CMU School of Drama


Thursday, October 28, 2021

Potential legal woes mount after ‘Rust’ shooting tragedy

PBS NewsHour: Alec Baldwin the actor, who pulled the trigger on a prop gun while filming “Rust” in New Mexico and unwittingly killed a cinematographer and injured a director, likely won’t be held criminally or civilly liable for the tragedy.

2 comments:

Alexa Janoschka said...

My first thing is why was anyone standing in the line of shot?? Even if the gun was annoyed as a prop gun and with blanks. First things first, don’t stand in the way that a gun is pointing, fake or not! Not saying that on Halyna’s part, I’m saying that any safety director or producers should have never allowed ANYONE to stand in the line of shot. The quote ending with “I think New Mexico appreciates the business” is just sad. The fact that there are people dying for film making the entertainment industry is just shocking. As an industry we can’t let these things happen, there is no monetary cost that will ever justify death. Ever! I get that there will be legal action taken against those who didn’t care for crew safety but some died. You can’t make up for that with legal fines (thousands or millions) this is an incredibly difficult situation for all involved (on and off set)

Sophie Howard said...

This brought up something even more horrifying about the Alec Baldwin situation. Why were there live rounds found on set days earlier and how did they keep showing up in the guns during any sort of production? The sheer negligence of this situation is mind-blowing and makes me wonder if this film should even be finished. The fact that they 1) allowed live rounds onset and 2) had Hutchins in the line of gunfire is enough to cause the entire production to be shut down. The culmination of this situation into the loss of life is where everything needs to shut down and be built back up from the bottom. The entire industry needs to learn from this and create a more safe production for everyone involved. We need more strict and intensive laws around gun safety to keep everyone safe in a production environment. This needs to happen.

Guns in any environment are an immediate danger to everyone involved, this is undeniable. Industries’ reactions to this tragedy are different from who you speak to. Theatre’s immediate defensive reaction shows how people want to believe they are safe and they rationalize why tragedy could never occur in their safe spaces. I think that firearms in theatrical context should be even more regulated than on film sets, and I think film sets should be VERY stringent in their firearm policy. I hope that theatres reconsider their firearms policies regardless of their beliefs on how safe their own productions are. The idea that a firearm could discharge in a theatre is deeply terrifying considering the density of people in spaces (audience, deck crew, ensemble, etc). I really think that theatres should consider not having functional firearms as props at all considering the suspension of disbelief in the theatre already. It should really be considered.