I think its more fair to put the blame on the Armourer than to blame the actor. Still 3 years in American prison is to much to put on someone with no criminal intent. She should be put on home detention or community service for 3 years.
Baldwin was the primary producer on the film and the set conditions had had numerous safety issues up until this point including 3 other firearm misfires. There was a documented safety issue on this set and while Gutierrez-Reed was part of it, the showrunners clearly were too by not taking steps to address it before the tragedy happened.
I don't disagree that he may be civilly liable for the safety conditions in general on the set. I just don't think that his role in this particular case amounts to criminal negligence. From what I have heard, he had every reason to think that his weapon was safe to handle and use. In order to be guilty of manslaughter, you have to act with gross negligence, meaning that you know the risk of harm to another due to your action is real and significant and yet you choose to do the action anyway. In this particular case, he would have reasonably believed that the risk in his actions was essentially none at all.
The negligence was primarily on the armourer and secondarily on the guy who was meant to confirm the armourer (the assistant director? I can't recall), both of whom failed in their basic due diligence and assured the crew and cast that the firearm was safe when it was not.
They had 3 other firearm misfires on this set. That alone is unacceptable, but to assume any weapon on set is safe at this point would be insane.
So what matters for a manslaughter case is proving with evidence that the defendant was aware of the risk and ignored it. That is simple enough with an armourer who mismanaged rounds and didn't do her due diligence. The very nature of her role, why she was hired, was to be aware of and minimize/eliminate the risks.
In Baldwin's case, you would have to prove that, at the time, he understood that the armourer's work (and the guy checking her work) was untrustworthy, and yet he pulled the trigger anyway. You can argue that he should have known that until you're blue in the face. But a prosecutor would have to prove that he did know that, beyond reasonable doubt. The mental state of the individual determines whether the death they caused was murder, manslaughter, or just an accident beyond their control.
From what I have heard, he had every reason to think that his weapon was safe to handle and use.
Several members of the crew walked off set earlier that day because safety protocols were not being strictly followed.
Hours before actor Alec Baldwin fatally shot a cinematographer on the New Mexico set of “Rust” with a prop gun, a half-dozen camera crew workers walked off the set to protest working conditions.
...
Safety protocols standard in the industry, including gun inspections, were not strictly followed on the “Rust” set near Santa Fe, the sources said. They said at least one of the camera operators complained last weekend to a production manager about gun safety on the set.
If he were a greenhorn actor on his first day on a non-union set I might give him the benefit of the doubt... But do you know how often an actor handling a firearm gets the full run down on weapon safety procedure in our industry? Every. Single. Production.
Here's what happened in Baldwin's case. He, a seasoned veteran, accepted a weapon from not just an unauthorized person, but a highly visible person on the set. The 1st AD, the guy who handed him the weapon is responsible for enforcing safety on the set in a general sense to protect a production from liability. Everyone on that set who saw that handoff would have known instantly that was an unauthorized handoff because as regular crew the FIRST rule a newbie learns is you NEVER touch other departments stuff EVER. Someone leaves a box of lenses in your way you call someone from camera to pick it up and move it the nessisary three feet out of your way or else you risk being skinned alive.
But here's the thing. Baldwin is a Producer. There is an implicit power balance on set. What happens when the guy with instant hiring and firing power, funding the project and given control of the creative and business aspects of production breaks a rule FLAGRANTLY on the set that even the GREENEST of greenhorns would know. A rule that every one knows because of the high profile deaths that caused those rules to come into being... And the chief onset safety officer charged by the production is the one that is the other half of the transaction? What the absolute fuck do you do?
Do you trust the Production Manager with your complaints? They are the one technically above the 1st AD in charge of Production liability and safety concerns but they are still beholden to the producers. Maybe you could call the Union hotline and get the entire thing shut down? Oh...But this wasn't a union show? Well shit. Well I guess you got to consider taking the hit and quitting because that's basically your only option. This particular production already had union numbers dropping and leaving production to unaddressed and flagrantly ignored safety concerns. Union members are allowed to work for non-union shows but the union safety training is hardcore and union guys know transgressions when they occur. They renew the main bullet points in safety talks every show start of every day of shooting where those safety concerns are likely to come up. After awhile there's some you know by heart. Animals on the set, pyrotechnic safety, spfx weather, car stunts, process car guns... Basic basic shit.
No. Everything about this situation screams to me that this show, this Production team specifically, was fucking dirty. People love to forget that Producers are employers. They focus on all the creative stuff they do forgetting that end of day someone is in charge of providing a safe working environment. The big studios have safety committees and oversight to take the weight off producers, the unions can shut you down for bad practice instantly... On union shows.
