The armorer faces up to 18 months in prison for the fatal shooting of a cinematographer by Alec Baldwin on the set of the Western.
A movie weapons supervisor is facing up to 18 months in prison for the fatal shooting of a cinematographer by Alec Baldwin on the set of the Western film “Rust,” with her sentencing scheduled for Monday in a New Mexico state court.
Movie armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed was convicted in March by a jury on a charge of involuntary manslaughter in the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and has been held for more than a month at a county jail on the outskirts of Santa Fe.
Baldwin, the lead actor and co-producer for “Rust,” was pointing a gun at Hutchins when the revolver went off, killing Hutchins and wounding director Joel Souza.
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Prosecutors blamed Gutierrez-Reed for unwittingly bringing live ammunition onto the set of “Rust” where it was expressly prohibited and for failing to follow basic gun safety protocols. After a two-week trial, the jury deliberated for about three hours in reaching its verdict.
She was crap at her job but she was also too inexperienced for it and employed to do it by cost-cutting producers who took so many shortcuts on set safety, half the crew walked out before this happened.
Funnily enough, the DA decided that Baldwin wasn't actually doing anything as one of them, which I don't think should be a surprise to people familiar with the idea of celebrity producers.
This is more than a little misogynistic. There are female armorers in their 20's out there who are kicking ass after a couple of gigs and old dogs who refuse to change with the times who are timebombs waiting to go off. Gender, how pretty you are, even experience have nothing to do with aptitude. On a set it's more mindset, willingness to learn, commitment to doing the craft well and wits than experience.
You want to blame something, blame industry nepotism. That's why she was there. She's the kid of another armorer who pulled strings for her to get her jobs. Not a gendered thing either. The majority of people I see fucking shit up in my industry aren't there because someone has aspirations to sleep with them, it's because they are somebody's kid, relative or best friend and they can't be fired.
Film has enough gendered bullshit issues without people pulling this shit about one of the few departments that actually has gender parity.
That was never alledged during the trial itself. There was live round practice, but it was done properly at a fireing range.
The prosecution's theory was that they came from a different set which did use live rounds. Reed brought dummies herself (instead of going through the prop house for everything) due to shortages.
The defenses theory was that their prop house messed up and provided live rounds with their dummies.
Real guns don't need to be on movie/tv sets anymore.
Craig Zobel, the director of the Emmy-winning HBO miniseries “Mare of Easttown,” drew one of the first lines in the sand after “Rust” actor and producer Alec Baldwin fired the gun that killed Hutchins.
“There’s no reason to have guns loaded with blanks or anything on set anymore. Should just be fully outlawed,” Zobel tweeted early Friday while the country absorbed the news.
“There’s computers now. The gunshots on ‘Mare of Easttown’ are all digital,” he added. “You can probably tell, but who cares? It’s an unnecessary risk.”
He was soon joined by other producers and directors. Alexi Hawley, the showrunner of the ABC police procedural “The Rookie,” said in a memo to cast and crew members that there would be “no more ‘live’ weapons on the show.”
In the future, all gunfire on “The Rookie” will come from airsoft guns — replica toys that use pellets instead of bullets — with CGI muzzle flashes added in post-production, Hawley wrote in the memo, first reported by The Hollywood Reporter and confirmed by NBC News.
“Any risk is too much risk,” he wrote.
Eric Kripke, the showrunner for Amazon’s dark comedy “The Boys,” made a similar pledge: Source
Animals were definitely harmed during the making of this movie. And it wasn't just one or two, it was a pretty apalling number of them. We're not good people.
Special prosecutor Kari Morrissey urged the judge to impose the maximum prison sentence and designate Gutierrez-Reed as a “serious violent offender” to limit her eligibility for a sentence reduction later, describing the defendant’s behavior on the set of “Rust” as exceptionally reckless.
Morrissey told the judge Monday that she reviewed nearly 200 phone calls that Gutierrez-Reed had made from jail over the last month. She said she was hoping there would be a moment when the defendant would take responsibility for what happened or express genuine remorse.
“That moment has never come,” Morrissey said. “Ms. Gutierrez continues to refuse to accept responsibility for her role in the death of Halyna Hutchins.”