Alec Baldwin [accidentally] Kills Crew Member with Prop Gun {2021-10-21}

Cafe Society
1969

Some of these recent posts are starting to persuade me that charges could be justified. Still, I have my doubts.

What if the scene was Baldwin driving with a co-star in the passenger seat and the brakes fail causing a crash that kills his co-star. Is that his fault? Is he supposed to check the brakes before filming a scene?

As a car owner it is my obligation to keep my brakes in working order. Just like if I were a gun owner, all of those rules about gun safety would absolutely apply about my gun. But am I supposed to check the brakes in a car like I’m supposed to check the blanks in a gun on set if I’m an actor? I tend to think not.

1970

As we already hashed out upthread, obviously movies can’t use the same gun rules that everyone else does. They have to be able to point the gun at people and even pull the trigger, both of which you’re never supposed to do.

And if you want to discuss how Baldwin could be at fault, you have to look at what other actors would actually have done, not just procedures in general, which would be primarily the fault of those in charge of that procedure. We also noted Baldwin is also executive producer, so then we could also discuss some duty there.

What we did seem to determine is that actors are supposed to ask the armorer to prove the gun isn’t loaded, which involves showing them the gun or even test firing into a safe place. But that COVID restrictions made that much more difficult to do on set, as the armorer was not necessarily present.

1971

This is incomprehensible to me. It is the job of an actor to deliberately simulate shooting someone. How can that not be contrary to basic gun safety rules that apply under normal circumstances?

Part of the simulation here is that the gun is loaded. It certainly should not be the actor’s job to check that the correct safe bullets are in a prop gun, that should be the job of an expert armorer who is focused exclusively on providing safe guns to the actors.

An actor may have to simulate killing someone by pushing a stunt man off a roof. This too is obviously contrary to safe behavior in normal life. Should it be the actor’s responsibility to ensure that the landing cushion is positioned and inflated correctly? Or should an expert be doing this?

An actor may have to push a stunt man through a glass window. Should the actor be responsible for ensuring that the window has special stunt “glass” in it rather than ordinary glass? Or should an expert be responsible for this?

1972

I’m stealing this if I’m hired to do the closing argument in this trial.

1973

This wasn’t a situation involving weapons/firearms, it involved a prop, even if was a real gun used as a prop. Props are the responsibility of other people, not the actors. In a movie such as this there will likely be scenes filmed where the prop is pointed at someone and/or the trigger will be pulled. It’s as Atamasama says:

I think various producers are the ones ultimately responsible for the set. Director is a creative position. Directors are normally responsible for the creative direction of the production. There may be other responsibilities sometimes, but not normally including ultimate responsibility for the production as a whole (financial, safety, etc.).

1974

I’m starting to seriously question whether that’s true. I mean, I am getting less and less confident that it’s “obvious” that actors need or “have to be able” to point a real gun capable discharging real ammunition at real people for the convenience of filmmakers.

I might also note that while industry standards may be evidence of what is or is not considered reasonable care, they are not binding on the law. Negligence doesn’t become “not negligence” just because it is widely practiced in a particular industry.

1975

Why? How many people have been killed or injured this way on film sets in the tens of thousands of times guns have been pointed?

1976

Greater than zero (and, frankly, just recalling the various incidents involving blanks, “greater than one” even). Is “greater than zero” an acceptable number of lives lost to you? For no particular benefit other than the convenience of filmmakers?

Because if you want to get all Learned Hand on us and start reducing negligence to a numbers game, it’s not the probability of the loss or the cost of prevention alone that matter. You must also consider the magnitude of the loss.

We’re talking human life, and the reason that life should be discounted is… what? It would have cost a few dollars more to have a look-alike prop gun rendered incapable of discharging rounds as a stand in for all scenes or rehearsals that would involve pointing a gun at someone?

And oh by the way… the scene didn’t even call for pointing the gun at someone, it called for pointing the gun at the camera, which IIRC was going to be vacant (no one behind it, crew watching remotely) during actual filming. So… how again was it necessary for Baldwin to actually point a real gun capable of firing real bullets at someone?

1977

Well, it’s obviously acceptable in the general context of gun ownership in the U.S. If the use of guns on film sets is safer than the use of guns by the general public outside of film sets, I’m struggling to see why you think this is a major problem.

And in the context of film making, why pick on guns? There are plenty of other dangerous things that happen on film sets. You want to just ban them all?

