In the days leading up to the tragic death of Rust cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on Thursday afternoon, there was trouble brewing.
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After multiple complaints made to production, at least six fed up crew members had reportedly walked off set hours before actor and film producer Alec Baldwin was handed a prop gun. According to a Santa Fe Sheriff’s Office search warrant affidavit, he mistakenly believed it had no cartridges inside, and discharged it, striking 42-year-old Hutchins and 48-year-old director Joel Souza.
Hutchins was airlifted to the University of New Mexico Hospital in Albuquerque where she died, while an injured Souza was released from the hospital on Friday morning.
Sources have insisted the fatal accident was a result of failings from top to bottom, starting with the production’s low-budget and cost-cutting measures, which led the film to hire 24-year-old armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, who was identified in the affidavit as the armorer on set at the time of the shooting. A production source described her to The Daily Beast as “inexperienced and green.”
They also placed blame on first assistant director, identified in the affidavit as Dave Halls. “He’s supposed to be our last line of defense and he failed us,” the production source added. “He’s the last person that’s supposed to look at that firearm.”
And in a heartbreaking 911 call, script supervisor Mamie Mitchell also seemed to lash out at Halls as she urgently asked a dispatcher to send an ambulance to the set at Bonanza Creek Ranch, on the outskirts of Santa Fe.
Referring to an unnamed assistant director, Mitchell can be overheard telling someone nearby, “this fucking AD that yelled at me at lunch asking about revisions, this motherfucker. Did you see him lean over my desk and yell at me? He’s supposed to check the guns. He’s responsible for what happened.”
Detectives are still investigating the circumstances that led up to the tragic misfirings, and no charges have been filed against anyone involved, but the search warrant affidavit filed in Santa Fe County has helped paint a picture of what went so drastically wrong.
According to the affidavit, Gutierrez-Reed had placed three prop guns on a cart outside where the scene was being filmed. Halls reportedly grabbed a revolver from the cart and gave it to Baldwin, mistakenly believing the firearm was not loaded.
Halls had even called out “cold gun!” on set, according the search warrant. A “cold gun” indicates there are no cartridges—including blanks—inside the firearm. A “hot gun” indicates the weapon is loaded with cartridges, either live ammunition or blank rounds.
But a production source told The Daily Beast that Gutierrez-Reed didn’t “quadruple check” to make sure the firearm was safe before letting Halls select it from the cart, who then deemed it safe for Baldwin to use.
“We were barely rehearsing, we were just getting the camera into position,” the source explained. “It was a shot of Alec pulling this firearm out in this little church, and he pulled it out and I don’t know if he pulled the trigger, or if he fumbled with the hammer, I don’t know exactly why it discharged.”
Halls and Gutierrez-Reed have not yet commented on the tragedy, but prop gun experts told The Daily Beast the armorer is usually ultimately responsible for the weapons on set.
“It’s up to that armorer company to prepare the firearms a day or two before and test fire them, make sure everything’s okay and the blank rounds are okay,” said Richard Howell, of Foxtrot Productions, a film armorer with 30 years of experience. “In film and TV, it’s a very controlled environment, you have to do risk assessments.”
Gutierrez-Reed was a relative newcomer to being an armorer, trained by her father, the Hollywood veteran firearms consultant Thell Reed.
In a podcast with Voices of the West last month Gutierrez-Reed talked about accepting a job as head armorer for the Nicolas Cage film The Old Way.
“I almost didn’t take the job because I wasn’t sure if I was ready but doing it, it went really smoothly,” she said, later adding that she thought loading blank rounds into the firearms was “the scariest thing.”
Days before the fatal accident, there had been at least two previous incidents of a prop gun being misfired on the set of Ruse, the production source told The Daily Beast. The Los Angeles Times reported there was an additional misfiring the previous week.
The production source said that crew members had complained directly to Halls about the misfirings over the weekend, demanding to make sure they were noted in the production report. “All of us yelled at him, ‘That better be on the production report, these guys are irresponsible and shouldn’t be here,’” the source explained.
“That should be automatic grounds for termination on a union film set, you should be gone. The first time that gun went off without telling anybody, that whole department should have been replaced, immediately. Clearly production thought better of it, decided to roll the dice and pay the ultimate price.”
Sources have maintained that the film’s production company would do anything to save money. For example, they promised to put crew up in a hotel in Santa Fe to be close to set.
However, when filming began, the crew were allegedly told there would be no such accommodation and instead, they would have to travel to and from Albuquerque—around 50 miles away—for filming. Many voiced concerns about working up to 13 hours a day, then driving an hour home in the dark.
Others were also annoyed by the shooting schedule of Wednesday through Sunday, which had been tailored to Baldwin’s schedule so that he could tape for his podcast, “Here’s The Thing with Alec Baldwin,” which airs on Mondays.
On Friday morning, Baldwin expressed his condolences to Hutchins’ family, including her husband and nine-year-old son, attending a private memorial in her honor later that night, according to Showbiz 411.
He also backed reports that he was told the prop gun was safe to use, liking an article on Twitter that indicated that he was told it was cold.
“There are no words to convey my shock and sadness regarding the tragic accident that took the life of Halyna Hutchins, a wife, mother and deeply admired colleague of ours,” Baldwin wrote on Twitter. “I’m fully cooperating with the police investigation to address how this tragedy occurred.”
Read more at The Daily Beast.
