Alec Baldwin sues several Rust crew members in effort “to clear his name”
The actor's cross complaint alleges that "More than anyone else on that set, Baldwin has been wrongfully viewed as the perpetrator of this tragedy"
Aux News Alec Baldwin
Alec Baldwin has now gone on the offensive in the legal battle surrounding the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of the Baldwin-produced Western Rust, with Deadline reporting that Baldwin issued a cross complaint tonight accusing four people associated with the filming of the movie with negligence that led to Hutchins’ death.
In his complaint (which you can read here), Baldwin’s lawyers state his desire to “clear his name” in Hutchins’ death, which occurred when a gun the actor and producer was pointing at the cinematographer discharged, with the live round inside also striking director Joel Souza. The suit names Rust armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed (responsible for handling of weapons on the set), first assistant director David Halls (who reportedly declared the gun in question “cold” before giving it to Baldwin), prop master Sarah Zachry (in charge of all props on set, including firearms), and weapons supplier Seth Kenney (as well as his company, PDQ) as defendants, accusing all of them of either negligent behavior, or having knowledge of negligent behavior that they should have brought to the producers’ attention.
Most of these names will be familiar to anyone who’s spent much time reading about the incident, or the spreading legal issues surrounding it—Gutierrez-Reed, especially, has been at the center of questions as to why live rounds were present on the film’s set, and weren’t found and removed. Baldwin’s complaint lays out his narrative of why these four people were responsible for Hutchins’ death pretty succinctly, while also trying to establish that he, personally, had nothing to do with hiring them:
This tragedy happened because live bullets were delivered to the set and loaded into the gun, Gutierrez-Reed failed to check the bullets or the gun carefully, Halls failed to check the gun carefully and yet announced the gun was safe before handing it to Baldwin, and Zachry failed to disclose that Gutierrez-Reed had been acting recklessly off set and was a safety risk to those around her.
As for why he’s lodging his own complaint, Baldwin took a potentially risky step in stating that he’s been, from his point of view, badly hurt by the aftermath of the incident. While acknowledging that, “There can be no doubt that others have suffered from Cross-Defendants’ negligence
far more than Baldwin has”—specifically naming Hutchins and her family—the actor’s lawyers did assert that,
Baldwin must live with the immense grief, and the resulting emotional, physical,
and financial toll, caused by the fact that Cross-Defendants’ negligent conduct, assurances, and
supervision put a loaded weapon in his hand and led him, Hutchins, and everyone else on set to
believe that his directed use of the weapon was safe. More than anyone else on that set, Baldwin
has been wrongfully viewed as the perpetrator of this tragedy…He has suffered physically and emotionally from the grief caused by these events.
Not a day goes by that he doesn’t think about, and suffer from, the events that happened that day. Baldwin has also lost numerous job opportunities and associated income. For
example, he’s been fired from multiple jobs expressly because of the incident on Rust and has been
passed over for other opportunities.
Per Deadline, lawyers for the cross-defendants have not responded to Baldwin’s complaint, which arrived on a federal holiday when the courts were closed. One person who did respond was lawyer Gloria Allred, who’s representing Rust script supervisor Mamie Mitchell, who’s suing Baldwin for negligence herself. Allred pulled no punches, stating that, “Baldwin’s cross complaint is a shameful attempt to shift the blame to others, just as he has done since he fired the fatal shot which killed Ms. Hutchins and injured our client, Mamie Mitchell. He claims that everyone else was negligent and that everyone else is at fault. Mr. Baldwin appears to argue that he is the only one that is truly innocent.”
75 Comments
Never forget: Alec Baldwin is the real victim in a case where a woman died.
Where did he claim to be the “real” victim?
By not owning up to his mistake and just take the hit, instead he blames everyone else for it.He was the one that fired the weapon, he should have checked it before hand.
He didn’t claim to be more of a victim than the woman who died.
He’s an actor who thought he was holding a safe prop. That isn’t his job.
So someone, who’s damn job it is to make sure that gun is NOT loaded, hands you a gun and you ill someone with that gun, you are willing to take the blame solely on you? I call BS. Every sane person would ask for other responsible persons to take that this blame together.
