the scale.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:36 PM on October 22, 2021 [2 favorites]
We need to be cautious about the word live. Some might be defining a gun that shot blanks as live.
Is it possible Baldwin thought he was holding a gun whose trigger mechanism worked, but which he thought didn't fire at all, including blanks.
What jumps out at me in the LA Times piece:
1) The out-of-town camera people quitting, and local crew being pulled in that very day.
2) Was the DP possibly acting as camera operator for the first time then because of it?
3) 21-day shoot, which is fairly short for a feature film, no?
It just indicates how stressed the set was, what a tight budget / schedule they had.
posted by NorthernLite at 1:50 PM on October 22, 2021 [1 favorite]
Is it possible Baldwin thought he was holding a gun whose trigger mechanism worked, but which he thought didn't fire at all, including blanks.
What jumps out at me in the LA Times piece:
1) The out-of-town camera people quitting, and local crew being pulled in that very day.
2) Was the DP possibly acting as camera operator for the first time then because of it?
3) 21-day shoot, which is fairly short for a feature film, no?
It just indicates how stressed the set was, what a tight budget / schedule they had.
posted by NorthernLite at 1:50 PM on October 22, 2021 [1 favorite]
for zero risk that means there shouldn't be any car chases or staged car crashes or any stunts in a movie or TV show at all.
Let's just start with fewer movies and TV shows that have guns in them. I'm so tired of guns.
posted by nickmark at 1:56 PM on October 22, 2021 [40 favorites]
Let's just start with fewer movies and TV shows that have guns in them. I'm so tired of guns.
posted by nickmark at 1:56 PM on October 22, 2021 [40 favorites]
I feel the term "misfires" reported in the LAT piece is similarly ambiguous, no?
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 1:57 PM on October 22, 2021
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 1:57 PM on October 22, 2021
The cinematographer who was accidentally killed, Halyna Hutchins, had been advocating for safer conditions for her team, said one crew member who was on the set.
“Corners were being cut — and they brought in nonunion people so they could continue shooting,” the knowledgeable person said.
There were two misfires on the prop gun and one the previous week, the person said, adding “there was a serious lack of safety meetings on this set.”"
Jesus Christ. I thought there was no way this could be anything but a terrible accident but terrible things are hardly ever accidents when there's money involved.
posted by bleep at 2:42 PM on October 22, 2021 [9 favorites]
“Corners were being cut — and they brought in nonunion people so they could continue shooting,” the knowledgeable person said.
There were two misfires on the prop gun and one the previous week, the person said, adding “there was a serious lack of safety meetings on this set.”"
Jesus Christ. I thought there was no way this could be anything but a terrible accident but terrible things are hardly ever accidents when there's money involved.
posted by bleep at 2:42 PM on October 22, 2021 [9 favorites]
You would think if a prop gun misfired ONCE that would be a wrap on that particular gun. What a nightmare.
posted by bleep at 2:43 PM on October 22, 2021 [9 favorites]
posted by bleep at 2:43 PM on October 22, 2021 [9 favorites]
Deadline:
“A gun had two misfires in a closed cabin,” a source told Deadline. “They just fired loud pops – a person was just holding it in their hands and it went off.”posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 2:51 PM on October 22, 2021 [1 favorite]
I mean, for zero risk that means there shouldn't be any car chases or staged car crashes or any stunts in a movie or TV show at all.
I work industrial construction. There is almost always two ways of doing something: one that is safer than the other but takes more time/more expensive tools/ more expensive material. I've seen some seriously skectchy shit done because a company couldn't "afford" to spend money/time to do it safer. Where afford means everyone gets home safe. I've also seen a serious shift in the industry such that that reckless cowboy crap isn't acceptable. But this is a mind set that has to be cultivated. And I can pretty much guarantee a lot of stunts could be done safer than they are on a lot of productions if labour had the power and will to demand it be done that way.
Regarding the Fark comment: I can point to hundreds or processes that are still happening despite an older way of doing them being outlawed. If electric guns were mandated you'd see several things happen. For a short period of time the variety of guns in productions would be limited to the most popular models where electric guns are already available. This would impact productions in a minor way (I mean really except for iconic arms in source material who gives a shit if everyone is using one of three Glock models or a standard AR-15). Manual action guns wouldn't be effected at all. Slowly a lot more replica electric gun models would be available including those by companies who are now going after prop houses for making electric guns. Because no gun company is going to forgo the product placement via replica electric guns if that is the only way their guns will appear in media. I'd also bet computer effects would get better/more realistic once the prop of being able to fall back on working guns was removed.
We shouldn't be depending on actors not pointing a gun in the direction of people as the safety control.Accidents Wholly foreseeable incidents are inevitable in those cases especially when people are tired or time stressed.
I mostly don't care about risks people take for recreation but workplaces should not be lethal accident zones. If you can't do your work without exposing people to those sort of risks, especially for entertainment media, then we shouldn't be doing that work at all.
posted by Mitheral at 3:13 PM on October 22, 2021 [38 favorites]
I work industrial construction. There is almost always two ways of doing something: one that is safer than the other but takes more time/more expensive tools/ more expensive material. I've seen some seriously skectchy shit done because a company couldn't "afford" to spend money/time to do it safer. Where afford means everyone gets home safe. I've also seen a serious shift in the industry such that that reckless cowboy crap isn't acceptable. But this is a mind set that has to be cultivated. And I can pretty much guarantee a lot of stunts could be done safer than they are on a lot of productions if labour had the power and will to demand it be done that way.
Regarding the Fark comment: I can point to hundreds or processes that are still happening despite an older way of doing them being outlawed. If electric guns were mandated you'd see several things happen. For a short period of time the variety of guns in productions would be limited to the most popular models where electric guns are already available. This would impact productions in a minor way (I mean really except for iconic arms in source material who gives a shit if everyone is using one of three Glock models or a standard AR-15). Manual action guns wouldn't be effected at all. Slowly a lot more replica electric gun models would be available including those by companies who are now going after prop houses for making electric guns. Because no gun company is going to forgo the product placement via replica electric guns if that is the only way their guns will appear in media. I'd also bet computer effects would get better/more realistic once the prop of being able to fall back on working guns was removed.
We shouldn't be depending on actors not pointing a gun in the direction of people as the safety control.
a person was just holding it in their hands and it went off.”And while this is a story that sort of thing happening where I work would result a in 100% safety stand down where all work stopped until we figured out why "it just went off" and prevented that from happening again. Firearms should never "just go off".
I mostly don't care about risks people take for recreation but workplaces should not be lethal accident zones. If you can't do your work without exposing people to those sort of risks, especially for entertainment media, then we shouldn't be doing that work at all.
posted by Mitheral at 3:13 PM on October 22, 2021 [38 favorites]
They had an 8 year old kid. Just awful.
Oh God, I lost a parent around that age, but I had time to prepare myself. I can't imagine.
posted by thelonius at 4:45 PM on October 22, 2021 [2 favorites]
Oh God, I lost a parent around that age, but I had time to prepare myself. I can't imagine.
posted by thelonius at 4:45 PM on October 22, 2021 [2 favorites]
Imagine walking off a movie set over safety concerns and then hearing someone was shot and killed 6 hours later.
posted by gottabefunky at 4:47 PM on October 22, 2021 [32 favorites]
posted by gottabefunky at 4:47 PM on October 22, 2021 [32 favorites]
Guns in movies kill way more than the occasional accident.
They create a power fantasy which is exported, embedded in statunitian mass entertainment.
Stupid men consume and believe that shit, and vote accordingly, facts be damned.
United States gun culture props that shit up. It is a curse on the world.
posted by Tom-B at 6:28 PM on October 22, 2021 [21 favorites]
They create a power fantasy which is exported, embedded in statunitian mass entertainment.
Stupid men consume and believe that shit, and vote accordingly, facts be damned.
United States gun culture props that shit up. It is a curse on the world.
posted by Tom-B at 6:28 PM on October 22, 2021 [21 favorites]
“A gun had two misfires in a closed cabin,” a source told Deadline. “They just fired loud pops – a person was just holding it in their hands and it went off.”
Okay, reading this is what switched me from the cautious and chill "it could have just been an accident, let's wait on the investigation" to a full-on, Stage-manager-mamma-bear "Oh HELL no" frothing rage.
The FIRST time that gun misfired it should have been taken out of use and a backup brought in while someone figured out what the fuck. Even IF they did that, the SECOND time it should have been permanently trashed.
That's it, Mama Bear is awake, THE PEOPLE WHO CUT CORNERS ON THIS CAN ROT.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:29 PM on October 22, 2021 [16 favorites]
Okay, reading this is what switched me from the cautious and chill "it could have just been an accident, let's wait on the investigation" to a full-on, Stage-manager-mamma-bear "Oh HELL no" frothing rage.
The FIRST time that gun misfired it should have been taken out of use and a backup brought in while someone figured out what the fuck. Even IF they did that, the SECOND time it should have been permanently trashed.
That's it, Mama Bear is awake, THE PEOPLE WHO CUT CORNERS ON THIS CAN ROT.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:29 PM on October 22, 2021 [16 favorites]
United States gun culture props that shit up. It is a curse on the world.
It's a cancer that has claimed another victim. But business is business.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 6:56 PM on October 22, 2021 [5 favorites]
It's a cancer that has claimed another victim. But business is business.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 6:56 PM on October 22, 2021 [5 favorites]
I've just had the sad realization that it's possible this was caught on camera...
posted by hydra77 at 7:11 PM on October 22, 2021
posted by hydra77 at 7:11 PM on October 22, 2021
According to the NYT:
posted by cheshyre at 7:20 PM on October 22, 2021 [3 favorites]
The assistant director of the western film “Rust” grabbed a prop pistol from a gray cart and handed it to the movie’s star, Alec Baldwin, shouting “cold gun!” — which was supposed to indicate that it did not contain any live rounds, and was safe to handle around the crew huddled by the camera. ... The weapon was “set up” on the tray by the movie’s weapons specialist, or armorer, along with a Western-style gun belt used in the scene.I'm also seeing a number of people talking about the helicopter crash in Twilight Zone: The Movie which killed Vic Morrow.
posted by cheshyre at 7:20 PM on October 22, 2021 [3 favorites]
And just saw this:
In addition to union issues on the Santa Fe set of “Rust” starring Alec Baldwin, there were THREE previous misfires on the prop gun, according to a Los Angeles Times sourceposted by cheshyre at 7:33 PM on October 22, 2021
yeah, I love shooting. Guns are really fricking dangerous and there's a system built up around them. This is a monumental fuckup, probably of the greedy sort.
posted by drewbage1847 at 7:36 PM on October 22, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by drewbage1847 at 7:36 PM on October 22, 2021 [1 favorite]
The assistant director of the western film “Rust” grabbed a prop pistol from a gray cart and handed it to the movie’s star, Alec Baldwin...
NO!
Why is an AD handling any props at all?! While on set, ADs make sure the correct scenes for the day are being shot based on the breakdown, that the right actors and extras are there, and they work with the department heads to make sure all is ready for the day's scenes. They also wrangle the actors and make sure everyone is on their marks for the runthroughs and the actual scene shooting.
Where was the armorer or designated assistants? Only the prop team should be handling any weapons if they're not in use in a scene. And it popped off THREE times previously? Then who the fuck is this armorer that they didn't get rid of a faulty weapon? What the fuck was going on on that set?!
posted by droplet at 8:12 PM on October 22, 2021 [17 favorites]
NO!
Why is an AD handling any props at all?! While on set, ADs make sure the correct scenes for the day are being shot based on the breakdown, that the right actors and extras are there, and they work with the department heads to make sure all is ready for the day's scenes. They also wrangle the actors and make sure everyone is on their marks for the runthroughs and the actual scene shooting.
Where was the armorer or designated assistants? Only the prop team should be handling any weapons if they're not in use in a scene. And it popped off THREE times previously? Then who the fuck is this armorer that they didn't get rid of a faulty weapon? What the fuck was going on on that set?!
posted by droplet at 8:12 PM on October 22, 2021 [17 favorites]
Let's just start with fewer movies and TV shows that have guns in them. I'm so tired of guns.
I mean okay, I can understand that, but just because you don't see something doesn't mean the problem stops existing. And I also know these days there are people on both on the Left and Right who actually are pro-2A and prefer to blame something ilke violent media for gun violence.
So yeah, there's a lot of reasons for Americans to focus on this story about a liberal elite Hollywood movie star accidentally firing a gun that kills someone on set. Everyone can argue about how to regulate how hundreds or thousands of guns are used in the entertainment industry, and then just avoid having to talk about enacting real gun control and regulations for the 390 million guns in the entire country. Hey, maybe a bunch of movie stars will wear pins or armbands at an award show and promise to stop using guns on set. And in the end half of us will pat ourselves on the back for this, while the other half will be screaming about this being Nazi Germany.
posted by FJT at 8:24 PM on October 22, 2021 [3 favorites]
I mean okay, I can understand that, but just because you don't see something doesn't mean the problem stops existing. And I also know these days there are people on both on the Left and Right who actually are pro-2A and prefer to blame something ilke violent media for gun violence.
So yeah, there's a lot of reasons for Americans to focus on this story about a liberal elite Hollywood movie star accidentally firing a gun that kills someone on set. Everyone can argue about how to regulate how hundreds or thousands of guns are used in the entertainment industry, and then just avoid having to talk about enacting real gun control and regulations for the 390 million guns in the entire country. Hey, maybe a bunch of movie stars will wear pins or armbands at an award show and promise to stop using guns on set. And in the end half of us will pat ourselves on the back for this, while the other half will be screaming about this being Nazi Germany.
posted by FJT at 8:24 PM on October 22, 2021 [3 favorites]
Hollywood Reporter: ABC cop drama The Rookie is banning “live” weapons on its set, effective immediately
"As of today, it is now policy on The Rookie that all gunfire on set will be with Air Soft guns with CG muzzle flashes added in post"
posted by cheshyre at 8:52 PM on October 22, 2021 [24 favorites]
"As of today, it is now policy on The Rookie that all gunfire on set will be with Air Soft guns with CG muzzle flashes added in post"
posted by cheshyre at 8:52 PM on October 22, 2021 [24 favorites]
I think this is probably the end of “real” guns being used in American movies and TV. It’s now an uninsurable risk.
posted by mr_roboto at 10:16 PM on October 22, 2021 [11 favorites]
posted by mr_roboto at 10:16 PM on October 22, 2021 [11 favorites]
The FIRST time that gun misfired it should have been taken out of use and a backup brought in while someone figured out what the fuck. Even IF they did that, the SECOND time it should have been permanently trashed.
Reports aren't uniformly clear, but from the writeup at LGM it seems that the gun in question wasn't necessarily the same one, and the "misfires" were based on the gun being announced as "cold"--ie, human error, not mechanical.
posted by mark k at 10:40 PM on October 22, 2021
Reports aren't uniformly clear, but from the writeup at LGM it seems that the gun in question wasn't necessarily the same one, and the "misfires" were based on the gun being announced as "cold"--ie, human error, not mechanical.
posted by mark k at 10:40 PM on October 22, 2021
the "misfires" were based on the gun being announced as "cold"--ie, human error, not mechanical.
So Baldwin was like, well they were wrong about the gun being safe twice before but I trust them this time. I'm hugely anti-gun, but this shit show seems like more than a gun problem.
posted by Literaryhero at 11:15 PM on October 22, 2021 [3 favorites]
So Baldwin was like, well they were wrong about the gun being safe twice before but I trust them this time. I'm hugely anti-gun, but this shit show seems like more than a gun problem.
posted by Literaryhero at 11:15 PM on October 22, 2021 [3 favorites]
Caveat here: the reports are still coming out and the investigation has just begun. However, everything that has come out so far suggests that the normal safety protocols broke down and it's possible there were similar incidents even before this one. Now a human being is dead. If there is any truth to this, then this is not a freak accident but the product of negligence and it's likely that the fault will not end up lying in the hands of just one individual.
Ultimately, it feels likely that, in an ethical and legal sense, responsibility will lie in those who are in charge of the entire production. (This reminds me of the discussion that revolved around "Woodstock '99" after the recent HBO documentary.) That may end up being Baldwin, who is one of the producers and who (by what I've seen) at least partly runs the production company. It may not. It may be multiple individuals. We will find out and I hope that whoever they are will face serious consequences, legal or otherwise. This cannot be another situation like the "Twilight Zone Movie" tragedy where John Landis essentially skated away free despite overwhelming evidence revealing his culpability.
posted by HunterFelt at 1:38 AM on October 23, 2021 [2 favorites]
Ultimately, it feels likely that, in an ethical and legal sense, responsibility will lie in those who are in charge of the entire production. (This reminds me of the discussion that revolved around "Woodstock '99" after the recent HBO documentary.) That may end up being Baldwin, who is one of the producers and who (by what I've seen) at least partly runs the production company. It may not. It may be multiple individuals. We will find out and I hope that whoever they are will face serious consequences, legal or otherwise. This cannot be another situation like the "Twilight Zone Movie" tragedy where John Landis essentially skated away free despite overwhelming evidence revealing his culpability.
posted by HunterFelt at 1:38 AM on October 23, 2021 [2 favorites]
Where was the armorer or designated assistants? ... What the fuck was going on on that set?!
