A movie weapons supervisor is facing up to 18 months in prison for the fatal shooting of a cinematographer by Alec Baldwin on the set of the Western film “Rust,” with her sentencing scheduled for Monday in a New Mexico state court.
Movie armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed was convicted in March by a jury on a charge of involuntary manslaughter in the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and has been held for more than a month at a county jail on the outskirts of Santa Fe.
Baldwin, the lead actor and co-producer for “Rust,” was pointing a gun at Hutchins when the revolver went off, killing Hutchins and wounding director Joel Souza.
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Prosecutors blamed Gutierrez-Reed for unwittingly bringing live ammunition onto the set of “Rust” where it was expressly prohibited and for failing to follow basic gun safety protocols. After a two-week trial, the jury deliberated for about three hours in reaching its verdict.
She was crap at her job but she was also too inexperienced for it and employed to do it by cost-cutting producers who took so many shortcuts on set safety, half the crew walked out before this happened.
More powerful heads need to roll.
I think this is a case of nepotism. Her father was a well known armorer. It turns out that does not count as experience.
You are correct that the person in charge of hiring (the producer) should be charged as well.
Oh, which one? Because there were six.
Funnily enough, the DA decided that Baldwin wasn’t actually doing anything as one of them, which I don’t think should be a surprise to people familiar with the idea of celebrity producers.
If you are given a loaded gun on a movie set and told it’s safe by the person in charge of gun safety, you can’t be blamed when it goes off.
Maybe he is as fault for cutting costs but that’s not at all what he was being charged with.
I remember an episode of the Better Call Saul podcast where Vince Gilligan was talking about safety on the set. This was WAY before this incident.
It was something about how they worked with guns and how they use squibs, etc. The way that actors are told about the guns they are using is that the armorer hands them the gun opened, fully emptied. The actor and the person being shot watches as the armorer handles the gun and it is in full view of everyone involved. The gun doesn’t leave the sight of the actor or the armorer as everyone gets in place.
Once everyone is ready, the gun is handed to the actor and then the scene is shot.
The amount of checking and double checking that is done is way over the top. And that’s just for a non-functioning gun For guns with squibs, even more oversight and more checking.
“We’re making a TV show for Christ sake. No one should get hurt, let alone die, because we’re shooting a scene.” (horrible paraphrase of Vince).
The actor shouldn’t “assume” the gun is safe when it’s handed to them. The actor KNOWS it’s safe because they saw it. The armor KNOWS it’s safe because it’s their job. There are no "should"s.
From what I remember, a live round got mixed with the blanks. I don’t think actors are expected to inspect every round let alone know the difference.
As a director on set, maybe Baldwin knew about the live round and even encouraged it, in which case he shares the blame.
But as the person who shot the gun when he was supposed to while filming, I cannot say the same.
And honestly, gun safety isn’t about having the actor, someone who knows nothing about guns, be the last line of defense. If the armorer went through the motions and told him it was safe, how could he spot the difference?
Its a movie, the actor has no gun safety knowledge. Gun safety is paramount but absolutely zero of that responsibility falls on the guy being paid because he looks good and says the lines well.
But tbh I wasn’t there. Maybe he was seriously negligent.
Simply by aiming the gun at another human being and pulling the trigger = Baldwin being negligent. Only dumbfucks do shit like that.
He didn’t shoot it when he was supposed to. It was during a break, not in the middle of shooting a scene.
Nah, one of the very first things you are taught about gun safety is to always assume a gun is loaded until you have checked it for yourself. If someone hands you a gun, you should always check it no matter what. I’ve been in to firearms since I was 8 years old, and I’ve never had a negligent discharge.
They were filming in a state that has a law specifying the exact opposite. “I thought the gun wasn’t loaded” is codified as not being an excuse for a negligent shooting and there isn’t a “it was a movie set” carve out to the law. Hollywood also seems to be extremely split on this with some actors saying you always check and take personal responsibility and others saying to just trust what you are told. If anything hopefully this will lead to actual best practices being adopted industry wide because the current hodgepodge isn’t cutting it.
As someone that has been working around weapons for the better part of 20 years, I disagree with your statement of not being blamed.
It’s unfortunate yes, but whoever had that weapon in their hands and pulled the trigger should hold some blame.
If anyone ever hands you a weapon, movie set or not, it should be checked.
I do understand that it doesn’t quite work that way but that’s how it should be. Anyone handling a real weapon, especially during the course of ones job, should be required to go through training.
