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Alec Baldwin is due to be tried for involuntary manslaughter following the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the 'Rust' film set in 2021.
I'm amazed at this. Actors have been firing guns the world over for 120 years, and for most of that period there have been people on set whose sole responsibilty it is to ensure that firearms, even fake ones, are handled safely and responsibly. The Rust armourer has already been tried and found guilty of the crime - as she should have been. She brought live ammo on to the set, and it was her responsibility above anyone else's to ensure that when a gun was put into an actor's hand, it was safe. She clearly failed in this and to put Baldwin on trial seems to me to be utterly ridiculous. Much has been made of whether or not he pulled the trigger, and this should be irrelevant. Watch any film in which anyone fires a gun - and you'd have thousands to choose from - and you'll see trigger fingers pumping. They can't NOT pull the triggers.
It will all come down to the skill of the defence and prosecution teams, and if Baldwin is found guilty it'll be interesting to hear how many actors decide to stop making action films. Maybe it'll be announced that henceforth all finger motion must be digitally created.
There's no denying it was a tragic event but Baldwin has definitely been handed the scapegoat hat. Is it a case of 'only in America' or am I just missing something?
IIRC it was something to do with him not actually being required to fire the gun at that time as they weren't filming, he was just messing around with it. I do still think it's irrelevant as I'm sure he wouldn't have been messing with the gun if he'd known it had live ammo in it.
I would have thought it's unlikely he would have intended to fire the gun, even if he believed it contained a blank. He wasn't wearing ear defenders and the noise would have been deafening.
There should have been many protocols in place that would have prevented that accident. It's only US American's lax attitude to firearms that allowed even the vaguest possibility of a gun with a live round being 'played around with'.
No doubt things will be tightened up considerably. (Unless the NRA have anything to do with it.)
It seems the trial has collapsed.
Unfortunately, on a technicality, so it doesn't really answer any questions.
The judge has also ruled that he can't be tried again, which suggests to me that she thought it shouldn't have been brought to court in the first place. It's also been suggested that the chief prosecutor has been mouthing off about Baldwin with some fairly choice expletives, indicating she really didn't like him. Now she can go home with a nice set of steak knives.
Very weird one, this.
Was it ever disclosed as to why there was live ammo on a film set in the first place ? 🤷
The film's armourer has already been convicted of the crime that Baldwin was accused of - and if anyone is responsible for live ammo on set, or at the very least responsible for the guns put into the hands of actors, it's that person. Given that you can sue in America if anyone just looks at you funny, it looks like someone just wanted to sue a big name. If it had been an actor nobody had heard of I doubt they'd have been charged (given that the armourer was already found to be culpable).