So your way of thinking is that every actor in every film who has ever used a gun is supposed to have had extensive firearms training to the point of being able to identify live rounds in a gun? A situation, which, by the way, should happen precisely never?
That’s absolutely insane.
Should they also be doing the oil changes and brake jobs on every car they drive? Do you expect them to be out there with the carpenters constructing the sets or setting up the stunt pads themselves?
Actors do not, and should not, have any responsibility for making sure the props they’re handed are what they are supposed to be- that’s the job of the prop department.
The shade of gray in this situation is that Baldwin has a producer credit, and in that capacity does share some blame for allowing incredibly unqualified people to be on set handling the prop weapons. That culpability will hinge largely on how ceremonial his producer credit was.
I guess this is from all your experience being on set when firearms are being used in scenes? You don’t know what you are talking about so get off your high horse.
So if you accidentally killed someone and were vilified you would embrace that?I call malarkey.
Baldwin is an unlikable blowhard but is it actually hard for you to see that he is one of the victims in this tragedy? Your use of the phrase “real victim” is disingenuous and I think you know it.
He’s suing people less wealthy or powerful than him in an effort to improve his situation in the lawsuits against him.
He is ultimately responsible for all of these people being on set. The buck stops with him.
This is a legal maneuver against people who are also suffering in all the ways his lawyer says he is.
They’re all victims, yes, but he’s the one using his wealth to further victimize the others for his own benefit.
Unless he financed the movie himself or was the sole producer, then the buck probably stops with other people too.
He’s suing the people responsible for weapons safety on set, the people who clearly didn’t do their jobs that day. And there were other producers overseeing various aspects of the movie. His role was more creative. Like, oh, Ryan Reynolds on a Deadpool movie. He’s concerned with the script of the film, the look of the film but the gunfights, he ain’t even in the suit.
It is hard to know what is true. But the claim was that he was one of the producers, and he was part of the decision to try to locate the shooting location to avoid a lot of union interference and save costs. Part of that for example was hiring a less expensive and experienced weapons handler. So while he may not have personally hired the handler, this person was able to be chosen because of decisions he deliberately made (and for which some on set had raised complaints). The gun was not one that would normally be sourced (more expensively) through normal Hollywood suppliers, but was instead leant by a local collector. Things were not being properly controlled and someone (or someones) were taking the gun during non shooting hours and recreationally shooting with live ammo. The whole thing was slapdash and that was intentional to save costs and he was part of that. I certainly don’t think he had a clue that the gun was loaded, but the environment was not safe.
Baldwin is one of the people responsible for weapons safety on set. Actors are actually people too and every person who handles a gun should check to make sure it is not loaded (this is in Baldwin’s union contract; George Clooney says he always does this), NEVER point the gun at anyone, and most importantly do not pull the trigger. Baldwin cut corners as a producer and then he rushed through rehearsal without following the most basic gun safety rules and as a result he killed Ms. Hutchins.
He didn’t do his job correctly either.
My band used to headline local concerts. We did not put the shows together, but were contracted to perform, that is all. Since we were the “star”, by your logic we would be responsible if a light fell on a stagehand’s head?
No, he is filing a cross complaint against people already suing him. Ehat would you like him to do, shrug his shoulders and take it?
The people he’s suing are mainly the ones whose job it was to ensure that the guns he and other actors were handed weren’t loaded with live ammunition. Given that they failed at that job, resulting in someone losing their life, it’d be weird if he didn’t sue them.
I do not see that he is a victim. Suffering the entirely predictable consequences of your own negligence does not make you a victim. Baldwin is like a drunk driver who is not even an alcoholic, just greedy and selfish. His personality appears to be a lot like Trump’s perhaps that’s why so many found his imitations of Chetolini so amusing? For me it was a bit too on the nose.
Exactly this. Baldwin’s taken his avoidance of responsibility to unpalatable extremes, but it’s very easy to volunteer someone else to “take the hit.”
As I have said since this happened, moron republicans are using this tragedy as a way of getting back at Baldwin for mocking the orange buffoon. Only a mental defect would believe that Baldwin is responsible for her death. Which is why so many republicans now believe it.