Proper gun safety is to always check yourself.l, especially since they had live ammo on the set. These are tools that kill people, you can never be too safe and he should have checked the mag before they shot.
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A movie set is not supposed to have a single round of live ammo.
Also you can’t compare actors to other people holding guns for the reason above.
Should we hire the old dude who is expensive but has a ton of experience?
Nah, pretty woman with not much experience is cheaper.
This is more than a little misogynistic. There are female armorers in their 20’s out there who are kicking ass after a couple of gigs and old dogs who refuse to change with the times who are timebombs waiting to go off. Gender, how pretty you are, even experience have nothing to do with aptitude. On a set it’s more mindset, willingness to learn, commitment to doing the craft well and wits than experience.
You want to blame something, blame industry nepotism. That’s why she was there. She’s the kid of another armorer who pulled strings for her to get her jobs. Not a gendered thing either. The majority of people I see fucking shit up in my industry aren’t there because someone has aspirations to sleep with them, it’s because they are somebody’s kid, relative or best friend and they can’t be fired.
Film has enough gendered bullshit issues without people pulling this shit about one of the few departments that actually has gender parity.
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Women are usually less cavalier when it comes to safety
Cite your sources.
Car insurance rates for men and women.
You guys are nuts sometimes
How on earth do you achieve this feat:
“unwittingly bringing live ammunition onto the set”
literally had one job to do, and failed.
Weren’t they firing rounds off for fun during breaks? Or was that claim never substantiated
Not that it makes it better but it would explain how it happened
That was never alledged during the trial itself. There was live round practice, but it was done properly at a fireing range.
The prosecution’s theory was that they came from a different set which did use live rounds. Reed brought dummies herself (instead of going through the prop house for everything) due to shortages.
The defenses theory was that their prop house messed up and provided live rounds with their dummies.
The Variety article on the closing arguments is fairly succinct.
The prosecution has argued that the evidence shows Gutierrez Reed inadvertently brought them to set, mingled among dummy rounds. In a police interview, Gutierrez Reed said she brought some dummies that were loose in a bag in her car and were left over from her previous job as armorer on “The Old Way,” a Nicolas Cage film.
“I’m not telling you that Hannah Gutierrez intended to bring live rounds on set,” Morrissey said. “I’m telling you that she was negligent. She was thoughtless. She was careless… For all we know those dummy rounds were floating around the set of ‘The Old Way,’ and Nicolas Cage is lucky to have walked away with his life.”
Throw in the fact that she apparently didn’t even give the rounds a little shake to confirm that they were empty except for the little BB rattling around in there, and “without due caution and circumspection” is a slam dunk. Baldwin’s case is a little more iffy, but certainly a reasonable one to bring to a jury.
Was Baldwin wrong on anything? Was he not just given the gun or were there other things at play?
Based on testimony and evidence presented at the Reed trial:
- He was not paying attention during his gun training.
- He broke gun protocals throughout the filming. Including fireing a (blank loaded) gun after cut was called.
- (The actual event) He pointed a “prop” gun at a real person and pulled the trigger. Even with a cleared gun, this is something that is not supposed to be done. Additionally, this was during a “blocking” session, so the camera was not even rolling. He was not supposed to be using the prop gun at all for this.
Even if the gun was loaded with blanks, this even would likely still have caused an injury (and possibly death, although likely not).
Baldwin will likely argue that Reed was supposed to know all of this and stopped him before the accident happened.
It’s been a while since I really looked into it, but there seem to be some open questions that could get him on the same standard:
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What’s up with his claim that he didn’t even pull the trigger, which seems to have been misleading?
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Could he have pointed the gun in a slightly different direction?
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Was the shot they wanted so artistically necessary that it had to be done with practical effects?
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Does an actor still maintain some residual “normal human” responsibility before pulling a trigger on a real gun pointed at an innocent person, and if so how much?
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Did he, in his role as a producer on a fairly slapdash production, bear any culpability for the armorer’s actions or for hiring her in the first place? The NM statute is pretty broad, though I think he’ll more likely face civil than criminal liability here.
All in all, my gut impression is he has a very good chance at being acquitted, but it was also a fair case to bring:
Involuntary manslaughter consists of manslaughter committed in the commission of an unlawful act not amounting to felony, or in the commission of a lawful act which might produce death in an unlawful manner or without due caution and circumspection.
EDIT: @[email protected] is probably more up on what’s going on than I am.