But not every show has these mitigating checks to producer power and liability. Particularly non-union gigs. That's the implicit risk of them. Baldwin and every other producer on Rust deserves a slice of the penalty for negligence. They had multiple warning signs and people who took personal financial hits by leaving to protest the culture of safety on their show before this incident because there was no other authority to petition. When there's no other authority to petition congrats, you are liable when you are found guilty of running a worksite that is flagrantly ignoring well trod industry wide safety standards.
You should blame Alec's parents for giving birth to him. You know, because they were the ones that caused all this. Without them this wouldn't have happened. Or maybe we should blame the person that introduced their parents together?
Sentencing hasn't happened yet, three years is the maximum sentence possible.
Actors literally get paid to point guns at each other, handle them unsafely, and click the trigger.
Could be mistaken, but I think people were going after Baldwin for this because he was a producer? As in, he funded and hired the armourer so ultimately it was his fault.
This is dumb. Learn like airlines do; only prosecute for malicious intent. In all other cases, learn. Create procedures that make this situation impossible, and make certain that all major productions follow them.
Saying it's X or Y person's fault absolves any systemic issues. What training should an armorer have? Can we avoid a single point of failure that results in live ammo on set? Etc etc.
Edit: thank you Lemmy for positive votes. The Reddit threads are absolutely bloodthirsty in comparison. Good change in pace here.
Umm.. No. I am sorry but you are about 30 years out of date in believing this is a problem of not having enough proceedure. In the wake of the death of Brandon Lee the industry created a very comprehensive system of weapon checks and requiring all basic prop people to go through licencing and safe handling programs as part of getting their union ticket never mind armourers who require more extensive courses in handling a wide range of weaponry and experience in handling them.
The Rust case IS one where legitimate negligence of stringent industry standard was SO endemic that there is no leg to stand on. This is criminal negligence. Unionized workers were already leaving that production for safety concerns before the incident occured.
Here is a list of things that specifically went wrong in process for this specific incident to happen.
Even if the gun were loaded with blanks not submiting to all of this process would leave the door open to someone getting killed on a set. Even blanks can kill. At this point the criminal negligence pie is so big that the slices that get handed out are going to hurt. Before you start calling this case "dumb" understand the industry.
the weapon was used with live ammo to shoot during the work day.
When I heard about this I had a strong feeling about what happened: people were firing the gun for fun while it wasn’t being used for the film. There would be an easy way to avoid the most remote possibility of this happening by accident: no live ammo on the set at all, period.
I mean... It's not the only problem? If you get killed by an actual bullet on a set something has gone spectacularly wrong. But you could just as easily get killed by something getting lodged in the barrel and getting propelled at bullet speed. Even a fairly small obstruction can be lethal. That's why whenever you as a props person / armorer hand a gun to an actor you perform a full check of the gun while the actor watches.
If you as an actor get handed a weapon without a check you call foul. If you as a crew member see a props person hand off without a check you call foul.
Even rubber prop weapons that have no capacity to fire and no internal components at all are treated the same as live weapons. Only props people or actors touch them, no one else. They are under lock and key when not actively under supervision or on someone's person and they have to be demonstrated, checked and explained at handoff with instructions for their safe return... Again... Rubber weapons on your average film set set is treated with more respect then the live weapons on Rust were.
It's really hard to explain to people how actually fucked up the situation on the Rust set is because they think we're wild westing all the time.
I'm familiar with that area of New Mexico and also read about how difficult it was for the set staff to deal with various conditions, such inadequate accommodations and being 1 hour+ from the closest vestige of civilization. That's definitely the middle of f'in nowhere. I don't even see how driving to Springer, Raton or Cimarron or what, Wagon Wheel would help much. It sounds like it was a poorly organized production in general.
Okay, good point, many other things went wrong with the protocol. I've had other discussions where I speculated that they could just use CGI to fill in the gun parts and it would seem about as realistic given the level of capability that has these days, but people have said the trend these days is for 'realism' in gun battles in movies.
It's basically still cheaper to hire one props person or armorer than a whole vfx team. To do good vfx there's a nessisary on site component and people react more realistically to actual weapon recoil and timing meaning less takes.
Realistically out of all the ways to die or even be injured in film guns are super rare. There have been three gun deaths in the past 40 years of filming and Rust is the first after all the gun safety changes that were made after the death of Brendan Lee on the Crow. The most common ways to die involves falling from a height over 3 ft, mishaps around vehicles and electrical shocks.
