At first glance it seems pretty crazy to have people—whether actors, SEALs, or craft services—firing live rounds on the set of a movie. But then I remembered my experience working on the film Hoosiers with Gene Hackman.
Live ammunition used on the set of Hoosiers??? No, something else.
The climactic basketball game in the film was shot at Hinkle Fieldhouse at Butler University in Indianapolis, the actual site of the actual high school game the film was based on.
In basketball-crazy Indiana we thought there’d be no problem getting 12,000 or so extras to fill up the seats for the scene. Not even close. I’d guess there were about 3 or 4 thousand. Couldn’t even fill up the lower level of one side.
So, the producers hatched a plan to have a local high school basketball game scheduled for the following night moved to Hinkle so they could get good crowd shots with hopefully more people and ones who actually looked like they were really cheering a game. Because they were.
The game counted as an official result even though the floor was painted inaccurately (it had the narrower “key zone” used in the 1950’s. Gaffer’s tape was used temporarily to mark the real spots players were to stand in during the real free throws). We still didn’t have enough people but they moved large groups of extras around and shot different angles to do the job. I don’t believe CGI was an option.
ANYWAY-- at long last my point is only-- if they could arrange to have h.s. hoopsters do what they do for real in order to shoot a flick, I’d imagine producers could arrange to have SEALs do what they do for real and engage in live fire exercises for a film production.
Or something. I kinda got lost in that ocean of words.
I hope that the police will follow the evidence wherever it leads, but that doesn’t mean that every possible theory of the crime has to be investigated. I mean, it could have been someone still sore over having spent $18 for tickets to see Pearl Harbor. But I wasn’t anywhere near the scene.
There had already been THREE discharges of supposedly ‘cold’ guns on the set in previous days. How the hell does that happen? Also, the ‘cold’ guns were outside of the sound stage, and the armorer was nowhere around. So an assistant director just walked out, grabbed a gun on a cart, handed it to Baldwin and called out ‘cold gun’ - without actually checking it.
This after there had already been three accidental discharges of supposedly ‘cold’ guns. Unbelievably reckless.
I assume this is just bad reporting and what they mean is the detective stated someone (I guess Assistant director Dave Halls) told them all of that, they didn’t just state it as fact on the warrant application?
“Live” is movie term to describe a gun that’s been loaded with blanks and ready to be fired for filming. You don’t typically confuse it with the layman term because a real live round would not be allowed anywhere on set to begin with. They are still investigating WTF could have happened, but I wouldn’t assume from this term being thrown around that it means they were using actual ammo for filming.
There was an episode of The Untouchables in which Stanley Adams was whacked as he sat in the back seat of a roadster. While the camera was set up to make it appear the shooter (a guy in the front seat) was aiming at Adams’ stomach, it was clear (to me, at least) that the pistol was pointed well off to the side.
Mind you, this was around 60 years ago; I don’t know if such a point-blank shooting scene could be filmed today, even if blanks were used.
I’ve only been working on television and movie sets for a few years, and on the east coast rather than in Hollywood, but I’ve been in several “gun intensive” series and this is unprecedented in my experience.
Anytime I’ve ever handled a weapon the armorer has always handed it to me, and before handing it over has demonstrated its safe state. They open the chamber, shine a flashlight down the barrel, show that the magazine is loaded with whatever dummy rounds are being used. It’s kind of a ritual.
Even in fight scenes where they’re using a rubber gun there’s a loud announcement that there’s a rubber gun on set and the prop is displayed. Maybe it’s because most of my work is at the studio where Jason Lee died during filming, but even on non-union sets no one but the armorer hands over a weapon, and there’s always a demonstration that comes with it.
It’s early yet, but it’s looking like about 60% of the responsibility lies with the armorer — a 24-year-old daughter of a legendary longtime armorer —- who left a “live” (hopefully meaning “blank, but not properly checked for wadding or other unintended ‘projectiles’” — but if it turns out to mean “fully live round,” that’s REALLY serious) gun out on a prop table, and wasn’t present at the filming but should have been;
35% with the assistant director, who should have known that the ARMORER, not the AD, hands the gun to the actor;
5% with Baldwin, who perhaps should have known to always point anything resembling a gun a little off to the side of any human.
If this turns out to be the scenario, I feel a LITTLE sorry for the armorer — working on just her second film, but growing up with her father’s expectations that she’d continue his legacy — but not much. There might be some story there. Maybe she had too much confidence in her own abilities (feeling like she’d been in the business since early childhood, when really she hadn’t been) and didn’t pay attention to her job.
I don’t think Baldwin is in the clear until we know where the safety protocols failed, why they failed, and whose decisions led to the failure. An actor handling a prop gun wouldn’t be culpable at all, IMO, since they have a reasonable expectation that it should be perfectly safe to follow any direction they were given.
But Baldwin wasn’t just an actor on this set, he was a producer and a writer. This was his project, as I understand it.
There are reports that union crewmembers walked out of the set the day before, and that there were known safety concerns, and that rehearsal still took place without a full complement of experienced crew. Is that true? If true, who made that decision? I would think such a decision would go up to the producer level.
It’s my understanding the walk out occurred earlier that day? The guns were already there and had been used in filming.
The replacement Armorer would have been getting up to speed. She may not have closely checked the guns and tested them.
She’s still responsible. I’m just thinking how a shift change would dangerously interrupt the safety checks. There had to be some confusion and she’s inexperienced. She didn’t have the confidence to say, “we can’t film that scene until I throughly check the guns”.
No “replacement armorer.” She wasn’t part of the union walkout. Camera crew is different than props department.
So, she was fully responsible, just not present (apparently), and not paying attention to her job.
There had been three other accidental (blank) discharges in previous days on the set. This was part of the camera crew’s motivation to walk off the set.
Guns can have hair triggers. The least bit of pressure and they go off. A gun in that condition certainly shouldn’t be on a movie set.
The on set misfires could be a lack of actor training. You never place your finger inside the trigger guard until you’re ready to fire. Trigger pressure varies from gun to gun.
The armorer is responsible for training the actors.
Actually, you might have identified a minor contributing factor. Though they aren’t directly responsible, the loss of most of the camera crew, and (impending?) replacement with “scabs” (likely less experienced overall, and certainly new to this set and group of folks), may have exacerbated the air of distraction and neglect, and that “this is a crisis so the usual rules don’t apply” (e.g., the AD handling a gun).
It would be interesting to know if “producer” was just sort of an honorary title they gave Baldwin, or if this was truly his project. Because working conditions on that set were apparently pretty bad and pretty chaotic, as evidenced by the earlier accidental gun firings and the crew walkout. The crew also had to work minimum 15-hour days (14 hours plus an hour for lunch) before they got comped for a hotel room, and even then it was a cheap dive that also served as a homeless shelter. If Baldwin was responsible for this sort of work environment, characterized by penny-pinching and carelessness, then he may indirectly bear some share of the blame.
For the record, those hours are not unusual for the business. I routinely worked from 8am until midnight for multiple days (and sometimes multiple weeks).