Alec Baldwin is in New Mexico filming the movie Rust, which is a Western. As with old school Westerns, the actors use guns for the scenes. Yesterday, Baldwin was handed a prop gun that he thought was filled with blanks. Somehow, the gun went off, killing Director of Photography Halyna Hutchins, 42, and inuring Director Joel Souza, 48, according to Santa Fe New Mexican.
That is the very basics because we don’t know what happened.
Conservatives are blaming Baldwin for the accident and say he should be charged with murder. But he did not load the gun. He did not know what was inside of it and what could’ve been jammed inside that could turn a blank into a bullet.
Then they are reports that the crew was overworked, with little downtime, and would have to travel at least an hour to get home every night. Therefore, they didn’t get enough sleep. Something that IATSE was supposed to eliminate with the new contract and didn’t.
But we don’t know if the person responsible for the prop gun was tired and missed something. We just don’t know the details.
When Brandon Lee died on the set of The Crow, people assumed there was live ammunition in the prop gun. There was not. The gun was full of blanks, but there was a cartridge that was accidentally left inside, turning the blank into a bullet.
That is why I keep saying we need to wait to find out what happened before we throw the blame around. There are so many factors that played into yesterday’s accident, so let’s wait before we become judge, jury, and executioner like they did in the Old West.
Let’s pray for Hutchins husband and son. Let’s pray for Souza. Let’s pray for Baldwin. Let’s pray from the person who was in charge of the gun. Let’s pray for everyone who was on the set. Because none of them will ever be the same.
I seriously don’t understand how in the year 2021 we are still using guns with blanks. Why can’t they just CGI the effect of a gun going off?
