Film set tragedies....
Royale-les-Eaux
LondonPosts: 822MI6 Agent
Alec Baldwin, Halyna Hutchins and Joel Souza news is tragic and horrific. Taking me straight back to Brandon Lee and The Crow.
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I wonder how it happened. The guy who was the in charge of firearms for the Norwegian scenes in NTTD says this shouldn't happen if the basic rules are followed.
The basic rules weren’t followed. But they have a different set of rules over there.
The rules in Canada are incredibly strict when any firearms are on a set. I'm not for a moment saying that this couldn't happen as accidents can and do happen, but every possible precaution is taken to prevent it from happening.
Hollywood union has said there was a single *live* round in the gun accidentally fired.
Mind boggling and terrible. Somebody really screwed up.
I got the impression two rounds were fired by Alec Baldwin himself.
Absolute gross negligence.
Hey GymKata
What does non-union mean for this situation and what impact would it have? An outside hire, or less experienced person?
It was in New Mexico. So may be a local hire armourer.
International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Emplyees (IATSE) is the name of the union.
If that's true I feel a little less sorry for Alec Baldwin since he's one of the producers.
This is certainly shocking news and while it's thankfully a rare occurrence during filming it's no consolation to the family of Halyna Hutchins. I feel for Alec Baldwin too as he'll probably have this burden on his shoulders forever as the person who pulled the trigger on a gun that was meant to only fire blanks. Of course the fault probably lies elsewhere, presumably with the armourer or prop team who prepared the gun in the first place.
It actually reminds me of one of the newer Perry Mason episodes I first saw in the mid-1990s (The Case of the Shooting Star, 1986) where a TV host was shot live on TV by an actor friend with a gun that was meant to fire blanks but that had a real bullet inside. It was a prearranged prank that went horribly wrong and obviously somebody with murderous intent had switched the blank for a live round.
There could well be a manslaughter case out of this but we'll have to wait and see what the police findings and legal ramifications of this are. Whatever the outcome, hopefully important lessons will be learned from this tragedy to prevent it from ever happening again.
Sadly accidents have also affected the Bond movies, including Terry Madden who had had worked on every Bond film since FYEO but suffered a career-ending injury on the set of Spectre: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-51215754
This is a tough read…
as are the details in this…
Alec Baldwin told gun was safe before fatal shooting - court records https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-59018391
Remember this, absolutely horrific…had a family member with similar injuries.
We all think of the victims of the accident, of cource. I also feel sorry for Alec Baldwin, but less so than at first. He fired the hun beliving it was safe and killed one person and seriously injured another, a terrible experience. But he's one of the producers. Union members left the production because of pay and working hours, but also because of safety problems. Reports say there were complaints about safety before the accident, especially guns being handed over to people who were told they were safe and weren't. A stuntman experienced this with the gun that was involved in the fatal accident and a shot was fired. Both the director (who's injured) and Baldwin as the a producer and star should've made sure security protocols were good enough and competent people were in charge of the firearms. I don't know if it's true, but there are stories the gun was loaded with real ammo. Why use real bullets in a modern film production?
There was also the death of the stuntman Paolo Rigoni (c. 1958-1981) who was killed during his last day of filming on the set of FYEO when his bobsleigh overturned during the Bond-Kriegler ski chase sequence. His was (mercifully) the only death to ever occur during the making of a James Bond film:
On the older Bond films there was also the case of the cameraman Johnny Jordan who almost had his foot cut of by a helicopter rotor blade while filming the Little Nellie aerial battle sequence for YOLT. He later had the foot amputated. He went on to film the impressive aerial ski sequences for OHMSS. He later fell 2000 feet to his death while filming on the 1970 film version of Catch-22, in part because of the injury he had sustained while filming on YOLT after which he had to have a prosthetic foot fitted.
Jordan is one of those guys you imagine could only have existed at the precise moment he did: his life and work fantastical and fascinating...
Yes, he was the right man at the right time and he certainly gave his all, putting himself in harm's way to get the footage he was looking for. Sadly such selfless dedication to the job at hand eventually cost him his life.
Martin Grace also suffered horrendous injuries whilst filming the train scenes in Octopussy, thankfully he survived though.