As a movie viewer my first admittedly uninformed thought is the contribution of COVID stresses in particular ways on workplaces, especially for workplaces and industries that can't be done from home. Maybe there was a preexisting missing stairwell situation on their set, but it seems reasonable to speculate on a structural level that a pandemic would've also magnified it and been the tipping point just from the intensified workloads and stresses on all workers.
posted by polymodus at 1:49 AM on October 23, 2021
As a movie viewer my first admittedly uninformed thought is the contribution of COVID stresses in particular ways on workplaces, especially for workplaces and industries that can't be done from home. Maybe there was a preexisting missing stairwell situation on their set, but it seems reasonable to speculate on a structural level that a pandemic would've also magnified it and been the tipping point just from the intensified workloads and stresses on all workers.
posted by polymodus at 1:49 AM on October 23, 2021
A 15 minute interview with the Armorer, recorded last month, she does sound very young to have been given so much responsibility for on-set safety.
posted by Lanark at 2:16 AM on October 23, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by Lanark at 2:16 AM on October 23, 2021 [2 favorites]
The union’s letter indicated that there was no armorer on set on the day of the shooting.
posted by rdr at 2:49 AM on October 23, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by rdr at 2:49 AM on October 23, 2021 [1 favorite]
The BBC has obtained a document showing which crew members were listed as scheduled to be on set that day. It names a head armourer, the crew member responsible for checking firearms.
posted by Lanark at 3:18 AM on October 23, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by Lanark at 3:18 AM on October 23, 2021 [1 favorite]
According to various sources, it sounds like the whole set was a shitshow from the start, with the entire camera crew walking off hours before the fatal accident because they hadn't been paid in weeks and were sick of the conditions:
It really sounds like it boils down to an indie production company trying to scrape by with as little safety/expense as possible, with minimal crew because on-set conditions were so terrible, and that ended up in a fatality because eventually this shit happens.
It's also worth stating that Baldwin was one of the (many) producers on the movie. Everyone on set was well aware that corners were being cut and they were doing dangerous and potentially illegal shit by forcing crew to work such long hours and letting things slide. Human error compounded by human greed.
posted by fight or flight at 4:10 AM on October 23, 2021 [8 favorites]
Labor trouble had been brewing for days on the dusty set at the Bonanza Creek Ranch near Santa Fe.I've also seen comments on reddit from people with IATSE friends who said that some of the crew were sleeping in their cars to avoid the 3+ hour round trip on top of 17 hour days.
Shooting began on Oct. 6 and members of the low-budget film said they had been promised the production would pay for their hotel rooms in Santa Fe.
But after filming began, the crews were told they instead would be required to make the 50-mile drive from Albuquerque each day, rather than stay overnight in nearby Santa Fe. That rankled crew members who worried that they might have an accident after spending 12 to 13 hours on the set.
Hutchins had been advocating for safer conditions for her team and was tearful when the camera crew left, said one crew member who was on the set.
“She said, ‘I feel like I’m losing my best friends,’” recalled one of the workers.
As the camera crew — members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees — spent about an hour assembling their gear at the Bonanza Creek Ranch, several nonunion crew members showed up to replace them, two of the knowledgeable people said.
One of the producers ordered the union members to leave the set and threatened to call security to remove them if they didn’t leave voluntarily.
“Corners were being cut — and they brought in nonunion people so they could continue shooting,” the knowledgeable person said.
The shooting occurred about six hours after the union camera crew left.
It really sounds like it boils down to an indie production company trying to scrape by with as little safety/expense as possible, with minimal crew because on-set conditions were so terrible, and that ended up in a fatality because eventually this shit happens.
It's also worth stating that Baldwin was one of the (many) producers on the movie. Everyone on set was well aware that corners were being cut and they were doing dangerous and potentially illegal shit by forcing crew to work such long hours and letting things slide. Human error compounded by human greed.
posted by fight or flight at 4:10 AM on October 23, 2021 [8 favorites]
A 15 minute interview with the Armorer, recorded last month, she does sound very young to have been given so much responsibility for on-set safety.
The part with head armorer Hannah Reed starts at 3:46, and it's just so sad to hear how excited she was to be head armorer for the first time on The Old Way, the Nicolas Cage western she finished before Rust. She calls it "a really badass way to start a really long and cool career, I'm hoping" before going on to admit she "almost didn't take the job cause I wasn't sure if I was ready, but doing it, it went really smoothly." The press is running with that quote, of course, and I'm sure the lawyers will be, too.
She's apparently the daughter of a famous Hollywood armorer, Thell Reed.
posted by mediareport at 5:35 AM on October 23, 2021 [2 favorites]
The part with head armorer Hannah Reed starts at 3:46, and it's just so sad to hear how excited she was to be head armorer for the first time on The Old Way, the Nicolas Cage western she finished before Rust. She calls it "a really badass way to start a really long and cool career, I'm hoping" before going on to admit she "almost didn't take the job cause I wasn't sure if I was ready, but doing it, it went really smoothly." The press is running with that quote, of course, and I'm sure the lawyers will be, too.
She's apparently the daughter of a famous Hollywood armorer, Thell Reed.
posted by mediareport at 5:35 AM on October 23, 2021 [2 favorites]
S. L. Huang, whose Wikipedia page calls her "the first woman to be a professional armorer in Hollywood," has an extended Twitter thread about the incident, including details about the expected (and apparently very strict) safety protocols, the difference between a "prop" gun and a "real" gun, and lots more info.
A tragedy happening in *this particular* way defies everything I know about how we treat guns on film sets. It implies to me that something was likely very, very wrong here.
My colleagues and I have been trying to figure out how this could happen when following our basic safety procedures and we keep ending at a loss. We keep ending at "but how is that possible?"
Which implies something even more appalling -- that very basic, very standard safety procedures may not have been followed. And that nobody shut the production down when they weren't.
My heart is breaking to imagine this
posted by mediareport at 5:45 AM on October 23, 2021 [11 favorites]
A tragedy happening in *this particular* way defies everything I know about how we treat guns on film sets. It implies to me that something was likely very, very wrong here.
My colleagues and I have been trying to figure out how this could happen when following our basic safety procedures and we keep ending at a loss. We keep ending at "but how is that possible?"
Which implies something even more appalling -- that very basic, very standard safety procedures may not have been followed. And that nobody shut the production down when they weren't.
My heart is breaking to imagine this
posted by mediareport at 5:45 AM on October 23, 2021 [11 favorites]
Oh my god, the assistant director..
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:16 AM on October 23, 2021 [16 favorites]
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:16 AM on October 23, 2021 [16 favorites]
From armorer S.L. Huang's twitter thread, on the importance of a smart Assistant Director:
The 1st AD / production stepping in and shutting things down is what we would want/expect to happen if things aren't being run safely, and it's another thing that has to fail for things to go really, really bad.
Experienced 1st ADs absolutely know how gunfire scenes should work. They know how to run them in conjunction with an armorer. They know if proper safety is being followed.
(You never, ever want to lack a good 1st AD. This is only one of many reasons.)
From jenfullmoon's link, it sounds like this film had just the opposite in the AD on the set of Rust, who was the last person to handle the gun before handing it to Baldwin and apparently has a history of things like this:
In one instance when, “We did have a gun on set,” Jay said Halls consistently tried to either skip or hurry through the safety run-throughs. “I would want to have these safety meetings. I can show them [actors] that the chamber is empty, the magazine is empty, so they can be comfortable on set. I’m the only person who holds it, or maybe an armorer if you wanted a flashbang effect. The AD is supposed to check it each time, they are supposed to be the last line of defense. He would always roll his eyes. ‘Do we need to do a safety meeting?’ He would do it and he would be flippant. ‘Well guys, we’ve got a gun on set, same as always.'”
posted by mediareport at 6:32 AM on October 23, 2021 [6 favorites]
The 1st AD / production stepping in and shutting things down is what we would want/expect to happen if things aren't being run safely, and it's another thing that has to fail for things to go really, really bad.
Experienced 1st ADs absolutely know how gunfire scenes should work. They know how to run them in conjunction with an armorer. They know if proper safety is being followed.
(You never, ever want to lack a good 1st AD. This is only one of many reasons.)
From jenfullmoon's link, it sounds like this film had just the opposite in the AD on the set of Rust, who was the last person to handle the gun before handing it to Baldwin and apparently has a history of things like this:
In one instance when, “We did have a gun on set,” Jay said Halls consistently tried to either skip or hurry through the safety run-throughs. “I would want to have these safety meetings. I can show them [actors] that the chamber is empty, the magazine is empty, so they can be comfortable on set. I’m the only person who holds it, or maybe an armorer if you wanted a flashbang effect. The AD is supposed to check it each time, they are supposed to be the last line of defense. He would always roll his eyes. ‘Do we need to do a safety meeting?’ He would do it and he would be flippant. ‘Well guys, we’ve got a gun on set, same as always.'”
posted by mediareport at 6:32 AM on October 23, 2021 [6 favorites]
I'm reminded of the glass cliff-- related to the glass ceiling. Instead of being excluded, women are brought in when things are going badly and blamed for failure.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 6:45 AM on October 23, 2021 [18 favorites]
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 6:45 AM on October 23, 2021 [18 favorites]
I mean okay, I can understand that, but just because you don't see something doesn't mean the problem stops existing. And I also know these days there are people on both on the Left and Right who actually are pro-2A and prefer to blame something ilke violent media for gun violence.
You misunderstand me. I'm not trying to blame violent media for gun violence and I don't advocate regulating the way guns are either portrayed or managed on set. And I certainly wouldn't push for media regulation in lieu of serious gun control. My comment was not a call for a policy response. Rather, I am wishing for the cultural change that would enable and be reflected in serious gun regulation generally and a reduction in overall gun violence, and also wishing that - again, as both a reflection and driver of that cultural change - less of our popular entertainment glorified the use of guns.
Movies can be exciting and fun and portray dramatic and dangerous imaginary events without being unsafe for the people making them, and movies can tell stories that are compelling and exciting without involving firearms.
posted by nickmark at 6:57 AM on October 23, 2021 [15 favorites]
You misunderstand me. I'm not trying to blame violent media for gun violence and I don't advocate regulating the way guns are either portrayed or managed on set. And I certainly wouldn't push for media regulation in lieu of serious gun control. My comment was not a call for a policy response. Rather, I am wishing for the cultural change that would enable and be reflected in serious gun regulation generally and a reduction in overall gun violence, and also wishing that - again, as both a reflection and driver of that cultural change - less of our popular entertainment glorified the use of guns.
Movies can be exciting and fun and portray dramatic and dangerous imaginary events without being unsafe for the people making them, and movies can tell stories that are compelling and exciting without involving firearms.
posted by nickmark at 6:57 AM on October 23, 2021 [15 favorites]
Red Flag (LA Times)
at least one of the camera operators complained last weekend to a production manager about gun safety on the set.
Further
Three crew members who were present at the Bonanza Creek Ranch set on Saturday said they were particularly concerned about two accidental prop gun discharges.
Baldwin’s stunt double accidentally fired two rounds Saturday after being told that the gun was “cold” — two crew members who witnessed the episode told the Los Angeles Times.
A colleague was so alarmed by the prop gun misfires that he sent a text message to the unit production manager. “We’ve now had 3 accidental discharges. This is super unsafe,”
posted by adamvasco at 10:12 AM on October 23, 2021 [4 favorites]
at least one of the camera operators complained last weekend to a production manager about gun safety on the set.
Further
Three crew members who were present at the Bonanza Creek Ranch set on Saturday said they were particularly concerned about two accidental prop gun discharges.
Baldwin’s stunt double accidentally fired two rounds Saturday after being told that the gun was “cold” — two crew members who witnessed the episode told the Los Angeles Times.
A colleague was so alarmed by the prop gun misfires that he sent a text message to the unit production manager. “We’ve now had 3 accidental discharges. This is super unsafe,”
posted by adamvasco at 10:12 AM on October 23, 2021 [4 favorites]
Rather, I am wishing for the cultural change that would enable and be reflected in serious gun regulation generally and a reduction in overall gun violence, and also wishing that - again, as both a reflection and driver of that cultural change - less of our popular entertainment glorified the use of guns.
"Wishing for the cultural change" sounds so anodyne that it's just kind of meaningless. The way I see it, this is the same discussion we've been having in the last 18 months: Either you value another person's life enough that you are willing to put up with some things like gun regulations or maybe putting on face mask, or you just don't.
posted by FJT at 3:36 PM on October 23, 2021 [1 favorite]
"Wishing for the cultural change" sounds so anodyne that it's just kind of meaningless. The way I see it, this is the same discussion we've been having in the last 18 months: Either you value another person's life enough that you are willing to put up with some things like gun regulations or maybe putting on face mask, or you just don't.
posted by FJT at 3:36 PM on October 23, 2021 [1 favorite]
“Our procedures plan in mistakes, actor error, etc. There should never be any single fail point; if anyone makes a mistake there are many multiple other things backing up the safety.”
Excellent Twitter thread from a film armourer named SL Huang on how abjectly poorly the set had to be run for this to happen
posted by nouvelle-personne at 4:34 PM on October 23, 2021 [5 favorites]
Excellent Twitter thread from a film armourer named SL Huang on how abjectly poorly the set had to be run for this to happen
posted by nouvelle-personne at 4:34 PM on October 23, 2021 [5 favorites]
Either you value another person's life enough that you are willing to put up with some things like gun regulations or maybe putting on face mask, or you just don't.
This comment seems really unfair to any American who *is* willing to put up with (and advocate for, and work toward) gun regulations while living in a society that elevates individual freedoms, violence, and certain religions in a way that prevents meaningful change. I wish for cultural change for a lot of things in American society because it seems insane to me that people happily accept anti-vax, pro-carceral, bigoted, anti-science, pro-violence, anti-immigrant, homophobic etcetera etcetera etcetera views as perfectly reasonable if you live in a small town and wave a flag. I don't see how a desire for a better society means an individual does not hold, express, or advocate for a strong personal position on something.
posted by oneirodynia at 4:47 PM on October 23, 2021 [9 favorites]
This comment seems really unfair to any American who *is* willing to put up with (and advocate for, and work toward) gun regulations while living in a society that elevates individual freedoms, violence, and certain religions in a way that prevents meaningful change. I wish for cultural change for a lot of things in American society because it seems insane to me that people happily accept anti-vax, pro-carceral, bigoted, anti-science, pro-violence, anti-immigrant, homophobic etcetera etcetera etcetera views as perfectly reasonable if you live in a small town and wave a flag. I don't see how a desire for a better society means an individual does not hold, express, or advocate for a strong personal position on something.
posted by oneirodynia at 4:47 PM on October 23, 2021 [9 favorites]
Just a note that S L Huang writes excellent novels too.
posted by seanmpuckett at 7:19 PM on October 23, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by seanmpuckett at 7:19 PM on October 23, 2021 [2 favorites]
And short stories. As The Last I May Know is tangentially related to the relationship of violence to American society.
posted by I claim sanctuary at 1:22 AM on October 24, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by I claim sanctuary at 1:22 AM on October 24, 2021 [2 favorites]
I appreciated this thread by actor Claudia Black. "Your stunt double is there to make you look cool but they often do not feel empowered to speak up. Check in with them and use your voice. It’s not about heroism it’s about humanity and navigating frustrating and fateful hierarchies."
posted by brainwane at 7:33 AM on October 24, 2021 [21 favorites]
posted by brainwane at 7:33 AM on October 24, 2021 [21 favorites]
Wow, again, from jenfullmoon's link. Looks like CNN got one of the anonymous folks in the Consequence.net article posted here yesterday to de-anonymize herself:
Maggie Goll, an IATSE Local 44 prop maker and licensed pyrotechnician, said in a statement to CNN that while working on Hulu's "Into the Dark" Anthology Series in February and May of 2019, Halls neglected to hold safety meetings and consistently failed to announce the presence of a firearm on set to the crew, as is protocol.
"The only reason the crew was made aware of a weapon's presence was because the assistant prop master demanded Dave acknowledge and announce the situation each day," Goll's statement reads...The Prop Master frequently admonished Dave for dismissing the talent without returning props, weapon included, or failing to make safety announcements."
...A crew member who also worked in the productions but requested to not be named for fear of retaliation corroborated Goll's accounts, saying that when Halls did hold safety meetings, they were short and he was dismissive, saying the guns used would be the same as the production always uses, and questioning why they'd have to hold the meetings in the first place. The crew member also said Halls complained about having a gun "cleared" (inspected by a licensed professional on set, such as an armorer) for a scene where an actress would aim the gun to her own head and pull the trigger.