You’re not even stating whether you think Baldwin is guilty or not your just saying his name next to “case where a woman died”. This is so flimsy.
I really do feel bad for Baldwin, as I can’t imagine accidentally killing someone in a stunt I was assured was safe and not going to kill someone. That’s horrific to have to live with. This is definitely the wrong way to go about handling it, though.
Since this is a cross complaint I think the people named are also suing him at the same time so I’m not sure what else he can do if he thinks they’re purposefully tarnishing his name to shift blame from themselves.I have no idea about the legalities of the situation but I think it’s more than that the people he’s suing said something bad about him, he saw it, said “Fuck those guys” and called his lawyer.
So what’s the right way?
In all fairness there is no “right” way to process trauma, but there are certainly some wrong ones.
He was a producer. He could have stopped production until a proper union crew was hired
Legal handling and emotional/moral handling are not the same thing, and are frequently incompatible with each other. On a legal front, the guy’s in the middle of a lawsuit, and cross-suits, finger-pointing, and asserting victimhood are solid and probably necessary tactical moves in that context. In the context of being a well-known human being whose career revolves (to a large extent) on being liked and admired…it’s a tough look. It’s one of the big reasons why lawyers usually advise people not to talk about their legal cases publicly. If Baldwin wasn’t constantly opening his mouth, and/or let his lawyer do the talking for him from the beginning, we’d chalk this up to lawyers being lawyers, and he wouldn’t look so much like a shitheel.
“In his ongoing effort to not let the public forget about what was already an obscure movie, that no knows the plot to or who starring in it other Alec Baldwin, Baldwin filed suite….”
Toot suite!
We hearing about this on The Diane Rehm Show?
Werfwess
Making a film is often a risky endeavor. I remember working on this one Michel Gondry film where I accidentally took all the paper towel rolls he had put aside for set design and shredded them into nesting material.
He is 100% correct in his reasoning for the suit. Not sure if its a good idea to file a suit over this, mostly because shitty blogs are going to make it out as an even worse thing. Regardless, he had nothing to do with her death. It was the 4 people named in the suit, and specifically the armorer who are responsible.
Republicans hate baldwin for mocking trump so they decided to use this as a way to get back at him.
He had something to do with it – the question is what part is his. They relocated the production away from Hollywood so normal union rules would not apply, particularly with regards to handling weapons and the production company, of which he is part owner, chose the armorer without a thorough check – at best a newbie with little background. How that fits in with the four people in this action and the other producers and financial backers and their responsibility for several of the wrong people being involved with the project will eventually be worked through the courts. Contrast with a hypothetical – instead of a gun he’s got a button to push that sets off an explosive, but the explosives expert used 10X the expected amount and a piece of shrapnel kills a person on the set. It’s almost impossible that Baldwin would have access to personal expertise about explosives to tell if there was too much. In this case, for me at least, is the question – is having a live round in a revolver something that would be knowable by Baldwin before he pulled the trigger? I think it very much is. Revolvers are easy to inspect and the rounds are easy to inspect and it is trivial to perform a True or False determination if the rounds are live or not and to stop the activities until it is clear what the truth is. It seems remarkably incurious of Baldwin to never ask about the lack of a gun safety briefing, to never ask how to tell the live rounds from the dummy rounds, to not take the gun to the range and aim it at a safe target and pull the trigger 6 times to ensure that only dummy rounds were installed – blanks are visually obvious for having no bullet, so inspection would work for blanks. Adding a chain of telephone-game like handling of a potentially lethal device is simply shit planning. Baldwin owns a piece of that – but so do a lot of people on the set. If I have an objection to Baldwin, it’s that I am tired of productions where a gun is used to solve a problem. I think it’s a sickness in America that guns are so often portrayed as a solution – there are other stories to tell.
You think he is guilty because he should have personally checked the gun himself, and should have known the difference between live and fake rounds. But thats not how Hollywood works. Its not the actors job to do any of that. They are not trained on any of that. They could get in trouble for messing with a prop. Its the armorers job to do that, thats why an armorer is hired so the actors dont have to be gun experts. Your ideas actually go against the rules that are set in place for everyones safety.
