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      Gun and Projectile Used in Shooting on Alec Baldwin Film Set Recovered, Officials Say

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      Sheriff Adan Mendoza of Santa Fe County said at a news conference on Wednesday that the lead projectile Alec Baldwin fired from a revolver on the “Rust” film set, killing the film’s cinematographer and wounding its director, was recovered from the director’s shoulder, and added that investigators believe they recovered more live rounds on the set.Investigators also believe they have recovered the Colt revolver that fired the shot, Sheriff Mendoza said, as well as about 500 rounds of ammunition from the set. The ammunition recovered included a mixture of blanks, dummy rounds and what the sheriff’s department suspects to be live ammunition, which it will send to the F.B.I. crime lab for analysis.“We have recovered what we believe to be possible additional live rounds on set,” he said.The sheriff declined to comment on how live ammunition got there; typically, live rounds are not allowed anywhere on film sets. He described the gun that fired the fatal shot as a .45 Long Colt revolver, made by the Italian manufacturer F.lli Pietta.The shooting happened during a rehearsal for a scene in “Rust,” a Western in which Mr. Baldwin was playing an outlaw. Mr. Baldwin was practicing a scene with a gun he had been told did not contain live ammunition on the set when it went off, killing the cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, and wounding the director, Joel Souza.Sheriff Mendoza used the words “lead projectile” to describe what was recovered from Mr. Souza’s shoulder, and said it was apparently the same round that had killed Ms. Hutchins. Asked if it was an actual bullet that had been fired — and not a blank — he said, “We would consider it a live round, a bullet, live, because it did fire from the weapon and obviously caused the death of Ms. Hutchins and injured Mr. Souza.”Over the past few days, questions have been raised about how the fatal shooting could have occurred if safety protocols had been followed properly.“I think there was some complacency on this set,” Sheriff Mendoza said. “Anytime firearms are involved, safety is paramount.”.css-m80ywj header{margin-bottom:5px;}.css-m80ywj header h4{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:500;font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.5625rem;margin-bottom:0;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-m80ywj header h4{font-size:1.5625rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}The Santa Fe County district attorney, Mary Carmack-Altwies, said at the news conference that the inquiry was continuing, and that criminal charges were still possible. “If the facts and evidence and law support charges, then I will initiate prosecution at that time,” she said.Sheriff Mendoza said there were 16 people in the vicinity of where the fatal shooting took place, a set depicting a 19th-century wooden church. In total, there were about 100 people on set, he said.All three people who had handled the gun were cooperating with law enforcement, Sheriff Mendoza said. According to court papers, the film’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, prepared a table on which three guns sat; an assistant director on the film, Dave Halls, grabbed a revolver and declared it to be a “cold gun,” meaning that it had no live ammunition inside and was safe to handle. Then, Mr. Halls handed the gun to Mr. Baldwin, a detective wrote in an affidavit used to obtain a search warrant.Mr. Baldwin had been sitting in a wooden church pew, rehearsing a scene that involved “cross drawing” a revolver and pointing it toward the camera lens, Mr. Souza told a detective investigating the shooting, according to court papers. When the gun went off, Ms. Hutchins was struck in the chest and Mr. Souza was wounded in the shoulder.Mr. Baldwin is an “active part of this investigation,” the sheriff said.Detectives said that they recovered three revolvers, spent casings and ammunition — in boxes, loose and in a fanny pack — while executing a search warrant on the set, according to an inventory of the items. The inventory did not specify what kind of ammunition was found on the set. More

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      Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, Armorer on 'Rust' Set, Told Detective She Checked Rounds

