Alec Baldwin has urged film and TV productions to hire police officers to monitor weapons and ensure guns used in filming are safe in the wake of the fatal shooting during filming of the western movie Rust.
Baldwin accidentally shot and killed the cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on 21 October after being told the gun he was rehearsing with on the film set in New Mexico was “cold”, or safe to use, according to the Santa Fe county sheriff’s office.
“Every film/TV set that uses guns, fake or otherwise, should have a police officer on set, hired by the production, to specifically monitor weapons safety,” the actor posted to Twitter on Monday. The account has since been made private, but the message was also placed on the actor’s Instagram account.
Authorities are trying to determine how a real bullet could have wound up in the gun that was handed to Baldwin. Attorneys for Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the Rust armorer who oversaw weapons on the set, said she believed she had loaded it with dummy rounds that were incapable of firing. They said she had done her best to ensure safety on set and blamed other factors as a result of which “the production set became unsafe”.
The incident has renewed calls for better safety practices on sets with regard to the use of weapons, and producers and crew members have been weighing whether new steps should be taken to prevent a similar tragedy in the future.
Some have called for banning real guns from movie and TV sets altogether.
The actor Dwayne Johnson has said that his future productions would only use rubber guns during filming.
A day after the shooting, Baldwin spoke about his “shock and sadness regarding the accident that took the life of Halyna Hutchins, a wife, mother and deeply admired colleague of ours”.
“I’m fully cooperating with the police investigation to address how this tragedy occurred and I am in touch with her husband, offering my support to him and his family. My heart is broken for her husband, their son, and all who knew and loved Halyna.”
The gun Baldwin used was one of three that the armorer had set on a cart outside the building where a scene was being rehearsed, according to court records.
The film’s assistant director, Dave Halls, took a gun off a cart and handed it to Baldwin, indicating that the weapon was safe by yelling “cold gun”, court papers said. But, unknown to Halls, it was loaded with live rounds, according to the records.
Affidavits subsequently released paint a picture of a dysfunctional and feuding set, where five crew members reportedly walked out over pay and working conditions a few hours before the fatal shooting occurred.
Lawyers representing the crew member in charge of weapons blamed the producers for an “unsafe” set. It was also later revealed Halls was the subject of an internal complaint on a previous movie. Maggie Goll, a prop maker and licensed pyrotechnician, said she had raised concerns about Hall’s conduct in relation to safety issues on set with the executive producers of Hulu’s Into the Dark TV series in 2019. He has yet to comment and has retained counsel.
According to an additional affidavit released last month, Halls admitted to investigators that he “should have checked all” the rounds in the gun before handing it to Baldwin, who was also a producer on the movie, but had not done so.
However, Goll was quick to clarify that she did not believe the situation was about Halls. “It’s in no way one person’s fault,” she said, adding that there were larger issues about the wellbeing of crew that had to be addressed. “It’s a bigger conversation about safety on set and what we are trying to achieve with that culture.”
The shooting has increased public scrutiny over an often overlooked corner of the film industry in which critics say the pursuit of profit can lead to unsafe working conditions.