The industry is also super interconnected. If someone dies anywhere in the US or Canada on a film set union or not the news is known in every corner of film in about 3 hours.
Yes, I know the list of things that kinda-sorta-shoulda happened. That's really my point, though. How can a production big enough to star Alec Baldwin and other union actors be able to run with non-union armory and such piss poor procedures?
We know that the whole safety procedures from top to bottom were rotten. So putting criminal blame on one person doesn't ring honest. How can we know the whole story if everyone is trying to cover their tracks to not land in prison? The people with meaningful authority on set failed, and I'm not convinced that this armorer truly had the authority to shut down production on safety grounds.
Procedural changes might be mandating that productions need armorers who are then protected from dismissal if things get dangerous, so they can stop productions etc. But nothing will change this time, since we have found someone to blame.
Here is what it is. The name of the star isn't important. Union people are not barred from being on non-union productions. I have had my union card over a decade and I have worked non union on occasion. What the difference is is how much of the liability is sunk by the Producers.
On a union show at any point there is a hotline I can call where a team from the Directors Guild, IATSE and the Teamsters can show up and stop production flat. That's on a union show. If it's a big studio there's a studio hotline that I can call who will check Producers because they protect their investments by enforcing standards.
If you have neither and you front the money and make the decisions at the top and have no regulatory body to which your employees can take their concerns to mitigate the responsibility to then you THE PRODUCER assume the liability for failure to provide a safe work environment. Alec Baldwin among other things is a Producer. He may have forgot that his job is an an employer and not an employee but the law fucking hasn't.
Yeah, if people are taking falls, Baldwin needs to take one. I am shocked that Halls got 6 mo suspended, too, as he was previously fired after another unexpected discharge among other complaints.
Non-union shows can be a bit of a nightmare for safety because Producers don't have the checks on power they should. Calling foul using government outsider jobsite regulators comes with potential costs of losing your job and blacklisting you with the other powerful people affiliated with production because Producers don't want to be bothered. Going out into the middle of nowhere where it's hard to get someone from OSHA to show up while something fuckity is actively happening is another layer of complexity.
Just like any other kind of work you don't get burned by liability and manslaughter charges until the bad thing actually happens. Union Film is one of the most regimented workplaces you're ever likely to encounter. Non-union projects though run the gamut. Anyone can fund them, they can be any size and they can be staffed with anything from people untrained in industry standard to folks with decades of experience. The wise thing for a Producer to do is to cover their ass by staffing with people who will enforce good safety standards but end of day if an aspirant first time Producer on a non-union show wants to hire all newbies there no immediate recourse. It's no different than if an employer at a regular job hires someone unqualified to do a dangerous job. It is the threat of it coming back to bite you in the ass that keeps you honest.
It's not like the airline industry. Shows pop up, they incorporate, they shoot then they completely dissolve and disappear within the space of as little as a couple of months and everyone goes back to shopping around for the next gig. Every non-union show is a tiny little bubble. If individuals don't face consequences things will never get better because there's no real cohesive industry after a certain point of the non-union world. Like if you work one of those things it's because you knew somebody who personally asked you to be on show as a personal favor or you're trying to upgrade your category or get started and show up on a word of mouth recommendation with promises of gaining experience and access to a group of people with money, wild aspirations and enough connections with techs or excitable talented amateurs to make something happen that may pay off further down the line.
The whole damn thing is rubber bands and handshakes.
Nahh. I watched the trial, this is a clear case of criminal negligence. The set was a mess, everything was rushed, someone died. There are dozens of gun heavy sets every months accross the US, yet people dont die. The producers and the armorer are responsible for gun safety on the set, they failes, they need to be held accountable.
I'm pretty sure there are already procedures and those include never having real guns on a set. If you do have real guns on a set (why would you ever have real guns on a set) they should be physically separated, and visually distinct.
Of course the real solution would just be to never have real guns on a set which of course is rule one that she broke. They didn't need real guns, they had them there for no reason that's why she's guilty because she was doing a stupid thing for no good reason.
There's a bunch of things that should never happen. No real guns on set. No live ammo ever near those guns. No removing guns from set. No pointing guns at people. All the procedures getting skipped when a new person holds a prop.
By blaming a person and one element of it, we leave everything else as it was and more accidents will eventually happen. Sooner or later a studio will want a non-union armorer that they can boss around again, who won't have the authority to push back on things, and if we don't learn now then it can all repeat.
