Alec Baldwin shooting: what happened on the set of the movie 'Rust'?
Alec Baldwin was drawing a revolver across his body and pointing it at a camera during rehearsal on the set of Rust when the weapon fired and struck the cinematographer in the chest, according to an affidavit released on Sunday.
The affidavit provided additional details about Thursday's accidental shooting in New Mexico that killed Halyna Hutchins, 42, and wounded director Joel Souza. Baldwin had been handed the prop gun and told it was unloaded, authorities in Santa Fe have said in court documents. The camera wasn’t rolling when the gun went off, cameraman Reid Russell told a detective.
"Joel stated that they had Alec sitting in a pew in a church building setting, and he was practising a cross draw. Joel said he was looking over the shoulder of Hutchins, when he heard what sounded like a whip and then loud pop," the affidavit read.
"Joel then vaguely remembers Hutchins complaining about her stomach and grabbing her midsection. Joel also said Hutchins began to stumble backwards and she was assisted to the ground," the affidavit says.
Hutchins said she could not feel her legs, Russell told officials.
Production of Rust – a 19th-century Western in which Baldwin is playing the lead – has been suspended.
The film is about a boy, 13, who is left to fend for himself and his younger brother following the death of their parents in 1880s Kansas, according to IMDb. The teen goes on the run with his long-estranged grandfather, played by Baldwin, after the boy is sentenced to hang for the accidental killing of a local rancher.
As law enforcement investigates the fatal shooting, court records show the probe includes the movie's armorer and assistant director.
Hannah Gutierrez, 24, was working as the armourer, or person in charge of firearms on the set. According to the affidavit, she prepared three prop guns and placed them on a cart outside the building where rehearsals were taking place.
Just a month before Thursday's accident, she had spoken about how she had been worried her inexperience meant she was not up to the job when she began her first movie as head armourer earlier this year – the Western The Old Way starring Nicolas Cage, which is scheduled for release in 2022.
"I was really nervous about it at first, and I almost didn't take the job because I wasn't sure if I was ready, but doing it, it went really smoothly," Gutierrez told the Voices of the West podcast about Western films.
Gutierrez followed in the steps of her father Thell Reed, a well-known Hollywood armourer. According to his biography on film database IMDb.com, Reed began competition shooting as a boy, performed in Wild West shows, and taught gun-handling to actors such as Russell Crowe and Brad Pitt.
Assistant director David Halls, 62, who grabbed one of the prop guns off the cart and took it inside to Baldwin, yelling "cold gun" – which on movie sets means the gun is not loaded – did not know that live rounds were in the prop gun when he handed it to the actor, the affidavit said.
An experienced Hollywood hand with credits on movies including Fargo in 1996, and 2003's The Matrix Reloaded, Halls is also an actor.
On Sunday, NBC News and CNN quoted a Hollywood prop maker, Maggie Goll, as saying she had raised safety concerns about Halls when they worked together on Hulu's Into the Dark television series in 2019.
"He did not maintain a safe working environment," Goll told NBC News. "Sets were almost always allowed to become increasingly claustrophobic, no established fire lanes, exits blocked ... safety meetings were nonexistent."
Goll told the AP that during work on Into the Dark, Halls didn’t hold safety meetings and consistently failed to announce the presence of a firearm on set to the crew, as is protocol. The assistant prop master admonished Halls several times for dismissing the actors before they had returned weapons to the props table, she said.
She became most concerned, however, when the supervising pyrotechnician, who is diabetic, was found unconscious in a chair, she said. Halls wanted to resume filming after the man was removed from the set even though Goll, the remaining pyrotechnician on site, didn’t have the qualifications to supervise the complicated series of pyrotechnic effects that were planned.
“One of the things that stuck out to me most about that day is the fact that he called out on radio over channel one, ‘Hey, Maggie says we can keep going!’ and I basically held the button down so he couldn’t transmit to anyone else on that channel while I yelled out, ‘No, Dave, that’s not what I said. We’re not doing that,’” she recalled in a phone interview.
“This situation is not about Dave Halls. … It’s in no way one person’s fault,” Goll said. “It’s a bigger conversation about safety on set and what we are trying to achieve with that culture.”
Film producer Aaron B Koontz, who worked with Halls on two previous movies but was not involved in the making of Rust, told the Los Angeles Times that Halls was "extremely efficient" and a good manager.
Source: www.thenationalnews.com
