Dave Halls, the assistant director on the film “Rust,” told an investigator that he had not checked all of the rounds in the gun he handed to Alec Baldwin, as he should have, according to an affidavit released Wednesday.
He said that the film’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, had opened the gun for him to inspect, according to the affidavit.
“He advised he should have checked all of them, but didn’t, and couldn’t recall if she spun the drum,” according to the affidavit. He said he remembered seeing only three rounds.
In the days since the shooting on the set, which occurred on Thursday — the actor Alec Baldwin shot the cinematographer and the director with a gun he had been told did not contain live ammunition — detectives from the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office have been examining the role that Mr. Halls and others on the set had in the incident.
The film’s cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, 42, was killed and its director, Joel Souza, 48, was wounded.
It was Mr. Halls who handed Mr. Baldwin the firearm during rehearsals inside the set of a church and said that it was a “cold gun,” according to court documents, indicating that the firearm contained no live rounds and was safe for Mr. Baldwin to handle. Mr. Baldwin then began rehearsing a scene that involved “cross drawing” the revolver and pointing it toward the camera lens, according to the affidavit, when the gun went off.
After the shooting, Mr. Halls said he picked up the gun from a pew inside the church and took it to Ms. Reed. When she opened it, he said, according to the affidavit, he could see “at least four dummy casings with the holes on the side, and one without the hole. He advised this did not have the cap on it and was just the casing.” Dummy rounds are sometimes identified by a pierced hole on the side.
Describing the safety protocols on the set, Mr. Halls said Ms. Gutierrez typically opened guns for him to inspect. “I check the barrel for obstructions, most of the time there is no live fire, she (Hannah) opens the hatch and spins the drum, and I say cold gun on set,” he said in an interview with the investigator, according to the affidavit. It was not clear what he meant by the term “live fire.”
Mr. Halls is an industry veteran who has worked on films including “Fargo” and “The Matrix Reloaded.” As assistant director, he was one of the people responsible for safety on the set of “Rust.” Mr. Halls didn’t respond to several attempts to reach him.
In the frantic moments after the shooting, the assistant director was singled out by a script supervisor who called 911 with a desperate plea for help. “We’ve had two people accidentally shot on a movie set,” the script supervisor, Mamie Mitchell, told the 911 operator. Then Ms. Mitchell described how it was the assistant director’s responsibility to make sure such mishaps never happen. “He’s supposed to check the guns,” Ms. Mitchell said in the call.
He has been the subject of complaints from various film professionals over the years. The complaints, which largely revolve around his regard for safety protocols and on-set behavior, are fueling questions about the New Mexico production, which had at least two accidental gun discharges just days before the fatal shooting. He was fired from the set of an earlier movie, “Freedom’s Path,” in 2019, after a gun unexpectedly discharged, causing a minor injury to a crew member, the production company, Rocket Soul Studios, said in a statement on Monday.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
