Alec Baldwin briefly showed up on last night’s SNL
The SNL mainstay made the kind of appearance that used to be totally normal but now is anything but
Aux News Alec Baldwin
After hosting the show upwards of a thousand times and doing his arguably passable Donald Trump impression for so long that you would’ve thought the alternate persona might’ve completely infected him like the Venom symbiote, it shouldn’t be a weird shock when Alec Baldwin shows up on Saturday Night Live… and yet he’s been in the news for some stuff since the days when he was constantly visiting 30 Rock. Stuff that you might think would make it a little prickly to have him pop up on a comedy show, if only because everyone who sees him is either going to immediately think of what happened on the set of Rust or they’re going to wonder what he’s been up to and do some Googling.
And yet SNL has been known to run full-steam ahead with questionable ideas (like when the real Trump hosted or when they did that “Hallelujah” song), so maybe it’s actually not a surprise that Baldwin made a somewhat inexplicable appearance last night as the button on an otherwise straightforward sketch starring host Timothée Chalamet as himself. In the sketch, Chalamet is recording a sleep story for the Calm app that becomes increasingly aggressive and non-calming (it’s about someone stepping in dog poop and wanting to attack the dog responsible), with the clever twist of the Calm employees being really hostile and mean to Chalamet for questioning them.
A solid sketch! No complaints! And then Alec Baldwin shows up to record his own sleep story, with the joke apparently being that he’s just really on board for the weird, aggressive vibe of the Calm employees? It’s something anyone could’ve done, but it’s also the kind of thing Baldwin has been regularly up for in the last couple of years on SNL, so the fact that it’s just a very, very minor cameo seems like he’s trying to gently dip his toe back into the public eye (as gross as that metaphor is) after the recent other stories. He was obviously going to do it at some point, and it makes perfect sense that SNL is the place he chose.
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I seem to recall him talking to a gaggle of reporters shortly after the shooting. I remember thinking his lawyer probably would be mad at him. Anyway I don’t think he’s been hiding or anything. If anything I have more sympathy for him after the shooting. What a fucked up thing to have happen. Who would ever have expected the gun to have real ammo in it?
He was one of the producers for that film. The morning of the incident IATSE members walked off set, citing unsafe working conditions, inlcuding unsafe firearm protocols. Rather than shut things down, untrained scab workers were let in and things went very badly. Baldwin had a hand in this tragedy. He managed to evade any responsibility as it was deemed he wasn’t at fault as a perfomer. The producers are responsible. He was a producer. He should have been held accountable and enough people realize this that his situation is now uncomfortable and it should be.
If Alec wants to return to his career (an understandable desire), perhaps he should stick to drama, on film or television.
SNL cameos combine an amusing portrayal of a character with the feel-good wink-wink of, “Hey, that’s _____! It makes me happy to see them on SNL!”
It didn’t make me feel good to see Alec last night; it felt a little gross.
He still has an open case, for crying out loud.
SNL – still trying to be provocative.
“It didn’t make me feel good to see Alec last night; it felt a little gross.”
Well, you had a stupid and unreasonable response, I guess the world must change for you.
“He was one of the producers for that film.”
Stop with your fucking ignorance. Just fucking stop it. You have literally no idea what you’re talking about, so FUCK OFF.
“The producers are responsible. He was a producer. He should have been held accountable and enough people realize this that his situation is now uncomfortable and it should be.”
Keep showing us all how fucking stupid you are.
There are FOURTEEN producers on Rust, you honestly want them all to go to jail because an armorer didn’t do their job? Fuck you, you stupid, ignorant fuck.
You know N-O-T-H-I-N-G about filmmaking, so how about you fuck off and shove your stupid thoughts up your stupid ass?
Eh, I still feel bad for him. Killing someone by accident is the kinda thing that haunts you. He was one of many producers and those can be vanity credits anyway. It seems unlikely it was his call to have live ammunition on set for some reason.Ultimately the blame lies with whoever put real bullets in the gun and told him it was safe.
I don’t know how often Baldwin has handled firearms in his career, but in my very limited experience (on low-budget, non-union productions, if that matters), the person handing me the gun was careful to examine the weapon (and ammo, if any) immediately preceding the take in front of everyone involved in the scene and explain to everyone what they were dealing with and what the required protocol would be. I would be very uncomfortable with anyone handing me a weapon they had not personally examined and telling me to point it at another person.The responsibility falls primarily on the armourer whose only job was to ensure safety, and secondarily on the AD who said it was safe without knowing that it was. But as the person pointing a weapon at another human being and (allegedly) pulling the trigger, Baldwin is at least partially responsible for what happened, morally if not legally. And as the lead actor and possibly the only reason the film got financed, he was in a better position to delay production than a nobody like me would be. (I’m not going to get into his role as a producer, because that is a title that can mean all sorts of things.)