For fuck's sake.
posted by mediareport at 3:51 PM on October 24, 2021 [8 favorites]
Maggie Goll, an IATSE Local 44 prop maker and licensed pyrotechnician, said in a statement to CNN that while working on Hulu's "Into the Dark" Anthology Series in February and May of 2019, Halls neglected to hold safety meetings and consistently failed to announce the presence of a firearm on set to the crew, as is protocol.
"The only reason the crew was made aware of a weapon's presence was because the assistant prop master demanded Dave acknowledge and announce the situation each day," Goll's statement reads...The Prop Master frequently admonished Dave for dismissing the talent without returning props, weapon included, or failing to make safety announcements."
...A crew member who also worked in the productions but requested to not be named for fear of retaliation corroborated Goll's accounts, saying that when Halls did hold safety meetings, they were short and he was dismissive, saying the guns used would be the same as the production always uses, and questioning why they'd have to hold the meetings in the first place. The crew member also said Halls complained about having a gun "cleared" (inspected by a licensed professional on set, such as an armorer) for a scene where an actress would aim the gun to her own head and pull the trigger.
For fuck's sake.
posted by mediareport at 3:51 PM on October 24, 2021 [8 favorites]
The number of people who are repeating their gun range shibboleths on twitter and reddit is exasperating. Yes, those are good rules for your personal gun use! But filming can require different things including things like pointing a gun at a camera, which is why they have a specialist there whose job is nothing but the weapons. An actor might be handed a gun a dozen times or more for takes of a single shot. They cannot step off the set to test fire it every time, and you do not want them holding guns between takes because that is a really good way to forget what kind of weapon you are holding -- is a prop, is it blanks, is it squibs. Or to accidentally point it at someone because you are busy discussing what to do differently for the next take. So that's the armorer's job, and actors are supposed to be able to trust that if they are handed a weapon and told what it is and does, that they can rely on that.
Now, Baldwin may have fault as one of the producers, depending on how much actual power he had, but as an actor he has none, if the versions described in the warrants are correct.
posted by tavella at 4:02 PM on October 24, 2021 [17 favorites]
Now, Baldwin may have fault as one of the producers, depending on how much actual power he had, but as an actor he has none, if the versions described in the warrants are correct.
posted by tavella at 4:02 PM on October 24, 2021 [17 favorites]
Goll said at the time she called a production safety line and complained internally to Blumhouse Productions executive producers in person. She also said she informed the Directors Guild of America (DGA) regarding unsafe persons.
"To my knowledge nothing was done after my complaints," her statement reads
And there it is, behind every giant fuck up is a woman identifying problems & being ignored. When will anyone start noticing that listening to complaints about dudes is a big, big money-saver.
posted by bleep at 5:20 PM on October 24, 2021 [17 favorites]
"To my knowledge nothing was done after my complaints," her statement reads
And there it is, behind every giant fuck up is a woman identifying problems & being ignored. When will anyone start noticing that listening to complaints about dudes is a big, big money-saver.
posted by bleep at 5:20 PM on October 24, 2021 [17 favorites]
Well sure, I'm a classically trained musician who's been rolling my eyes at people faking the fiddle and piano for decades, and I know medical people who do same at how their field is portrayed
And nobody says hello when hanging up the phone, and those coffee cups obviously don't have anything in them.
The TV series Justified has plenty of guns and shooting and my understanding is that it was all Airsoft stuff. It looked perfectly good on screen, in fact I was surprised by the behind the scenes talking about how everything was Airsoft.
posted by turbid dahlia at 6:01 PM on October 24, 2021 [7 favorites]
And nobody says hello when hanging up the phone, and those coffee cups obviously don't have anything in them.
The TV series Justified has plenty of guns and shooting and my understanding is that it was all Airsoft stuff. It looked perfectly good on screen, in fact I was surprised by the behind the scenes talking about how everything was Airsoft.
posted by turbid dahlia at 6:01 PM on October 24, 2021 [7 favorites]
I have some friends who do airsoft and there are high-end airsoft guns that look externally indistinguishable from real firearms.
I don't mean "close enough", I mean cosmetically indistinguishable, down to the serial numbers and (fake) manufacturer marks. The only thing that tipped me off that something wasn't right about it was that it was honestly too clean for the serial number and city of manufacture. But the materials, weight, balance, finish were all on point. Initially I thought it had to be world's nicest Khyber Pass gun, or some sort of crazy North Korean counterfeit.
It wasn't until you actually worked the action and closely examined the bolt face and bolt carrier group that you could see something had been modified to let it feed airsoft pellets and cycle on propane.
Apparently they cost basically as much as the real thing, which makes sense since it essentially was real from a manufacturing standpoint.
But that said, it seems like the problems on Rust weren't really hardware-related, they were procedural and organizational, and while switching to airsoft guns or replicas might be a valid step, it's still entirely possible for someone to lose an eye to an airsoft pellet, so it would be an inadequate step by itself.
posted by Kadin2048 at 10:29 AM on October 25, 2021 [6 favorites]
I don't mean "close enough", I mean cosmetically indistinguishable, down to the serial numbers and (fake) manufacturer marks. The only thing that tipped me off that something wasn't right about it was that it was honestly too clean for the serial number and city of manufacture. But the materials, weight, balance, finish were all on point. Initially I thought it had to be world's nicest Khyber Pass gun, or some sort of crazy North Korean counterfeit.
It wasn't until you actually worked the action and closely examined the bolt face and bolt carrier group that you could see something had been modified to let it feed airsoft pellets and cycle on propane.
Apparently they cost basically as much as the real thing, which makes sense since it essentially was real from a manufacturing standpoint.
But that said, it seems like the problems on Rust weren't really hardware-related, they were procedural and organizational, and while switching to airsoft guns or replicas might be a valid step, it's still entirely possible for someone to lose an eye to an airsoft pellet, so it would be an inadequate step by itself.
posted by Kadin2048 at 10:29 AM on October 25, 2021 [6 favorites]
Washington Post: Search warrant from ‘Rust’ set details fatal shooting and crew member walkout over production ‘disagreements’ Not that much else in it I didn't know, but it clarified one thing:
Souza recalled Baldwin sitting on a pew while rehearsing the scene, which required the actor to cross draw his character’s weapon and point it toward the camera.
(Well, that explains how he shot people not in the movie. I have been wondering.)
posted by jenfullmoon at 12:37 PM on October 25, 2021
Souza recalled Baldwin sitting on a pew while rehearsing the scene, which required the actor to cross draw his character’s weapon and point it toward the camera.
(Well, that explains how he shot people not in the movie. I have been wondering.)
posted by jenfullmoon at 12:37 PM on October 25, 2021
I've seen a couple new points in recent articles.
Many stories surfacing about the assistant director (who handed the gun to Baldwin) showing disregard for safety procedures in past productions.
Two minor incidents in the armorer's last (and first) job.
There's one detail - I've been waiting until someone other than TMZ reported it.
It's said that some in the crew were using the prop guns off-the-clock for recreational target practice.
I've learned a lot in this thread about proper weapon handling in Hollywood, so - while this sounds bonkers to me, is it really?
posted by cheshyre at 5:00 PM on October 25, 2021 [7 favorites]
Many stories surfacing about the assistant director (who handed the gun to Baldwin) showing disregard for safety procedures in past productions.
Two minor incidents in the armorer's last (and first) job.
There's one detail - I've been waiting until someone other than TMZ reported it.
It's said that some in the crew were using the prop guns off-the-clock for recreational target practice.
I've learned a lot in this thread about proper weapon handling in Hollywood, so - while this sounds bonkers to me, is it really?
posted by cheshyre at 5:00 PM on October 25, 2021 [7 favorites]
The more I hear about this, the more clear it is that all the Gallants quit because there were too many Goofuses, so more Goofuses were hired to replace them
posted by rifflesby at 5:56 PM on October 25, 2021 [10 favorites]
posted by rifflesby at 5:56 PM on October 25, 2021 [10 favorites]
There's one detail - I've been waiting until someone other than TMZ reported it.
It's said that some in the crew were using the prop guns off-the-clock for recreational target practice.
FWIW, TheWrap is also reporting this: ‘Rust’ Shooting: Gun That Killed Halyna Hutchins Was Used That Morning for Live-Ammo Target Practice.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 7:22 PM on October 25, 2021 [8 favorites]
It's said that some in the crew were using the prop guns off-the-clock for recreational target practice.
FWIW, TheWrap is also reporting this: ‘Rust’ Shooting: Gun That Killed Halyna Hutchins Was Used That Morning for Live-Ammo Target Practice.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 7:22 PM on October 25, 2021 [8 favorites]
I'm re-reading this line in a new light:
"The Prop Master frequently admonished Dave for dismissing the talent without returning props, weapon included" [while working on Hulu's "Into the Dark" Anthology Series, so different armorer/prop master]
posted by ryanrs at 8:00 PM on October 25, 2021
"The Prop Master frequently admonished Dave for dismissing the talent without returning props, weapon included" [while working on Hulu's "Into the Dark" Anthology Series, so different armorer/prop master]
posted by ryanrs at 8:00 PM on October 25, 2021
That is so bonkers. My understanding is that the non-prop guns should be in the armorer's control nearly every moment they aren't in an actor's hand. Was she being cowed by the bigwigs in the crew who wanted to play, or was she genuinely that foolish that she was handing guns over (or leaving them where random crew members could access them) for this kind of game? Or even participating?
I guess we have to treat these stories with some caution, since there may be people covering their ass, but if even half this stuff is true someone is going to jail. Possibly multiple someones.
posted by tavella at 8:55 PM on October 25, 2021
I guess we have to treat these stories with some caution, since there may be people covering their ass, but if even half this stuff is true someone is going to jail. Possibly multiple someones.
posted by tavella at 8:55 PM on October 25, 2021
From one of the other articles at The Wrap: Prop Master Says He Turned Down ‘Rust’ Job Because of ‘Massive Red Flags’ - Neal W. Zoromski tells the LA Times he was offered the job a few weeks before the start of filming:
"What concerned Zoromski the most was his request for five technicians in the department, a figure he revised to two due to the fim’s low budget. But producers wanted one person to serve as both assistant prop master and armorer, he told The Times.
“You never have a prop assistant double as the armorer,” he said. “Those are two really big jobs.” ... “In the movies, the prep is everything. …You also need time to clean, inspect and repair guns,” he told the newspaper. “You need time to fix old clocks. In period films, you are sometimes using antiques. But here, there was absolutely no time to prepare, and that gave me a bad feeling.”
Zoromski decided to pass on the role.
“After I pressed ‘send’ on that last email, I felt, in the pit of my stomach: ‘That is an accident waiting to happen,’” he said.
posted by oh yeah! at 9:06 PM on October 25, 2021 [11 favorites]
"What concerned Zoromski the most was his request for five technicians in the department, a figure he revised to two due to the fim’s low budget. But producers wanted one person to serve as both assistant prop master and armorer, he told The Times.
“You never have a prop assistant double as the armorer,” he said. “Those are two really big jobs.” ... “In the movies, the prep is everything. …You also need time to clean, inspect and repair guns,” he told the newspaper. “You need time to fix old clocks. In period films, you are sometimes using antiques. But here, there was absolutely no time to prepare, and that gave me a bad feeling.”
Zoromski decided to pass on the role.
“After I pressed ‘send’ on that last email, I felt, in the pit of my stomach: ‘That is an accident waiting to happen,’” he said.
posted by oh yeah! at 9:06 PM on October 25, 2021 [11 favorites]
So a ton of movie people and gun people have been going "how is this even possible?"
Well this is a really good answer: horsing around with prop guns and live ammo after hours, plus a negligent AD, plus a negligent armorer. Yep, that'll do it.
posted by ryanrs at 9:35 PM on October 25, 2021 [4 favorites]
Well this is a really good answer: horsing around with prop guns and live ammo after hours, plus a negligent AD, plus a negligent armorer. Yep, that'll do it.
posted by ryanrs at 9:35 PM on October 25, 2021 [4 favorites]
It's sort of like the Brandon Lee case, except that at least in that case all the steps in the chain of disaster were at least connected to filming. So Brandon Lee but everyone was much much stupider and negligent.
posted by tavella at 9:46 PM on October 25, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by tavella at 9:46 PM on October 25, 2021 [2 favorites]
It's said that some in the crew were using the prop guns off-the-clock for recreational target practice.
I've learned a lot in this thread about proper weapon handling in Hollywood, so - while this sounds bonkers to me, is it really?
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK yes.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:52 AM on October 26, 2021 [4 favorites]
I've learned a lot in this thread about proper weapon handling in Hollywood, so - while this sounds bonkers to me, is it really?
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK yes.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:52 AM on October 26, 2021 [4 favorites]
horsing around with prop guns and live ammo after hours, plus a negligent AD, plus a negligent armorer. Yep, that'll do it.
You left out negligent production companies - including Alec Baldwin's and one that markets itself as an investment vehicle for rich people looking for places to get a quick return on money they don't know what to do with - who apply severe pressure for 21-day shoots to finish quickly and cheaply.
Seems to me that's the primary driver for all of the others, by forcing a film to go cheap when it comes to the gun safety team, and by hiring ADs known for not spending too much time enforcing pesky safety protocols. This Jacobin story quotes someone saying the same pressures are being placed on Hollywood COVID compliance officers:
“The armorer being young is relevant because if you’re young or newer, you also have less room to speak up [without being fired],” says Leah Caddigan, an independent filmmaker and former network production assistant. She added that such retaliation is currently happening “all the time” to COVID officers, the newly formed (and largely nonunion) role added to productions nationwide during the pandemic. “COVID compliance officers are getting fired for not bending the rules for the executive producers,” she says.
posted by mediareport at 5:27 AM on October 26, 2021 [11 favorites]
You left out negligent production companies - including Alec Baldwin's and one that markets itself as an investment vehicle for rich people looking for places to get a quick return on money they don't know what to do with - who apply severe pressure for 21-day shoots to finish quickly and cheaply.
Seems to me that's the primary driver for all of the others, by forcing a film to go cheap when it comes to the gun safety team, and by hiring ADs known for not spending too much time enforcing pesky safety protocols. This Jacobin story quotes someone saying the same pressures are being placed on Hollywood COVID compliance officers:
“The armorer being young is relevant because if you’re young or newer, you also have less room to speak up [without being fired],” says Leah Caddigan, an independent filmmaker and former network production assistant. She added that such retaliation is currently happening “all the time” to COVID officers, the newly formed (and largely nonunion) role added to productions nationwide during the pandemic. “COVID compliance officers are getting fired for not bending the rules for the executive producers,” she says.
posted by mediareport at 5:27 AM on October 26, 2021 [11 favorites]
Like so many news stories these days, it all boils down to management putting profit over people.
In this case, speed over safety. Not just the lax gun handling, but the reliance on overworked underpaid inexperienced crew. Conditions so bad that pros (Zoromski, above) wouldn't touch it, that workers filed complaints and walked off the set. And looking at IATSE's grievances in the barely-averted strike, this seems like an industry-wide problem.
A gun death is certainly dramatic, but how many other injuries didn't make headlines? Recent revelations show a *lot* of warning signs were ignored in the hours, days, and weeks before. What other red flags should we be looking at now to prevent future tragedies?
While the AD's history of callous disregard for safety makes him an easy villain, don't let focus on him distract from the other endemic issues at fault.
posted by cheshyre at 7:26 AM on October 26, 2021 [5 favorites]
In this case, speed over safety. Not just the lax gun handling, but the reliance on overworked underpaid inexperienced crew. Conditions so bad that pros (Zoromski, above) wouldn't touch it, that workers filed complaints and walked off the set. And looking at IATSE's grievances in the barely-averted strike, this seems like an industry-wide problem.
A gun death is certainly dramatic, but how many other injuries didn't make headlines? Recent revelations show a *lot* of warning signs were ignored in the hours, days, and weeks before. What other red flags should we be looking at now to prevent future tragedies?
While the AD's history of callous disregard for safety makes him an easy villain, don't let focus on him distract from the other endemic issues at fault.
posted by cheshyre at 7:26 AM on October 26, 2021 [5 favorites]
Every workplace lets you horse around with dangerous stuff after hours. That’s one of the main benefits of many jobs. The warehouse is for forklift racing. Of course you can juggle those chainsaws between shifts, that’s why you’re a lumberjack. I can’t tell you how many hours and mutants we burned when we first got those new uranium control rods. At Tesla, they test new cars off the line each afternoon with a quick game of chicken.