1978

Unfortunately, gun ownership has been recognized as a right in the US. Please do cite to the part of the Constitution that creates or recognizes a right of pointing real guns at real people for movies, though.

Words to the effect of “That’s the way we’ve always done it” or “we do way more dangerous things than that” can hardly be a justification for unnecessary risk.

Because that’s what this increasingly seems like to me. I’m seeing a lot of hand waving over just how small the risk was, how utterly unlikely it was anything should go wrong, much less fatally wrong, but still no explanation for why even that small amount of risk was appropriate in the first place.

1979

What on earth does Constitutional rights have to do with deciding whether there is a need to ban potentially dangerous aspects of film production?

1980

You’re being incredibly disingenuous suggesting that “we let people own guns, and that’s dangerous” should stand in support of the proposition that it is acceptable, for the convenience of filmmakers, to point real guns at real people while filming a movie, even if—as here—the scene did not actually call for pointing anything at a real person, let alone a real gun.

1981

I don’t really see how I’m being disingenuous at all. If society generally accepts public gun ownership and a certain level of risk that goes along with it (whether this is for Constitutional reasons is irrelevant - it is a societal norm) then it is perverse to suggest that film production has a specific gun safety problem if it is much safer than general practice when people handle guns outside of film production.

1982

Yes. But my further point is that these strict safety standards are not the same for performance arts as they are for general firearms handling, because the requirements of the settings are different.

I am an actor. I have handled firearms on stage and on film.

Let me give you an actual example of how this works from my own experience. It’s theater, not film, but the reader should be able to extrapolate the principles with little effort.

Almost 30 years ago, I was in a production which involved the following actions: My character enters with a handgun visibly tucked at the waist (a big revolver, a .38 maybe; I don’t remember the exact type as I’m not a gun person). During the scene, I pull out the gun, grab another character, and hold him from behind with the barrel of the gun pressed to his temple. After a minute or so of dialogue, there is a scuffle, and the other character gets the gun away from me. A couple of minutes of stage time pass. Then the other character fires this gun twice on stage.

To achieve this safely, we did the following.

At the beginning of rehearsals, the director and the fight master (who was workng with a stage armorer) looked specifically at this scene. They agreed on blocking that would take the other character off stage briefly after getting the gun from me. This allowed us to perform a switch.

The gun I carried on stage had been rendered inert, making it impossible to fire. If I remember right, the safety people showed us a special cylinder had been installed. It had fake rims secured around the cylinder, so it looked like an actual firearm, but the chambers were otherwise empty and nothing could be loaded.

Then we had a second gun, which could be fired.

Prior to every performance, the other actor and I met with the stage manager and the stage assistant who had been designated as the safety officer for the run. (Background for anyone who’s never been in theater: The director, the fight master, and the other creative leads are present only during rehearsals and on opening night. Afterward, they are not in attendance. When the production opens, during the run, the stage manager is absolutely in charge. But the stage manager is almost always in the technical booth, supervising as the various delegated technicians execute their roles, so a qualified stage assistant was named the safety officer back stage, since the stage manager would not be physically present.) During this meeting, which happened every single night, the stage assistant showed us the two handguns. We watched as the cylinders were opened, one to confirm it was the non-firing gun, and the other to confirm that two and only two blanks were loaded. Then we watched as the two props were placed in a special lockbox in the wings. The “hot” weapon went into a red bag. The “cold” weapon was set next to it. Then the lockbox was closed and locked with a key held by the assistant.

During the performance, prior to my entrance before the key scene, I went to this stage assistant. I watched as he opened the lockbox and took out the “cold” gun. He handed it to me and closed and re-locked the lockbox. I opened the cylinder, touched the rims to confirm this was the prop with the fake bullets, and closed it again.

Then I made my entrance, and performed my part of the scene, which, again, I remind you, required me to touch the barrel of the weapon directly to another person’s head.

After the subsequent struggle, when the other actor took this prop away from me, he briefly exited into the wings. I remained on stage, so I was not able to witness this during the performance, but his procedure was to go to the same assistant, hand off the cold gun, and receive the hot gun from the lockbox. According to the procedure, the assistant was not to remove the hot gun from the red bag except in the presence of the other actor, to ensure that they were not inadvertently switched. The actor then re-entered the stage, carrying a live weapon that could be fired for the performance.

