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Alec Baldwin indicted for involuntary manslaughter in fatal gunfire on film set
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2024
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This from the start has seemed to me like a prosecutor trying to make a name for themselves by taking down a famous person.
If you're doing a scene where you throw acid on somebody is the person throwing the acid supposed to check to make sure it's not actually acid before they throw it?
Should they check to make sure the knife they're about to stab someone with is actually a prop?
If you get to the person who's been told to "do this action convincingly" and you want them to double check all the safety work you're doing it wrong. Their job isn't making sure they've been given safe tools, it's using safe tools to make someone that's fake but convincing.
Everyone in the armoring company should be charged with murder ... but Alec Baldwin did not put live rounds into a gun. He went into work, did his job, and because other people screwed up someone got shot. Maybe the industry itself needs to change but that shouldn't be Alec Baldwin's problem. That's not justice.
But you're right, and the management who kept ignoring problems is going to be tried here. It just so happens that the producer was also an actor and happened to be the one given a bad prop. Alec was the manager of everyone: he hired people, and decided they were doing a good enough job. After employees complained about safety problems, he ignored them. After people QUIT over those safety problems, he continued ignoring them. Alec the producer is the one on trial, not Alec the actor.
Thank you! I feel like I've never been able to get the full story!
Baldwin was in charge. He wasn't just an Actor. He took several actions that made the set less safe that day.
He's being charged because he was an executive producer not because he pulled the trigger
He’s being charged for pointing a gun at someone and pulling the trigger. Him being an executive is an argument against the “I was told it was unloaded” defense. NM law is clear on criminal negligence with a firearm and there is no movie production exemption. Being handed a gun by someone else who says it is safe does not negate liability under the law. His failures as a producer with prior safety lapses and incidents leading up to the tragedy are important as well, but at the end of the day he pulled the trigger and that’s what he is being charged for.
Executive producer typically means you are the money behind the project, not that you have hands-on control of the daily details.
And liability
EP credits can be given for any number of reasons and their impact on the project varies greatly.
Some do nothing and just put up some cash, some are involved in every action/word in the script and will always be on setn
Well my understanding is that he was an executive producer on the film, which is a leadership position that impacts decisions on hiring staff like armory/weapons consultants.
As an actor he's probably not responsible but as EP he is .
There are 14 producers on this movie, and bdwin was not the executive producer according to IMDB. None of the other producers who were actually most likely responsible for those decisions are facing charges. It's simply because Baldwin is an opponent of trump and the prosecutor wants to gain political influence and notoriety.
Exactly. If everyone involved was on trial, it might be reasonable. They happened to pick the guy Donnie hates.
He was pointing the gun at someone. That should never happen.
He was a producer on a set which was being mismanaged to the extent that a large proportion of the crew had just walked off the job over safety concerns.
It is very much his problem.
The cinematographer wasn't an actor. They weren't rolling. Why would you aim a (ostensibly prop) gun at somebody during a time when the cameras weren't rolling and they're not an actor?
Because they were doing a camera test. The gun was drawn and pointed in the direction of the camera, which had people behind it because there weren't supposed to be live rounds in the gun.
I thought this had been settled that it was the fault of the master amorer who was wholly unqualified to be doing the job.
There is blame from the armorer for sure, but I thought I heard something about real guns being on set to shoot for practice. Don't take my word on that. If that was the case I do think Alec should take part of the blame, because real weapons have no place on a set. If you want actors to have target practice you take them to a gun range.
Sorry for being a bit out of the loop. Did Baldwin have knowledge that live ammo was not unheard of on the set?
The set was not meant to have any live ammo. It was a "cold" set.
The live ammo actually came from the prop supply company, co-mingled with dummy rounds.
The live rounds were re-loads into casings that would normally be dummy rounds, because a previous film used them to train the actors how to react to live fire from their guns.
The live rounds were then turned over to the prop company at the end of that film, and at some point became co-mingled with dummy rounds and then sent out to the Rust film location.
The armorer should have checked every dummy round. But didn't even know how to do so. The re-loads were also slightly different looking than the standard dummy round. (red paint in the logo vs blue for the dummy)
As a note, when questioned by police, the armorer didn't even know the name brand of the dummy rounds.
I'm sorry. I don't mean to sound rude. That didn't address my question. I do appreciate all those facts gathered concisely.
My question was more to the tune of: Did Baldwin have any reason to doubt the common assumption
It seems if the first Baldwin ever heard of this rule being broken was at the moment of the accident, then I can't see how anyone argues that he should be accountable. But I was asking is there any paper trail or something where he was complaining about the armorer or something?