What is the point of having a collection of specialist tools around designed for a specific purpose (make live things dead), if you can’t even have some fun. Not sure I see all the fuss here. Rules are for people who don’t know what they’re doing, and everybody always does.
posted by bigbigdog at 7:47 AM on October 26, 2021 [6 favorites]
What is the point of having a collection of specialist tools around designed for a specific purpose (make live things dead), if you can’t even have some fun. Not sure I see all the fuss here. Rules are for people who don’t know what they’re doing, and everybody always does.
posted by bigbigdog at 7:47 AM on October 26, 2021 [6 favorites]
also wishing that ... less of our popular entertainment glorified the use of guns.
A frequent refrain with my wife is how my brain just shuts off during a movie when the shooting starts and for a disappointingly large number of movies, that seems to be the last third or quarter of the film. We have a little one now, and it's alarming how many kids' movies have a lot of shooting.
------
Late to the thread but wanted to add this. I remember being shocked, but not surprised, that an explicit marketing ploy for Glock was getting their guns into as many film and television productions as possible. Heard that on Fresh Air a while back during this interview with Paul Barrett, author of "Glock: The Rise of America's Gun." A relevant part: "Another strategy, says Barrett, was to get the Glock screen time in Hollywood. In 1990, the Glock began to appear in the hands of police officers in Law and Order and other police procedural shows. It was also used by Bruce Willis in the movie Die Hard 2. Willis' character gave a long soliloquy touting the advantages of using a Glock. '[He] introduced the gun as a character to people who don't know anything about guns,' says Barrett."
And while Glock had already been working hard to get police departments to switch to their weaponry through massive discount programs, I remember from the interview (not written in that link above) that after the weapon showed up in Law and Order and other Hollywood portrayals of police, that really got police officers trying to get their departments to switch to Glocks in order to look like the cool police on tv and in the movies.
------
Unrelated to the above: I've been in police armories a couple of times through the course of my work and have seen police officers use a discharge station to check that their weapon's chamber is clear when grabbing special weaponry to use. I saw it when a police department was demonstrating a shotgun that was used to shoot "less lethal" beanbags for crowd control. The officer grabbed the shotgun from the rack/locker for the demonstration and then immediately put the muzzle into a docking station of some sort and pulled the trigger (this was a decade ago that I saw it last; memory is fuzzy on the details). It seemed to have a bunch of layers or rubber or maybe kevlar in the docking station so it could absorb a bullet if in fact the gun was loaded. The police officer also did this procedure when returning the weapon to the armory after the demonstration. It was the last thing they did before returning the weapon to the rack/locker. In both checking out and returning the weapon, it was a method for quickly ascertaining whether or not the weapon was loaded, in addition to other visual checks when picking up or dropping off a weapon.
I tried googling but couldn't figure out what to call it, so I don't have a link to show what this is, but it seems like something like that could be put in as a step between retrieving the weapon for a movie production, loading it with blanks if needed, and handing it to the actor for use in front of the camera. Obviously could just be another corner to cut in the case of negligent weapons handling like this, of course...
posted by msbrauer at 7:57 AM on October 26, 2021 [4 favorites]
A frequent refrain with my wife is how my brain just shuts off during a movie when the shooting starts and for a disappointingly large number of movies, that seems to be the last third or quarter of the film. We have a little one now, and it's alarming how many kids' movies have a lot of shooting.
------
Late to the thread but wanted to add this. I remember being shocked, but not surprised, that an explicit marketing ploy for Glock was getting their guns into as many film and television productions as possible. Heard that on Fresh Air a while back during this interview with Paul Barrett, author of "Glock: The Rise of America's Gun." A relevant part: "Another strategy, says Barrett, was to get the Glock screen time in Hollywood. In 1990, the Glock began to appear in the hands of police officers in Law and Order and other police procedural shows. It was also used by Bruce Willis in the movie Die Hard 2. Willis' character gave a long soliloquy touting the advantages of using a Glock. '[He] introduced the gun as a character to people who don't know anything about guns,' says Barrett."
And while Glock had already been working hard to get police departments to switch to their weaponry through massive discount programs, I remember from the interview (not written in that link above) that after the weapon showed up in Law and Order and other Hollywood portrayals of police, that really got police officers trying to get their departments to switch to Glocks in order to look like the cool police on tv and in the movies.
------
Unrelated to the above: I've been in police armories a couple of times through the course of my work and have seen police officers use a discharge station to check that their weapon's chamber is clear when grabbing special weaponry to use. I saw it when a police department was demonstrating a shotgun that was used to shoot "less lethal" beanbags for crowd control. The officer grabbed the shotgun from the rack/locker for the demonstration and then immediately put the muzzle into a docking station of some sort and pulled the trigger (this was a decade ago that I saw it last; memory is fuzzy on the details). It seemed to have a bunch of layers or rubber or maybe kevlar in the docking station so it could absorb a bullet if in fact the gun was loaded. The police officer also did this procedure when returning the weapon to the armory after the demonstration. It was the last thing they did before returning the weapon to the rack/locker. In both checking out and returning the weapon, it was a method for quickly ascertaining whether or not the weapon was loaded, in addition to other visual checks when picking up or dropping off a weapon.
I tried googling but couldn't figure out what to call it, so I don't have a link to show what this is, but it seems like something like that could be put in as a step between retrieving the weapon for a movie production, loading it with blanks if needed, and handing it to the actor for use in front of the camera. Obviously could just be another corner to cut in the case of negligent weapons handling like this, of course...
posted by msbrauer at 7:57 AM on October 26, 2021 [4 favorites]
Eh, maybe don't copy some police department's ideas on gun safety. The procedure you described above absolutely does not demonstrate that a gun is not loaded. Cowboy bullshit like that is exactly how you end up handing a loaded revolver to an actor who then shoots and kills the director of photography.
Seriously, that is NOT how you check that a gun is unloaded. You have to open the gun up and look inside.
posted by ryanrs at 8:33 AM on October 26, 2021 [6 favorites]
Seriously, that is NOT how you check that a gun is unloaded. You have to open the gun up and look inside.
posted by ryanrs at 8:33 AM on October 26, 2021 [6 favorites]
bigbigdog - PLEASE tell me you are just being sarcastic?......
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:35 AM on October 26, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:35 AM on October 26, 2021 [1 favorite]
Sorry I thought the sarcasm was clear. I am simply horrified at the idea that people were playing with these weapons at work.
posted by bigbigdog at 9:04 AM on October 26, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by bigbigdog at 9:04 AM on October 26, 2021 [5 favorites]
The problem is, that doesn't necessarily work on a movie set. Given this was a shot looking down the barrel of a revolver, it was almost surely meant to be loaded with dummies. And not the commercial sort of dummies with bright orange tips or one piece steel construction, but ones handmade from fired brass and new bullets with no powder, so that the tips would look right in the shot. So Baldwin could have looked at the gun all he liked, but without x-ray vision he wouldn't be able to see that there was powder inside the bullets. The only way to be sure would have been to test fire his way through the whole cylinder, and do that every time the gun went out of his control and back again. Which a) movie sets are not usually equipped for that and b) the actors are supposed to be concentrating on acting, not the guns, and split attention with guns can be deadly. Which is why armorers exist, to externalize that sort of check.
posted by tavella at 9:08 AM on October 26, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by tavella at 9:08 AM on October 26, 2021 [3 favorites]
I've been in police armories a couple of times through the course of my work and have seen police officers use a discharge station to check that their weapon's chamber is clear when grabbing special weaponry to use.
Without making any claims about how various organizations actually use safety barrels like that (and the military has used them for decades; traditionally they were just an oil drum cut in half and filled with sand, and often doubled as ashtrays in the bad old days), they have a very specific purpose: they provide a known-safe direction in which you point the muzzle of the firearm while clearing it, and in particular while doing the final dry-fire (i.e. "dropping the hammer") after final clearing of a firearm before putting it into storage, like a weapons rack or locker. It's generally considered bad for the firearms to store them with the hammer cocked, and particularly with rifles it's difficult to manually lower the hammer without doing something that would result in a discharge if there happens to be a round in the chamber. Hence, the safety barrels.
They're just an extra, final, last-ditch safety measure against what would still have to be a significant chain of negligence.
posted by Kadin2048 at 9:11 AM on October 26, 2021 [3 favorites]
Without making any claims about how various organizations actually use safety barrels like that (and the military has used them for decades; traditionally they were just an oil drum cut in half and filled with sand, and often doubled as ashtrays in the bad old days), they have a very specific purpose: they provide a known-safe direction in which you point the muzzle of the firearm while clearing it, and in particular while doing the final dry-fire (i.e. "dropping the hammer") after final clearing of a firearm before putting it into storage, like a weapons rack or locker. It's generally considered bad for the firearms to store them with the hammer cocked, and particularly with rifles it's difficult to manually lower the hammer without doing something that would result in a discharge if there happens to be a round in the chamber. Hence, the safety barrels.
They're just an extra, final, last-ditch safety measure against what would still have to be a significant chain of negligence.
posted by Kadin2048 at 9:11 AM on October 26, 2021 [3 favorites]
I can think of no firearm where pulling the trigger will definitively tell you that it is unloaded. Literally not a single gun.
The one case where it sort of half-works is with a single-shot firearm, and then only if the gun goes bang when you pull the trigger. If it doesn't go bang when you pull the trigger, it might still be loaded.
As Kadin says, a discharge station could be one step in a safety protocol, but it is absolutely not a failsafe. You can't skip to the final step and use it to 'prove' the gun is not loaded. You need to open the gun and look for bullets.
(I know a lot of you are rolling your eyes at this gun pedantry. But the reason I'm emphasizing this is because it's very dangerous to ignore industry-standard practices and just have some laymen brainstorm one weird trick to make guns safe.)
posted by ryanrs at 9:59 AM on October 26, 2021 [5 favorites]
The one case where it sort of half-works is with a single-shot firearm, and then only if the gun goes bang when you pull the trigger. If it doesn't go bang when you pull the trigger, it might still be loaded.
As Kadin says, a discharge station could be one step in a safety protocol, but it is absolutely not a failsafe. You can't skip to the final step and use it to 'prove' the gun is not loaded. You need to open the gun and look for bullets.
(I know a lot of you are rolling your eyes at this gun pedantry. But the reason I'm emphasizing this is because it's very dangerous to ignore industry-standard practices and just have some laymen brainstorm one weird trick to make guns safe.)
posted by ryanrs at 9:59 AM on October 26, 2021 [5 favorites]
You need to open the gun and look for bullets.
Again, that doesn't work on a movie set! You cannot apply shooting range rules to a movie set, because the goals are different. On a range, if you have dummies they are intended to look visibly different. On a set, you want them to look identical, just with no explosive contents. Similarly, you never point a gun at something you don't intend to shoot in most circumstances; on a movie set you point guns at people and things all the time. Sure, you can use angles so that that the gun is actually pointing somewhat to the side, but it's still going to be pointed somewhat in their direction, and anyone who knows anything about the inaccuracy of handguns and how wobbly most people's aims are would still consider that unsafe for actual firearm use.
I do think some of the practices are going to have to change, artistic impact can't excuse endangering people this way, but it's not a question of just applying range rules.
posted by tavella at 10:30 AM on October 26, 2021 [1 favorite]
Again, that doesn't work on a movie set! You cannot apply shooting range rules to a movie set, because the goals are different. On a range, if you have dummies they are intended to look visibly different. On a set, you want them to look identical, just with no explosive contents. Similarly, you never point a gun at something you don't intend to shoot in most circumstances; on a movie set you point guns at people and things all the time. Sure, you can use angles so that that the gun is actually pointing somewhat to the side, but it's still going to be pointed somewhat in their direction, and anyone who knows anything about the inaccuracy of handguns and how wobbly most people's aims are would still consider that unsafe for actual firearm use.
I do think some of the practices are going to have to change, artistic impact can't excuse endangering people this way, but it's not a question of just applying range rules.
posted by tavella at 10:30 AM on October 26, 2021 [1 favorite]
Yeah, for a movie set you'd want a professionally trained gun expert / gunsmith to verify the condition of the guns and maintain a strict chain of custody. That's what I mean by industry-standard practices. I think that would work pretty well if the people involved took it seriously and actually followed the rules.
posted by ryanrs at 10:38 AM on October 26, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by ryanrs at 10:38 AM on October 26, 2021 [2 favorites]
Given this was a shot looking down the barrel of a revolver, it was almost surely meant to be loaded with dummies. And not the commercial sort of dummies with bright orange tips or one piece steel construction, but ones handmade from fired brass and new bullets with no powder, so that the tips would look right in the shot. So Baldwin could have looked at the gun all he liked, but without x-ray vision he wouldn't be able to see that there was powder inside the bullets.
One of the links from a working hollywood armorer talked about having the primers drilled out -- meaning that the person who is in control of the firearm and ammunition (who is not the actor) has an additional visual way to tell that those are fake bullets and won't fire if the trigger is pulled.
But this is just one more example of how a correctly functioning set has multiple layers of safety protocols, and for this to have happened meant that multiple protocols failed, not just a single one.
posted by Dip Flash at 11:01 AM on October 26, 2021 [4 favorites]
One of the links from a working hollywood armorer talked about having the primers drilled out -- meaning that the person who is in control of the firearm and ammunition (who is not the actor) has an additional visual way to tell that those are fake bullets and won't fire if the trigger is pulled.
But this is just one more example of how a correctly functioning set has multiple layers of safety protocols, and for this to have happened meant that multiple protocols failed, not just a single one.
posted by Dip Flash at 11:01 AM on October 26, 2021 [4 favorites]
Well this is a really good answer: horsing around with prop guns and live ammo after hours, plus a negligent AD, plus a negligent armorer. Yep, that'll do it.
Not excusing anything but by all accounts this AD was an asshole who did whatever he pleased, and I wonder about the dynamic on set with a 24 year old, inexperienced armorer. Obviously the weapons should never have been out of their sight or control. Were they even aware they had been used for target practice? How does a pistol end up on a cart where anyone can grab it? Why wasn't the armorer double checking the weapon right before the scene? It sounds like they may have been working as a prop assistant as well- were they not around at that moment? It's all so fucked up and from what little we know it has to actually be even more fucked up that that.
posted by oneirodynia at 12:21 PM on October 26, 2021 [7 favorites]
The only people in this story who are unambiguously in the right are the union crew members who walked off the job.
posted by ryanrs at 12:55 PM on October 26, 2021 [18 favorites]
posted by ryanrs at 12:55 PM on October 26, 2021 [18 favorites]
The only people in this story who are unambiguously in the right are the union crew members who walked off the job.
I'd add Halyna Hutchins, but otherwise I think you're correct
posted by cheshyre at 2:27 PM on October 26, 2021
I'd add Halyna Hutchins, but otherwise I think you're correct
posted by cheshyre at 2:27 PM on October 26, 2021
No. Hutchins was one of the most senior crew members. The production would have stopped if she had walked out with the rest of the crew. She chose not to, when plenty of much less powerful crew members did make the correct choice.
It is merely coincidence that the life that was lost was her own.
posted by ryanrs at 2:46 PM on October 26, 2021 [4 favorites]
It is merely coincidence that the life that was lost was her own.
posted by ryanrs at 2:46 PM on October 26, 2021 [4 favorites]
These are all the mistakes I count. The ones in brackets aren't 100% confirmed (yet).
(Movie gun should never have real bullets in it)
(Real bullets should never be on a movie set at all)
(GUNS ARE NOT USED AS FUCKING TOYS WITH REAL BULLETS AFTER HOURS)
(Armorer should only be doing one job, not also doing props)
Armorer should have good judgement & be the most cautious one (apparently Hannah Gutierrez Reed was laissez-faire in other ways, like letting a young actor figure out his own draw (!) and shoot at nearby hills, or on her last film, loading a gun on pebbly ground and not checking to see if a pebble got into the barrel to become an accidental projectile before giving it to an actor)
Assistant Director should care about safety, it's a key safety enforcement role, and by all accounts, Dave Halls does not remotely care about safety
An Assistant Director who was just fired due to a gun incident on another set should maybe not be immediately re-hired on a goddamn western
There had been prior accidental discharges already on the set of Rust (!!!)
After those discharges, they apparently did not increase caution levels
(Were the discharges with the same gun? Maybe? It was a stunt performer, and if it was Baldwin's stunt double, it may well have been Baldwin's gun)
ARMORER DOES NOT LEAVE GUNS UNATTENDED & GUNS ARE NEVER LEFT SITTING ON A FUCKING CART!!!! There's a strict chain of custody. A gun can be in the armorer's hand, in the actor's hand, or in a locked box. That's where guns belong. This is possibly the most outrageous breach of protocol in this entire shitshow. Even in shitty basement plays I've done, guns get locked in a metal box. Because anyone could tamper with an unsupervised gun. "Dave Halls GRABBED A GUN OFF A CART? No no no no no. My jaw dropped when I read that.
