Today, Explained - The Alec Baldwin shooting

Episode Date: October 26, 2021

Variety’s Brent Lang explains how cinematographer Halyna Hutchins died on the Rust film set—and how the tragic shooting might catalyze positive change in the entertainment industry. Today’s show was produced by Hady Mawajdeh with help from Will Reid, edited by Matt Collette, engineered by Efim Shapiro, fact-checked by Laura Bullard and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit Superstore.ca to get started. Funny thing about how the news works these days is that it comes to you, no matter where you are or what you're doing. Like when you're hanging out on your couch on a Thursday night at 11 o'clock and your phone buzzes and it says that Alec Baldwin accidentally killed someone? Well, I think obviously there's the sort of the lurid aspect, right, that it's an Oscar-nominated, Emmy-winning, beloved actor involved in a terrible tragedy. It's a very rare thing that happens. So that's why it continues to kind of dominate the news cycle. But

Brent Lang is an executive editor over at Variety. If you dig a little deeper, it points to some fundamental issues involving, you know, safety on film sets and television sets and some larger labor problems that have been exposed in recent months and really a growing sense of grievance among the grips and gaffers and camera operators and makeup artists and all of the hundreds of people who allow us to enjoy these movies and shows that we stream and we binge and we buy tickets for in non-pandemic times, who are frustrated that they feel that they've been sort of pushed to the breaking point and often asked to engage in unsafe work practices. Well, I want to get there, but let's start with what we know happened on this set.

Let's start with this movie. It's called Rust, and clearly no one had heard of it until last week. And frankly, probably a movie that no one would hear that much about. It looks like it was a very low-budget action film. I think Vultures called them geezer teasers they're films with kind of high-end actors who come in and do these sort of action oriented movies that get sold to uh foreign markets and appear on uh vod you know mel gibson bruce willis they appear in tons of these things. Nobody remembers them. They're completely ephemeral,

but they get paid relatively well. And it looks like that there was some financial incentive for Baldwin to do this and for his company, El Dorado Pictures, to be involved as a producer too. So I don't know much about the plot, but it seems sort of like an action-oriented Western. It was made for about $7 million, which is a pittance when it comes to a movie of this kind of size and scale. And heading into this tragic incident that transpired last week, how were things on the set of Rust? So basically, when you're working on a movie, sometimes you're being asked to put in 16 to 18 hour days, and then you closer to the set. So their lodging was inadequate that they felt. And that was causing some safety concerns. There was

obviously a lot of tension on the set before this accident happened. And in fact, on the day of the accident, a new crew had come in to replace an old crew that had walked off, and that had led to substantial delays in filming that day. We actually have a pretty clear picture of what happened on the day of the accident because investigators have released affidavits from the film's director, Joel Sousa, and another cameraman on the set. And so what happened is the production got a late start in part to the fact that new crew had come in and that they only had one camera available to them to shoot. There are reports several members of the crew complained about the long hours and low pay, with some walking off the movie shortly before the accident.

So they start rehearsals. They break for lunch. The cast and crew go to an off-site. Before that, the guns that were going to be used in the scene had been prepared and were sitting on a table. And at some point after they come back around 1230 or so, Baldwin is sitting in a church pew. He's in costume and Western garb,

and he's talking to the director and to the cinematographer, Elena Hutchins. According to a newly released affidavit, Susan told investigators that Baldwin was sitting in a church pew rehearsing a scene for the western film Rust. In the scene, he draws his revolver across his body and points it at the camera. And they notice a shadow, so they move their camera slightly. And then he goes to show them how he's going to pull his gun out of the holster. And when he pulls the gun out of the holster, it discharges.

Hutchins took a lethal shot to the chest while Souza, who was standing behind her, was wounded in the shoulder. The director describes hearing a loud sort of pop, as does the cameraman. Helena Hutchins falls to the ground, says she cannot feel her legs. Medics then come in. They try to stop the bleeding. The script supervisor makes a phone call to 911. Bonanza Creek Ranch has had two people accidentally shot on a movie set by a prop gun. We need help immediately.

