A movie weapons supervisor is facing up to 18 months in prison for the fatal shooting of a cinematographer by Alec Baldwin on the set of the Western film “Rust,” with her sentencing scheduled for Monday in a New Mexico state court.
Movie armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed was convicted in March by a jury on a charge of involuntary manslaughter in the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and has been held for more than a month at a county jail on the outskirts of Santa Fe.
Baldwin, the lead actor and co-producer for “Rust,” was pointing a gun at Hutchins when the revolver went off, killing Hutchins and wounding director Joel Souza.
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Prosecutors blamed Gutierrez-Reed for unwittingly bringing live ammunition onto the set of “Rust” where it was expressly prohibited and for failing to follow basic gun safety protocols. After a two-week trial, the jury deliberated for about three hours in reaching its verdict.
She was crap at her job but she was also too inexperienced for it and employed to do it by cost-cutting producers who took so many shortcuts on set safety, half the crew walked out before this happened.
More powerful heads need to roll.
I think this is a case of nepotism. Her father was a well known armorer. It turns out that does not count as experience.
You are correct that the person in charge of hiring (the producer) should be charged as well.
Oh, which one? Because there were six.
Funnily enough, the DA decided that Baldwin wasn’t actually doing anything as one of them, which I don’t think should be a surprise to people familiar with the idea of celebrity producers.
If you are given a loaded gun on a movie set and told it’s safe by the person in charge of gun safety, you can’t be blamed when it goes off.
Maybe he is as fault for cutting costs but that’s not at all what he was being charged with.
I remember an episode of the Better Call Saul podcast where Vince Gilligan was talking about safety on the set. This was WAY before this incident.
It was something about how they worked with guns and how they use squibs, etc. The way that actors are told about the guns they are using is that the armorer hands them the gun opened, fully emptied. The actor and the person being shot watches as the armorer handles the gun and it is in full view of everyone involved. The gun doesn’t leave the sight of the actor or the armorer as everyone gets in place.
Once everyone is ready, the gun is handed to the actor and then the scene is shot.
The amount of checking and double checking that is done is way over the top. And that’s just for a non-functioning gun For guns with squibs, even more oversight and more checking.
“We’re making a TV show for Christ sake. No one should get hurt, let alone die, because we’re shooting a scene.” (horrible paraphrase of Vince).
The actor shouldn’t “assume” the gun is safe when it’s handed to them. The actor KNOWS it’s safe because they saw it. The armor KNOWS it’s safe because it’s their job. There are no "should"s.
From what I remember, a live round got mixed with the blanks. I don’t think actors are expected to inspect every round let alone know the difference.
As a director on set, maybe Baldwin knew about the live round and even encouraged it, in which case he shares the blame.
But as the person who shot the gun when he was supposed to while filming, I cannot say the same.
And honestly, gun safety isn’t about having the actor, someone who knows nothing about guns, be the last line of defense. If the armorer went through the motions and told him it was safe, how could he spot the difference?
Its a movie, the actor has no gun safety knowledge. Gun safety is paramount but absolutely zero of that responsibility falls on the guy being paid because he looks good and says the lines well.
But tbh I wasn’t there. Maybe he was seriously negligent.
He didn’t shoot it when he was supposed to. It was during a break, not in the middle of shooting a scene.
Simply by aiming the gun at another human being and pulling the trigger = Baldwin being negligent. Only dumbfucks do shit like that.
Nah, one of the very first things you are taught about gun safety is to always assume a gun is loaded until you have checked it for yourself. If someone hands you a gun, you should always check it no matter what. I’ve been in to firearms since I was 8 years old, and I’ve never had a negligent discharge.
They were filming in a state that has a law specifying the exact opposite. “I thought the gun wasn’t loaded” is codified as not being an excuse for a negligent shooting and there isn’t a “it was a movie set” carve out to the law. Hollywood also seems to be extremely split on this with some actors saying you always check and take personal responsibility and others saying to just trust what you are told. If anything hopefully this will lead to actual best practices being adopted industry wide because the current hodgepodge isn’t cutting it.
As someone that has been working around weapons for the better part of 20 years, I disagree with your statement of not being blamed.
It’s unfortunate yes, but whoever had that weapon in their hands and pulled the trigger should hold some blame.