If the armorer is union, or a newb has no bearing on this. Non-union doesnt mean bad. And everyone is a newb at some point. As for your last paragraph…its a western set in the 1880s. Not too many westerns without guns. They were a pretty big part of life back then. Hard to argue with having guns in a movie about an accidental shooting (ironic) set in the 1800s.
It would be- and was- absolutely insane to have live rounds anywhere near a set. That failure is the beginning and end of why this happened.
As you say, Baldwin, as producer and part owner of the production company, certainly bears blame for some of that. But as an actor on set, I think you expect too much. It’s certainly not possible- or advisable- for an actor to be walking off with each firearm every time he’s handed it and making sure that it fires blanks. That’s actually exactly the opposite of what should happen: the only person bringing a gun to or from set should be a representative from the props department trained to handle them. No one but the props department or actors should ever be touching them. And firearms should be in one of three places: locked up in prop dept possession, on set under direct supervision of someone in prop dept, or in the hand of an actor after its been checked and verified safe.
As an individual who has worked in New Mexico film on numerous productions, I feel I must say that Alec Baldwin being blamed for this incident occurring is completely gender-based and it’s completely clouding the actual narrative of this accident. All people see in this situation is that the victim was a woman and that Alec Baldwin is a man and is outspoken, so he must be guilty of something. Well, that’s not how things work. The armorer was hired to do a job and she failed at that job. She gave a prop gun loaded with live rounds to an actor for him to use in a scene that he had lines in. His only responsibility at that point during the day is to turn in a performance that is believable, with confidence that the props that he is using look realistic and work realistically. As a producer on the film, it could be said that Baldwin bears some responsibility for who was hired, but Albuquerque is not Los Angeles. Santa Fe is not Hollywood. The armorer got that job because her father had been in that line of employment for decades. Most of the time when you go to work on sets in a place like New Mexico, you will end up knowing everybody there from previous productions. I’m sure that her credentials were vouched for because of who her father was and her place there was not questioned. It should have been. But that still does not make Baldwin at fault for the actual accident that took Hutchins life. Not even if he was holding the gun when it discharged and really it doesn’t matter if he pulled the goddamn trigger. The gun was not supposed to be loaded with live rounds. If the armorer knew what she was doing or cared more about what she was doing then Hutchins would still be alive today and that film would be available for streaming. That’s the problem with nepotism. You don’t earn your spot from hard work. You get your spot because of who your family is. The armorer will more than likely just end up as a bartender somewhere for the rest of her life because she certainly isn’t ever going to work in film again. And her negligence led to a family never getting to see their mother again.
That is quite the pretzel twist. It’s him who is most responsible, okay? It’s him.
I think to go to “gender based” on this is a bit out of line. I’ve never seen anyone out there defending the armorer in any real way (outside of her lawyers, who’re paid to do so). The closest anyone came to that was NM OSHA, because she documented her requests to the department heads on Rust that she needed more time for her armorer duties, particularly training Baldwin for the draw he was practicing when Hutchins died (and the department head’s answer was more or less “you’ve used up all your time with Baldwin, we’ve got some props you need to handle”).As for Baldwin, as the person who had the gun in hand, on a practice run where he wasn’t required to fire it (arguably, not even draw it, according to Hutchins’s family), when the accident happened, it is inevitable that some of the blame falls on him. In a civil lawsuit context, he might have some share of liability if he was negligent in handling the gun (bear with me: you cut the brakes on my car, and I get into an accident that kills someone; if it turns out that I was doing 50 in a school zone when the accident happens, you’re still primarily to blame, but a jury might put some liability on me, because maybe the accident wouldn’t have been so bad if I obeyed posted speed limits). Also, a lot of people around here resent people for being rich and successful (like Baldwin) and so they want him to pay for the accident just because he can. Add to that the fact that he was a producer on the movie, so the mismanagement of the movie (including its lack of gun safety) probably falls on him to some extent. None of that is gender based.
