Fewer than three weeks before actor Alec Baldwin is due to go on trial in Santa Fe, New Mexico, prosecutors have said that he “engaged in horseplay with the revolver”, including firing a blank round at a crew member on the set of Rust before the tragic accident occurred.
Baldwin is facing involuntary manslaughter charges in the 2021 shooting death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.
In new court documents, prosecutors said they plan to bring new evidence to support their case that the 66-year-old actor and producer was reckless with firearms while filming on the set and displayed “erratic and aggressive behavior during the filming” that created potential safety concerns.
Prosecutors in the case, which is due to go to trial on 10 July, have previously alleged that to watch Baldwin’s conduct on the set of Rust “is to witness a man who has absolutely no control of his own emotions and absolutely no concern for how his conduct affects those around him”.
In the latest filing, special prosecutors Kari Morrissey and Erlinda Johnson allege that Baldwin pointed his gun and fired “a blank round at a crew member while using that crew member as a line of site as his perceived target”.
There’s no good reason to use a functional gun in film and theater, change my mind.
The only reason to do it is verisimilitude, and that’s not compelling because a fake is easy enough to acquire/create.
Isn’t literally everything in film and TV intended to look real, or at least look like it exists in that universe?
Sure, but the difference between a real gun and a fake gun is not that great.
Also, they often shoot 30 times without reloading from guns with a much lesser capacity. Their interest in realism is often so-so.
Actors miming shooting looks ridiculous. Like laser tag guns. Actual recoil looks much more realistic.
❌When the recoil looks fake
✔️Action hero only ever gets shot in shoulder despite thousands of rounds shot at them, bullets used by bad guys never hollow point
The must be a way to create “false” gun in the sense that they only takes blanks and have nonfunctional barrels. Or I’m I too optimistic?
Unfortunately, guns are deceptively simple. Just about anything that can detonate a realistic looking blank is capable of firing an actual bullet. And even if it’s just a blank, any obstruction in the barrel can end up becoming an ad-hoc projectile by the force. Every once in a while, you have that happen in Civil War re-enactments.
If the armorer wasn’t willfully negligent it wouldn’t be a problem. Not a problem for the vast majority of film sets. Just pure lack of professionalism from the armorer whose sole core responsibility is to ensure safety.
In Blade Runner 2049, Weta Workshop had their laser pistols set up with a solenoid that moved back and forth with a trigger pull. Adam Savage looked at them in a Tested video. I don’t know if it’s cost prohibitive, but it sure seemed like the right way to do it.
However, you don’t get smoke with that. You can definitely rig something up as they did it with a knock off nerf blaster in the 80’s or even a cap gun, but at some point I assume the level of complexity makes modifying a real gun cheaper.
You could weld shut the barrel of a gun, which is what a lot of them do, but it seems like it’s a cost cutting measure when they used real guns that would retain their value. Alec (as a producer) used a cheap setup with a cheap armorer that didn’t know what they were doing. It’s both of their faults.
A blank killed Brandon Lee while filming The Crow.
Although I don’t know the details admittedly.
Some guns are modified in that way for movies. They are still potentially dangerous. Blanks can harm someone close enough or accidentally propel something lodged in the barrel.
I know some pistols have a co2 blow back system that you can install on your gun so you can practice drawing and dry firing without fear of damaging the gun or hurting people. The only one I know of is for glocks but I’m sure a company could make them for more models.
Yeah, you would think you could just change the chambers and bullets so only a certain standard of blanks would fit in it, although I guess those guns would become more expensive than the real mass produced ones.
Either way, this is all the result of Baldwin as executive producer cheaping out on every aspect of this shoot, causing this to happen.
If you shot a blank in a gun with a plugged barrel the gun would explode. A blank is just a round minus the projectile, it has just as much “push” from the powder as a real round does.
I know there at least used to be gas powered airsoft guns that had minor ‘recoil.’ I don’t know if there’s anything particular about them that makes them bad for filming, maybe just the lack of real force on the shooters wrist/shoulder.
What recoil? They are shooting blanks. There is no mass leaving the gun. If you want to cycle the gun on trigger pull in a realistic yet safe way, compressed CO2 can be used. Some movie guns are even electrically/magnetically actuated.
I mean 5-10 grams of vaporized gunpowder leaves the barrel at fairly high speed. It’s not a lead round but it’s not nothing. Also the spent brass being ejected is not easy to CGI convincingly.
