I can empathize that this sucks to go through because I haven’t read anything to suggest she had murderous intent, but even accidents have consequences. There have to be penalties for setting up dangerous conditions to make sure that happens as rarely as possible. It’s why charges like “involuntary manslaughter” exist.
While this was technically an accident, I put it in the same league as driving drunk and killing someone. It was preventable by doing the bare minimum of what her job responsibilities were.
I agree and that’s why I finished by saying even these situations, where there’s no intent, have to be prosecuted and punished. While I empathize with making mistakes (having made my own albeit none nearly so serious) I still think there’s a good reason she’s headed to prison.
…
It’s “an accident” in the same way getting shit faced and going for a cross country drive and wrecking is “an accident”.
She violated pretty much every safety regulation, and I believe was even getting drunk and shooting the prop guns on set with live bullets. She was definitely shooting them on set, I just don’t know if they proved she was doing it while drunk.
A drunk driver doesn’t mean to kill anyone either. But most don’t say it was just an accident and try to emphasize with the irresponsible sociopath who got someone killed because they thought they knew more than the law.
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This is a WORK place accident, not an at home or social thing.
She was staying after work and shooting live ammo out of the guns used on set…
There is evidence someone was also drinking because she had empty containers in her vehicle along with the live ammo.
They didn’t need to prove she was drinking to find her guilty, but she said she was still “hungover” when she did it.
I’m not sure how much experience you have with alcoholics, but when they say they’re “hungover” they’re usually still legally drunk too. Often they had a drink first thing after waking up to take off the edge.
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Well, I tried…
She (correctly) beat an evidence tampering charge on reasonable doubt, because the person Reed handed a white baggie of powder to, threw it away - after the shooting happened.
If she’s actively using narcotics (why else have it on her?) and working as a set armorer, that is a massive dereliction of duty irrespective of drug laws. She needs treatment absolutely, but as set armorer it is your responsibility ultimately, and there was live ammo that fired on set that day. That is her responsibility, Baldwin’s culpability for firing/“pointing” the gun remains to be determined.
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Back in 2010 an Officer in my state killed 1 motorcyclist and injured two others while drunk driving on the job. He was eventually sentenced to 4 years in prison for that.
By comparison 18 months seems reasonable for her crime.
She wasn’t qualified to do a very specific job she was hired specifically to do. The people who hired her are also at fault, but her very actions and incompetence at her duties lead to a shooting and death. You don’t just shrug and say oops, accidents happen if a certified electrician or utility worker messes up so badly they burn your house down.
People do more time for growing medicinal fungus than she will for manslaughter .
And she will do more time in prison for manslaughter then every rich person who has committed manslaughter and never see a day behind bars.
Intent is part of the law. Yours was a crime committed with intent, her’s was a crime committed by negligence.
So if someone’s intention is to treat depression or cluster headaches the law takes that into consideration? Or not?
I’m not arguing the merit of the law itself, I’m just saying that doing something that you know to be against the law is inherently going to generally get you a harsher punishment than causing harm via negligence.
That’s generally fair. In this the negligence ended a life though.
Well yeah. That’s why there’s any legal punishment at all. Being bad at your job otherwise would just get you fired.
Your honor, when I took on ‘Rust,’ I was young and naive. But I took my job as seriously as I knew how to,"
Why say this?
Because she is still young and naive.
And she took the court proceedings as seriously as she knew how to?
It’s the “I’m just a little guy” defense strategy.
Because sometimes it works.
She really only had ONE job. She failed.
Hire scabs, get scabs results.
This wasn’t a scab hire, it was a nepotism hire.
Nobody seems to be blaming the producer of the movie for hiring these people. The producer is also the man who shot the gun
Oh, which one?
Because there were six producers on the set, and the DA discovered that the celebrity producer you’re mad about didn’t seem to actually have any duties.
This is very, very surprising to people that know how hard working your average celebrity producer is.
Yeah, Producer titles without any responsibilities are included as part of compensation packages all the time. Sometimes they’re assigned because talent is helping fund part of the movie or consulting on some specific topic, but otherwise not involved other than as talent.
