Feb 29, 2024 11:27am PT
‘Rust’ Set Footage Shows Alec Baldwin Rushing the Crew, Saying: ‘One More! Right Away! Let’s Reload!’
By Gene Maddaus
https://variety.com/wp-content/uploa...ize=1000%2C563
Santa Fe County Sheriff's Office
SANTA FE, N.M. — The director called “action,” and Alec Baldwin emerged from a wooden shed and advanced toward the camera, firing shots from an old pistol. As soon as he heard “cut,” the actor wanted to do the take again.
“One more! One more! One more! Right away!” Baldwin shouted. “Let’s reload!”
Hannah Gutierrez Reed, the film’s 24-year-old armorer, hurried to put more blanks into his gun. Baldwin was visibly impatient. “Here we go! C’mon,” he said. “We should have two guns and both we’re reloading.”
Gutierrez Reed is now on trial for a fatal accident that occurred later on the set of “Rust.” On Thursday morning, jurors saw outtakes from the film, in which Baldwin could be seen using his pistol to point as he gave instructions to the crew.
The videos — seen publicly for the first time — are likely to be played again at Baldwin’s manslaughter trial in July. Both he and the armorer are accused of criminal negligence in the death of the film’s cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins.
Prosecutors have alleged that Baldwin is responsible both for firing the gun that killed Hutchins, and for management failures in his role as a producer. Baldwin’s defense has argued that he was a “creative” producer and was not in a supervisory role.
Kari Morrissey, one of two special prosecutors, played the videos during the questioning of Bryan Carpenter, a veteran armorer who is serving as the state’s expert witness. Carpenter testified that a series of behind-the-scenes videos showed numerous lapses in gun safety.
In several videos, a stuntman could be seen walking around with a shotgun pointed up — failing to maintain “muzzle discipline.” In another, the stuntman spun around with the gun pointed up, and then handed the gun to a child actor. He faulted Gutierrez Reed for failing to intervene or take the shotgun away.
In other scenes, Gutierrez Reed could be seen holding a shotgun upright by the barrel. Carpenter also said that when Baldwin was trying to speed up the reloading of the pistol, she should have slowed things down.
“Rushing with firearms and telling someone to rush with firearms is not normal nor accepted,” Carpenter testified. “In a situation like that, when you’re getting rushed to that extent, that’s when safety starts to fall by the wayside.”
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Bryan Carpenter, the state’s firearms expert, testifies during Hannah Gutierrez-Reed’s involuntary manslaughter trial at the First Judicial District Courthouse in Santa Fe on Thursday, Feb. 29, 2024.
Gabriela Campos/The New Mexican
In another take, Baldwin could be seen lying on his back on the ground, while holding a pistol. He gestured with the gun, explaining to the crew how he was going to get up and fire.
“I don’t want to shoot toward you,” Baldwin said. “I’m going to shoot close to you.”
Asked if he saw anything wrong with the clip, Carpenter said: “He’s using the weapon as a pointing stick.”
At one point, Gutierrez Reed could be heard off-screen warning the crew: “Everyone in the path of the gun please move.”
Carpenter said it appeared that Gutierrez Reed was avoiding addressing the issue with Baldwin.
“She was attempting to not correct Mr. Baldwin, but to try to make the crew move in a more safe position,” Carpenter said.
On cross-examination, the armorer’s lawyer, Jason Bowles, noted that she was just starting out in the business, and was not even in the union yet. He asked if it would be hard for her to rein in an A-list actor like Baldwin.
“It would be a difficult situation,” Carpenter said.
Carpenter also testified that the production should have had two armorers. Gutierrez Reed was the only armorer, and was splitting her time between that and her role as prop assistant.
But the expert also testified that once she accepted the job, Gutierrez Reed took on the responsibility for others’ lives.
“If that is not something you feel capable of doing, you should never step into the position of doing it,” he said. “You have to be prepared to go home.”
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David Halls, first assistant director on Rust, uses his hand to resemble a gun to recreate a gesture that Alec Baldwin used while on set the day the Halyna Hutchins was killed.
Gabriela Campos/The New Mexican
David Halls was the first assistant director on “Rust,” and the person ultimately responsible for safety on set. He pleaded no contest last year to a misdemeanor charge of negligent handling of a weapon, and served six months of unsupervised probation.
He took the stand on Thursday afternoon, and painted a different portrait of the “Rust” set. He said that until Hutchins was shot, he believed it was safe.
He said that Gutierrez Reed was diligent, and seemed confident and knowledgeable about firearms. He also said that she always checked guns with him before they were used in scenes, as required by industry safety protocols.
And he defended Baldwin, saying that the actor’s conduct on the videos didn’t raise safety concerns for him.
“I don’t characterize that as Mr. Baldwin rushing people,” Halls said. “I characterize it as an actor in his moment — ‘I’m ready. OK, let’s go.’ There was never Mr. Baldwin rushing anybody.”
Halls was also asked about two accidental discharges of blank rounds, which occurred a few days before Hutchins’ death. That incident raised concerns for many of the crew, and led complaints. Bowles asked Halls what he had done about it.
“I didn’t do anything,” Halls acknowledged. “When Blake’s long gun went off, I said, ‘What the F is going on in there?’ He replied, ‘It just went off.'”
Halls has been accused of handing Baldwin his Colt .45 just before Hutchins was shot. That would be a violation of safety rules that allow only the armorer and the actor to handle a weapon. On the stand, Halls denied handing it off, saying that Gutierrez Reed handed it directly to Baldwin.
Halls gave the same account in a December 2022 deposition for the New Mexico Occupational Safety and Health Bureau.
Halls has acknowledged from the beginning that he failed to fully check the gun before it was handed to Baldwin, saying he only saw the back of three or four dummy rounds when Gutierrez Reed rotated the cylinder for him.
Morrissey asked Halls why he had chosen to plead to a criminal charge.
“I was negligent in checking the gun properly,” he said.
Halls was three feet away from Hutchins when the gun went off. He became emotional when he described turning to Hutchins to ask if she was all right.
“She said, ‘I can’t feel my legs,'” Halls said, wiping his eyes with a tissue.
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A teary-eyed David Halls takes a moment to collect himself after recounting the moments following the accidental shooting of Halyna Hutchins.
Gabriela Campos/The New Mexican
In the chaos that followed, Halls found the armorer and demanded that she open up the cylinder to show what was inside. He testified that she pulled out five dummies and one spent casing — the remnant of a live round.
Asked why he had decided to testify, Halls said he wanted to set the record straight.
“It’s important to me that the truth be known — that Halyna’s husband and son, her family, know the truth of what happened,” he said. “It’s important that the cast and the crew and the producers of ‘Rust’ know what happened. And it’s important that the industry, the motion picture and television industry, knows what happened so that this never happens again.”
After the shooting, Halls retired from the industry.