Bonanza Creek Ranch. Come on. So Helena falls to the ground. Emergency personnel show up. She is taken by a helicopter. She's later pronounced dead at a hospital in Santa Fe. Joel is also taken to the hospital where he's treated for a wound in his shoulder. And it's a relatively minor wound. He's discharged.

What happens to Alec Baldwin? Alec Baldwin is interviewed by the police. There are pictures of him outside the sheriff's office in Santa Fe looking completely stricken. He's sort of bent over in one of them. Baldwin tweeting from the account he shares with his wife, there are no words to convey my shock and sadness regarding the tragic accident that took the life of Elena Hutchins. I am in touch with her husband, offering my support to him and his family. One assumes he will take some kind of work break. I don't know how you really get over something like this.

First of all, he may be facing some kind of legal liability because he was not only the star of this film, he was also one of the producers. So he could have a lot of litigation that he has to be involved with for a while. And then there's kind of the personal toll that something like this takes on someone. I don't know. I feel like he's in for a lot of pain, you know, personally, maybe even professionally, certainly legally. What do we know about the investigation into what exactly happened here so far well it's ongoing uh you know certain key people on the set have

been interviewed baldwin has been interviewed suza has been interviewed a cameraman who was nearby when the accident happened presumably other members of the crew have been interviewed. And, you know, they've taken certain materials, the costume Baldwin was wearing, which apparently was stained with blood, and also whatever round had been discharged. But they're being very careful about, you know, announcing any kind of conclusions. They haven't said whether or not there was live ammunition in the firearm. A union, IATSE Local 44, released an email saying there had been live ammunition. The police are going to have a press conference on Wednesday. Presumably, they'll share more details.

So, we're still looking at, you know, what happened in the lead up to this accident? You know, was there negligence? Was it a terrible human error? What safety procedures and protocols were ignored? You know, there are a lot of questions still. Do we know if Rust is going to finish filming or is this kind of the end of this movie? So Rust has suspended production until the investigation is concluded. You know, my gut sort of tells me that Rust is never going to be concluded. It's an independently financed film that involves a lot of different parties and entities putting little bits of money in. And it's always a precarious situation to actually complete one of these movies.

And then you throw in something like this and it just it scrambles the whole thing and then i'm i'm not sure um people are going to want to watch this movie given that sort of the tragedy involved Thank you. Support for today explained comes from Ramp. Ramp is the corporate card and spend management software designed to help you save time and put money back in your pocket. Ramp says they give finance teams unprecedented control and insight into company spend. With Ramp, you're able to issue cards to every employee with limits and restrictions and automate expense reporting so you can stop wasting time at the end of every month. And now you can get $250 when you join Ramp. You can go to ramp.com slash explained, r-a-m-p.com slash explained. Cards issued by Sutton Bank, member FDIC.

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or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Brent, I think since the shooting last week, a lot of people have been wondering how guns work on Hollywood sets.

What do we know about what transpired on the set of Rust with this gun? Well, what we know is that Baldwin had been told it was a cold gun, which means that there was no live rounds or blanks in the gun. And he was using that gun for rehearsal. Do we know who told him it was a cold gun? That's a little unclear, but it appears to have been the assistant director, Dave Halls, who informed Baldwin that it was a cold gun. And usually on a set, there is the armorer who prepares the guns, and then there is the assistant director who's in charge of kind of the safety. And often the stunt coordinator is also involved.

But somebody told Baldwin and multiple people said they heard, you know, kind of a warning go out that it was a cold gun. And a cold gun means that someone has tested this gun and confirmed that there's no live ammunition in it? Absolutely confirmed. There's not only no live ammunition, there are no blanks, and there's no material that got stuck in the chamber, which could become a projectile and potentially harm someone. Did this film set have an armorer and a stunt coordinator on set at the time? It's unclear about whether or not the stunt coordinator was on set, but presumably a stunt coordinator was on set because they are supposed to coordinate anything involving stunts and firearms.