Talent is not expected to know everything about every prop they are handling, that is someone else’s job. They are informed of what they need to be careful of either by a prop master, or the armorer. If the armorer is sending out a weapon saying it is ready for set, then talent will expect it to be in the state they have been educated about in advance.
Thing is though that being a Producer comes with different rules on a set. In a normal circumstance narcing on one can be a career limiting move which is why anonymous union and studio hotlines exist but little fly by night passion projects don’t have those. I have seen some really messed up stuff happen when one of the people who puts up the money for the paychecks is in an indispensable role and they flagrantly break a rule… But this case where the highest ranked on set safety officer is the other half of the equation doing it what in the absolute fuck do you do about it?
Given how people were already leaving the show for reasonable safety concerns (which believe me usually have to be pretty agregrious for people to actually split when they are working shows like this ) you can kind of tell tell what the general Producer/Production Manager attitude was about crew safety versus Producer privilege. Technically speaking I think all of them should be at least fined up the ass but it’s so rare that a Producer, celebrity or not is literally left holding a smoking gun.
We as a culture need to really start looking at the power dynamics on a set because lemme tell you - they fucking matter and they can get you killed.
The producer is rich and famous.
Last time I saw a discussion on this, someone said it’s been literally over 100 years since the last time someone died on set from a live gun being fired. There are so many rules and regulations in place I can understand why a producer would assume things are just automatically going to be fine no matter what.
Granted, that’s the kind of “taking things for granted” attitude that leads to counties repealing fluoride requirements for municipal water. People get so accustomed to things working well that they forget it takes work to keep it working.
You’re thinking of 1915’s The Captive, in which an extra was killed but there was also 1993, Brandon Lee in The Crow where a .44 bullet was left in the gun and a blank loaded behind it.
Or 1984’s The Cover Up in which Jon-Erik Hexum shot himself in the head with a blank, but the force of the blast killed him.
Considering the amount of (bad) TV they produced, and being an entertainment venue does Maldondo who shot himself at The Tiger King’s park count, too?
I did mean The Captive, yes. I knew there were instances of death by blanks, but didn’t realize one of them involved love ammo too.
If you mean the one during The Crow that didn’t involve live ammo either. The gun was loaded with dummy cartridges used for closeups that contained only primer but did have a bullet. Someone pulled the trigger on one and the primer was enough to propel the bullet into the barrel. Later in the production it was loaded with blanks but procedures weren’t followed and no one checked the barrel for obstructions.
And from my reading, it doesn’t look like anyone was ever charged in that case. Was that referenced at all in this case?
a fall guy to the producers who brought a bunch of non union workers on set during a strike. obviously she fucked up, but this isn’t just on her, she was at work.
This is a dumb take. Her only job was to make sure the weapons are safe, and she had live ammo on set. The producers may share some of the blame with her, but she’s no fall guy.
She was also supposedly complaining about the judge and jury on her recorded phone calls. The judge sounded incandescent with rage while sentencing her to the maximum of 18 months. In another jurisdiction manslaughter could land you many years in prison.
She additionally lacked remorse. She was feeling sorry for herself and how this conviction would adversely affect her own modeling career.
I think 18 months was very little all things considered.
And she’s also the child of an armorer so it’s not like this was her first rodeo.
interesting that it was actually a white dude in a position with considerable power who discharged the firearm, maybe Baldwin could have checked the gun too.
If i’m caught accidentally shooting someone with live ammunition can I blame the last person who held the weapon, or is it my responsibility to check it myself?
Alec Baldwin shot an killed a woman ffs, and the buck has stopped with some low level minion.
Baldwin’s fault was for hiring subpar staff that were not qualified to perform their duties. And he’s just as culpable for the death on set as the other producers and people calling the shots.
With that said, no, a person he assumed was more knowledgeable about firearms than himself handed him a weapon, told him it was safe and loaded with blanks, and he believed them. In that circumstance, he was not responsible for the fatal discharge, and your straw man is not relevant or hold water, as this wasn’t just a stranger handing him a loaded weapon, this was a paid (supposedly) professional armorer whose entire job description encompasses safe and best practices of firearms on set.
While what you said is factual, this also was the very specific reason she was brought to the set: the safe and professional handling of firearms and firearm analogous props. Her entire job was to ensure no one got shot. 18 months for manslaughter is a slap on the wrist.