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Baldwin is absolutely worth going after. Guy is a producer in the set who flagrantly broke protocol any greenhorn actor would have drilled into their heads first day on set. He’s liable as an employer to provide a safe work environment and the people who broke the rules were all people hired to positions meant to enforce safety on the set.
If a regular someone broke the rules he broke on any set I have worked they would have had their ass fucking handed to them. Rule one on a set, DON’T TOUCH anything that is not directly related to your department. If anyone saw a 1st AD with a weapon in hand for any reason on a set his job would be on the line… Yet this producer took it from him without asking questions. Anyone who saw that happen would immediately know the set safety is fucked… But who are you going to report to? Production? Not when the producer is the one breaking the rule . The Union? Nope- not a union show? Studio Hotline? Ha, not unless they are able to pull funding. OSHA? Good luck explaining the complex best practice of film work to some normie showing up on set.
Union and studio produced film has layers of folks who check producer power and mitigate the liability of individual producers on a set… But if there is no one who can stop you congrats! You are liable for what happens on your show.
In reality these people had two options. Work on an unsafe set where Production was obviously crooked and take the risk - or lose money and maybe risk their personal relationships to follow their instincts and leave. Baldwin put these people’s lives and careers at risk.
Bullshit. You test and inspect everything that goes into a actor’s hands doesn’t matter what it is particularly when it comes to fx and stunts. Throwing shade on a prop house is a skeezeball move. Our industry has best practice checks that you do at multiple points - upon purchase before the day, when you load up and immediately before you hand over the weapon. Even if they somehow bought their live rounds from a prop house you would have to ignore at least three levels of check you should be doing to get that far, nevermind the weapon was left on a cart and handed over by someone unauthorized.
It doesn’t matter if it’s a breakaway ceramic piece or a round - you buy extra then what you need for camera and you check…
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Thanks, I haven’t really been following this story so I appreciate the insight
Tbh that’s worse.
Willfully violating protocol and allowing live ammo to be near, let alone loaded into, the prop gun. That makes them even more culpable.
Yeah no kidding. The very definition of reckless negligence, jesus christ.
Real guns don’t need to be on movie/tv sets anymore.
Craig Zobel, the director of the Emmy-winning HBO miniseries “Mare of Easttown,” drew one of the first lines in the sand after “Rust” actor and producer Alec Baldwin fired the gun that killed Hutchins.
“There’s no reason to have guns loaded with blanks or anything on set anymore. Should just be fully outlawed,” Zobel tweeted early Friday while the country absorbed the news.
“There’s computers now. The gunshots on ‘Mare of Easttown’ are all digital,” he added. “You can probably tell, but who cares? It’s an unnecessary risk.”
He was soon joined by other producers and directors. Alexi Hawley, the showrunner of the ABC police procedural “The Rookie,” said in a memo to cast and crew members that there would be “no more ‘live’ weapons on the show.”
In the future, all gunfire on “The Rookie” will come from airsoft guns — replica toys that use pellets instead of bullets — with CGI muzzle flashes added in post-production, Hawley wrote in the memo, first reported by The Hollywood Reporter and confirmed by NBC News.
“Any risk is too much risk,” he wrote.
Eric Kripke, the showrunner for Amazon’s dark comedy “The Boys,” made a similar pledge: Source
You can keep your fake-ass CGI gunshots to yourself, I will keep only watching movies where all deaths are real
Animals were definitely harmed during the making of this movie. And it wasn’t just one or two, it was a pretty apalling number of them. We’re not good people.
I’ve been going through some of the IMDb top 100 and occasionally an animal will very clearly just really have died for that movie and I just don’t understand why. Immediately ruins the entire movie for me every time. Oldboy being a great example.
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You can even get airsoft guns with good blow back on them now.
Special prosecutor Kari Morrissey urged the judge to impose the maximum prison sentence and designate Gutierrez-Reed as a “serious violent offender” to limit her eligibility for a sentence reduction later, describing the defendant’s behavior on the set of “Rust” as exceptionally reckless.
Morrissey told the judge Monday that she reviewed nearly 200 phone calls that Gutierrez-Reed had made from jail over the last month. She said she was hoping there would be a moment when the defendant would take responsibility for what happened or express genuine remorse.
“That moment has never come,” Morrissey said. “Ms. Gutierrez continues to refuse to accept responsibility for her role in the death of Halyna Hutchins.”
To be fair, self-incrimination should not be a part of justice.
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producers should be in jail for 5-10 years or they won’t learn to cut costs