We do know the armorer was on set that day. Our guest for today is Hannah Reed. She is an armorer in Hollywood. Hi, Hannah. How are you? Hi, I'm great. How are you guys? She's 24 years old. She had a fairly thin resume, frankly, before this movie and in a podcast that's been subsequently resurfaced and in comments that have not aged well. She talks about feeling underprepared when she took on a different action-oriented project

and mentioned that loading blanks was something that made her incredibly anxious. I think the best part about my job is just showing people who are normally kind of freaked out by guns, like how safe they can be and how they're not really problematic unless put in the wrong hands.

It's a tool. More details have also come out about Dave Halls, the assistant director, and his problematic past when it came to firearms on sets and safety regulations. What's come out about Dave Halls? So what we've found out is that Dave Halls was fired from the set of a movie called Freedom's Path in 2019. And that was after a crew member incurred a minor and temporary injury when a gun was unexpectedly discharged.

So, I mean, in that case, a terrible tragedy was averted, but it's obviously, you know, a troubling history. And apparently on the set of that film, Halls also didn't do enough safety meetings and things like that, proper kinds of procedures. Licensed pyrotechnician Margaret Gohl claims Halls failed to maintain a safe environment when she worked with him on a previous project. Basically yelling at people that we need to get things done, ignoring people when they say that they need a minute to do something safely.

It looks as though you had a crew that was underprepared and was not taking the proper precautions. You had too little money, too much ambition, perhaps, when it came to action scenes. There were a lot of different entities and companies that were involved in it, including Baldwin's own company, El Dorado. But who was the sort of the strong producerial hand here? You know, somebody on set making the final calls, you know,

that's still unclear. It's a pretty upsetting picture of disorganization. Can we talk about the actual gun? I mean, this was not a prop gun. This was a live firearm. Exactly. It was an actual firearm. And some people that I've talked to who work on crews were kind of horrified that during a rehearsal, there would actually be a live firearm. As in they would save that for the actual shoot?

The actual shooting, yeah. That you would have a rubber gun to sort of rehearse and plan things out. I mean, it's not always the case. It sounds like it sort of varies. But they felt like there was no real need to take that kind of risk. And fans of, like, goth action movies from the mid-'90s will remember that this isn't the first time something like this has happened on a movie set, yeah? Absolutely. I mean, you had a similar tragedy happen with Brandon Lee on The Crow, and he died after six hours of surgery. a tragic accident. And since then, I am very conscious

of the dangers of making a movie. And it is a dangerous proposition where you throw ourselves out. More precautions were taken in the aftermath of that accident. You know, there was a kind of industry-wide movement about safety on set. There's also another historical parallel. It didn't involve a firearm, but three actors were killed on the set of The Twilight Zone in the 1980s.

Actor Vic Morrow and two children were taking part in the final moments of The Twilight Zone film. Explosions set off by special effects teams rocked a helicopter which hovered above. A third blast blew our tail prop off, and it was all over. We just started spinning, went around in circles about one and a half times or something,

and crashed into the riverbed. And on our way down is when we hit the actors. That put a lot more pressure on Hollywood Studios to get serious about how they treated on-set safety. So as horrible as these tragedies are, and, you know, there really are no words to describe a 42-year-old woman with a 9-year-old son about to sort of enter a new stage of her career,

dying on the set needlessly, the only sort of positive thing to come out of it is that it inspires a larger conversation about safety protocols. So hopefully you can ensure that something like this doesn't take place again. positive thing to come out of it is that it inspires a larger conversation about safety protocols. So hopefully you can ensure that something like this doesn't take place again. Yeah, tell me how the entertainment industry is responding to this so far. Well, so far there is a change.org petition that drew tens of thousands of people within a few hours of going up asking to have firearms banned on sets. I've talked to of thousands of people within a few hours of going up asking to have

firearms banned on sets. I've talked to a number of people who work on crews who say it's time, they've got to get rid of these. It's an unnecessary risk. It'll take time, but I sort of suspect that they will be phased out. And you mentioned at the top of the show that this is coming sort of on the heels of a broader conversation about how entertainment industry workers are treated right now. Remind people what's going on there.