Yo, all that shit exists and was presented in the trial. Lmao.
I feel like a slap on the wrist would just incentivize this sort of behavior.
I think what they mean is it would bring about change across the entire industry to prevent this type of thing from happening regardless of who's in charge.
There are already industry standards to point to the left or right of the target when firing on set, there are already strict procedures and guides for actors and armorers both. This event happened due to multiple levels of gross negligence. To say "only prosecute for malicious intent" is just legalizing murder.
Yeah, I didn't say I agree too much with the concept, especially with the way airline safety has been pretty sketchy nowadays.
If people were bored and wanted to plink cans, fine. DON’T USE THE FUCKING OFFICIAL PROP GUNS.
Several lines of responsibility got lazy on that set. The most egregious is that someone other than The Armorer had access to the guns used on set.
I am a consequentialist, so while I don't support the current state of "reform" in the USA I still think negligence is just as punishable an offence as malice.
I think Baldwin, responsible for cutting corners resulting in loss of life, should also face prison time.
Baldwin is old enough to remember what happened to Brandon Lee. Add several workers leaving for safety reasons and it makes Baldwin the Producer and decision taker, responsable for turning a blind eye on all the security violations.
He was the one gambling and taking a chance, as always, for a bigger profit.
Gutierrez-Reed was unprofessional and ignored many safety procedures and is very responsible also, and should have walked out also... but being young and on your first jobs can be demanding and difficult to say no. What a wake-up call for her.
she's got a great hairstyle here.
I was thinking that she definitely doesn't look like what I assumed an armorer would look like
The way she looks in real life before this trial is nothing like she looks during the trial now. They're trying to make her look as professional as possible
Maybe now Hollywood will stop using real guns
Why do they even use real guns? And even when they do why aren't they guns with locked/incapacitated barrels, blocked ? I am sure that they could have disabled the hammer, detached the trigger so that it did not actually fire or maybe even dont allow real guns and bullets in filming locations?
A good armorer uses a mix of these techniques, and it usually isn't a problem there have only been 3 ~~gun injuries~~ live ammo shootings:
-The Captive (1915). -The Crow (1994). -Rust (TBA).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_film_and_television_accidents#
This one too:
Cover Up (1984). While waiting for an episode filming to resume, actor Jon-Erik Hexum played Russian roulette with a .44 Magnum loaded with a blank. The gunshot fractured his skull and caused massive cerebral hemorrhaging when bone fragments were forced through his brain. He was rushed to Beverly Hills Medical Center, where he was pronounced brain dead.>
huh, I missed that one, I was looking for live rounds, there are a few other instances involving blanks or prop guns:
The Girl of the Golden West (1915). Actor House Peters Sr. suffered serious burns to his face and hands when a prop pistol exploded upon being fired.
The General (1926). During filming of the epic comedy in Oregon, there were a number of incidents. Several National Guardsmen, employed as extras for the Civil War battle scenes, were injured by mishaps caused by misfired muskets or explosions. Director and star Buster Keaton was knocked unconscious when he stood too close to a cannon firing. Assistant director Harry Barnes was accidentally hit in the face by a blank charge. Train brakeman Fred Lowry sued the production for US$2,900 after his foot was crushed when it was run over by a locomotive wheel during filming of one of the railway scenes
Die Hard (1988). Bruce Willis lost two-thirds of his hearing in his left ear after firing a gun loaded with extra-loud blanks from underneath a table.
there was also:
My Life for Ireland (1941). An anti-British propaganda film made by Nazi Germany. During the epic final-battle scene set during the Irish Civil War, several extras were killed when one of them stepped on a live land mine. The footage is said to have been included in the release prints, although no proof of this has been established
but that's more of a where did you get a live land mine issue.
Wow.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Her mother, seated behind her, put her hands on her head and bent forward as the judge ordered her remanded into custody pending sentencing.
During the prosecution's closing arguments on Wednesday, Kari T. Morrissey told the jury that Gutierrez-Reed "was negligent, she was careless, she was thoughtless."
But he said he did not realize he had been injured by a live round of ammunition, and when medical personnel informed him at the hospital, “It could not compute for me,” Souza said.
Dave Halls, who was the film’s safety coordinator and pleaded no contest to negligent use of a deadly weapon last year as part of a plea deal, also took the stand.
During opening statements, special prosecutor Jason Lewis called Gutierrez-Reed’s behavior on the “Rust” set “sloppy” and “unprofessional.”
Dana Griffin and Sumiko Moots reported from Santa Fe, and Chloe Melas from New York City.
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