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      Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the armorer on the “Rust” film, told a detective that the day Alec Baldwin fatally shot the movie’s cinematographer, she had checked dummy rounds and ensured they were not “hot,” according to an affidavit released on Wednesday. When the crew took a break for lunch, she told the detective, the ammunition was left out on a cart on the set.Dummy rounds contain no gun powder or primer cap; they are simply used as stand-ins for real bullets on camera.It was Ms. Gutierrez-Reed who had set up a gray two-tiered cart outside the set from which Dave Halls, the assistant director, took the firearm and handed it to Mr. Baldwin just before the shooting, according to court papers.On the day of the shooting, the crew had been rehearsing a scene, then broke for lunch before returning to that scene. Ms. Gutierrez-Reed told the detective that at the start of the lunch break, the firearms were secured inside a safe on a “prop truck.” During that time, she said that ammunition was kept in the truck as well as on a cart on set, where they were “not secured,” according to the affidavit.Ms. Gutierrez-Reed told an investigator that no live ammunition “is ever kept on set.” After lunch, the film’s prop master, Sarah Zachry, took the firearms from the safe and handed them to Ms. Gutierrez-Reed, the armorer, according to Ms. Gutierrez-Reed’s account to the detective.“She advised there are only a few people that have access and the combination to the safe,” the affidavit said.During the course of filming, Ms. Gutierrez-Reed told the detective that she had handed the gun to Mr. Baldwin a couple of times and also to Mr. Halls.On a podcast posted last month, Ms. Gutierrez-Reed, 24, who also goes by Hannah Reed and Hannah Gutierrez, said that she had just finished filming her first movie as head armorer in a western called “The Old Way,” starring Clint Howard and Nicolas Cage, that is set for release next year.“I was really nervous about it at first, and I almost didn’t take the job because I wasn’t sure if I was ready, but doing it, it went really smoothly,” Ms. Gutierrez-Reed said of that movie in the podcast, “Voices of the West,” on which the hosts discuss old western films and television shows. She is the daughter of Thell Reed, a shooting expert and a consultant to the movie industry who has trained prominent actors in handling firearms.“Dad’s been teaching me a little bit every now and then about guns since I was 16,” Ms. Gutierrez-Reed said on the podcast, “but I think we really got into the stuff more just really in the last couple of years.”Ms. Gutierrez-Reed did not respond to several requests for comment. More

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      5 Movies to Watch for Halloween

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      5 Movies to Watch for HalloweenErik PiepenburgIn Manhattan, watching with the lights out 👻 [embedded content]Cult: ‘Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker’Starring ’70s teen hearthrob Jimmy McNichol, this movie is one of the few classic slasher films to feature a positive portrayal of a gay character. But it’s Susan Tyrrell who turns it into a camp showpiece.Find where to stream it. More

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      Alec Baldwin Shooting: What Detectives Found at the Movie Set

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      Court papers did not specify what kind of ammunition detectives recovered from a movie set where the actor had fatally shot a cinematographer with a gun he was told did not contain live rounds.Detectives found three revolvers, spent casings and ammunition — in boxes, loose and in a fanny pack — when they searched the New Mexico film set where the actor Alec Baldwin fatally shot a cinematographer last week with a gun he had been told did not contain any live rounds, according to an inventory of the items seized that was released on Monday.The new details emerged four days after Mr. Baldwin shot the cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, while rehearsing a scene in which he draws a revolver from his holster and points it at the camera, according to an affidavit used to obtain the warrant to search the set. The inventory, filed in Santa Fe County Magistrate Court, did not specify what kind of ammunition was seized, and whether it included regular bullets, blank cartridges or dummies.Taken together, the guns, ammunition and blood from the scene where the movie “Rust” was being filmed did not answer the central question of how Ms. Hutchins was killed with a gun that was not supposed to contain live ammunition.Mike Tristano, a veteran professional armorer based in Los Angeles, said the inventory was vague and gave scant information about the type of guns or bullets found. But he did point to the reference to loose ammunition and spent casings as unusual. Typically, ammunition would be kept in a clearly labeled box, he said. “The fact that there is loose ammunition and casings raises questions about the organization of the armory department,” he said.According to an interview with the movie’s director, Joel Souza, used in an affidavit released on Sunday by the Santa Fe County sheriff’s department, Mr. Baldwin had been sitting in a wooden pew in a set depicting a church, explaining how he would draw the gun, when it suddenly discharged. Mr. Souza told a detective that he remembered Ms. Hutchins grabbing her midsection and starting to stumble backward before noticing that he was bleeding from his shoulder.Reid Russell, a cameraman who was present at the scene, told a detective he remembered Ms. Hutchins saying that she “couldn’t feel her legs.”The details, from Detective Joel Cano, provide a chilling account of the fatal shooting on a production set that had been beset by accidental gun discharges and labor disputes between producers and crew members..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-m80ywj header{margin-bottom:5px;}.css-m80ywj header h4{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:500;font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.5625rem;margin-bottom:0;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-m80ywj header h4{font-size:1.5625rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}The exact safety protocol that played out before the shooting on Thursday remained unclear. Mr. Souza said in the affidavit that typically, firearms had been checked by the movie’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, then the first assistant director, Dave Halls, before Mr. Halls would hand the weapons to actors. Before the shooting, the affidavit said, Mr. Halls had grabbed the revolver from a cart outside the building that had been prepared by Ms. Gutierrez-Reed — on which three guns sat — and declared it to be a “cold gun,” which on a film set usually refers to an unloaded firearm.Although the inventory did not stipulate what kind of ammunition was recovered, live bullets are generally forbidden on film sets.Mr. Halls, an industry veteran who worked on films including “Fargo” and “The Matrix Reloaded,” has been the subject of complaints about safety on previous productions. On Monday, a production company, Rocket Soul Studios, said in a statement that Mr. Halls had been fired from the set of a movie, “Freedom’s Path” in 2019 after a gun unexpectedly discharged, causing a minor injury to a crew member. The statement was reported earlier by CNN.“Halls was removed from set immediately after the prop gun discharged,” the statement said. Mr. Halls did not immediately respond to a request for comment on that situation.Mr. Souza said the filming of the scene inside the church that day had been interrupted by a lunch break for the production. Neither Mr. Souza nor Mr. Russell knew whether the revolver had been inspected after the crew returned from the lunch break, according to the affidavit.The sheriff’s office and the Santa Fe district attorney’s office are planning to hold a news conference on Wednesday to discuss the investigation. More