I feel for him, I really do. Imagine having that weight on your shoulders, knowing intellectually it’s not your fault, there’s nothing you can do to change what happened but still replaying that moment in your head again and again.I’m not a lawyer or an investigator so I guess all I can do is wait for all this to play out.
But the thing is, he’s a producer on the movie and they chose to film where they did to save money and get away from those controlling Hollywood unions and their safety regulations. So it is his fault. Not for pulling the trigger but being involved in the choices that led up to it.
Also for pulling the trigger FFS!
Great job missing my point
No, you made it for him. Pulling the trigger is somewhere on the list of bad things Baldwin did. So you’re both correct. I agree his being executive producer is more significant that his pointing the gun at someone and pulling the trigger.
I got your point. My point is he is at fault in at least 2 ways.
If corners hadn’t been cut in production he would’ve pulled the trigger of a prop gun and there would be no issue
Correct, so he failed as a producer and also as a human being. Actors are actually people too and every person who handles a gun should check to make sure it is not loaded (this is in Baldwin’s union contract; George Clooney says he always does this), NEVER point the gun at anyone, and most importantly do not pull the trigger. Baldwin cut corners as a producer and then he rushed through rehearsal without following the most basic gun safety rules and as a result he killed Ms. Hutchins .
Classic gun safety rules can’t really apply to filming stuff because things you are absolutely told not to do in real life, you do all the time in film. I do agree he should have checked the gun for blanks but the actor doing that is the absolute lowest level of safety on a set and massive safety issues had to be ignored many times over before that gun hit Baldwins hand. Like I said, he’s absolutely to blame for this but not for the act. That act was a tragic accident. The incompetence leading up to it is criminal.
As I mentioned to burner, it’s debatable whether most actors could even identify the rounds in question- because that gun most certainly was “loaded”. There is a way to ID blanks vs “real” ammunition, but I’m not a prop guy, and I’m not confident enough in my memory of what it is to even write it down here.
I’m on set around guns firing blanks almost weekly on the show I work on, and the prop department is top notch. They were always good about safety, but since Rust, they’ve taken to bringing the guns around every time they will come out of holsters and showing us that they are empty or plugged— if they’re doing VFX firing.
However, if they are firing blanks, they don’t. Why? Because the guns ARE loaded. With blanks. There are muzzle flashes, the guns expel shells. They are fully functioning firearms for all intents and purposes, except that the rounds don’t fire projectiles. Yet even still, we measure out at least 15 feet from the muzzle to the camera (sometimes more, depending on the weapon) so that any risk from malfunction is still minimized.
Thank you for agreeing to the obvious fact that Baldwin should have checked the gun and he is therefore 100% responsible for killing Ms Hutchinson. This fact is written in Baldwin’s ACTOR’S union contract. The fact that others screwed up does not in ANY WAY mitigate the fact that Baldwin screwed up.
Again, show that contract that states an actor is supposed to be able to differentiate between live and blank ammunition.I’ll eat all the crow you have if you can produce that wording.
Even if he checked the gun, he would have seen a revolver with bullets in the cylinder— which is exactly the same thing he would have seen if it was loaded with blanks. Unless you are claiming he should be individually checking each round and personally loading it (which, btw, WOULD actually be a breach of written SAG protocols), I fail to see where his mistake was made in checking the weapon.
My blood sugar is back up so here is some more free research: the gun was NOT supposed to be loaded at all. They were rehearsing a scene where the trigger was NEVER meant to be pulled. Anyone who touches a gun should be able to tell if it is loaded (with ANYTHING) or they should not touch the gun. Or here’s a great idea: hire some special effects guys and add the guns in post. They don’t even have a union so cheapskate producers with birth fetishes should have enough money left over after all the diapers and mac n cheese.
“I got your point. My point is he is at fault in at least 2 ways.”
I don’t think you got the point, because if you did, you would understand that yours and his contradict each other. Nilius is quite literally saying that he’s only at fault in one way.