You do know how physics works, right? There is an explosion in the chamber that moves the slide/bolt backward to rack another round of course there will be recoil. Have you ever fired a black powder gun with no bullet in it? There is still a recoil.
You can only get that with real rounds though. Blanks are not causing that recoil effect.
We gotta sometimes kill a bunch of people on set, because americans need their religion represented correctly
Modify the dang things so they can’t take real ammo. Make it keyed somehow or odd shaped. Problem solved.
This particular gun was an actual period gun, so it could prevent the use of the gun if it needed to be modified. But honestly, just like there wasn’t a real helicopter in films besides stock footage or military footage the production company didn’t film, because accidentally killing three actors two of whom were children being illegally treated, was enough for studios to forbid it, the people who’ve been shot accidentally on film should really make everyone unwilling to use anything but a prop that is explicitly and legally not at all a gun in any way.
It’s laziness. Automatics are modified in a way that prevents them from being fully operational as a gun, but not for safety reasons.
They won’t cycle with blank rounds because there’s no backpressure from firing a live round, so they obstruct the barrel to redirect some of the gasses back into the action.
For revolvers, bolt guns, etc that isn’t an issue because they aren’t cycled by recoil or gasses. You can just load a blank and use it.
It’s funny I recently bumped into a guy who is a gunsmith and worked in Hollywood sets before so we talked about this. There are reasons to have a fully functional gun on set and the different rounds they use on set because there are a bunch of different types depending on the scene and lighting. They use different charges for different shots and a bunch of other things. Especially if it’s a practical effects movie.
The issue is making sure live ammo is not on set or around the guns on set. If you have access to these guns you can use them after filming is done with live rounds.
Alex trusted the people around him to do their jobs and they didn’t make it a safe set. This is like flipping the keys to Dodge Hellcat to your 15 1/2 year old son with a learners driving permit and his 18 year old friend riding shotgun. It’s not a good idea. They should be driving Kia Sportage.
With all the money spent on films, I’m amazed there isn’t regulated “Hollywood” caliber firearms. Something incapable of chambering anything on the market, and only functions with the certified blanks.
Something akin to the way fake currency is controlled.
I mean, cool idea, but that would severely limit the available choices for types of firearms.
Except my understanding is Baldwin would be the Hellcat owner in this case. He was the producer and the film hired a company to handle the guns that was known to have issues and be irresponsible. I’m not intimately familiar with the case but from what I remember he was being reckless with that choice and it sounds like he was being reckless with the gun as well.
Real, sure. But functional, no. Sometimes, for authenticity’s sake or just for cost reasons, it may make sense to use a real firearm for a scene. However, it should always be modified so that it cannot be loaded or fired. There are plenty of ways to do this without affecting the appearance of the gun, and skipping that is just pure negligence.
Unless it’s a revolver, just remove the firing pin. Problem solved. Revolver might be a little more tricky, but removing the pin from the hammer and putting a silicone cushion into the chambers should work.
The colt SAA and other old revolvers’ firing pin was attached to the hammer (at least most of the newer repros have updated that part for safety). That is why they used to carry them on an empty chamber, because otherwise your firing pin would just be resting on the primer and could very easily go off if bumped. If using a repro you could similarly just remove the firing pin, if using an original (just don’t do that, because what I’m about to say is an affront to history, but) you could grind that pin down enough that it’d never make contact with the primer again. Shudder.
The only reason I can see from all the comments is cost. But it isn’t about a good reason. It’s about not micromanaging what people can do from a legal standpoint. Guns are either legal, or they aren’t. After that it would be up to unions involved in these things to demand better saftey for thier people. In this case we know the standards for safely handling guns on set were not followed. Now maybe that should be a crime and not just a civil matter. I could totally get behind that.
I’d argue otherwise. Their can be. It’s not required, but it’s the difference of using CGI or practical effects. John Wick didn’t use real guns, but it’s the perfect case for that. It’s fast action with a lot going on, so you’ll never notice that it’s fake. I would argue more intimate shots it can make sense to use a real firearm.
They shouldn’t be used where it’s possible to avoid, and even when it can’t be avoided aiming it at someone should be avoided. There should also be checks and double checks to ensure there isn’t a live round, and the actor should also be trained to handle the weapon and check there isn’t a live round before using it as well. There is no reason something like this should have been possible, but I don’t agree there is no use for using a real firearm ever on set.