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      The ‘Halloween’ Franchise and the Problem With Its Sequels

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      The follow-ups took the wrong lessons from the 1978 film. But we keep giving the franchise second chances, in hopes a new one will live up to the original.The astonishing opening-weekend grosses for “Halloween Kills,” the 12th film in the durable “Halloween” franchise, may have surprised some observers — after all, audiences are still hesitant to visit theaters, and reviews for this installment were not kind.And they’re not wrong: it’s truly a mess, a whiplash-inducing attempt to fuse straight horror, sideways comedy and socially relevant themes. But just as you can’t kill Michael Myers, the knife-wielding psychopath at its center, you can’t kill “Halloween,” which has outlasted other horror franchises from the same era like “Friday the 13th” (dormant since 2009) and “A Nightmare on Elm Street” (since 2010).So what is it about this series that has proved so durable? What keeps fans — and I count myself among them — coming back, forever granting the series second chances at greatness, fully aware of the inevitability of disappointment? A look back at the first five films in the series (available in new Blu-ray collector’s editions from Shout Factory but also streaming on major platforms) provides some answers.It’s impossible to overstate the impact of John Carpenter’s 1978 “Halloween,” a film now treated as a sacred text among horror aficionados — and for good reason. The thriller was innovative, quite literally from the first frame: it opens with a lengthy sequence in which we see a brutal murder through the killer’s eyes. It’s easy to understand what the film’s imitators lifted from this: the heavy-breathing point-of-view framing, the gratuitous nudity, the prurient moralizing (the victim is killed after a casual sexual encounter). Few bothered to replicate Carpenter’s technical wizardry — that four-minute introductory shot, clearly inspired by the opening of Orson Welles’ “Touch of Evil,” plays out as an unbroken take — or use it as ingeniously as “Halloween” does: to delay, for as long as possible, the moment of shock when Carpenter finally reveals that the murderer is the 6-year-old Michael Myers, who has slain his own sister.In stark contrast to the slasher movies it spawned, and even to its own sequels, barely a drop of blood is shed in “Halloween.” Carpenter and his co-writer and producer, Debra Hill, spend much of the film’s first hour crafting distinct, memorable characters, particularly Myers’s final would-be victim, the bookworm babysitter Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), and his psychiatrist and antagonist, Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasence).So rather than reveling in guts and gore, the original film’s emphasis is on suspense, terror and mood. Carpenter’s elegant direction makes inventive use of negative space and darkness (particularly when moving Michael’s ghostly white mask in and out of the cinematographer Dean Cundey’s inky night spaces), and of foregrounds and backgrounds, which frequently reveal the killer’s presence to the viewer before he is seen by his potential victims. Carpenter also masterfully manipulates the pace, which rises and falls in waves through the first and second acts, casually accumulating dread and fear, before moving into the relentlessly scary closing scenes.“Halloween” was a commercial sensation, grossing roughly $47 million on a budget of $325,000. That tremendous return on investment prompted a slew of quick, cheap imitations — after all, the logic went, you didn’t need stars or production values, just some attractive young unknowns and a guy with a knife. None of the successors was more transparent, or more successful, than the “Friday the 13th” series. Its makers couldn’t replicate Carpenter’s stylistic flair, so they invested in elaborate, intricate killing scenes and blood by the bucket.