The other problem is that you probably don’t actually have a full picture of what you’re talking about. Even if it was an actor’s job to check a gun to see if it was loaded (it’s not), unless you have extensive training in firearms, the gun would LOOK loaded. It would literally contain ammunition. “Blank” firing rounds still are rounds that are loaded into a gun. They are manufactured differently so they don’t actually expel a projectile (and even then, they can malfunction and kill or injure people if they are still too close; see Brandon Lee on The Crow).
Source: Nearly a decade of working on a television show with gunplay in nearly every episode, often with guns pointed at me.
Baldwin almost certainly has some culpability as a producer. As the actor in front of the camera, being handed a gun he’s told is safe and pointing it where he’s told, he has nothing to go on but the people surrounding him he is supposed to trust.
I deliberately contradicted Nilius, hence the “for f*cks sake.” It is everyone’s job to check a gun before handling it, even if their job is picking their nose on the moon. The FACT that you MUST check the gun if you are and ACTOR on set is in Baldwin’s union contract. Thus even if he were NOT a producer Baldwin is still 100% responsible for killing miss Hutchins. This obvious fact only has to be argued because Americans are so careless with guns that a toddler kills someone once a week and their parents are not held responsible because as a nation we are freaking insane.
“The FACT that you MUST check the gun if you are and ACTOR on set is in Baldwin’s union contract.”
Pull up a SAG contract that shows that. Go ahead, I’ll wait.
Actually, no I won’t. The SAG basic agreement doesn’t mention “guns” “firearms” or “weapons” at all. However, here’s the SAG bulletin regarding safety, including multiple entries on firearms, for you: https://www.sagaftra.org/files/safety_bulletins_amptp_part_1_9_3_0.pdfIt states that safety is an actor’s responsibility in the boilerplate at the top, but in the actual pertinent info about firearms, it lists nothing about being able to discern blanks from live rounds.
What it DOES say, is to follow the instructions of the prop master and armorer, and that all weapons will be inspected by qualified people (again, the prop dept), and that the prop master will determine if a person is qualified to be handling a gun. The document makes it very clear that it is the responsibility of the prop master to ensure guns are safe and that they are being handled correctly, by actors trained to do so. It also very explicitly states that live ammunition is never to be used on a set, outside of VERY specific conditions that were not present here (ie, in a shooting range).
Regarding pulling the trigger, reports have differed as to whether that was accidental or directed, but in either case, there is absolutely no excuse that Baldwin was handed a gun with LIVE ammunition in it, or that he should be expected to visually understand that the gun was not loaded with blanks. Accidental or directed, nothing more than a blank should have gone off— but it didn’t, and that is negligence on the part of the person loading the weapon and handling the ammunition.
Baldwin bears some responsibility as a producer for creating a situation where protocols were not followed, but if you set aside that role and consider him only as an actor, I cannot see any way to place blame on him.
Pull it up yourself. It is there. I am not your research assistant. You have enough to say without my free labor.
And you know that cause you were on this set? Or just on this “internet”?
Years of investigations and very public comments from many people spell out the issues.
…The alternate to production issues is famous actor murdered someone at random with no discernible motive while surrounded by witnesses?
1 billion percent
I believe there are multiple lawsuits occuring over the incident, some concerned with legal responsibility for members of the production over the woman’s death and other separate but related lawsuits stemming from the statements many of those people gave publicly blaming each other in the immediate aftermath. So one set about the actual death and one set about the response to that death and how it may have damaged the reputations and careers of people involved.
Well I’m sure insurance companies are involved and pretty much anytime there is a pay out required those assholes will take everyone to court. The whole sueing over “reputations” just seems even more crass and gross. It’s barely been a year since this tragedy happened.
This is what makes it tricky in this situation- as a producer on the film, he does likely share some responsibility for the situation on set (depending somewhat on what kind of producer he was on the film— it’s a title that is often very squishy). Hiring grossly unqualified people and allowing unsafe conditions to exist (IIRC, there were safety complaints on set prior to this) should confer some liability on him as a producer. But not as an actor handling a weapon he was told was safe.
As a Manhattan resident, let me say proudly that I don’t feel for him. I wish he would just fucking die.
