Sure, blame the captain. But there's no evidence that Baldwin is actually the captain of "Rust". He might be a deadheading commodore with no real knowledge of what's going on.
His involvement might well be limited to emerging from his trailer when it's time for him to shoot a scene in which he appears. And then cashing the check from his x% of the gross receipts.
Cindy Hamilton
You are one of the people saying they were shooting out in the desert in their down time. I can understand why the Armorer is saying what she is saying. That would put her in the gross negligence category if she was loaning out prop guns but I am not sure she was controlling much of anything. Why was an assistant producer handling the gun at all?
Careful now. You are bordering on saying this may have just been a labor action by a striking union member ;-)
I am a little curious why those union loving Democrats are not blaming this all on hiring scabs tho. I guess it is still early. They may have that "disgruntled union member" thing in their mind too. That would certainly bump this up into a crime tho.
The story has been widely reported and one of the reasons the people walked off the set.
This may have been before she was hired but I can't believe she didn't hear the story. It does look like she was just hired as a front tho since the Asst Producer was doing her job. She should have loaded that gun and had custody of until she handed it to Baldwin. It just points out what a lot of Hollywood folks are saying. They can't be trusted with real guns.
It should have never been put away loaded, blank or not. These are the kinds of things covered in the first few minutes of an NRA safety course and repeated many times before you are done.
The incompetence is dripping from every orifice of this killing. Many things had to go wrong for this to happen and it could have been prevented by any one of the dozen or so rules that should have been in place.
He calls himself the producer. That implies more executive responsibility than simply providing the money from whatever source he came up with. You may be right tho. He may not have had a clue what was going on in his movie but you can be assured he was pushing to keep the shooting schedule, with whatever bozos they could find, on short notice, to replace the ones who walked out. It seems apparent the armorer was unqualified. Someone was shot with a gun that was her responsibility to insure was safe.
The film had 13 producers. Only the "line producer" is responsible for making the film happen in a real-world way. Baldwin wasn't the line producer.
No, I can't be assured of that. The line producer is responsible for maintaining the shooting schedule.
No argument there. As I've said before, Baldwin was stupid; he should have known how to check and clear the gun he was using, and known that he needed to do that. Both times my husband has taken me to the range, that was the second thing he taught me. (The first being basic trigger discipline.)
Cindy Hamilton
Supposedly, the "armorer" is designated to do that job. That is not the actor's job, and they may be expected to not mess with the guns.
Would you trust an actor to safely check your gun?
That's the entire point. I'd safety check my own gun. Baldwin should safety check his in addition to whatever the armorer does.
And he should have kept his stupid finger off the trigger unless he was planning to shoot.
Cindy Hamilton
That's another good question. I haven't heard an exact explanation of what actually happened. I think they were not filming, but beyond that IDK how exactly the gun went off. Were they rehearsing and he pulled the trigger, believing the gun was empty? I can see that. Harder to understand if he somehow accidentally pulled the trigger on a revolver like that, unless it was cocked, which it should not have been.
It's ironic someone who hates firearms as much as Baldwin picked Vermont to hide in. Anybody 16 or older can purchase a firearm and carry it openly, concealed, or however else they please. That's been the case as long as I can remember. I think the people of Vermont send Bernie to Washington just to be cantankerous.
My understanding is that the firearm used is a F.lli Pietta long Colt 45 revolver; a copy of a Colt SAA. If so, it is a single-action revolver requiring the hammer be cocked to enable firing. The only way it could have fired is if it was cocked.
I was wondering about that, whether it had to be cocked or was a double action type. It's being reported that Baldwin was rehearsing drawing it. If it had to be cocked, then why was it cocked? The latest version of events I've heard on how it happened was this:
It was a rehearsal, not being filmed. Baldwin was doing a cross draw from his holster and that's when it went off. That seems odd. Even if the gun was cocked, one would think that it would be more likely to go off as it was being pulled from the holster or swung up to fire, not once it was pointed straight ahead, in a firing position. Seems more likely to me that the trigger was pulled intentionally, if that's the case.
There are conflicting stories on how the gun got into Baldwin's possession. According to some witnesses, three guns were on a cart, the assistant director took one, handed it to Baldwin and shouted out that it was cold. Other witnesses say that the armorer came over with the gun, that the AD was standing between her and Baldwin, that she handed the gun to the AD and he immediately passed it to Baldwin. There is another version where Baldwin already had the gun, needed to adjust his holster, so he handed it to the AD, who then handed it back when Baldwin was done.
Further complicating things is that some of the witnesses that made statements have now lawyered up and are refusing to cooperate. I did see it reported that Baldwin is calling the cops every day though.
