Alec Baldwin starrer “Rust” will resume production with Baldwin remaining as the lead of the film. This is after Baldwin and the movie’s armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed was criminally charged with the death of the film’s cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, according to the DA’s office in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Both individuals have vehemently denied the allegations and any wrongdoings on their part and commented that they will be fighting the charges in court.
The film has now returned to the floor, with a crew consisting of both new and old members.
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What happened?
On October 21, 2021, Alec Baldwin, while rehearsing a scene for the film, fired a Colt gun, which killed Hutchins, the cinematographer and also gravely injured the director, Joel Souza. Before the scene started, Gutierrez-Reed had double checked the .45 Colt gun and failed to see that the gun was loaded with a round of real bullets.
She had even confirmed that the gun was loaded with a round of dummy bullets prior to the incident. What she failed to do was to check all the bullets in front of Baldwin himself, as per the safety protocols.
But she did claim to have the intention of running another safety check, but the production safety coordinator, David Halls, had remarked that the gun would not be used by Baldwin that day, unless it became necessary. Later in the day, of course, the gun was needed by Baldwin to rehearse an unscheduled scene.
Halls, before the scene commenced, yelled ‘Cold Gun’, meaning that the gun had no live bullets, without telling Gutierrez-Reed to examine the gun one last time. He handed the gun over to Baldwin, who, after listening to Hutchins, pointed the gun to the camera and fired it, striking Hutchins and Souza in the process. Four days later, production was temporarily shut down amid police investigations.
The Aftermath
Baldwin, however, vehemently denied pulling the actual trigger. Instead, according to him, he had ‘cocked the gun’, that is, pulled the hammer of the gun back after which, the gun had apparently fired the bullet on its own. But this proved to be false as in later FBI in its forensics reports stated that the .45 Colt could only be fired when the trigger was pulled.
This sort of hazardous handling of the gun on Baldwin’s part prompted Hutchins’s family to file a lawsuit against Baldwin, Gutierrez-Reed, the ammunition supplier and the producers of Rust in February of 2022. The lawsuits claimed that such a tragedy had befallen solely due to Baldwin and the crew’s negligence to follow industry safety protocols and basic gun safety checks while utilizing an actual gun during the filming process. This suit has since been settled in a court of law.
In November 2022, Baldwin himself filed a lawsuit against Gutierrez-Reed and producers of Rust, alleging that they too were culpable as they were the parties who had handed him a loaded gun.
Not just this incident, but the New Mexico Occupational Health & Safety Bureau (OHSB) in its report dated April 2022, found multiple issues with the environment of Rust’s set, leading them to fine the production $137,000 due to safety violations.
Further, according to the report, specific on-set producers have been named who had ignored repeated concerns which were voiced by the employees. One of the employees was also Gutierrez-Reed, who, like others, was ignored by the producers.
Also, according to the OHSB report, two other accidental discharges did take place like this on October 16th, five days before the accident that ultimately claimed Hutchins’s life.
The present status
On October 27th, 2022, the Santa Fe sheriff’s office submitted reports related to their investigation in this case to the prosecutor. On January, 31st, Baldwin and Gutierrez-Reed were criminally charged with two charges of involuntary manslaughter. On February 9th, Hutchins’s family filed a lawsuit again against Baldwin, Gutierrez-Reed and the producers and other members of the crew. Baldwin and his crew, consisting now of both new and old members, have returned to resume production on ‘Rust’.