I agree there’s a degree of moral responsibility, hence the guilt I imagine he’s wracked with. I would totally blame myself in his position. That’s why I feel sympathy for him. I do suspect he’s pretty far down the list of people responsible though. The thing I can’t get past is why was there live ammunition on the set at all.
Well, it was nice of them to give him another shot.
(rimshot)
**Ba-dum tish**
You should have given some trigger warnings for that.
I really appreciate puns of this calibre.
Some topics are too fully loaded for a proper pun thread.
Here I am, innocently rifling through the comments, and y’all slayed me.
He was ok, maybe a little Rusty.
Not sure why it would be ‘prickly’, most sane people felt sorry him after what happened. Not on the scale of Hutchins and her family, but still. The litigious persecution, and the prospect that they might try and nail him *again* just made everyone feel more sorry for the guy. He’s proven himself an asshole many times, but SNL never cared about that before. The Rust incident makes him more likeable, not less.
Absolutely nothing about the way he handled the Rust incident made him more likeable.
There but for the grace of God…
Yeah, that comments is wack. Baldwin wasn’t the victim in that situation.
You say that like there can only be one victim.
Except for the fact that it was the set armorer’s job to clear the weapon before giving it to Alec.Yes you’re supposed to clear any weapon handed to you even if you just watched the person who gave it to you do it but that’s literally why they have an armorer – to check weapons before being put in the hands of actors.
Exactly. Baldwin handled the aftermath very poorly. No one is disagreeing there. But, why were they even going after him in the first place? You would trust an expert that was explicitly hired to ensure this didn’t happen did their job.
That absolves Baldwin in his role as actor.As one of the producers on the film….decidedly less so.
This likes with the armorer IMO. Regardless of who the directors were. The armorer had ONE JOB and failed miserably at it.
“Yeah, that comments is wack. Baldwin wasn’t the victim in that situation.’
He absolutely was a victim.
He was reported to be completely distraught after it happened.
I mean, yeah, he killed a person. I’m not saying he enjoyed it.
Seems to me like his distress made him more likeable.
We can always rely on you for the definitive Crusty Old Man Take, Dino. Never change.
Here’s something I think is tangentially relevant: giving a eulogy at Vic Morrow’s funeral, John Landis said: “Tragedy can strike in an instant, but film is immortal. Vic lives forever. Just before the last take, Vic took me aside to thank me for the opportunity to play this role.” It may be a low bar to clear, but as far as I know after Halyna Hutchins died Alec didn’t congratulate himself for hiring her.
Alec Baldwin generates a natural Smarm Field that makes it nearly impossible for him to be likeable regardless of the circumstances.
I think Jack Donaghy could’ve been a lot less likeable with a different actor.
You were totally fine with the most famous person (easiest target) involved being slapped with criminal charges (later dropped because the case against him was pathetically weak) even though it was obvious to everyone that he did nothing wrong?
Prosecutors announced on Oct 17th (as in, less than a month ago) that they’re having a grand jury determine if criminal charges should be re-filed. Does no one remember this being reported on?https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2023-10-17/alec-baldwin-may-be-charged-again-in-rust-shootingThe special prosecutors plan to argue that Baldwin should be indicted on an involuntary manslaughter charge, according to three people close to the case who were not authorized to comment.“After extensive investigation over the past several months, additional facts have come to light that we believe show Mr. Baldwin has criminal culpability” in the case, special prosecutors Kari T. Morrissey and Jason J. Lewis said in a statement. “We believe the appropriate course of action is to permit a panel of New Mexico citizens to determine from here whether Mr. Baldwin should be held over for criminal trial.”
There has never been and will never be a situation in human history where someone fires a gun and kills people and was not to some degree at fault.
In this case, the most famous person involved also happened to be the one who pulled the trigger.
“Most sane people?” Being responsible for someone’s death doesn’t make you likeable.
He wasn’t responsible. Getting unjustly persecuted and vilified for a freak accident that was beyond your control does, in fact, make you more likeable.
He’s not responsible for anyone’s death, asshole.
See this part here? “Most sane people?”You aren’t one of them, you absolute cunt.
Really! When I heard that, after they cleared him, they were going after him AGAIN? I went, “Well, I guess the Republicans in New Mexico weren’t going to let a ‘notorious Libburul’ like Baldwin go without thoroughly smearing him with shit first!”For Gods’ sake, the gun had a hair trigger and he was told it was “cold” (unloaded)! While the family might go after him as a Producer for agreeing to hire somebody who was more experienced posing with guns than, you know, actually handling them on a film set, and who had live ammo around? The Prosecutors taking a second bite of that particular apple smells of partisan politics from a party that worships the man Baldwin used to regularly make fun of….