If anyone ever hands you a weapon, movie set or not, it should be checked.
I do understand that it doesn’t quite work that way but that’s how it should be. Anyone handling a real weapon, especially during the course of ones job, should be required to go through training.
Proper gun safety is to always check yourself.l, especially since they had live ammo on the set. These are tools that kill people, you can never be too safe and he should have checked the mag before they shot.
A movie set is not supposed to have a single round of live ammo.
Also you can’t compare actors to other people holding guns for the reason above.
especially since they had live ammo on the set.
At that point all gun safety is already thrown out of the window
Should we hire the old dude who is expensive but has a ton of experience?
Nah, pretty woman with not much experience is cheaper.
This is more than a little misogynistic. There are female armorers in their 20’s out there who are kicking ass after a couple of gigs and old dogs who refuse to change with the times who are timebombs waiting to go off. Gender, how pretty you are, even experience have nothing to do with aptitude. On a set it’s more mindset, willingness to learn, commitment to doing the craft well and wits than experience.
You want to blame something, blame industry nepotism. That’s why she was there. She’s the kid of another armorer who pulled strings for her to get her jobs. Not a gendered thing either. The majority of people I see fucking shit up in my industry aren’t there because someone has aspirations to sleep with them, it’s because they are somebody’s kid, relative or best friend and they can’t be fired.
Film has enough gendered bullshit issues without people pulling this shit about one of the few departments that actually has gender parity.
Women are usually less cavalier when it comes to safety
Special prosecutor Kari Morrissey urged the judge to impose the maximum prison sentence and designate Gutierrez-Reed as a “serious violent offender” to limit her eligibility for a sentence reduction later, describing the defendant’s behavior on the set of “Rust” as exceptionally reckless.
Morrissey told the judge Monday that she reviewed nearly 200 phone calls that Gutierrez-Reed had made from jail over the last month. She said she was hoping there would be a moment when the defendant would take responsibility for what happened or express genuine remorse.
“That moment has never come,” Morrissey said. “Ms. Gutierrez continues to refuse to accept responsibility for her role in the death of Halyna Hutchins.”
To be fair, self-incrimination should not be a part of justice.
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How on earth do you achieve this feat:
“unwittingly bringing live ammunition onto the set”
Weren’t they firing rounds off for fun during breaks? Or was that claim never substantiated
Not that it makes it better but it would explain how it happened
That was never alledged during the trial itself. There was live round practice, but it was done properly at a fireing range.
The prosecution’s theory was that they came from a different set which did use live rounds. Reed brought dummies herself (instead of going through the prop house for everything) due to shortages.
The defenses theory was that their prop house messed up and provided live rounds with their dummies.
The Variety article on the closing arguments is fairly succinct.
The prosecution has argued that the evidence shows Gutierrez Reed inadvertently brought them to set, mingled among dummy rounds. In a police interview, Gutierrez Reed said she brought some dummies that were loose in a bag in her car and were left over from her previous job as armorer on “The Old Way,” a Nicolas Cage film.
“I’m not telling you that Hannah Gutierrez intended to bring live rounds on set,” Morrissey said. “I’m telling you that she was negligent. She was thoughtless. She was careless… For all we know those dummy rounds were floating around the set of ‘The Old Way,’ and Nicolas Cage is lucky to have walked away with his life.”
Throw in the fact that she apparently didn’t even give the rounds a little shake to confirm that they were empty except for the little BB rattling around in there, and “without due caution and circumspection” is a slam dunk. Baldwin’s case is a little more iffy, but certainly a reasonable one to bring to a jury.
Was Baldwin wrong on anything? Was he not just given the gun or were there other things at play?
Based on testimony and evidence presented at the Reed trial:
- He was not paying attention during his gun training.
- He broke gun protocals throughout the filming. Including fireing a (blank loaded) gun after cut was called.
- (The actual event) He pointed a “prop” gun at a real person and pulled the trigger. Even with a cleared gun, this is something that is not supposed to be done. Additionally, this was during a “blocking” session, so the camera was not even rolling. He was not supposed to be using the prop gun at all for this.
Even if the gun was loaded with blanks, this even would likely still have caused an injury (and possibly death, although likely not).
Baldwin will likely argue that Reed was supposed to know all of this and stopped him before the accident happened.