That’s fine. They need to prosecute the producers as well.
Oh absolutely, this was a complete failure from top to bottom on responsibilities and best practices. The level of incompetence on display here is at a level where I would hesitate to let this team manage a bake sale, let alone run around with dead weapons to try and make their little picture seem cool.
Wait, so what’s the role of an armorer on set?
They are a subsection of Props which covers everything an actor holds or interacts with during a scene (minus things like furniture) and some things worn during a scene like jewelry (some overlap with costume dept there so not exclusively everything is props)
Armorer specifically deals with the sourcing and safe handling of weapons and armor. Depending on where you are all Props people need to be licenced to handle weapons wherever licencing programs exist so all props people can do the most basic armorer tasks but generally speaking once you stop dealing with rubber toy look-alikes and airsoft weapons most shows will upgrade to an armorer who has specialized knowledge to handle loading, proper storage and instruction on proper handling and guidance.
Thanks! I don’t know much about filmmaking.
I did some googling and it seems like she should’ve been considered too inexperienced for the job, from what I read, westerns are particularly difficult due to the amount of guns on set and should’ve been supported by a crew of multiple armorers?
She’s also simultaneously facing charges of concealing firearms to get them past a bouncer then showing off that she snuck a gun in on social media, so idk how much sympathy I have for her…
Oh… Have no sympathy. This production absolutely should have had more armourers than it did which is one of many reasons why every slimeball Producer deserves to be fined on the thing. She herself was so far off best practice she might as well have been on the moon so the liability pie has a slice for everyone involved.
I have worked shows like this and there’s a certain attitude Production takes where they tend to actively pick and reward people they know will cut corners because doing things slapdash is cheaper and saves them money long term. I have my own tales of Production sleeze that could have gone fantastically wrong and ended up with people dead but didn’t because of basically just luck.
So she didn’t bring live rounds on set and put those live rounds in a prop gun intended for actors in a movie?
50:30 in case anyone just wants the sentencing part, but the lead up is more rewarding. She doesn’t react much to the sentence itself.
Yea, you can tell during her statement that she made it more about her and I knew that would bite her in the ass. Sure enough, the judge caught it.
Damn. No one cares that it’s wildly irresponsible to give a 24 year old with no experience a job of this magnitude and responsibility?
Mega corp and ultra rich actor found a patsy…
I don’t think it’s a patsy when the person who was criminally negligent is held accountable.
Baldwin was also criminally negligent, in several different ways.
First he failed to clear the firearm, second he hired and employed an armorer who was unqualified…. And apparently an alcoholic who was also absent.
He’ll stand trial, so we’ll certainly see if he’s criminally negligent or not.
You mean, we’ll see if a rich, famous white guy whose acting skills are well known can convince a jury he’s really sorry and didn’t know…. And it’s really really not his fault!
His guilt is already there, and I suspect it’s weighing on him heavily. The presumption of innocence is merely an assumption that informs procedural rules preserving Baldwin’s (or any accuse’d) rights and civil liberties.
A man who is guilty of a crime is not innocent then suddenly guilty when a jury finds them so- they’ve always been guilty, and would remain guilty even if they were acquitted. Similarly, an innocent man could be found guilty while being innocent. Such a person doesn’t become guilty just because 12 people made a mistake.
With that rant out of the way….
It’s effectively self evident he was handling a loaded firearm in an unsafe manner resulting in the death of one and severe injury of another.
There are a lot of things that could have prevented this tragedy, personal actions he could take:
- as a producer, hiring a competent armor and support staff. He did not.
- also as a producer, responded to correct the safety concerns that were reported to him.
- adequately reviewing on- and off-set safety protocol.
- he could have inspected the pistol himself. It’s not hard, takes thirty seconds. A trained monkey could do it. He did not
- alternatively, if you want to be truly idiot-resistant, firing into a bullet catcher (a steel box with… stuff… inside to capture any rounds that do go off.) he did not.
- not using a a functional fire arm.
- not hanging crew and actors down range when he was posing.
- not pulling the fucking trigger.
And that’s just off the top of my head. I’m sure there’s more.