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR SHOULD NOT TOUCH THE GUNS AT ALL - THAT IS NOT OK
Assistant Director is absolutely not qualified to judge if a gun is loaded - another egregious breach
In rehearsal, a rubber gun should be used
Actor should never point a working gun at humans and should be immediately stopped by both the AD and the Armorer if they do so
When a working gun is on set, nobody should be standing in the line of fire: it should be a remote-operated camera behind a lexan shield. Sadly Baldwin may have drawn too rapidly for the camera operator, and Joel Souza and Halyna Hutchins to even realize that he was aiming at them.
Producers should not allow their sets to become so dysfunctional that people are quitting, and then so tense that people are making bad decisions and everyone is rushing to save time and terrified to speak up and cause friction
....I wonder what other horrible horrible lapses in judgement will emerge.
posted by nouvelle-personne at 2:48 PM on October 26, 2021 [18 favorites]
(Movie gun should never have real bullets in it)
(Real bullets should never be on a movie set at all)
(GUNS ARE NOT USED AS FUCKING TOYS WITH REAL BULLETS AFTER HOURS)
(Armorer should only be doing one job, not also doing props)
Armorer should have good judgement & be the most cautious one (apparently Hannah Gutierrez Reed was laissez-faire in other ways, like letting a young actor figure out his own draw (!) and shoot at nearby hills, or on her last film, loading a gun on pebbly ground and not checking to see if a pebble got into the barrel to become an accidental projectile before giving it to an actor)
Assistant Director should care about safety, it's a key safety enforcement role, and by all accounts, Dave Halls does not remotely care about safety
An Assistant Director who was just fired due to a gun incident on another set should maybe not be immediately re-hired on a goddamn western
There had been prior accidental discharges already on the set of Rust (!!!)
After those discharges, they apparently did not increase caution levels
(Were the discharges with the same gun? Maybe? It was a stunt performer, and if it was Baldwin's stunt double, it may well have been Baldwin's gun)
ARMORER DOES NOT LEAVE GUNS UNATTENDED & GUNS ARE NEVER LEFT SITTING ON A FUCKING CART!!!! There's a strict chain of custody. A gun can be in the armorer's hand, in the actor's hand, or in a locked box. That's where guns belong. This is possibly the most outrageous breach of protocol in this entire shitshow. Even in shitty basement plays I've done, guns get locked in a metal box. Because anyone could tamper with an unsupervised gun. "Dave Halls GRABBED A GUN OFF A CART? No no no no no. My jaw dropped when I read that.
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR SHOULD NOT TOUCH THE GUNS AT ALL - THAT IS NOT OK
Assistant Director is absolutely not qualified to judge if a gun is loaded - another egregious breach
In rehearsal, a rubber gun should be used
Actor should never point a working gun at humans and should be immediately stopped by both the AD and the Armorer if they do so
When a working gun is on set, nobody should be standing in the line of fire: it should be a remote-operated camera behind a lexan shield. Sadly Baldwin may have drawn too rapidly for the camera operator, and Joel Souza and Halyna Hutchins to even realize that he was aiming at them.
Producers should not allow their sets to become so dysfunctional that people are quitting, and then so tense that people are making bad decisions and everyone is rushing to save time and terrified to speak up and cause friction
....I wonder what other horrible horrible lapses in judgement will emerge.
posted by nouvelle-personne at 2:48 PM on October 26, 2021 [18 favorites]
Oh two more-
Gun should not be cocked until the actual take
Actor's finger should be outside of the trigger guard until the actual take
posted by nouvelle-personne at 2:55 PM on October 26, 2021
Gun should not be cocked until the actual take
Actor's finger should be outside of the trigger guard until the actual take
posted by nouvelle-personne at 2:55 PM on October 26, 2021
Supposedly the cart was a Covid precaution, I guess because having the armorer in the church building would have been too many people, so they set up a cart outside. But in that case, the armorer should have been right there with it, and require the AD to check the weapon when they hand off, or at least that's how I'd do it.
I guess the big question is what were the three guns on the cart, and how did they get there. I'm wondering if we've heard the armorer's side yet. That is, is the version in the warrants agreed upon by both AD and armorer, that she prepared three guns that were supposed to be cold and staged them there? Because if that's true then the blame is going to lay heaviest on her, even if the AD should have checked it themselves to confirm cold gun. Or were they mixing types of guns and one was loaded with blanks? Did the AD take the wrong one, and then the trigger slipped, the blank went off and dislodged debris left from the target shooting? Or is it possible that someone could have returned the gun they went target shooting with by leaving it on the armorer's cart?
I don't think there isn't any way the armorer is not heavily at fault, unless she had been kicked off the set and someone else put the guns out. But there may have been a lot of help.
posted by tavella at 3:17 PM on October 26, 2021 [3 favorites]
I guess the big question is what were the three guns on the cart, and how did they get there. I'm wondering if we've heard the armorer's side yet. That is, is the version in the warrants agreed upon by both AD and armorer, that she prepared three guns that were supposed to be cold and staged them there? Because if that's true then the blame is going to lay heaviest on her, even if the AD should have checked it themselves to confirm cold gun. Or were they mixing types of guns and one was loaded with blanks? Did the AD take the wrong one, and then the trigger slipped, the blank went off and dislodged debris left from the target shooting? Or is it possible that someone could have returned the gun they went target shooting with by leaving it on the armorer's cart?
I don't think there isn't any way the armorer is not heavily at fault, unless she had been kicked off the set and someone else put the guns out. But there may have been a lot of help.
posted by tavella at 3:17 PM on October 26, 2021 [3 favorites]
Debris and blanks don't kill (unless you try real hard). That was a 100% real, normal bullet.
posted by ryanrs at 3:38 PM on October 26, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by ryanrs at 3:38 PM on October 26, 2021 [3 favorites]
I think that's most likely, but a pebble or the like could do some serious damage. And the director said he was standing next to Hutchins, not crouching behind her as had been speculated. Which is what makes me wonder if it could have been a spray of debris to hit two people at different heights.
posted by tavella at 3:48 PM on October 26, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by tavella at 3:48 PM on October 26, 2021 [1 favorite]
I don't think there isn't any way the armorer is not heavily at fault, unless she had been kicked off the set and someone else put the guns out. But there may have been a lot of help.
Tavela, one of the articles linked in this thread mentioned that there was no gun scene on the day's call sheet. So it seems entirely plausible that they decided to squeeze the extra scene/rehearsal into the day to shave more time/money of the shoot, and 'Safety-Shmafety' AD Hall didn't bother waiting for the armorer to get alerted to the new schedule and get to set but just plowed ahead without her. Not that I think that means the armorer still wasn't at fault -- surely part of her job is keeping the guns locked up from being taken on-set without her physical presence? Or at the very least not letting anyone fire real bullets from them for funsies outside of filming.
posted by oh yeah! at 3:51 PM on October 26, 2021 [5 favorites]
Tavela, one of the articles linked in this thread mentioned that there was no gun scene on the day's call sheet. So it seems entirely plausible that they decided to squeeze the extra scene/rehearsal into the day to shave more time/money of the shoot, and 'Safety-Shmafety' AD Hall didn't bother waiting for the armorer to get alerted to the new schedule and get to set but just plowed ahead without her. Not that I think that means the armorer still wasn't at fault -- surely part of her job is keeping the guns locked up from being taken on-set without her physical presence? Or at the very least not letting anyone fire real bullets from them for funsies outside of filming.
posted by oh yeah! at 3:51 PM on October 26, 2021 [5 favorites]
Looks like we've got a partial answer on when the gun was loaded and with what.
From The Wrap:
And according to the affadavits (& reported multiple places), nobody interviewed could recall whether the armorer re-checked the firearms after the set returned from lunch. (were they really just sitting unattended at that table for hours!?)
Also, Hollywood Reporter quotes the DA with this description of the weapon:
From The Wrap:
The gun that killed “Rust” cinematographer Halyna Hutchins last Thursday was used by crew members that morning for live-ammunition target practice, an individual with knowledge of the set told TheWrap.Crew members were plinking with the props just hours before the fatal shooting.
And according to the affadavits (& reported multiple places), nobody interviewed could recall whether the armorer re-checked the firearms after the set returned from lunch. (were they really just sitting unattended at that table for hours!?)
Also, Hollywood Reporter quotes the DA with this description of the weapon:
The gun that was used on set was in fact “a legit” working gun and more specifically “an antique-era appropriate gun”posted by cheshyre at 5:01 PM on October 26, 2021 [1 favorite]
Crew members were plinking with the props just hours before the fatal shooting.
What a shit show.
posted by mr_roboto at 7:20 PM on October 26, 2021 [11 favorites]
What a shit show.
posted by mr_roboto at 7:20 PM on October 26, 2021 [11 favorites]
In any bad accident it's always more than one thing, one mistake, one cock up. This is trivially true, because if it were one thing the actual cause would that one thing, and this additional thing: "they were in a situation where one mistake could kill someone."
But even expecting a pile of things, this is just horrific.
Also, I don't know (and don't really care) how at fault Baldwin was in the sequence. But since the reports of the union walkout came up I've been thinking: There's some alternate world where liberal partisan Baldwin watches union members leave, says "I'm not working on this until you get your labor issues sorted out" and the production is shut down as he sits at home for a day or two--completely unaware that he just saved someone's life.
posted by mark k at 7:48 PM on October 26, 2021 [12 favorites]
But even expecting a pile of things, this is just horrific.
Also, I don't know (and don't really care) how at fault Baldwin was in the sequence. But since the reports of the union walkout came up I've been thinking: There's some alternate world where liberal partisan Baldwin watches union members leave, says "I'm not working on this until you get your labor issues sorted out" and the production is shut down as he sits at home for a day or two--completely unaware that he just saved someone's life.
posted by mark k at 7:48 PM on October 26, 2021 [12 favorites]
Baldwin, with his great depth of experience working in films with guns, should have recognized that gun handling on the Rust set was far sloppier than is usual in the film industry. He had to have known common safety rules were being ignored.
posted by ryanrs at 8:24 PM on October 26, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by ryanrs at 8:24 PM on October 26, 2021 [5 favorites]
He had to have known common safety rules were being ignored.
So did both of the victims of the shooting. Everyone involved was operating on that set with the knowledge that they were cutting corners, they just didn't care. I hope the director and AD don't get work on this kind of movie again.
posted by fight or flight at 3:26 AM on October 27, 2021 [5 favorites]
So did both of the victims of the shooting. Everyone involved was operating on that set with the knowledge that they were cutting corners, they just didn't care. I hope the director and AD don't get work on this kind of movie again.
posted by fight or flight at 3:26 AM on October 27, 2021 [5 favorites]
Debris and blanks don't kill (unless you try real hard).
They fucking can kill, dude. A blank is what killed Jon-Erik Hexum - and not because he was "trying real hard", it was because he was doing something stupid.
The gases from a blank charge still need a way to escape after you fire them, and if there's debris blocking the way those gases escape through, that debris becomes a projectile and that projectile can kill you. Or if you do something stupid like hold that gun to your head and pull the trigger, like Jon-Erik Hexum did, the gasses push a piece of your own skull into your brain and that kills you. Even though it was just a blank.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:01 AM on October 27, 2021 [6 favorites]
They fucking can kill, dude. A blank is what killed Jon-Erik Hexum - and not because he was "trying real hard", it was because he was doing something stupid.
The gases from a blank charge still need a way to escape after you fire them, and if there's debris blocking the way those gases escape through, that debris becomes a projectile and that projectile can kill you. Or if you do something stupid like hold that gun to your head and pull the trigger, like Jon-Erik Hexum did, the gasses push a piece of your own skull into your brain and that kills you. Even though it was just a blank.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:01 AM on October 27, 2021 [6 favorites]
and not because he was "trying real hard", it was because he was doing something stupid.
Yes, that's what I meant by trying real hard.
It seems very clear to me that this was a plain old bullet. It wasn't a pebble or propellant gases that punched straight through one person and into a second. On the other hand, that is exactly the kind of damage you'd expect from full metal jacket plinking/range ammo.
posted by ryanrs at 8:09 AM on October 27, 2021 [1 favorite]
Yes, that's what I meant by trying real hard.
It seems very clear to me that this was a plain old bullet. It wasn't a pebble or propellant gases that punched straight through one person and into a second. On the other hand, that is exactly the kind of damage you'd expect from full metal jacket plinking/range ammo.
posted by ryanrs at 8:09 AM on October 27, 2021 [1 favorite]
> and not because he was "trying real hard", it was because he was doing something stupid.
Yes, that's what I meant by trying real hard.
"Trying real hard" implies he had to do something deliberate. He DIDN'T do something deliberate. There's a difference between "trying real hard" and "making dumb mistakes", in the minds of many.
It seems very clear to me that this was a plain old bullet. It wasn't a pebble or propellant gases that punched straight through one person and into a second. On the other hand, that is exactly the kind of damage you'd expect from full metal jacket plinking/range ammo.
In this particular case, this is true. However, the fact that it was an actual bullet in this instance does not negate the fact that blanks are also dangerous and should not be treated casually because "oh, it's not a real bullet or anything, it can't hurt me".
In fact, that kind of dismissive treatment of blanks as being "not dangerous unless you're trying real hard to mess up" is indicative of the kind of thinking that brought about the shoddy lack of security on this set which allowed them to have bullets in that gun in the first place.
The rules about gun safety on a film set or in a theater space are there for the protection of the actors. All of them, including the ones involving the dangers of blanks. Period.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:20 AM on October 27, 2021 [5 favorites]
Yes, that's what I meant by trying real hard.
"Trying real hard" implies he had to do something deliberate. He DIDN'T do something deliberate. There's a difference between "trying real hard" and "making dumb mistakes", in the minds of many.
It seems very clear to me that this was a plain old bullet. It wasn't a pebble or propellant gases that punched straight through one person and into a second. On the other hand, that is exactly the kind of damage you'd expect from full metal jacket plinking/range ammo.
In this particular case, this is true. However, the fact that it was an actual bullet in this instance does not negate the fact that blanks are also dangerous and should not be treated casually because "oh, it's not a real bullet or anything, it can't hurt me".
In fact, that kind of dismissive treatment of blanks as being "not dangerous unless you're trying real hard to mess up" is indicative of the kind of thinking that brought about the shoddy lack of security on this set which allowed them to have bullets in that gun in the first place.
The rules about gun safety on a film set or in a theater space are there for the protection of the actors. All of them, including the ones involving the dangers of blanks. Period.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:20 AM on October 27, 2021 [5 favorites]
I think we are arguing about different things.
Or maybe just semantics.
But that's part of why I'm kind of militant about this, actually - anything that can lead people towards thinking that blanks or debris in a nozzle is not dangerous, and that prop guns shouldn't be respected, is super-plus-bad in my book.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:53 AM on October 27, 2021 [4 favorites]
Or maybe just semantics.
But that's part of why I'm kind of militant about this, actually - anything that can lead people towards thinking that blanks or debris in a nozzle is not dangerous, and that prop guns shouldn't be respected, is super-plus-bad in my book.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:53 AM on October 27, 2021 [4 favorites]
One thing I was curious about, in terms of union organization, is the 1AD management or union? Where does that line fall?
posted by ryanrs at 9:17 AM on October 27, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by ryanrs at 9:17 AM on October 27, 2021 [1 favorite]
The Sheriff's and Prosecutor's offices currently giving a presser. Baldwin fired a live round. A mix of ammunition that may include other live rounds (subject to testing) has been recovered. Investigation is ongoing, everyone is cooperating so far.
Nothing much else substantive.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 9:26 AM on October 27, 2021 [5 favorites]
Nothing much else substantive.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 9:26 AM on October 27, 2021 [5 favorites]
The Sheriff's and Prosecutor's offices currently giving a presser. Baldwin fired a live round.
This is bananas. How the hell does a live round wind up in a prop gun? I don't work on movie sets and this story has taught me a lot about the guns we see in movies. I never knew they could be so dangerous even when properly prepared. But.. a live round??
posted by wondermouse at 11:01 AM on October 27, 2021 [2 favorites]
This is bananas. How the hell does a live round wind up in a prop gun? I don't work on movie sets and this story has taught me a lot about the guns we see in movies. I never knew they could be so dangerous even when properly prepared. But.. a live round??
posted by wondermouse at 11:01 AM on October 27, 2021 [2 favorites]
In an LA Times article Monday, a witness statement said that after being shot, Hutchins said, "I can't feel my legs." So she was conscious. Ugh, spending the final minutes of her life knowing she was dying because of this complete fuck up.
I also take some issue with a couple posts here that seemed to put some blame on her. It sounds like she tried to support the original camera crew, then scrambled to keep things going after they walked out. Does the DGA have guidelines for such situations?
It certainly would've added to her stress. But her job was to film the scenes, not keep track of the goddamn guns.
(Like you mark k, my imagination always goes to what could have happened in some alternative reality, where even one little difference could have changed the outcome. Like whatever assholes thought it was a great idea to grab those guns and play with them - didn't.)