The set was cold.
There was no reason anyone would have expected live rounds, because live rounds are legally banned on movie sets.
Especially live rounds in Starline Brass casings, because Starline Brass doesn't make live rounds, they only make dummy rounds.
The bullet that Baldwin fired was from a Starline Brass casing, and had the logo on the end next to the primer.
https://variety.com/2021/film/news/rust-investigators-live-rounds-alec-baldwin-1235122384/
This has all been known for years. The round looked like a dummy, but was not.
You sound like you're trying to convince me of something. I only asked a question. Just to be clear, is your answer "no"?
There are a lot of people in this thread who are ignoring reality, and thinking that a movie set is a gun range.
So yeah. I'm basically saying the same thing over and over again.
You would never do this even if there were blanks in the gun. Blanks can kill at point blank.
There weren't supposed to be any ammo capable of fire. The round was even a fucking reload of a dummy casing that went untested because the armorer was an incompetent idiot who got someone killed.
Who was hired by Baldwin, and who complained to Baldwin that he wasn't letting her do her job. She was unqualified and she still identified the dangerous situation. The biggest problem for her was not resigning in protest.
Baldwin didn't hire the armorer, she got the job through family connections.
She was also incompetent. She didn't know how to test the dummy rounds to see if they were live, she didn't know the name brand on the dummy rounds.
Yeah her family connection got the producers, including Baldwin, to hire her. That doesn't mean he had no control. It means he put nepotism over safety.
Baldwin didn't hire anyone. He was one of 10 producers, and was listed as being in charge of funding and script changes.
And yes, family connections did play a big role here, the armorer is the daughter of an armorer who has worked on hundreds of films and TV shows.
And she didn't even know the brand name Starline Brass when questioned by police.
That alone is a major red flag, because Starline Brass is the company that makes all the dummy rounds used on movie sets. They do not make live rounds, and yet, the round that Baldwin shot, was in a Starline Brass casing.
The story of that has been known for 3 years now.
https://variety.com/2021/film/news/rust-investigators-live-rounds-alec-baldwin-1235122384/
Yeah, see that? It shouldn't even be possible. Unless you're talking about blanks and not dummy rounds. Dummy rounds should be completely unable to fire, or be made to fire without a metal shop involved.
And yeah. Nobody is saying she was qualified. But the fact that she wasn't replaced after the first 2 negligent discharges on set is a leadership problem. The fact that people walked off the set because they felt unsafe and even the unqualified armorer herself raised concerns about how leadership was using the guns is a leadership problem.
And Baldwin being that leadership, is responsible.
Did you read the link?
It walks through how some Starline Bass casings were loaded with live ammo, and then ended up on a film set where there should not have been any live ammo at all.
As to the armorer, yes, she was incompetent. That's the whole point here. The hiring director (who was not Baldwin) took a chance on someone who had past safety issues on her only other film, because she was the daughter of a well respected armorer.
She didn't know how to check the bullets to see if they were dummy rounds (completely fake, but realistic looking) or live rounds.
I know the article says blanks, but from everything I've found online, there weren't even blanks on the set of Rust. Just dummy rounds, and a few live rounds that snuck in via a coffee can full of co-mingled rounds from a previous film.
That literally shouldn't be possible with dummy rounds. They should be a solid block inside so it's impossible to load with powder. If that's true then Starline deserves to be sued into oblivion.
I think you're mistaking blank rounds for dummy rounds. Also a quick look at their website shows they sell brass. Brass for reloading, for live, for blanks, or for creating your own dummies.
Again, there is no way to test a round to see if it's a dummy short of attempting to fire it. Normal ones are a completely different color or even transparent for this reason. Obviously that doesn't work in filming.
As to which producer is culpable, Baldwin absolutely could have fired her and was part of violating safety protocols by ignoring complaints he could have addressed directly and immediately.
All of that info is in the link.
Or in this link.
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2021-11-30/rust-shooting-ammunition-search-warrant-pdq-alec-baldwin
Starline is not involved here. Every dummy round used in Hollywood has the Starline logo, but that's just because they make the brass that everyone uses to make dummy rounds.
No, the company that fucked up before the armorer fucked up was PDQ Arm & Prop, LLC. They sent out the co-mingled rounds.
A search warrant executed in 2021 found live rounds mixed into their supply of dummy rounds.
It's amazing that people who are oblivious to the facts have such strong opinions defending a guy who shot and killed someone.