“Friday” and its first follow-up had already come and gone by the time “Halloween II” hit theaters, in October 1981, but that series’s influence is keenly felt in this sequel. Though Carpenter and Hill wrote and produced again (with directorial duties handed off to Rick Rosenthal), the violence is much more extreme and the body count is higher, as is the volume of jump scares, a sure sign that the filmmakers didn’t believe their audience had the patience for the slow builds of the initial installment.But “Halloween II” still has moments of visceral terror that rival the first film, and compositions that are breathtaking in their ingenuity. At their best, these films can tap into a primal fear: of being chased, of running for our lives, of realizing too late that we don’t have a way out. It’s why the scene of Laurie seemingly trapped in a closet in the first film has lodged itself so firmly in our collective memories; it’s why the sequel’s basement chase is so similarly effective. Throughout the series, characters and dialogue return to the idea of “the boogeyman,” a relentless force of evil whom you, of course, cannot kill; “Halloween” works on our subconscious, to a great extent, because it is rooted in childhood fears. (The fears of “Friday the 13th” are teenage concerns: getting caught, either having sex or doing drugs or both.)“Halloween III: The Season of the Witch” was closer to science fiction than horror.Universal PicturesThe “Halloween” movies’ willingness to take risks, at least early on, is more pronounced in the next installment. The first sequel ends, perhaps hopefully, with the death of Michael Myers; the next year, Carpenter and Hill produced “Halloween III: Season of the Witch,” an effort to rebrand the series as a horror anthology, telling a completely different story in a completely different style. This tale of an evil plan to murder kids en masse via killer Halloween masks is closer to 1950s science fiction (or, at the very least, ’70s riffs on the genre like the “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” remake) than anything that was happening in horror in the 1980s — and, perhaps as a result, audiences rejected the attempt to rethink “Halloween.”That was, in retrospect, the last time the series tried to break new ground rather than follow current trends. But that’s probably the other explanation for the longevity of “Halloween”: its malleability. When the producer Moustapha Akkad resurrected the series in 1988 with “Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers,” he gave the fans what they wanted — more of the same — though that film, and its quickie follow-up a year later, “Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers,” felt more like “Friday the 13th” sequels than anything Carpenter and Hill had made. Both films have moments of genuine fright and a handful of affecting performances, but they feel like the series reacting to trends rather than setting them, a pattern that continued through the next entries: the winking, “Scream”-influenced “Halloween H20: 20 Years Later” (1998); the extreme horror of Rob Zombie’s 2007 mash-up of remake and origin story; and the gestures of social relevance in the current iterations.These efforts to rethink, rebrand and reboot that original, comparatively simple exercise in suspense have failed and succeeded in roughly equal measure. Yet we’ll plunk down our ticket money, no matter how sour the word of mouth, no matter how dire the reviews, because we’ve grown up with these movies.Part of it is sheer nostalgia, plain and simple: “Halloween” movies remind us of sneaking contraband videotapes into sleepovers and scaring each other silly late at night, after the parents were asleep. The series will probably never scale those heights again, and we know it. But we’ll keep showing up, like die-hard fans of a baseball team that hasn’t nabbed a pennant in years, but can still win a big game every now and then. More

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      in Television

      What’s on TV This Week: ‘Great Performances’ and ‘In the Heights’