I remember when I saw SNL in person, I watched Baldwin off camera waiting for his cue, turned toward my section of audience, but deep within himself, completely shutting us out, scant feet away. So, like many actors, he's intense when working.
And as an actor, it certainly wasn't his responsibility to check the guns. But as a producer ...
This has also opened some people's eyes to how chaotic production is. As much as I am steeped in the performing arts, I learned long ago my temperament can't really handle the unpredictability and stress of certain creative endeavors.
posted by NorthernLite at 12:32 PM on October 27, 2021 [2 favorites]
I also take some issue with a couple posts here that seemed to put some blame on her. It sounds like she tried to support the original camera crew, then scrambled to keep things going after they walked out. Does the DGA have guidelines for such situations?
It certainly would've added to her stress. But her job was to film the scenes, not keep track of the goddamn guns.
(Like you mark k, my imagination always goes to what could have happened in some alternative reality, where even one little difference could have changed the outcome. Like whatever assholes thought it was a great idea to grab those guns and play with them - didn't.)
I remember when I saw SNL in person, I watched Baldwin off camera waiting for his cue, turned toward my section of audience, but deep within himself, completely shutting us out, scant feet away. So, like many actors, he's intense when working.
And as an actor, it certainly wasn't his responsibility to check the guns. But as a producer ...
This has also opened some people's eyes to how chaotic production is. As much as I am steeped in the performing arts, I learned long ago my temperament can't really handle the unpredictability and stress of certain creative endeavors.
posted by NorthernLite at 12:32 PM on October 27, 2021 [2 favorites]
This is bananas. How the hell does a live round wind up in a prop gun?
The terminology here is confusing: these were real guns. They had been used for plinking the night before. Apparently no one cleared them at any point in between.
posted by oneirodynia at 1:15 PM on October 27, 2021 [4 favorites]
the Twitter thread by a film armourer linked way up above said that "prop gun" means a fake gun, rubber gun, thing that looks like a gun but is not a gun, and that a gun used for firing blanks or live rounds is not called that
posted by thelonius at 3:15 PM on October 27, 2021
posted by thelonius at 3:15 PM on October 27, 2021
And a WP article above says about prop guns:
while it’s thought of as a nonfunctional weapon often used in theater productions, the term also refers to real guns on TV and film sets that are loaded with blank cartridges, which are essentially modified bullets.
So it's clear some people use it the way the armorer in question doesn't, even if those people perhaps aren't armorers.
In context I think it's obvious that the phrase in this specific is referring to a real gun, one people went shooting with.
posted by mark k at 3:28 PM on October 27, 2021
while it’s thought of as a nonfunctional weapon often used in theater productions, the term also refers to real guns on TV and film sets that are loaded with blank cartridges, which are essentially modified bullets.
So it's clear some people use it the way the armorer in question doesn't, even if those people perhaps aren't armorers.
In context I think it's obvious that the phrase in this specific is referring to a real gun, one people went shooting with.
posted by mark k at 3:28 PM on October 27, 2021
Seconding everything that ryanrs is saying about gun safety in general and with regards to movie sets. He's speaking truth, here.
Gun safety is hard enough at an established range or going plinking. I've gone shooting a fair amount with just about everything short of anything full auto. I've shot long guns, carbines, shotguns - including a little skeet and clay pigeon shooting - pistols and even a few semiauto AR-15s, with bores ranging from 22s up to 45 caliber and 30.06, basically any round short of a 50 cal.
I'm super, super careful about self policing my control over the gun and being hyper aware of my line of fire, trigger discipline and so. Every gun is a loaded gun. A recently emptied gun is a loaded gun. A jammed gun is a loaded gun.
And EVERY DAMN TIME I've gone shooting there's been at least one if not multiple instances where someone relaxes too much and sweeps a recently fired but not yet cleared gun across one or more people, or tries to manipulate, rack, cock or clear a jammed or stovepiped or misfed gun with their finger inside the guard and other similar mistakes of attention and care.
Or as simple and innocuous as not waiting to make sure everyone has ear and eye protection sorted out and they're well behind the firing position and line before they start firing.
Every damn time I've been out shooting there's been something like this.
Sure, thankfully nothing tragic has happened but I want to re-emphasize this because gun safety is actually really challenging and difficult. It requires standards of care similar to working with toxic waste or biological laboratory safety standards and protocols. Or clean room protocols.
Every fucking time I've gone shooting there's been at least one moment like this where everyone behind the line ends up shouting something like "WOAH WOAH WOAH KEEP THAT POINTED DOWN RANGE STOP STOP RIGHT NOW WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?!"
This has included people who have seen active combat duty who should know better, or even the licensed owners of the guns we're firing. This even includes people I've gone shooting with who have concealed carry permits.
One of the very real problems with sport and target shooting is that shooting guns even for practice can release a lot mood altering endorphins and adrenaline. It's one of the reasons why sport shooting is so popular. It's a rush, like taking risks on a race track is a rush. Or how going surfing or snowboarding is a rush.
If I had a couple of bucks for each time I saw someone going shooting and got all kinds of high and shaky from the experience and endorphin release of even sport shooting - and then became a bit too casual or confused from the experience - I could probably pay down a few months of rent.
Trying to maintain this discipline in a high pressure, faced paced movie set environment is even more important and more difficult.
At no point should there be live rounds anywhere near the guns used in a movie production. Live rounds should not exist on the set. They shouldn't exist anywhere near the set, full stop. If live fire training is desired, it should happen at a range with guns that aren't involved in any way with being anywhere near on set or on location, no matter how remote the set or location is.
At no point should a movie armory guns be used or involved with target or practice shooting.
Maybe these real-but-prop guns can take a field trip to the range before or after a movie production. Many movie armory guns do end up on non-production practice shooting and sport shooting because some guns are rare and expensive, and it's a way for movie armorers to make some income by renting them out or providing them for totally legal live fire training, practice, safety training or sport shooting.
There's also the issue that many guns require live firing involving lead rounds and/or full loads to function properly or break in components like barrels, chambers or recoil and trigger/sear springs. Many guns will stop functioning properly if you don't fire some real rounds through them that aren't lead free range ammo, because this is part of the science of gunsmithing and engineering.
A whole lot of guns won't properly break in and function without some amount of full load, unjacketed lead rounds because gunsmithing and firearm engineering and design presumes that they'll be used with live rounds.
But this should never, ever happen during the production with the guns rented and marked for the production. They should never be anywhere near real bullets and rounds during the production while those guns are rented and provided to the production.
If I was a director, producer or involved in any way with a movie production even as lowly as a caterer or craft services and I found out or witnessed the use of live, real guns and weapons with real bullets and rounds during a production I would be either raising hell and/or removing myself from the production so fast it would make sonic booms.
The movie armorers who do this for a living and take it seriously maintain all prop guns and "blank" ammo under lock and key and need to be involved with all aspects of handling it. The armorers who know what they're doing hand load their blank rounds to specific powder load weights that are just enough to reliably cycle each and every individual gun with the absolute minimum blank loads required.
These armorers weigh each round and keep records of them. Before real prop guns and blank ammunition is deployed they weigh the blank custom loads again, and again, and yet again. Anything that falls out of spec for weight, look, or type of casing or round gets set aside to not be used and classified as unsafe until proven otherwise, or emptied and reloaded back to specs or outright discarded.
And there's a lot of environmental and procedural aspects that can cause weight changes of rounds between initial loads and final inspection before on-set, on-camera use. Humidity in the atmosphere, temperature changes, even actual mistakes in the initial load. They weigh and inspect these blank prop rounds over, and over, and over again before they finally make it to a production element of filming a scene with live, real guns and blank rounds.
And this is in addition to all of the other safety aspects like training the talent about safe handling or having the final say on the blocking and framing of the actual filming no matter how much the director or producer really wants the talent to fire in the general direction of their cameras, photographers, focus pullers and camera operators or that part of the production unit.
The armorer definitely fucked up and made mistakes about maintaining control over the guns and/or blank ammo for this production, but there would have been multiple points of failure and mistakes being made for this to happen. The producers, Director, Assistant Director, even the talent and all of the higher level production staff are also partially responsible for this, and this is reflected in the staff who walked away from paid work due to safety concerns.
And I find no pleasure in saying this because Alec Baldwin is obviously feeling absolutely gutted by this incident and filled with terrible remorse - but even he bears some responsibility with this in not practicing air tight gun safety with live guns and assuming anything at all about them even though it's not technically his job as the talent.
He could - and should - have been there inspecting his own "prop" live gun, making sure it was cleared and not loaded with live rounds or anything other than the inspected, verified and cleared blank rounds.
If your acting career and tasks are going to involve live guns and blank rounds you really should be taking a deadly serious and acutely keen interest in knowing every step of the safety protocols and adding your own safety protocols in addition to all of the above before putting your finger anywhere near the trigger of a movie armory gun before you assumed it was properly prepared and loaded with blanks.
In the extremely unlikely scenario if I was ever involved as the talent or production in a movie production like this involving real guns and live blank ammo I'd be there every step of the way with the armorer and watching them like a hawk and signing off on loads, weights and inspections. I'd want to know how to inspect, clear and even field strip every gun I'd ever handle during the production and inspect it and make it safe and help manage those risks myself. I'd want to see the rounds being weighed. I'd want multiple eyes on clearing the guns, preparing them and even witnessing loading them with live blanks.
These accidents are not accidents, they are deadly mistakes that should never have had the remote possibility that they would ever happen.
posted by loquacious at 6:31 PM on October 27, 2021 [11 favorites]
Gun safety is hard enough at an established range or going plinking. I've gone shooting a fair amount with just about everything short of anything full auto. I've shot long guns, carbines, shotguns - including a little skeet and clay pigeon shooting - pistols and even a few semiauto AR-15s, with bores ranging from 22s up to 45 caliber and 30.06, basically any round short of a 50 cal.
I'm super, super careful about self policing my control over the gun and being hyper aware of my line of fire, trigger discipline and so. Every gun is a loaded gun. A recently emptied gun is a loaded gun. A jammed gun is a loaded gun.
And EVERY DAMN TIME I've gone shooting there's been at least one if not multiple instances where someone relaxes too much and sweeps a recently fired but not yet cleared gun across one or more people, or tries to manipulate, rack, cock or clear a jammed or stovepiped or misfed gun with their finger inside the guard and other similar mistakes of attention and care.
Or as simple and innocuous as not waiting to make sure everyone has ear and eye protection sorted out and they're well behind the firing position and line before they start firing.
Every damn time I've been out shooting there's been something like this.
Sure, thankfully nothing tragic has happened but I want to re-emphasize this because gun safety is actually really challenging and difficult. It requires standards of care similar to working with toxic waste or biological laboratory safety standards and protocols. Or clean room protocols.
Every fucking time I've gone shooting there's been at least one moment like this where everyone behind the line ends up shouting something like "WOAH WOAH WOAH KEEP THAT POINTED DOWN RANGE STOP STOP RIGHT NOW WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?!"
This has included people who have seen active combat duty who should know better, or even the licensed owners of the guns we're firing. This even includes people I've gone shooting with who have concealed carry permits.
One of the very real problems with sport and target shooting is that shooting guns even for practice can release a lot mood altering endorphins and adrenaline. It's one of the reasons why sport shooting is so popular. It's a rush, like taking risks on a race track is a rush. Or how going surfing or snowboarding is a rush.
If I had a couple of bucks for each time I saw someone going shooting and got all kinds of high and shaky from the experience and endorphin release of even sport shooting - and then became a bit too casual or confused from the experience - I could probably pay down a few months of rent.
Trying to maintain this discipline in a high pressure, faced paced movie set environment is even more important and more difficult.
At no point should there be live rounds anywhere near the guns used in a movie production. Live rounds should not exist on the set. They shouldn't exist anywhere near the set, full stop. If live fire training is desired, it should happen at a range with guns that aren't involved in any way with being anywhere near on set or on location, no matter how remote the set or location is.
At no point should a movie armory guns be used or involved with target or practice shooting.
Maybe these real-but-prop guns can take a field trip to the range before or after a movie production. Many movie armory guns do end up on non-production practice shooting and sport shooting because some guns are rare and expensive, and it's a way for movie armorers to make some income by renting them out or providing them for totally legal live fire training, practice, safety training or sport shooting.
There's also the issue that many guns require live firing involving lead rounds and/or full loads to function properly or break in components like barrels, chambers or recoil and trigger/sear springs. Many guns will stop functioning properly if you don't fire some real rounds through them that aren't lead free range ammo, because this is part of the science of gunsmithing and engineering.
A whole lot of guns won't properly break in and function without some amount of full load, unjacketed lead rounds because gunsmithing and firearm engineering and design presumes that they'll be used with live rounds.
But this should never, ever happen during the production with the guns rented and marked for the production. They should never be anywhere near real bullets and rounds during the production while those guns are rented and provided to the production.
If I was a director, producer or involved in any way with a movie production even as lowly as a caterer or craft services and I found out or witnessed the use of live, real guns and weapons with real bullets and rounds during a production I would be either raising hell and/or removing myself from the production so fast it would make sonic booms.
The movie armorers who do this for a living and take it seriously maintain all prop guns and "blank" ammo under lock and key and need to be involved with all aspects of handling it. The armorers who know what they're doing hand load their blank rounds to specific powder load weights that are just enough to reliably cycle each and every individual gun with the absolute minimum blank loads required.
These armorers weigh each round and keep records of them. Before real prop guns and blank ammunition is deployed they weigh the blank custom loads again, and again, and yet again. Anything that falls out of spec for weight, look, or type of casing or round gets set aside to not be used and classified as unsafe until proven otherwise, or emptied and reloaded back to specs or outright discarded.
And there's a lot of environmental and procedural aspects that can cause weight changes of rounds between initial loads and final inspection before on-set, on-camera use. Humidity in the atmosphere, temperature changes, even actual mistakes in the initial load. They weigh and inspect these blank prop rounds over, and over, and over again before they finally make it to a production element of filming a scene with live, real guns and blank rounds.
And this is in addition to all of the other safety aspects like training the talent about safe handling or having the final say on the blocking and framing of the actual filming no matter how much the director or producer really wants the talent to fire in the general direction of their cameras, photographers, focus pullers and camera operators or that part of the production unit.
The armorer definitely fucked up and made mistakes about maintaining control over the guns and/or blank ammo for this production, but there would have been multiple points of failure and mistakes being made for this to happen. The producers, Director, Assistant Director, even the talent and all of the higher level production staff are also partially responsible for this, and this is reflected in the staff who walked away from paid work due to safety concerns.
And I find no pleasure in saying this because Alec Baldwin is obviously feeling absolutely gutted by this incident and filled with terrible remorse - but even he bears some responsibility with this in not practicing air tight gun safety with live guns and assuming anything at all about them even though it's not technically his job as the talent.
He could - and should - have been there inspecting his own "prop" live gun, making sure it was cleared and not loaded with live rounds or anything other than the inspected, verified and cleared blank rounds.
If your acting career and tasks are going to involve live guns and blank rounds you really should be taking a deadly serious and acutely keen interest in knowing every step of the safety protocols and adding your own safety protocols in addition to all of the above before putting your finger anywhere near the trigger of a movie armory gun before you assumed it was properly prepared and loaded with blanks.
In the extremely unlikely scenario if I was ever involved as the talent or production in a movie production like this involving real guns and live blank ammo I'd be there every step of the way with the armorer and watching them like a hawk and signing off on loads, weights and inspections. I'd want to know how to inspect, clear and even field strip every gun I'd ever handle during the production and inspect it and make it safe and help manage those risks myself. I'd want to see the rounds being weighed. I'd want multiple eyes on clearing the guns, preparing them and even witnessing loading them with live blanks.
These accidents are not accidents, they are deadly mistakes that should never have had the remote possibility that they would ever happen.
posted by loquacious at 6:31 PM on October 27, 2021 [11 favorites]
the Twitter thread by a film armourer linked way up above said that "prop gun" means a fake gun
I know some IATSE people. They're very insistent on terminology, but when questioned will always admit that different people (departments, locals, etc.) have different definitions. So I'm not surprised to see one person insist a "prop gun" is an inactive replica and another insist a real gun used as a prop is a "prop gun."
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:34 PM on October 27, 2021 [1 favorite]
I know some IATSE people. They're very insistent on terminology, but when questioned will always admit that different people (departments, locals, etc.) have different definitions. So I'm not surprised to see one person insist a "prop gun" is an inactive replica and another insist a real gun used as a prop is a "prop gun."
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:34 PM on October 27, 2021 [1 favorite]
So this Variety article is very illuminating.
- The armorer was on set, outside with the cart (due to the COVID limits), and in fact they did do a handoff, but "he [the AD] could only remember seeing three rounds,” ... “He advised he should have checked all of them, but didn’t, and couldn’t recall if she spun the drum.” Given his attested indifference and impatience with gun safety, it's easy to picture him going "fine, fine, give it to me" half way through the check.