The key word is functional. Make it physically/mechanically incapable of firing. I’ve been in stage productions that used non-functioning firearms working on my undergrad. They were still locked away. The professor who was the technical director and armorer was the only one who had a key to that safe. They handed it to the props master who handed it to the actor. When the prop wasn’t in use during the run, the props master had it on their person. When the performance was over, it immediately when back into the safe and locked away. If it is absolutely necessary for it to function then only blanks and only in use when needed. Not using it to play a prank. Not using it to fire rounds after the shoot is over. Baldwin and the armorer are absolutely at fault here for failing to maintain safety protocols.
I agree Baldwin and the armorer are at fault. There’s no debate there. A non-functional firearm can’t fire blanks though, as you seem to mention (despite starting by seemingly saying they shouldn’t exist). It’s sometimes useful to do that, and it should be handled with extreme care and only in the cases where it’s actually useful.
There’s an entire industry surrounding the production of (often incredibly) realistic not-firing (and blank-firing) prop guns. the only time you’d need a real one, firing real bullets is if you were doing some extremely-close up shots or recording sound. Even then, you’d only need the real bullets for sound effects or close ups of actually firing. The only thing you’d really need CGI for is the muzzle flash. which is so short and so slow most people would barely even notice if it was merely ‘realistic’.
All of which, it should be said, could have been shot with no one down range of the weapon at any time, and in any case, there was zero reason to need a functional firearm at the time of the shooting. They were not actually filming. They were setting up the cameras and checking for things like glare and reflections and various other angles. All of that could have done with a non-firing prop with no danger to anyone at all.
I totally agree with everything you said. This case was handled poorly. I was arguing it can be useful, but should be handled as if it’s a firearm, not a toy, because it is. There should have been no chance (or as close to that as possible) of this happening, but it doesn’t mean there is zero use cases.
This was always a political bag of bullshit. They even had to fund it as a special prosecution with legislation, going so far as to assign a special prosecutor that happened to also be a state Republican legislator.
The gymnastics people keep using to align blame for manslaughter onto Bladwin have slowly become accepted as if it is factual like propaganda is meant to do.
Yeah been following the rust cases closely.
Kari Morrissey was the one who secured the conviction for Hannah Gutierrez Reid.
Important things to note for Alec Baldwin’s case: he’s got more money and resources for his defense. There’s a bunch of high class attorneys that entered appearance for Baldwin. But he has 2 major problems: those attorneys are not from new Mexico. A good lawyer knows the law and a great lawyer knows the judge. Additionally, he is known for being bad at safety and security. That was already becoming clear in HGR’s trial. But legally things are bad as well: he held the weapon. Now in other states that doesn’t make him more culpable than HGR, but in new Mexico basically everyone holding a weapon is held accountable for the consequences of whatever they do while holding the weapon. This, together with what I would predict are looking like pretty bad facts for him rn, is an indication that he has a steep climb to make, unless Morrissey fucks up in a major way.
Pretty solid summarization of the situation. I definitely think that Baldwin’s on site safety problems and the seemingly rushed nature of production are going to bite him.
Remember that this occured during a strike, and Baldwin brought in scabs to fill the positions, and then pushed one of those scabs to be the fallguy, despite baldwin being both the one in the position of power, and the one who fired the gun without checking it was loaded.
It’s not the actor’s job to check if a prop is a functional weapon. They have other things to be focusing on.
But since he hired the people and set the policies, he’s still responsible.
It is the job of anyone handling a dangerous object to handle it safely. If they can’t, they shouldn’t.
The point of an armorer on set is that they ensure that the guns aren’t dangerous. The typical rules about “don’t aim at something you don’t want to destroy” doesn’t apply in a movie because otherwise all the action sequences would look dumb with people firing wildly at the ground. How stupid would it look if John Wick shoots at the floor and blood spurts out of the guys face.
That said, anyone who hires a scab armorer gets what they pay for and deserve to be prosecuted.
It is the job of anyone handling a firearm to handle it in a safe and responsible manner.
You don’t get to pull “not my job” when you were holding the firearm that killed someone.
Especially since the normal on set was so far below the industry standard - a fact I would expect somebody with is broad and extensive experience to know as a qualified actor.
He had a duty of care to check the weapon and to handle it safely and he didn’t.
He had a duty of care to not point a fucking lethal weapon at people, and he did.
(This is in addition to potential liability as a producer and a duty of care to ensure workplace safety.)
Or maybe it is the job of any actor pulling the trigger on a gun to check whether it is a real or prop gun and to never do so while there is another person in the line of fire.
It is not. That is why they have a prop master and a master at arms. That person is the one who fucked up.
Sounds like Jack Donaghy was on the set.
