I’d thought of this as well…but it seems she was rather NEAR the set when the incident happened, as the was there when the cops arrived (IIRC).
The reason for her absence is irrelevant. The safety on set shouldn’t depend on whether one person showing up for work. She might feel bad about what happened, if she wasn’t there just because she was hungover and feeling petulant. But in terms of liability it shouldn’t make a difference, whether it was that or if she was actually in intensive care. If they weren’t able to use guns safely in her absence then they shouldn’t have used guns without her there to supervise.
Sage Rat was making a little joke, I’m sure — likely he/she agrees with you.
But this wouldn’t get the armorer off the hook, of course. She still deserves much of the blame (I put it at 60% upthread), for allowing projectile rounds to get mixed in with blanks.
Yeah that’s the truly jaw dropping bit of this. Everything else can be explained (though not excused imo) by shoddy safety practices, by hurried inexperienced staff. But that is something else. How much she knew and was responsible for is another question (probably one a jury is going to be asked to answer in the coming months)
Ebola aside, if she was away for some legitimate reason then there are scenarios like:
The day before, as they’re wrapping up for the day, she gets a call telling her that a family member is in the hospital. She locks the guns away in a safe, gives the keys to the Assistant Director, runs him through all the steps to verify safety, and leaves the set saying that she’ll be back the next day late because she needs to drive to town for a family emergency.
During the night, the Assistant Director and the crew start up a campfire, start drinking, and eventually end up shooting bottles after the sends someone with the keys to grab some guns. They end the night when the gun stops firing - jammed, but they believe that it has fired all its shots.
In the morning, the AD goes to get the guns - maybe thinking that he’s choosing something different than they had been using the previous night, declares it a “cold gun” and hands it over to Baldwin.
I wouldn’t blame the Armorer.
Saw No Time to Die tonight. Having read quite a bit over the past few days about the incredibly strict safety precautions taken on a movie set whenever a gun is fired, all I could think was - damn, James Bond movies must take a really long time to make.
Good point. That is indeed a possible scenario — the AD (say) deliberately subverting the armorer’s precautions. I agree the armorer would be blameless. But the TMZ stories of real shooting for fun OVER SEVERAL DAYS indicate the armorer was most likely not doing her job.
(In any case, everyone present at the filming in question — especially the AD and Baldwin — should have noticed that the usual “ritual” wasn’t happening.)
Though the witness statement in the search warrant application said the guns had been left on a cart by the armorer for the AD.
She means “loading” as in “making”, nit as in “putting in a gun”.
Yes and No. Bond films take a while because they typically shoot on several continents. Things get spread out and the shoot will take more than the average 7-12 weeks for a show. ( By comparison, “Rust”'s schedule is measured in days not weeks. Very low-budget. )
I say no not because I think the Bond franchise would be anything less than scrupulous in adhering to best practices. I say No because they are SO scrupulous. Armorer enters set with 2 weapons. 2 actors await. EVERYTHING STOPS for a minute, perhaps 2. Armorer shows Daniel his weapon, Daniel confirms it is empty and safe and tucks it into his jacket. Other Bad Guy goes through the same thing. Quick, careful, quiet, precise. Nobody fucking around. Nobody yapping.
Having been on a lot of sets, I can tell you that at certain moments, a specific department owns the set. Usually only the 1st A.D. can stop a specific moment. In the case of Armorer, nobody gets in the way. Nobody.
But this is a quick careful focused ritual, not an ongoing debate on the 2nd Amendment. It does not take forever…but it sure as hell takes place every single time.
The irresponsible level of ( as we call it on some shoots ) pure tomfuckery in this case is just appalling.
In fact, one might say, plain criminal.
Then there’s the Pyro department…
Thanks — your experience is illuminating (yay Dope). The gulf between this and what happened in this incident is indeed unfathomably wide. A Tenerife of Swiss-cheese mistakes.
Unspeakable negligence as mentioned above is a good description. And the buck stops at the top. The following correct procedures, with properly trained personnel, the behavior of staff and crew on the set of the movie, these are ultimately the responsibility of the production company.
Of course the Assistant Director and the Armorer were at the basis of the tragedy but the people at the top bear the responsibility for proper procedures being followed by trained staff doing their jobs.