- there were three guns on the cart: the fireable gun, one that was apparently modified to not be fired, and a plastic one. I would bet that any good armorer would have insisted that any rehearsal and checking of camera views be done with one of the non-fireable guns and the one with the dummies only brought out once everyone was away from the camera, but the armorer couldn't see what was going on. Again, you have to wonder if the AD couldn't be bothered with running back and forth to get different guns and just went right to the final one.
I also realized that I had been thinking of a swing-out type revolver, but early Colts had a fixed barrel with a loading port. I had been unable to imagine anyone not noticing a bullet left in a revolver -- you swing the barrel out you hit the rod everything comes out, if something gets stuck it's big brass disks that are impossible to not see. But instead this gun probably had have bullets removed and loaded one at a time, and it's possible to imagine a sloppy or distracted armor losing track or rotating too far. Still wildly unprofessional, but at least I can picture the mechanics of it.
posted by tavella at 10:31 PM on October 27, 2021 [6 favorites]
- The armorer was on set, outside with the cart (due to the COVID limits), and in fact they did do a handoff, but "he [the AD] could only remember seeing three rounds,” ... “He advised he should have checked all of them, but didn’t, and couldn’t recall if she spun the drum.” Given his attested indifference and impatience with gun safety, it's easy to picture him going "fine, fine, give it to me" half way through the check.
- there were three guns on the cart: the fireable gun, one that was apparently modified to not be fired, and a plastic one. I would bet that any good armorer would have insisted that any rehearsal and checking of camera views be done with one of the non-fireable guns and the one with the dummies only brought out once everyone was away from the camera, but the armorer couldn't see what was going on. Again, you have to wonder if the AD couldn't be bothered with running back and forth to get different guns and just went right to the final one.
I also realized that I had been thinking of a swing-out type revolver, but early Colts had a fixed barrel with a loading port. I had been unable to imagine anyone not noticing a bullet left in a revolver -- you swing the barrel out you hit the rod everything comes out, if something gets stuck it's big brass disks that are impossible to not see. But instead this gun probably had have bullets removed and loaded one at a time, and it's possible to imagine a sloppy or distracted armor losing track or rotating too far. Still wildly unprofessional, but at least I can picture the mechanics of it.
posted by tavella at 10:31 PM on October 27, 2021 [6 favorites]
There's something else that has been bothering the fuck out of me. Loquacious, in all the lazy, inattentive, sloppy gun handling you've seen, how often have you seen a negligent discharge? (ND = a gun firing without the shooter intending it to fire)
I have never had a negligent discharge. But I have already had that conversation in my brain, about what I would do if I had a negligent discharge. I imagine a lot of gun shooters have thought about this too, and have their own little scripts about how to react.
My personal plan for a negligent discharge is to pack up everything and go home / go back to camp. No more shooting that day. Take the rest of the day off, think about what happened, come back tomorrow rested. Doesn't matter if I'm at the shooting range, or alone in the wilderness on a week-long hunting trip. It doesn't matter if no one else is around to be endangered, or to see my fuckup. I'm still gonna take the rest of the day off so my mistakes don't snowball. I feel like this is a reasonable and responsible response to an ND. It is definitely not an overreaction.
I think a lot of non-gun-shooters might not realize how TOTALLY FUCKING WILD AND NOT OK it is to have a negligent discharge. Many non-professional, recreational shooters will nope out immediately after the first ND. It's pretty crazy the armorer wasn't fired after the first ND. Rust had at least 3 NDs before the 4th one killed the DoP.
To me, it is insane anyone stuck around on set after the first 1 or 2 NDs. I can see not fleeing at the first ND, especially if you weren't the one handling the gun, and with professionals around to asses safety and correct mistakes. But 2 NDs? And nobody is being fired, things aren't shut down for a couple days to determine WTF? Run for the fucking hills. Really, get out of there.
posted by ryanrs at 10:29 AM on October 28, 2021 [11 favorites]
I have never had a negligent discharge. But I have already had that conversation in my brain, about what I would do if I had a negligent discharge. I imagine a lot of gun shooters have thought about this too, and have their own little scripts about how to react.
My personal plan for a negligent discharge is to pack up everything and go home / go back to camp. No more shooting that day. Take the rest of the day off, think about what happened, come back tomorrow rested. Doesn't matter if I'm at the shooting range, or alone in the wilderness on a week-long hunting trip. It doesn't matter if no one else is around to be endangered, or to see my fuckup. I'm still gonna take the rest of the day off so my mistakes don't snowball. I feel like this is a reasonable and responsible response to an ND. It is definitely not an overreaction.
I think a lot of non-gun-shooters might not realize how TOTALLY FUCKING WILD AND NOT OK it is to have a negligent discharge. Many non-professional, recreational shooters will nope out immediately after the first ND. It's pretty crazy the armorer wasn't fired after the first ND. Rust had at least 3 NDs before the 4th one killed the DoP.
To me, it is insane anyone stuck around on set after the first 1 or 2 NDs. I can see not fleeing at the first ND, especially if you weren't the one handling the gun, and with professionals around to asses safety and correct mistakes. But 2 NDs? And nobody is being fired, things aren't shut down for a couple days to determine WTF? Run for the fucking hills. Really, get out of there.
posted by ryanrs at 10:29 AM on October 28, 2021 [11 favorites]
I just saw a tweet that said this armorer went on a podcast & told everyone that she had never even been trained, she just sort of picked it up from her dad! This would be like me showing up at dialysis unit and just stabbing people with needles left & right.
I feel like as a big name actor no matter what his producer status was, Baldwin & all the senior dept leaders each had the individual responsibility to stop production when the walk off occurred and make things right. That's just common sense & basic treating everyone you meet as an equal human being. When you fail to do this you will fuck yourself ever time.
One of the very real problems with sport and target shooting is that shooting guns even for practice can release a lot mood altering endorphins and adrenaline. It's one of the reasons why sport shooting is so popular.
Wow. I never knew this before and suddenly I understand why guns have more rights than people.
posted by bleep at 10:41 AM on October 28, 2021 [6 favorites]
I feel like as a big name actor no matter what his producer status was, Baldwin & all the senior dept leaders each had the individual responsibility to stop production when the walk off occurred and make things right. That's just common sense & basic treating everyone you meet as an equal human being. When you fail to do this you will fuck yourself ever time.
One of the very real problems with sport and target shooting is that shooting guns even for practice can release a lot mood altering endorphins and adrenaline. It's one of the reasons why sport shooting is so popular.
Wow. I never knew this before and suddenly I understand why guns have more rights than people.
posted by bleep at 10:41 AM on October 28, 2021 [6 favorites]
I just saw a tweet that said this armorer went on a podcast & told everyone that she had never even been trained, she just sort of picked it up from her dad!
*EC's eye twitches a few seconds before she suddenly erupts*
flames
flames on the side of my face
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:49 AM on October 28, 2021 [3 favorites]
*EC's eye twitches a few seconds before she suddenly erupts*
flames
flames on the side of my face
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:49 AM on October 28, 2021 [3 favorites]
A shooting death on ‘Rust’ set has put movie armorers in the spotlight
posted by ryanrs at 11:09 AM on October 28, 2021
posted by ryanrs at 11:09 AM on October 28, 2021
Loquacious, in all the lazy, inattentive, sloppy gun handling you've seen, how often have you seen a negligent discharge? (ND = a gun firing without the shooter intending it to fire)
I'm not Loquacious, but I'd bet I've been around about as much sloppy gun handling. I've seen only one negligent discharge, and it was pretty mild (someone didn't realize how light a trigger was, started pressing on the trigger before fully aiming, and had a negligent discharge that surprised them but was pointed in a safe direction).
Back when police departments were switching from the old double-action revolvers to Glocks and other modern guns, there were a lot of stories of police officers shooting themselves in the leg because they were used to drawing their revolvers with their fingers on the (heavy) triggers. (Glock, in fact, sells a "New York trigger spring": "It facilitates officers changing from revolvers to pistols. This part increases trigger pull weight from factory standard 5.5 lb. to 8 lb..") I've wondered if this is what happened here -- someone used to drawing a revolver with pressure on the trigger, and/or trying to do some kind of fancy cocking-while-drawing maneuver with an antique single-action revolver.
(Regardless, there should be so many redundant safety processes that it shouldn't matter if the actor flubs their gun handling, and movies need to be able to safely show things that aren't good ideas in real life, like car chases or fancy gun fights.)
posted by Dip Flash at 11:25 AM on October 28, 2021
I'm not Loquacious, but I'd bet I've been around about as much sloppy gun handling. I've seen only one negligent discharge, and it was pretty mild (someone didn't realize how light a trigger was, started pressing on the trigger before fully aiming, and had a negligent discharge that surprised them but was pointed in a safe direction).
Back when police departments were switching from the old double-action revolvers to Glocks and other modern guns, there were a lot of stories of police officers shooting themselves in the leg because they were used to drawing their revolvers with their fingers on the (heavy) triggers. (Glock, in fact, sells a "New York trigger spring": "It facilitates officers changing from revolvers to pistols. This part increases trigger pull weight from factory standard 5.5 lb. to 8 lb..") I've wondered if this is what happened here -- someone used to drawing a revolver with pressure on the trigger, and/or trying to do some kind of fancy cocking-while-drawing maneuver with an antique single-action revolver.
(Regardless, there should be so many redundant safety processes that it shouldn't matter if the actor flubs their gun handling, and movies need to be able to safely show things that aren't good ideas in real life, like car chases or fancy gun fights.)
posted by Dip Flash at 11:25 AM on October 28, 2021
Rust had at least 3 NDs before the 4th one killed the DoP.
Practice makes perfect.
posted by flabdablet at 2:16 PM on October 28, 2021 [2 favorites]
Practice makes perfect.
posted by flabdablet at 2:16 PM on October 28, 2021 [2 favorites]
Regarding the armorer, the quote which made me hesitate was something I saw a few days ago:
I was also wondering about the description of how she inspected the guns, from Hollywood Reporter:
Regarding prop storage, Variety reports the armorer telling investigators:
posted by cheshyre at 2:29 PM on October 28, 2021 [1 favorite]
"I think the best part about my job is just showing people who are normally kind of freaked out by guns how safe they can be and how they're not really problematic unless put in the wrong hands," Reed said in a podcast interview in September.This seems like a rather blase' attitude for someone who's supposed to enforce rigorous safety protocols. Then again, I suppose one doesn't become an armorer unless they like handling guns, so I could be misreading this.
I was also wondering about the description of how she inspected the guns, from Hollywood Reporter:
AD Halls said that normally when handling guns on set, "I check the barrel for obstructions, most of the time there's no live fire, she [Hannah] opens the hatch and spins the drum, and I say cold gun on set."Is that really all there is to it? I assumed the process would be more complicated.
Regarding prop storage, Variety reports the armorer telling investigators:
the guns were kept secure in a safe in the prop truck during lunch, and that only a few people had access to the safe. She said that after lunch, Sarah Zachry, the film’s property master, got the firearms out of the truck and gave them to her. ... She told deputies that the ammunition was kept on a cart during lunch, where it was not secured.Finally, officials say they're still trying to confirm rumors that the prop guns were being used for target practice.
posted by cheshyre at 2:29 PM on October 28, 2021 [1 favorite]
Wow. I never knew this before and suddenly I understand why guns have more rights than people.
I feel like America's worship of guns as if they are our gods has become a lot clearer to me since this whole thing happened.
posted by wondermouse at 2:30 PM on October 28, 2021 [3 favorites]
I feel like America's worship of guns as if they are our gods has become a lot clearer to me since this whole thing happened.
posted by wondermouse at 2:30 PM on October 28, 2021 [3 favorites]
The only time I've been around an accidental discharge was when a friend of mine bought a new to him antique coach gun. Unknown to both of us - the previous owner had been lubing the works with a 3 in 1 type oil and had fouled up the hammer mechanisms.
He loaded the gun, stepped up to the range bench and snapped it shut right next to me only for it to go *boom*, discharged both barrels and sent the gun out of his hands and behind us. I jumped up on the bench and then away from the muzzle as fast as possible.
I walked away while he inspected the firearm and loaded it again - no discharge. loaded again and discharge (he was an engineer trying to problem solve - a forceful closing of the breech would trigger the shell - I wanted nothing more to do with that thing since it was pointing at my ankles afterwards)
guns require a ton of respect and a little bit of luck.
posted by drewbage1847 at 2:52 PM on October 28, 2021 [1 favorite]
He loaded the gun, stepped up to the range bench and snapped it shut right next to me only for it to go *boom*, discharged both barrels and sent the gun out of his hands and behind us. I jumped up on the bench and then away from the muzzle as fast as possible.
I walked away while he inspected the firearm and loaded it again - no discharge. loaded again and discharge (he was an engineer trying to problem solve - a forceful closing of the breech would trigger the shell - I wanted nothing more to do with that thing since it was pointing at my ankles afterwards)
guns require a ton of respect and a little bit of luck.
posted by drewbage1847 at 2:52 PM on October 28, 2021 [1 favorite]
I've never had or been personally around an ND in decades of handling and shooting firearms. Even among all my friends and colleagues, I can only think of one ND that wasn't caused by gross negligence.
That one was caused—somewhat ironically—by a badly-designed trigger lock. The gun (a Gen1 Glock) was open and empty, the trigger lock was put on, and then the operator inserted a loaded magazine and released the slide. Boom. Scared the living shit out of everyone around. It turns out that some early Glock handguns had an "feature" where if the trigger was held back and the slide was released, the gun would fire as soon as the slide went into battery. This is not, as far as I can tell, supposed to happen, but isn't clearly a defect either. (And other models of firearm do the same thing; Ithaca shotguns are well-known for firing if you cycle the pump action while holding the trigger, by design.) Anyway, aside from a bit of tinnitus and possibly a need for fresh underwear, nobody was hurt, because the operator had it pointed in a safe direction. And it turns out that frangible ammunition really won't go through more than about one layer of drywall before exhausting itself.
I think most gun enthusiasts have at least one or two stories about packing up and leaving a range due to unsafe gun handling by other people, though. I know I do: I was shooting at an unattended public range in WV when a bunch of people showed up and just blithely walked downrange to set up targets while the rest of us were still shooting. After a whole bunch of yelling, during which they acted like the aggrieved party and we were the Stasi, the rest of us decided maybe we'd had our fun for the day and decamped to the local bar. Totally bizarre. I think, in retrospect, that was the moment when I decided that perhaps there are people just too stupid to have firearms.
posted by Kadin2048 at 12:04 PM on October 29, 2021 [4 favorites]
That one was caused—somewhat ironically—by a badly-designed trigger lock. The gun (a Gen1 Glock) was open and empty, the trigger lock was put on, and then the operator inserted a loaded magazine and released the slide. Boom. Scared the living shit out of everyone around. It turns out that some early Glock handguns had an "feature" where if the trigger was held back and the slide was released, the gun would fire as soon as the slide went into battery. This is not, as far as I can tell, supposed to happen, but isn't clearly a defect either. (And other models of firearm do the same thing; Ithaca shotguns are well-known for firing if you cycle the pump action while holding the trigger, by design.) Anyway, aside from a bit of tinnitus and possibly a need for fresh underwear, nobody was hurt, because the operator had it pointed in a safe direction. And it turns out that frangible ammunition really won't go through more than about one layer of drywall before exhausting itself.
I think most gun enthusiasts have at least one or two stories about packing up and leaving a range due to unsafe gun handling by other people, though. I know I do: I was shooting at an unattended public range in WV when a bunch of people showed up and just blithely walked downrange to set up targets while the rest of us were still shooting. After a whole bunch of yelling, during which they acted like the aggrieved party and we were the Stasi, the rest of us decided maybe we'd had our fun for the day and decamped to the local bar. Totally bizarre. I think, in retrospect, that was the moment when I decided that perhaps there are people just too stupid to have firearms.
posted by Kadin2048 at 12:04 PM on October 29, 2021 [4 favorites]
There's something else that has been bothering the fuck out of me. Loquacious, in all the lazy, inattentive, sloppy gun handling you've seen, how often have you seen a negligent discharge? (ND = a gun firing without the shooter intending it to fire)
I can't recall a single ND in my relatively limited experience. I think my response would be to de-ass the area quickly and call it done and over, too.
I've definitely been around some close calls with jammed/stovepiped rounds and people mishandling the weapon trying to clear it. But most of my experience with shooting has been on private land, unincorporated land or otherwise not at an official range where there's been a limited number of people, one person firing at a time, etc.
This is tangential but the last time I was shooting I had to stop the guy who brought the guns over to use our residential rural land for shooting from taking random potshots at some of our trees and stumps without having a clear line of fire, controlled firing line or backstop. Like people were milling all around and ear/eye protection wasn't sorted out yet and it was haphazard and hazardous.