None of these things were beyond his capabilities as the actor, nevermind the producer. All of them should be familiar.
None of those things are particularly difficult to accommodate. None of them are “unreasonable.”
It’s kinda funny seeing someone use bullet points about my industry while simultaneously not knowing what the the fuck they’re talking about. And basic law too lmao.
Your industry? Film?
It’s kinda funny some one saying I’m wrong then doesn’t explain in even cursory detail how I’m wrong.
Are you really saying that someone dying from getting shot because a person didn’t handle a firearm in a safe manner, isn’t invul. Manslaughter?
Are you saying that because “you’re” “industry” says it’s okay to handle a firearm in a negligent manner, the laws do not apply?
Edit: here’s the NM law
Sorry, but “an expert telling you it’s okay” doesn’t absolve you of one’s legal responsibility to behave in a reasonable and safe manner.
There were multiple producers, evidence will determine the shared responsibility of each of them
She’s the daughter of a famous armorer / sharp shooter. She was raised around that stuff and should’ve known better.
Being raised around firearms doesn’t qualify you to be an armorer. Neither does her parent being one.
What would is if they apprenticed her, or if she had any actual professional experience.
Just because someone has professional experience doesn’t mean they are actually good at the job. There are keeners who are committed to learning the craft who outdo a lot of negligent old timers after about a month or two. A lot of it just comes down to personality. I tend to be given the task of training green Dressers in my department and I see a gamut of personality and aptitudes. There are a lot of people who very much coast on being somebody’s friend or relative because they don’t need aptitude to get or keep their jobs.
The reality of the situation is that you are way more likely to get hired because either someone likes to have you around because you are already friends or because people like your laid back (generally) rule agnostic personality than based on merit and strict commitment to safe conduct. Doing things properly every single time is often disensentivized as people find people who stick to their guns regarding proper procedures to be too uptight and people who want to coast are literally made uncomfortable when one person is obviously killing it due to constant application of effort because it brings their attention to their own slack they could be picking up. Actually being a force of nature who can do the work of half a crew yourself is actually kind of a gamble in film because on the one hand it makes it possible for more people to slack but on the other is adds to the personal discomfort of the people who are guaranteed to have the ear of the boss.
So, I don’t know about inside theater, but whenever Anyone bit he’s about the OCD protocols/procedures and what not when it comes to our armed guards (which I’m the guy who manages and partially trains them), I send them a few hypotheticals I asked corporate’s actuaries to draft up.
The costs associated with a supposed guard shooting an individually… justifiably, then wrongfully, then themselves.
The expenses and risks are insane. And that’s just the monetary costs. I assume Baldwin is human and therefore pretty fucked up by this, not to mention the grief and pain of Hutchin’s friends and family. Reed, too.
It might be annoying and tedious, but those safety protocols exist for a reason. And while i undo understand it’s not common, anybody handling that weapon needs to be able to clear it safely- and should be trained to do so; because even the best and most competent and OCD armorer is human, and humans make mistakes.
Had a viceral reaction to you calling film/television “theater” that I needed to parse for a second… I have worked the industry over a decade onset and off and I know the utter bullshit Producers pull when they think nobody is looking. Everything about this Production I have heard sounds like shit I worked in the past before I had the security to work Union gigs.
These gigs are generally hackneyed with grandiose dreams where Production chooses people who won’t rock the boat and safety falls completely by the wayside. They just want their shoot day and so they pick folk with cowboy mentality that make industry folk wince at knowing how often they are risking their skins.
In Union world armourers have not just guns but anything that even looks like a gun under lock and key. Doesn’t matter if it’s made of rubber you treat every replica and actual functioning weapon as though it is real. Only armourers and actors touch them. All actors who are given anything gun like must have them in their person or give them back to the armourer. Every actual weapon is handed off only to people who have been briefed on the rules. During the hand off the armourer checks the barrel and load to make sure there is no obstruction and the correct type of blank or dummies. This is done in front of the actor and only once complete and if there’s nothing in can a weapon be described as “cold”. Then before filming begins the size of the load is mentioned to the crew as a precaution to protect people’s hearing. The process isn’t actually all that hard it just requires dedication to do it properly every single time. Armourers tend to be gun enthusiasts anyway so the actual technical aspects of the craft are generally already well known by the first day on set it’s just learning the process.
