Maybe its a generational thing, but I don’t find the pictures particularly “salacious”, they seem more or less what you would find on the social media feed of most twenty or thirty somethings.
I think we are mostly in agreement.My point is, there didn’t have to be any ammo of any kind for the rehearsal. When they were ready to film, they could then load the gun. And since this gun loads one round at a time it should have been easy to ensure that a blank/blanks were loaded along with any cosmetic rounds. Much better than someone grabbing a pre loaded gun off a cart that nobody was watching over.
I may have misunderstood. This is similar to what I read before:
Dave Halls, the assistant director on the film “Rust,” told an investigator that he had not checked all of the rounds in the gun he handed to Alec Baldwin, as he should have, according to an affidavit released Wednesday.
He said that the film’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, had opened the gun for him to inspect, according to the affidavit.
“He advised he should have checked all of them, but didn’t, and couldn’t recall if she spun the drum,” according to the affidavit. He said he remembered seeing only three rounds.
The problem with this is that this particular gun does not have a cylinder that flips out so you can check all the rounds at once. (why he thinks seeing the cylinder spin is an effective way to check the type of rounds loaded, I don’t know)You have to open the feed gate and have the gun at half-cock to spin the cylinder and see only the primer end of the cartridges one at a time. For all he knows, the three he saw were all that were in the gun. And going on his track record for safety, I’m guessing that he didn’t look at those three rounds closely enough to determine whether they were blanks or dummy rounds.
Either way, him and the armorer screwed up big time and I expect that their movie careers are over and criminal charges are in their future. And if it’s discovered that one of them is responsible for bringing live ammo on set, hello prison.
As I said, they were ready to film.
They were just getting camera lined up, and ensuring that Balwin’s hand would be in the center of the shot when he drew the gun.
Sometimes the end of a dummy round will have a hole in it to identify it as a dummy, as they apparently did in this case.
This is a contradiction.
If those things are not decided, they are not ready to film.
Ready to film means camera position and angle (and movement, if applicable) are set, and all physical actions by the performer are rehearsed and agreed.
Edit to add: I’m in a hotel on a family vacation, so my writing time is limited. I’ll come back later with my own on-set experience if there’s still interest.
As I understand it, everything was decided, agreed, and rehearsed. Then it was time for lunch and they took a break.
After lunch a shadow had shifted into the shot, so they had to move the camera.
They could have brought the gun in empty, lined up the camera again, then stopped and waited, taken the gun outside again, loaded it with dummies, brought it back in again, and filmed the scene.
Perhaps they should have done that, but they were behind schedule and in a rush.
The point is they were ready to film asap.
Very interesting take from author author Stephen Hunter, who knows movies and guns. I was surprised to learn that Alec Baldwin actually has made very few movies in which he uses a gun.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/10/stephen-hunter-the-shooting.php
That article is horseshit.
To elaborate: The entire thrust of the article is “Baldwin is not a firearms expert and he had no business holding that particular device and also he’s a known asshole, and I won’t say anything beyond that but my implication is clear.”
There are precisely zero words about the responsibility framework on a modern film production that is dedicated to safely putting such a device into the hand of even the least knowledgeable actor, as has been exhaustively examined in this thread. Basically that article is where this discussion was 900 posts ago.
It’s worse than horseshit. It’s agenda-driven, reality-rewriting horseshit, and no responsible reader will pay it further mind.
Lest we forget …
His new novel is TARGETED , which will be published in January by Atria/Emily Bestler Books and is available for pre-order now.
In addition,
Whether intentionally or by chance, he has had a remarkably gun-free career as a film actor. He has never made a Western. His most recent exposure dates back to 1994’s “The Getaway,” in which he used a .45 automatic, as did Steve McQueen in Sam Peckinpah’s original.
Just off the top of my head, MISSION IMPOSSIBLE - FALLOUT and PIXIE. Did this guy do any actual research?
One must further wonder if his reputed anger issues or his CEO status as producer precluded some old-salt type from giving him a basic rundown on what he could or could not do or what he should never do with the pistol.
Must one further wonder this, if one isn’t a hack with a self-aggrandizing goal?
For what it’s worth, Baldwin also did his share of gun-handling in ”The Shadow”: not long after “The Getaway”, but, yes. still after “The Getaway” (in terms both of filming and release dates).