SAA means Single Action Army. OTOH cocking the gun is part of the draw action in a quick draw drill. Pulling the trigger isn't. I also bet the camera was running and the woman filmed her own death. They usually film everything when the talent is rehearsing because if the footage is good, they can use it somewhere and they still want to see how it looks on film, even if they don't use it. I bet this ends up in a settlement. They don't want all the details of gross negligence coming out in a trial that might even preempt the soap operas on TV
All the reports I've seen say that it was not being filmed. Even if it was, how in the world would the director and cinematographer be filmed? They would be behind the camera, not in front of it and in the scene.
It's likely all coming out one way or the other, there is also the criminal investigation and some kind of charges seem likely.
If the camera was running they would have Baldwin firing the fatal shot. I am really surprised if it wasn't running unless he was screwing around before the actual rehearsal started. It wouldn't surprise me if they simply "lost" that film, assuming they even use film in the 21st century.
Just reading about the Rust film on Wiki I noted this quote from Baldwin:
"They're always at the ready. I'm an actor of the old school. So if you read my resume ? my motorcycle riding, my French, juggling, my horseback riding, my gunplay ? is all right at my fingertips at all times."
Stupid remarks like this are one reason this will never see the inside of a court room. They will throw massive amounts of money at the victims and hope it quietly goes away. Most of Hollywood has skin in this game. If gross negligence was adjudicated it might start an investigation into a whole lot of unsafe practices they engage in. The movie business certainly wouldn't want government inspectors crawling all over their sets looking for violations like we see in any normal building site when an OSHA strike team is in town. They self regulate and cover up their failures. If this woman hadn't died, we might not have heard about the shoulder. I know when the stunt woman died in Naples shooting "Gone Fishin", it was quickly off the front page and forgotten. I doubt they did anything significantly different after that.
There is still the very real possibility of criminal charges, though depending on what they are, that could wind up in a plea deal.
If it turns out to be sabotage, which is what the lawyers for the armorer are loudly claiming now, all of the above negatives for Hollywood go away. It's interesting that in their sabotage theory these lawyers haven't said anything about the alleged previous incident a week before this happened. Just speculating here as to why, but one reason would be if it happened the same way. The lawyers are saying a live round was placed into the dummy ammo. If that's what they believe happened the week prior too, probably not a good idea to be broadcasting it, because then people are going to ask what measures were taken to prevent it from happening again, why weren't the police notified, etc.
There are lots of question and has to be some good forensic evidence here:
How were dummy rounds marked to identify them as such? Was the live round marked the same way or not? Can it be determined if that round was from the same batch as the dummies?
If they had a practice of having dummy rounds without them being clearly marked, that would be really dumb. Also, we still don't know if the gun was loaded with blanks or dummy rounds, though from listening to those lawyers it sounds like the latter. If the armorer loaded a gun with dummy rounds, you would expect the final step would be to try firing the gun through all the cylinders. If that simple common sense practice was in place, then a live round would have to have been put in later.
Dummy rounds should be identified as such. Blue is the normal color in the US military. It could be as simple as a blue slug of plastic in the primer pocket. That would stand out in the most cursory inspection even of a loaded gun. It might also go unnoticed on film. If not good enough for the most pedantic director, scrubbing one particular color out is trivial and has been since before computers. (blue or green screen shots spring to mind) I would not expect those draft dodging Hollywood folks to understand that but a decent armorer should.
The idea of sabotage might be true, I mentioned it a week ago but it is also a convenient dodge to absolve everyone of blame except the alleged saboteur. This might end up being Baldwin "in the quest for the real killers". ;-)
Some news source had a more detailed account of what they think happened, I posted it in another reply. But the part relevant here was that the armorer took the gun to where the rehearsal was taking place. They said that following procedure, she handed it to the assistant director and he opened it to examine that it was not loaded. He admitted to police that he did not fully spin it to inspect it though. In that same account it said that dummy rounds had a hole in the side to identify them as such. I immediately thought that's a good idea as part of it, but it should not be relied on because you can't see the hole without removing the round. Your idea of a color mark around the primer area sounds like that should be there too.
The assistant director said that after the accident they opened the gun and found 3 dummies or blanks (I don't remember which) and one empty casing. Which means that if the director told the police that he opened it, but didn't fully spin it, what was he looking for? With four rounds in there, you're going to see some of them as soon as you open it. And as soon as you see it's loaded, the next step is to carefully check what it's loaded with. Still lots of unanswered questions, but this AD guy looks like he's a big part of the failure chain and could face charges. Also according to that account, the armorer was with him after she handed him the gun. You'd think that if she saw him ignore the procedure, she would say something. But then she's a lower level employee and he's the AD, so maybe she didn't say anything.
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