Fatal Rust

The last thing you think will happen is getting killed by a prop gun. Mishaps do happen on sets of films and shows. A stunt gone wrong. Pyrotechnics, driving, you name it. Gun related things will mostly be tragic. There's a movie being made called Rust. It stars Alec Baldwin and he is a focal point of attention for this. Firing a prop gun in rehearsal, it has killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and injured the writer/director Joel Souza. The incident has made its rounds on LA Times, Vanity Fair, and so many other sites.

This is obviously a police matter. Some want homicide charges on Baldwin. I can see two reasons. One is a political aspect given how much of a liberal he is. I don't think he's that malicious. But the second reasons and more reasonable is that he is a piece of garbage. I can't think of anything positive in his personal life over the last 20 years. I don't see charges sticking to him. If they do, I can't imagine a lengthy sentence by any stretch. Unless there's instance of him being foolish, he wasn't doing anything on purpose.

A lot of questions I think will go into the prop department. Stories from The Sun and LA Times mentioning gun misfires on set. Now there's speculation on the assistant director, Dave Halls. In a sad fate of irony, Halls worked on the sequel to The Crow, which I'm willing to believe is the first thing coming to many people's minds when Baldwin fired. In 1993, Brandon Lee was killed by a prop gun as he was shooting a scene for The Crow. Imagine if an incident occurred on the sequel. This brings to question safety in general.

Someone's getting in trouble. Halls seems like a suspect in terms of negligence as well as whoever is in charge of props. Multiple incidents occurring and with death happening, this should automatically raise red flags. There's stories reported of the crew walking away not too long before the gun was fired because of working conditions. This is a problem with Hollywood unfortunately. I'm going to assume it's beyond just safety with props. New Mexico is not the most ideal place to shoot at certain points of the year because of dry heat. The southwest of the United States in general, too.

The IATSE (International Association Theatrical Stage Employees) was ready to strike until reaching a deal about a week ago, demanding better improvements of working on set. Better working conditions, hours, everything. Hutchins' death will reinforce why they almost went on strike. This is going to look really bad for the industry. Rust should be canned for now. Not until things are vastly improved for safety and better conditions. It's going to be investigated for a while. Don't hold your breath on justice being served, no matter who is in line to be charged.