A solid sketch! No complaints!
Huh? No, that’s a solid premise, which might, in the hands of better writers, actually go somewhere.
But not only does it not have anything resembling an ending, it doesn’t even have anything resembling a middle. Dismukes is solid, as always, but he isn’t given enough material to save the sketch.So Alec Baldwin coming in at the end, well, it serves the purpose of distracting the audience from all that. Clever, just not in the service of a satisfying conclusion.
I feel like a line got skipped but I don’t know if it was an actor error or cue card mishap.* Chalamet twice referred to someone telling him to be louder but I don’t remember anyone saying anything like that. (To be fair, I may have missed a moment as my brain tried to shut itself down to avoid this awful, awful sketch. Dog poop, LOL.)
Overall, *Were they really scrambling to write/revise cue cards during the live broadcast – 24 hours after a full dress rehearsal? The interstitial behind-the-scenes clips make it look they are. If true, no wonder there are gaffes.
(Apparently my brain shut down in mid sentence while remembering that awful, awful sketch.)Overall, I thought this was a weaker-than-average episode and Chalamet was not just unfunny, but actively annoying. I did not think it was possible to be less interested than I was in seeing Wonka, but after that abysmal rendition of “Pure Imagination” (yeah, I know the lyrics were a parody but I think the tune was supposed to be the same), here we are.
I thought it had some weak sketches but Chloe Troast’s orphan song was enough to swing this up into B+ territory. But I would rather have two great sketches and four stinkers than six mediocre snoozes.
Yeah, she did a great job. Chalamet was basically in the traditional Mikey Day role of commenting in how weird the obviously weird parts were in case the audience missed the weirdness. Making him the moon/imaginary friend was a nice touch but performance-wise it could have been anyone.
That’s why Micheals insists hosts read from the cue cards.They change things right up to the last minute.It really takes away from the show sometimes though.
They don’t do dress 24 hours before. They do it 2 hours before.
Oops! The chaos makes a lot more sense then.
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I think they’re trying for that ever elusive ‘absurdist’ humor. They don’t seem to understand how it works so instead we get script salad.
but why
What was the death toll?
Real talk what is the correct amount of time of media-decided penance that a person has to wait through after accidentally killing someone else before they can do their ostensible job again? Is it like in years? Is it a never situation? Like there have to be some manner of statutes of limitations here because I’ve seen this very website do articles about Mark Wahlberg without mentioning his various hate crime style indiscretions. No gotcha shit here on my part, I’m just genuinely curious.
Three years and two months, but it depends on whether there’s a leap year and also the Chinese Zodiac.
I just don’t understand the need people completely separate from the incident have to find Baldwin “Guilty”, like he went out of his way to kill someone.The shambolic gun safety on set is obvious; a professional in responsibility of that firearm was that shit at their job they allowed a fucking actor to unwillingly put a slug through some poor fucker.It’s a horrible, heartbreaking proof of how some cunt not doing their only job right can end in horror.I just don’t know why people seem to want to blame Baldwin. And feel that the dude should never, ever be forgiven for being a tiny piece of a shambolic event obviously caused by a very specific other person.
Hate Crime 5 yrsManslaughter 10 yearsMurder 20 years
Lol that last sentence isn’t fooling anyone; this question is as bad faith as it comes. No question that what Wahlberg did was infinitely more heinous, but it also happened over 30 years ago and has fully gone through the legal process. Baldwin’s incident happened slightly over 2 years ago and the case is very much open and has actively pending legislation. The prosecutors announced they would be asking a grand jury to re-file criminal charges against Baldwin literally less than a month ago. But whatever, it’s just that damn liberal media and their cancel culture, right?
I uhhh… I’m a weed smoking polyamorous bisexual California liberal, my dude. I think you may have perceived that I think I could use Wahlberg as a wedge to get people to shut up about Baldwin, instead of what I actually want, which is constant neverending reminders that Wahlberg did that shit and it’s weird we just pretend he didn’t and he gets to shill Budweiser in Transformers movies or whatever.
“Real talk what is the correct amount of time of media-decided penance that a person has to wait through after accidentally killing someone else before they can do their ostensible job again?”
I dunno. Ask the guy who killed Brandon Lee.
It took Rebecca Gayheart about two years to come back from vehicular manslaughter. Fun fact: one the first roles she filmed afterwards was a run on Dead Like Me.
As long as he didn’t shoot anyone, it’s cool.