Finally, at the end of each show, we both went back to the same assistant to watch and confirm as the two props were placed back in the same lockbox. The assistant then took the lockbox and gave it to the stage manager to be locked in a filing cabinet in the theater office.

So, I ask everyone who keeps insisting that every weapon be treated as live and hot and dangerous and never aimed at another human being: How would it have been possible for me to place this handgun against my fellow actor’s temple?

We created a system with multiple layers of safety and precautionary measures. As long as everyone correctly does their jobs, there’s no problem, and throughout the entire run, around fifty performances, we never had any kind of issue with the firearms. (We had other problems, because, well, it’s live theater, and there’s always something you have to cope with, but never with the guns.)

Yes, it’s remotely possible as a hypothetical that both I and the other actor could have looked away at the very moment the stage assistant accidentally put the cold gun in the red bag. Or that the assistant or someone else got into the lockbox after the preparatory step and maliciously switched them. Also, as mentioned, I’m not a gun person. It’s theoretically possible that when I opened the cylinder, in the darkness of the wings and the urgency of the production, that I could have touched the rims quickly and routinely and failed to notice such a switch. But these are layers of checks and cross-checks. And if a one-in-a-million sequence of failures had lined up in such a way that I wound up with a live gun on stage, who would have borne the majority of the blame for an accident?

Ultimately it would have been the theater as an entity, with its deep pockets, that would be on the hook for any financial settlement. But in terms of criminal liability, they would have looked at the director, the fight master, and the consultant armorer to see whether they had behaved responsibly in organizing the scene to maximize safety; the stage manager, for her supervisory role over the production in flight; and the stage assistant, for his direct function as safety officer and caretaker of the lockbox. I, as the actor, would have been at the very bottom of that list.

Even though I was the one holding the gun and pressing it to another person’s head.

So, please — all these repeated efforts to quote and re-quote generic firearms safety rules are wrong and inapplicable. Stop it.

1983

I believe the DP (and director) were just off to the side of the camera watching a monitor. And that an asst. camera operator was at the camera.

Wiki:

The trio behind the monitor were two feet from the muzzle of the firearm and none of them were wearing any protective gear like noise-canceling headphones or safety goggles

1984

Forgot to mention something here:

So to anticipate the question: “If you just had to brandish the gun, why did you need a real but modified firearm at all?”

In the scene, as my character was menacing the other guy, the director wanted me to thumb back the hammer, creating the click and the cylinder turn. So a functional prop was required.

The alternative was a hard rubber prop gun, which is what the fight master initially suggested. But the director wanted the functional element, so the more elaborate protocol was devised.

Otherwise I would have been using an entirely fake weapon, which would have been easily and immediately distinguished from the actual hot weapon just by weight and touch. And there would have been no need for all the special management; it would have been just another prop and the hot gun would have been secured by itself.

(This was a production that took safety very, very seriously. There was another scene in the play with a brief knife fight. The fight master provided specific prop weapons that looked very realistic but that had lightweight blades with no edge. In one rehearsal, one actor substituted the safety weapon for another weapon he brought himself because he thought it looked “cooler” for the character. It was also a stage-ready prop, but it wasn’t the one the fight master had provided. The instant he brought it out, the fight master interrupted the scene and took it away from him. Then he went and had quiet but heated words with the director. And the actor was summarily fired, on the spot.)

1985

Especially since so much is done in post-production these days. It used to be that the sound was enhanced. however, with a good enough CGI artist, I think Baldwin could have held a banana painted green.

Anyway.

Is there an election for the DA office in Santa Fe this year? I only mention this because Baldwin
Is known to be a big asshole
Is a vocal Liberal
Poked Trump time and again on SNL
Is a celebrity (duh!) so the case will get massive media attention
Is probably well off/rich.

1986

Dumb question here. But in movies where people are shooting guns at other people, are the guns aimed at the targets? Or is it a rule that they should be aimed slightly left or right of the target?

1987

New Mexico is a blue state, and the People’s Republic of Santa Fe is the bluest part of it.

1988

I can’t imagine how Baldwin the actor could be responsible, BUT I can imagine a scenario where Baldwin the producer is at fault.

Totally hypothetical but what if the investigation found, and testimony will reveal, that Baldwin as producer knowingly violated safety protocols during production? What if members of the crew testify that on the day of the incident Baldwin pulled rank and said, “I don’t care if the armorer hasn’t inspected the damn gun, give it to me so we can shoot this scene!”

In that case, Baldwin might be in trouble.