Agree they should have done that. It’s not a big, onerous thing to go through the safety protocols. From what I understand, making a movie involves lots of various wait times: touching up makeup, readjusting sound equipment or lighting or camera angles, etc. The wait time while the gun is loaded and verified isn’t in itself an issue.
Being in a rush is no excuse. It’s why there are safety protocols in the first place.
That’s getting ready to film, not ready to film. Setting up a camera angle does not require a gun to have any ammo in it at all.
I’d love to hear it if you can find time. Hope you are having a good vacation!
No perhaps about it. It’s never a good idea to rush things when you are dealing with firearms. That’s why stuff like this happens.
Yep, his take on Baldwin comes straight out of his ass. I loved Hunter’s earlier books but he is one of those people that went nuts after 9/11. Everything was political after that and made the books impossible for me to read. He does know his guns tho. And if the armorer and AD had done their jobs, it wouldn’t matter what kind of “mood” Baldwin was in.
I’m wondering now if the statements about only seeing 3 rounds in the gun is true or if the gun was just grabbed from an unattended cart is true. Both can’t be true.
And to really go full conspiracy theory: Since the armorer and AD fucked around with the gun by moving it and unloading it, there could have been all live rounds in there for all we know. Guns don’t go off by themselves, they should have just left the gun where it was. Maybe the armorer could have done her job and stayed with the gun until police arrived.
I’d like to hear more about the plinking stories also. It seems weird that people that already worked 12 hours a day would sit around in the dark drinking beer and shooting at empties, then still have to drive an hour to the motel. And the director said he never heard any shooting. Does he just work 9-5? Gunfire in a flat open space like that would carry a long way.
But would it have made any difference?
The issue was a live round being loaded instead of a dummy, and the gun not being checked after that. If that negligence was going to happen, then it would have happened at whatever stage the dummies were loaded into the gun, and the gun brought in.
Adding an extra step of bringing in an empty gun first would have changed nothing.
Looks like Hutchins had a gift for understatement.
Huh. I’m not sure what Stephen Hunter’s politics, books, or 9/11 have to do with the issue at hand. His insight was in the model of revolver used in the movie and how it would be handled. And I’m baffled why Baldwin defenders seem to take his comments so personally because what he is saying seems to go quite a ways to exonerating the actor.
Baldwin was unfamiliar with firearms, especially revolvers, and barely used them throughout his long and successful career. Hardly a criticism, this would appear to me to be the likely foundation for Baldwin’s defense (if it comes to that - “This was Mr. Baldwin’s first ever western, Your Honor.”). I hardly think his lawyers will want to remind a jury (again, if that even happens) that their client used guns all the time in his films.
So, handed a gun he was unfamiliar with and assured was not dangerous, Baldwin did what any actor would do - he started messing with it, practicing his draw, cocking the hammer, feeling the trigger - all the things that would make him appear experienced on the screen. His job is to convince an audience he’s an old gunslinger.
So I think Hunter’s main point is probably close to the truth. Baldwin accidentally fired the gun through an unfortunate combination of factors, but particularly his inexperience with the hammer and trigger use. He might have been examining the revolver and didn’t realize the muzzle was pointing at anyone.
So, on the part of Baldwin the actor it would appear to be a very, very bad mistake, but totally unintentional. As for Baldwin the producer, who knows what part that played in what happened.
But I hardly think it’s a low blow to point out his well-known history of losing his temper in public. He might have been the nicest guy in the world on this set but we will have to wait to see what police interviews with the cast and production crew have to say about that.
My understanding is currently that he pointed the gun directly at the camera because that’s what the shot called for. What that shot meant to show, I don’t know. Was the camera to focus on the bore of the barrel, on how many bullets were left in the gun, on his hand (solid as a rock or flagging badly), or even on his face?
Whatever his intentions, I think we can safely assume the gun was pointed at the camera operator and not the camera. Were that the case, the only tragedy here would be a big bullet hole in an expensive camera.
If that were the case, we’d have a dead cameraman.
There were three people lined up almost directly behind that camera.
We do have a dead camera man. Halyna Hutchins was operating the camera. The regular crew had walked out.