Alex Baldwin was the producer, it was his production company making the movie, and he fired the fatal shot. He is ultimately responsible.
I find it kind of bizarre that much of this thread is attempting to absolve Alex Baldwin of his responsibility. He did not mean to fire this fatal shot, but proper procedures were not followed, there was a walk out by on site staff due to safety issues and previous accidents with fire arms on the set.
The buck stops with Alex but it will never be seen this way.
As the original quote, which was impling she was talking about loading blanks into a gun, was from the daily effing mail. I’m not going to give them the benefit of the doubt. I’d assume it was them deliberately trying to paint this young woman as incompetent.
I largely agree. We need to separate out his “guilt” in actually firing the fatal round (in which he seems to have small, but still some, culpability in that he did not follow proper SAG procedures) from his “guilt” as a producer and by far the cast member with the most clout on a set that was rife with safety violations. It’s in this second category where he seems to have the most culpability and where he’s exposed to civil, and maybe even criminal, action.
In fact, I’ll go out on a limb and predict that this is the end of Baldwin’s career. He may well decide so himself – I have no reason to doubt that he’s genuinely anguished over what happened. But he’s also the most recognizable face on a production that went completely off the rails in terms of basic safety protocols killing a wife, mom and rising star in her field. The industry and the public are going to want someone held accountable, and they’re not going to settle for an unknown AD.
Yeah, Alec Baldwin’s name will forevermore be associated with deadly Hollywood tragedy. I mean, even days later it’s still a little jarring to realize that movie star Alec Baldwin drew a gun out of a holster, aimed it a woman and shot her to death. Yikes.
That would definitely be problematic!
So I had the misfortune of learning (I think on this thread if not one of the articles about this incident) about the hideous Twilight Zone: The Movie accident (really bugged me reading about, so not linking) and John Landis, who was clearly plenty culpable for it, had a pretty good career afterwards (and I had no idea he had that on his record):
John Landis - Wikipedia
In terms of criminal liability I genuinely doubt that he is significantly exposed. There will be no compelling argument a prosecutor could make to demonstrate mens rea to any of the more serious grades of homicide which require intent to kill, and he would have a strong defense (remember the high burden of proof standard in criminal trials) that as an actor he is not a firearms expert and primary responsibility for insuring firearms are safe on movie sets is historically not the actor. You could litigate that sure, but would you, as a prosecutor? The prosecutor would be going against someone who won’t be using the guy who barely graduated a Tier 3 law school but probably one of the top criminal defense firms in the entire country, with enough resources to tie your office up for ages in the case, for what is probably less than 50/50 odds of conviction (and prosecutors historically don’t even like to go to trial for much less than a sure thing.) New Mexico is a small and relatively low income state, also, and this didn’t even happen in Albuquerque the one decent sized city they have, it happened in Santa Fe.
Assuming the New Mexico 1st Judicial District prosecutor’s office would be responsible–this is an office that covers three counties with a combined population of 200,000.
The budget for their entire department, all in, is $5m. It isn’t remotely outside the realm of possibility Baldwin’s legal team would command higher total fees defending him in any case. I just don’t think a criminal trial is going to happen.
Very rarely are the wealthy held to account for such things. Baldwin is supposedly worth $60 million. More than enough to buy his way out of this (probably). And that’s assuming he isn’t able to hang it all on some underling.
I imagine this will be the end for him in show business though (and he may well want it that way).
Civil liability I think obviously the family of the dead cinematographer is going to get money. But I also strongly suspect that a typical movie production is incorporated as its own LLC, has comprehensive insurance, and is probably legally structured so there is no way you can go through that company to get at the personal assets of the investors who formed it. I know jack shit about movies, but I know a little bit about company formation and that would just be standard. If you look at any of the buildings I own at the county assessor’s office you’ll note none are owned directly by my firm, they’re owned by LLC with the same name as the building–this is a standard practice to insulate liability and try to contain it as best as possible. I assume movies are structured similarly.
Now the hitch here is Baldwin personally took an action here that resulted in human death, if it can really be demonstrated an actor should know better than to pull the trigger without going through some “ritual”, Baldwin may have some personal civil liability separate from his financial interest in the production of the movie.