Right. So IATSE, which is the union that represents a lot of the people who make up the film crews, so you're talking about, you know, camera operators, grips and gaffers, and by grips and gaffers. And by grips and gaffers, I'm talking about the people who put up the lighting and riggings and help kind of make sure that the sets are constructed and things like that. They're doing all the kind of manual labor that's required to actually pull off these films.

And there's a small army of workers on every film set. They've just renegotiated their contract with the studios, and it calls for certain concessions. For example, studios were not required previously to give crews weekend rest times. That's a concession. And crews are also going to receive a minimum rest of 10 hours between leaving a set and returning to that set now the problem is this contract has not been ratified yet and it was already somewhat unpopular at least in sort of social media circles because they felt that their negotiators actually didn't get enough from the studios. And that part of this is because of peak content, if you will. What is peak content? Yeah, I mean, peak content is kind of a catch-all for this explosion of different distribution

platforms throughout the media landscape. So, you know, in the old days, you had broadcast television and you had movies. Now you have not just broadcast television and cable television and cinema, but you also have these streamers that have come in and the amount of content that they need to kind of keep you subscribed is just staggering, frankly. I mean, Netflix releases a new original movie every week. That's kind of output that more traditional sort of media players, which release maybe in a good year, 12 to 14 films,

you know, they can't possibly match that. And there's all these series and miniseries. And it's never happened before. It's worth remembering, right? This is new territory. You've never had this amount of work. And then the problem was, during the pandemic, you had a shutdown where production couldn't happen for several months, really, until some other safety measures were put into place

to make sure that sets remained COVID-free, requiring extra testing and things like that. By the way, measures that add time to films production as well as costs. So that's something that producers have had to shoulder. And so people are feeling like they're being asked to work longer hours than ever in order to make these films and shows this big backlog of material that's being greenlit for all these different streamers and studios. So it's kind of creating this perfect storm where people just feel spread too thin, frankly. Brent, I think to a lot of people, working on a movie set with movie stars sounds like a total dream job. But do you think this IATSE labor movement and this tragedy on the set of Rust has sort of made clear to people

that there are just as many drawbacks to working on a movie set or a TV set as perhaps any other plain old job? Well, I think there is an illusion that working in film and television is this really glamorous job because what we see are, you know, pictures from red carpet premieres and film festivals and these glamorous looking movie stars. But there's a whole infrastructure behind, you know, Ryan Reynolds and Tom Cruise and what have you. And it's a real blue collar infrastructure. It's made up of people who are, you know, building sets and applying makeup and doing hair and hauling very, very heavy cameras. And it can pay well. People get compensated decently. But the hours are insane. And in some cases, you're being asked to do dangerous things. I mean, just look at what a camera operator has to do.

They have to be in the line of fire, literally, sometimes. They have to be in front of pyrotechnics to capture them. They have to be hanging off of helicopters to get the shot. So there's danger involved. There's upside, of course, you know, it's an exciting dynamic industry. But even if you like your job, after the pandemic, after what we've all been through, there are elements about it that you probably didn't like. And every workplace is having a conversation, I think a much needed one about sort of what workers are required to do.

And now really also the workers are participating in that dialogue. And in some cases they're pushing back and saying, you know, you may want us to do this. You may want us to have these kinds of working conditions, but we're actually not willing to work in those conditions. And is it all but sure that this tragedy on the set of Rust gives entertainment industry workers more leverage in these conversations going on right now about how they're treated?

Well, they've reached an agreement, but they haven't ratified a contract. So the question is, does this inspire IATSE members to vote down that contract and force their leadership to go back to the negotiating table? I don't know. It's a very diverse union. There's 60,000 members. The ones that you hear from on Twitter and Facebook are usually the ones who are the most upset about working conditions. But it's certainly not going to make ratification easier. There was a vigil for Helena in Los Angeles, and there were a lot of people waving signs saying, fuck IATSE, and other sort of choice phrases about the union and its leadership. And that's a sign that there's a lot of anger out there. Brent Lang is the executive editor of Film and Media at Variety.

Today's show was produced by Hadi Mawagdi with help from Will Reed. I'm Sean Ramos for him. It's Today Explained. Thank you.