And this was a small-ish thing but he wanted to send some rounds from a standing position right in our driveway at an old nurse log and stump that I liked because it had all kinds of burrows and nests dug into it and for a moment things almost got heated because I was saying something like "Yeah, no, don't do that. For one, there's animals and birds that live in there. And for two you don't have a backstop. For three, after you shoot it up we're going to have to look at those bullet holes basically forever long after you're gone."
So as far as my memory goes that's about the closest I've been to an intentional negligent discharge, which isn't really the same thing but close enough for me.
posted by loquacious at 10:25 AM on October 30, 2021 [4 favorites]
I can't recall a single ND in my relatively limited experience. I think my response would be to de-ass the area quickly and call it done and over, too.
I've definitely been around some close calls with jammed/stovepiped rounds and people mishandling the weapon trying to clear it. But most of my experience with shooting has been on private land, unincorporated land or otherwise not at an official range where there's been a limited number of people, one person firing at a time, etc.
This is tangential but the last time I was shooting I had to stop the guy who brought the guns over to use our residential rural land for shooting from taking random potshots at some of our trees and stumps without having a clear line of fire, controlled firing line or backstop. Like people were milling all around and ear/eye protection wasn't sorted out yet and it was haphazard and hazardous.
And this was a small-ish thing but he wanted to send some rounds from a standing position right in our driveway at an old nurse log and stump that I liked because it had all kinds of burrows and nests dug into it and for a moment things almost got heated because I was saying something like "Yeah, no, don't do that. For one, there's animals and birds that live in there. And for two you don't have a backstop. For three, after you shoot it up we're going to have to look at those bullet holes basically forever long after you're gone."
So as far as my memory goes that's about the closest I've been to an intentional negligent discharge, which isn't really the same thing but close enough for me.
posted by loquacious at 10:25 AM on October 30, 2021 [4 favorites]
“I can confirm that Dave Halls was fired from the set of Freedom’s Path in 2019 after a crew member incurred a minor and temporary injury when a gun was unexpectedly discharged,” he added. “Halls was removed from set immediately after the prop gun discharged. Production did not resume filming until Dave was off-site. An incident report was taken and filed at that time.”
posted by oneirodynia at 5:44 PM on October 30, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by oneirodynia at 5:44 PM on October 30, 2021 [3 favorites]
Baldwin Breaks Silence on Deadly "Rust" Movie Shooting
He can't discuss the case but he does take some time to answer reporter questions. It's a bit tense, with his wife recording the interview while reporters ask him questions. They just wanted the reporters to stop following them, so they stopped to give them a few minutes. After the interview there is a general update by CNN.
posted by Glinn at 7:50 AM on October 31, 2021
He can't discuss the case but he does take some time to answer reporter questions. It's a bit tense, with his wife recording the interview while reporters ask him questions. They just wanted the reporters to stop following them, so they stopped to give them a few minutes. After the interview there is a general update by CNN.
posted by Glinn at 7:50 AM on October 31, 2021
'Rust' production staff ordered custom T-shirts mocking camera-crew requests for accommodation
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:59 AM on November 1, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:59 AM on November 1, 2021 [2 favorites]
A handful of my theater/entertainment peeps are all at the point of "GATHER THE PITCHFORKS" at that news about the t-shirts.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:00 PM on November 1, 2021 [7 favorites]
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:00 PM on November 1, 2021 [7 favorites]
The day Alec Baldwin shot Halyna Hutchins and Joes Souza (LA Times, archive.is link)
‘Rust’ Camera Assistant on Safety Issues, Pay Irregularities and Producer Behavior on “Brutal” Set (Hollywood Reporter)
There are a lot of producers listed on the film. Who was actually the producer on the ground that was running things?
Ryan Winterstern and Nathan Klingher. They were micromanaging the heck out of the show. Ryan, very particularly, he would have these very energetic conversations, loud conversations, with the first AD.
Baldwin was also a producer on the film, in addition to being the star. Did he do many things as a producer? Was he mostly focused on acting when he was there?
Baldwin wasn’t even there the first week of the show. And when he was there, he was only there for four to five hours a day, doing his role as an actor. I never saw Baldwin in any kind of producer role.
posted by mogget at 6:03 PM on November 5, 2021 [3 favorites]
‘Rust’ Camera Assistant on Safety Issues, Pay Irregularities and Producer Behavior on “Brutal” Set (Hollywood Reporter)
There are a lot of producers listed on the film. Who was actually the producer on the ground that was running things?
Ryan Winterstern and Nathan Klingher. They were micromanaging the heck out of the show. Ryan, very particularly, he would have these very energetic conversations, loud conversations, with the first AD.
Baldwin was also a producer on the film, in addition to being the star. Did he do many things as a producer? Was he mostly focused on acting when he was there?
Baldwin wasn’t even there the first week of the show. And when he was there, he was only there for four to five hours a day, doing his role as an actor. I never saw Baldwin in any kind of producer role.
posted by mogget at 6:03 PM on November 5, 2021 [3 favorites]
Don't know if anyone's still reading this thread, but apparently the armorer's lawyers are throwing around the word sabotage. They're suggesting someone (maybe those disgruntled crew who walked off the set) put live ammo in the box of blanks.
But don't blanks look different?
If she couldn't tell what kind of bullets she was loading in the gun, doesn't that make it pretty clear she was too inexperienced to be armorer.
posted by cheshyre at 7:46 PM on November 5, 2021
But don't blanks look different?
If she couldn't tell what kind of bullets she was loading in the gun, doesn't that make it pretty clear she was too inexperienced to be armorer.
posted by cheshyre at 7:46 PM on November 5, 2021
It's still not clear ,but the scene may have called for dummy cartridges rather than blanks.
Apparently the scene called for Baldwin to point a revolver at the camera.
The bullets would be visible in the cylinder. Their absence would be noted ,.
So a dummy is used.
The Bullet or projectile is real, but the cartridge does not contain any powder, nor does it have a primer. The whole thing is a dummy.
No primer, no powder , no bang.
A blank has no bullet but does have primer and some powder to go bang.
Now they can can be marked as dummies with some paint.
Some have a hole drilled in the side.
Some use a small BB in place of the powder. The rattle confirms it is a dummy
But the point of a dummy bullet is to look like a real one. At least from some angle or distance.
posted by yyz at 6:39 AM on November 6, 2021
Apparently the scene called for Baldwin to point a revolver at the camera.
The bullets would be visible in the cylinder. Their absence would be noted ,.
So a dummy is used.
The Bullet or projectile is real, but the cartridge does not contain any powder, nor does it have a primer. The whole thing is a dummy.
No primer, no powder , no bang.
A blank has no bullet but does have primer and some powder to go bang.
Now they can can be marked as dummies with some paint.
Some have a hole drilled in the side.
Some use a small BB in place of the powder. The rattle confirms it is a dummy
But the point of a dummy bullet is to look like a real one. At least from some angle or distance.
posted by yyz at 6:39 AM on November 6, 2021
apparently the armorer's lawyers are throwing around the word sabotage
Today.com: Exclusive: Fatal bullet fired on ‘Rust’ set may have been ‘sabotage,’ armorer’s lawyers say
Today.com: Exclusive: Fatal bullet fired on ‘Rust’ set may have been ‘sabotage,’ armorer’s lawyers say
“We know there was a live round in a box of dummy rounds that shouldn’t have been there,” Bowles said. “We have people who had left the set, who had walked out because they were disgruntled. We have a time frame between 11 (a.m.) and 1 (p.m.), approximately, that day, in which the firearms at times were unattended, so there was opportunity to tamper with this scene.”posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 9:24 AM on November 6, 2021
Gorence added that the film set's prop ammunition was in a truck "that was completely unattended at all times, giving someone access and opportunity."
NBC News has not verified Bowles' allegation that firearms were left unattended on set during that time period or Gorence's allegation that the ammunition was left unsupervised in a prop truck.
In a New York Times interview following their Wednesday appearance on TODAY, Gorence and Bowles walked back their allegation that weapons were left unattended on set for two hours.
In fact, they were only left unattended for five to 10 minutes, the lawyers told the Times. Bowles said they had been "mistaken" about the two-hour window, and they corrected themselves after speaking with Gutierrez-Reed, the newspaper reported.
Isn't the armorer's job to prevent accidents or shenanigans, intentional or not? Keeping arms stored when not actively filming and in sight when filming would prevent such 'sabotage'.
posted by mazola at 9:33 AM on November 6, 2021 [6 favorites]
posted by mazola at 9:33 AM on November 6, 2021 [6 favorites]
Sorry, are they suggesting that the union workers who walked out intentionally put live bullets in the prop mix? I'm incredulous.
posted by prefpara at 10:48 AM on November 6, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by prefpara at 10:48 AM on November 6, 2021 [5 favorites]
Is Alec Baldwin Going to Jail for the Death of Halyna Hutchins?
Click-baity title, but LegalEagle is a lawyer (previously) and he covers both the background and the legal situation for all involved pretty thoroughly. (Although it was filmed before the 'sabotage' claim.)
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 10:51 AM on November 6, 2021
Click-baity title, but LegalEagle is a lawyer (previously) and he covers both the background and the legal situation for all involved pretty thoroughly. (Although it was filmed before the 'sabotage' claim.)
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 10:51 AM on November 6, 2021
DARVO will never quite be respectable but since 2016 it's no longer beyond the pale as a PR tactic.
posted by flabdablet at 10:52 AM on November 6, 2021
posted by flabdablet at 10:52 AM on November 6, 2021
But don't blanks look different?
From the AD's interview in the warrant info, after the gun fired, he went outside and unloaded it together with the armorer , and there were 4 cartridges with a hole marking them as dummies, and one fired one without a hole. He also said he had only seen three of them when checking with the armorer at the handoff.
So Gutierrez can claim sabotage -- but it wouldn't have mattered if she had done her job properly.
posted by tavella at 10:55 AM on November 6, 2021 [1 favorite]
From the AD's interview in the warrant info, after the gun fired, he went outside and unloaded it together with the armorer , and there were 4 cartridges with a hole marking them as dummies, and one fired one without a hole. He also said he had only seen three of them when checking with the armorer at the handoff.
So Gutierrez can claim sabotage -- but it wouldn't have mattered if she had done her job properly.
posted by tavella at 10:55 AM on November 6, 2021 [1 favorite]
So Alec Baldwin apparently has now publicly suggested that going forward, movie sets have police on hand to oversee the use of weapons.
...No, dipshit, what you need is to hire competent firearms safety managers in the first place.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:18 AM on November 9, 2021 [6 favorites]
...No, dipshit, what you need is to hire competent firearms safety managers in the first place.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:18 AM on November 9, 2021 [6 favorites]
...and learn to treat a mass walkoff from unionized staff as the canary in the coal mine that it is, instead of dismissing it as an insult to Moloch.
posted by flabdablet at 8:28 PM on November 9, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by flabdablet at 8:28 PM on November 9, 2021 [4 favorites]
So Alec Baldwin apparently has now publicly suggested that going forward, movie sets have police on hand to oversee the use of weapons.
...No, dipshit, what you need is to hire competent firearms safety managers in the first place.
Kind of telling that those are considered two distinct things.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 8:47 PM on November 9, 2021 [2 favorites]
...No, dipshit, what you need is to hire competent firearms safety managers in the first place.
Kind of telling that those are considered two distinct things.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 8:47 PM on November 9, 2021 [2 favorites]
Kind of mad that some people apparently think of police as beings of godlike universal competence rather than standard-issue human beings with a particular set of skills and training.
I mean yes, ideally it should be possible to presume that somebody for whom the bearing of arms in public is a job requirement should have been trained to a point of competence in doing so safely. But if Baldwin sees even that often-not-evident competence as equivalent to what should be required of a movie set armourer, and also apparently doesn't see his own accidental shooting of somebody else as motivation enough to argue strenuously for a mandatory ban on the presence of lethal weapons on set, he's burnt whatever sympathy I felt for him over this incident.
Zuck's sake. Why would you pay for a cop on set when you could just pay for a prop master and give the armourer the time to do their zucking job?
posted by flabdablet at 9:06 PM on November 9, 2021 [4 favorites]
I mean yes, ideally it should be possible to presume that somebody for whom the bearing of arms in public is a job requirement should have been trained to a point of competence in doing so safely. But if Baldwin sees even that often-not-evident competence as equivalent to what should be required of a movie set armourer, and also apparently doesn't see his own accidental shooting of somebody else as motivation enough to argue strenuously for a mandatory ban on the presence of lethal weapons on set, he's burnt whatever sympathy I felt for him over this incident.
Zuck's sake. Why would you pay for a cop on set when you could just pay for a prop master and give the armourer the time to do their zucking job?
posted by flabdablet at 9:06 PM on November 9, 2021 [4 favorites]
This thing about cops having to be on set is extremely pathetic, short-sighted and dangerous. You already had someone whose job this was. You specifically chose not to give a shit about this person or their job or their training or any of it. Coming out and saying now that that person failed at their job because they didn't have enough authority, authority that you specifically failed to grant them, oh if only they had been a big beefy dude with a badge, well then I would have paid attention to what they had to say of course, how could I ever be at fault for not paying attention when it wasn't a police man??? Get the fuck out of here.
posted by bleep at 10:16 AM on November 11, 2021 [10 favorites]
posted by bleep at 10:16 AM on November 11, 2021 [10 favorites]
I know that at the very beginning of this thread I take a very measured, let's-wait-and-see-the-details tone. So I think it's telling that when I read just now that someone on the crew is suing Alec Baldwin for negligence, that so much has come to light about just how incompetently this was handled, my knee-jerk reaction to the news was "DAMN STRAIGHT."
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:26 AM on November 11, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:26 AM on November 11, 2021 [2 favorites]
Baldwin in his producer capacity, to be clear.
[Gaffer Serge] Svetnoy’s general-negligence complaint, filed Wednesday in Los Angeles Superior Court, names the producers, armorer Hannah Gutierrez Reed, first assistant director Dave Halls, property master Sarah Zachry and weapons provider Seth Kenney as defendantsposted by ChurchHatesTucker at 11:51 AM on November 11, 2021
Oh yeah, cops learn all about period-correct revolvers at the police academy.
posted by ryanrs at 4:28 PM on November 11, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by ryanrs at 4:28 PM on November 11, 2021 [1 favorite]
My thought was "What exactly is a cop on set suppose to do? Run onto the set from outside and shoot the guy holding the gun?"
Also I'd forgotten that I knew cops aren't necessarily competent or informed about things that are out of their everyday wheelhouse or at best job adjacent. When I was getting into rallying in a big way I talked to a dozen cops trying to find out the regulations on auxiliary lighting and none of them knew; not even the ones working traffic. Pre-internet I eventually had to order a dead tree copy of the highway/motor vehicle act to get a straight answer.
It is certainly the case that I wouldn't expect a cop, outside of non-job training, to have any clue how to be an entertainment armourer. In fact I'd expect them to have been trained in such a way as to be dangerous in that capacity because they only deal with live ammunition day to day and on the job they probably only handle a gun(s) that is issued to them and they never hand it off.
posted by Mitheral at 5:07 PM on November 11, 2021
Also I'd forgotten that I knew cops aren't necessarily competent or informed about things that are out of their everyday wheelhouse or at best job adjacent. When I was getting into rallying in a big way I talked to a dozen cops trying to find out the regulations on auxiliary lighting and none of them knew; not even the ones working traffic. Pre-internet I eventually had to order a dead tree copy of the highway/motor vehicle act to get a straight answer.
It is certainly the case that I wouldn't expect a cop, outside of non-job training, to have any clue how to be an entertainment armourer. In fact I'd expect them to have been trained in such a way as to be dangerous in that capacity because they only deal with live ammunition day to day and on the job they probably only handle a gun(s) that is issued to them and they never hand it off.
posted by Mitheral at 5:07 PM on November 11, 2021
I suspect it's less of an actual cop, but more of the idea of the cop — somebody who keeps things safe, enforces the rules, has authority, training, and knows what to do. Which, in this case, is what would be known as the Armorer.
posted by iamkimiam at 8:13 AM on November 12, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by iamkimiam at 8:13 AM on November 12, 2021 [3 favorites]
Perhaps film set armourers need to adopt an intimidating uniform with shiny boots and mirror shades, if that's what it takes to make producers take their work seriously.
posted by flabdablet at 11:09 AM on November 12, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by flabdablet at 11:09 AM on November 12, 2021 [3 favorites]
Or maybe they need to get some flight attendants in there, we're legally required to do what they say right.
Or they could just follow The Rock's lead and just not have real guns at all. He is beefy enough to be respected but is not a white man so it could go either way.
posted by bleep at 12:32 PM on November 12, 2021 [2 favorites]
Or they could just follow The Rock's lead and just not have real guns at all. He is beefy enough to be respected but is not a white man so it could go either way.
posted by bleep at 12:32 PM on November 12, 2021 [2 favorites]
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posted by axiom at 9:59 PM on October 21, 2021 [6 favorites]