So when you hear this weapon was left on a cart, picked up by a non-props department member who handed it over and called “cold gun” and handed over blind to a seasoned actor… Naw mate I don’t care how much everybody feels bad about this. People need a smack in the jaw to remember that this is a dangerous industry and you do not cut corners when it comes to safety.
I might be a bit tinfoily here, but since you mention union armorers, wasn’t Hutchins flacking for the union strike over - in large part- firearms safety protocol? I seem to recall several social media posts advocating for solidarity and such.
In any case, having the armorer check the gun like that seems “reasonable” and is likely very effective. My issue with it, is that armorers are people too, and they make mistakes- doesn’t matter how good they are; it’s part of being human. Redundancy is very important when the consequences of a mistake is death.
If there’s a single point of failure, a single mistake can have tragic consequences.
That’s the thing. This wasn’t one mistake on behalf of the armourer. This was a crew lousy with massive safety violations. For this to go wrong she had to fuck up three points in a row. Using live rounds in a film weapon, not clearing and checking the chamber afterwards an instead of locking it up as she was supposed to have done leaving it unattended on a cart. For the other half of the equation you have Baldwin accepting it from a source who was not authorized to handle it, not waiting for a full check and accepting the call of cold weapon from an unauthorized person.
Six points of failure.
But then consider this :
A few days before Baldwin’s stunt double fired two live shots and a total of three accidental discharges. TWO live rounds were fired and yet this didn’t cause Production to bat an eye…
Camera crew walked the week before because gun safety was a fraught issue and the Production Manager did fucking NOTHING about it.
Production fucked with the crew hotel stays so their crew lost sleep which is how a lot of people in my local have gotten fucked up. When your standard day is 12-15 hours sleeping 5 hours a night doesn’t cut it. You make bad calls and are more prone to slip ups.
Yeah, armourers are people who make mistakes. The most common one is missing the last clearing check before handoff ( which actors are also on the hook for and are supposed to insist on if it gets forgotten in the hectic rush) but when you start seeing mistakes that are not just small reasonable mistakes but massive violations of protocol adding up… The word isn’t “mistakes” it’s negligence. When someone gets hurt and dies that’s criminal negligence.
It’s admirable wanting to forgive people on their worst day but I have seen too many working conditions where these “mistakes” are made and someone who was just trying to do their job gets life-changingly hurt and you know what? The person who caused that to happen doesn’t change.The industry doesn’t change. The abuses of power in our industry is aggregious at times and a lot of the way things are structured are to mitigate consequences for the people at the top and their relatives.
What drives me insane is that people just want to assume the best of the people they feel they know. Lady Gaga gets to be “brave” for throwing a hissy fit and endangering the lives of her music video crews for endangering their lives for a shot. Baldwin plays absolute cowboy on a crew that was bleeding from safety concerns and ends up killing someone. It could have been the stunt double the week before who killed someone but the difference between the stunt double and Baldwin is Baldwin could have DONE something about this fucking firestorm. Producers, even principle actors have the power to make things happen. But this show was lousy with people at the top who didn’t fucking care.
We reward the famous all the damn time for playing risky games. We reward producers for making quick dirty unsafe shows and then spinning it like playing with fire was a good thing. We reward nepotism, and cut corners and It has to stop. When your luck runs out all those devils bargains you made should come back to haunt you because it makes people with their head stuck so far up their ass who believe that it could never happen to them actually fucking think.
Are you suggesting Alec Baldwin hired her?
He probably didn’t… But he also didn’t take the weapon from her on the set. He took it from the 1st AD who had absolutely no fucking business handling that weapon in the first place. To give a parable it would be like if you regularly go bungie jumping and the person who is supposed to check your equipment and buckle you in pre jump isn’t around but the parking attendant still wearing his vest shows up gives you a pat down and a thumbs up and says “good to go boss!”
Like if it was your first day on and you somehow got past all the safety layers of people who should give you the full safety spiel… But really? This was not the first nor second rodeo. This was a neon red flashing sign of bad practice.
This wouldn’t have happened with a Go armourer, just saying.
She can do that easy
Now do Baldwin.