I’m not a lawyer, so perhaps someone here can answer this: Does he even have a cause of action?
he’s suing mostly for indemnification and contribution, ie the idea that these people should be paying his legal fees for defending the underlying suit because they’re the ones at fault. its a lot less nefarious than this article makes it seem.
Imagine if the A.V. Club reportedly clearly and honestly on legal matters. Think of all the hot takes they wouldn’t be able to produce!
Sounds reasonable. Thanks for the reply.
He’s the executive producer and he pulled the trigger. Where’s the arrest? Lock this fucker up. Enough of this guy trying to direct the investigation, the lawsuits and even trying to finish the movie itself. A movie no one wants to see.
Baldwin is so unlikeable that it really clouds the public’s judgement. If this had happened to Tom Hanks or Morgan Freeman, the reaction would be to find out how live rounds got on set, how a live round was loaded into the gun. Baldwin’s behavior in general and especially after the shooting has done him no favors.
At which point in the sequence of events that included a live round being chambered in a real gun and brought to the set was Baldwin involved other than the obvious? He would have had no reason to question a prop handed to him. I’m guessing he doesn’t have a lot of experience with firearms in general and would not have noticed anything out of the ordinary.
I see a lot of opinions going around here, and very few of them seem to be based in any understanding of how firearms on film sets actually work. As someone who has worked for nearly a decade around prop firearms (not in the prop department, but around cameras and in close proximity to the prop weapons), here’s my take:
First and foremost, it is inconceivable that actual “live” rounds (as in, with working, firing projectiles) were allowed to be in a prop truck or lockup, let alone made their way onto the actual shooting location and into a weapon being handed to an actor. That is inexcusable, and it is the root cause of the problem.Many people are claiming it was Baldwin’s responsibility (as an actor) to check those rounds, or to check that the gun “wasn’t loaded”, or not to point it where he pointed it, etc. Those people are wrong, for multiple reasons.
A prop gun firing blanks IS loaded. IIRC, this was a revolver, so the cylinder would have been loaded with rounds. There is a way to tell the difference between a blank and a “real” round, but I am not confident enough in my knowledge to repeat my understanding of that detail here. Regardless, though, the point is that an actor would have no way of visually understanding whether or not the gun was loaded, and cannot be expected to have the training to tell the difference in the first place.
When an actor is handed a prop weapon, they must depend on those around them to know it is safe. In this case, the prop department failed to properly care for its equipment. (There is also the case of the Assistant Director, or AD, informing Baldwin the gun was “cold”, as well as reports of the AD directly handing the gun to him— also a failure, as no one but props or the actor should be touching a weapon).
The actor is then told where the gun should be pointed, by the director and/or cinematographer or camera operator, to achieve the camera angle that is desired. Again, these are people that the actor is expected to trust, and people who should trust the prop department. By all accounts, this is what happened.
Even if pulling the trigger was an accident (I was not on this set, and this has not been clear from the reports I’ve read), it should not have resulted in a bullet being fired.
So from the standpoint of actual day-to-day production, the fault here is clear— it lands with the prop department and the armorer specifically.
However, it does get sticky in that Baldwin was a producer and part owner of the production company. If he had simply been an actor hired to play a part, this would be cut and dry for him: a terrible tragedy that he could not have been realistically expected to prevent.
But as producer, Baldwin can and should be held responsible for the conditions on set, including the hiring of people who were clearly not qualified. IIRC, there were also safety complaints made about the set prior to this, so this could be shown to be part of a larger pattern.
In terms of this lawsuit, he is certainly within his right to claim that the people he depended on, and listed as defendants, failed him and were at fault. It may also help to clarify what involvement he had in the day-to-day operation as a producer, which is a title that can be quite broad in the film business. It can be anything from highly ceremonial, in-name-only, to incredibly hands-on and shaping the production more than even a director. This and various other lawsuits being filed will likely answer that question, but I can’t see how it would help the prop department folks, because to effectively cast any blame on Baldwin as a producer, they’d have to essentially be admitting they weren’t qualified for the job and negligent in their duties on-set, and incriminating themselves in the process.Hope this all helps. Throw questions at me if you have them.
Why is this movie still resuming production?