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      PBS’s “Great Performances” debuts a Halloween-themed episode. And “In the Heights” airs on HBO.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, Oct. 25-31. Details and times are subject to change.MondayPOV: THINGS WE DARE NOT DO 10 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). A teenager pushes against gender expectations in a small village in western Mexico in this documentary from the filmmaker Bruno Santamaría. The film follows a young Ñoño, who begins exploring femininity, leading to difficult conversations with conservative family members, and challenges from others in the community.TuesdayTHE LAST O.G. 10 p.m. on TBS. In the Season 3 finale of this comedy series, Tray (Tracy Morgan) was the victim of a violent attack. In Season 4, which will debut with a pair of new episodes on Tuesday night, Tray returns to his Brooklyn community determined to better his life. This season will be the first without Morgan’s original co-star, Tiffany Haddish. It’s something of a mirror of the series’s first episodes: The show started with Tray returning home after 15 years of incarceration.WednesdayPOLTERGEIST (1982) 7 p.m. on AMC. Channels have spent the month of October airing an array of spooky movies. Take advantage of the final week with a double feature of horror classics: “Poltergeist,” about a suburban family plagued by ghosts, and THE EXORCIST (1973), about a possessed child, which airs on AMC at 9:30 p.m.ThursdayFrom left, Bill Murray, Chloë Sevigny and Adam Driver in “The Dead Don’t Die.” Abbot Genser/Focus FeaturesTHE DEAD DON’T DIE (2018) 5:30 p.m. on FX. The undead take their flesh with coffee and chardonnay in “The Dead Don’t Die,” Jim Jarmusch’s zombie comedy. Bill Murray, Adam Driver and Chloë Sevigny star as members of a small-town police department. In this world, a climate change driven apocalypse is set in motion by “polar fracking,” which disrupts the earth’s rhythms and causes the dead to awaken. There are familiar faces among the living and undead alike: Jarmusch assembled an unusually recognizable ensemble that includes Tilda Swinton, Selena Gomez, RZA, Steve Buscemi and Iggy Pop. “This is an end-of-the-world party with an appealing guest list and inviting, eccentric décor,” A.O. Scott wrote in his review for The Times. “The consumption of human flesh just keeps it interesting,” Scott added, “and the crepuscular light — shot by the ghoulishly gifted cinematographer Frederick Elmes — gives it a bewitching, Halloween ambience.” In this apocalypse, even the beheading of a ghoul manages to feel coolly understated.WALKER 8 p.m. on the CW. Cordell Walker, the fictional Texas Ranger played by Chuck Norris in the 1990s show “Walker, Texas Ranger,” supplements his badge, cowboy hat and belt buckle with a smartphone in a saddle brown leather case in this modern-day reboot. The Season 1 finale saw this new version of Walker (played by Jared Padalecki) revisit the site of his wife’s murder along the U.S.-Mexico border, and gave a shocking revelation about who killed her. The second season debuts on Thursday night. In an interview with The New York Times in August, Padalecki hinted at what the show’s second season might have in store for his character. “Now he realizes he needs to be there for his kids, for his parents, for his brother, for his work partners, and for himself,” Padalecki said. “We’ll see in Season 2 that Walker has found some degree of closure.”FridayGREAT PERFORMANCES: NOW HEAR THIS 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). The violinist and conductor​​ Scott Yoo brings a group of musicians to a historic manor home in the Berkshires to record works by Beethoven in this latest entry of PBS’s “Great Performances” series. But like any Halloween-weekend program worth its candy corn, this one has some spooky twists: The group performs a seasonally-appropriate piece in Beethoven’s Op. 70, No. 1, the so-called Ghost Trio, and the episode also brings in dramatized fictional conversations between Beethoven and Sigmund Freud. (Apparently nothing is scarier than confronting one’s inner demons.)SaturdayMelissa Barrera and Anthony Ramos in “In the Heights.”Macall Polay/Warner Bros.IN THE HEIGHTS (2021) 8 p.m. on HBO. Since this movie adaptation of the Lin-Manuel Miranda musical “In the Heights” debuted in July, Miranda’s best-known work, “Hamilton,” has returned to Broadway. For those who enjoy the comforts of a sofa, “In the Heights” can bring a taste of Broadway-scale spectacle to your living room. Directed by Jon M. Chu (“Crazy Rich Asians”), this lavish movie musical stars Anthony Ramos as Usnavi, a New Yorker who runs a bodega in Washington Heights. Usnavi dreams of returning to the Dominican Republic, where he lived as a child. He sings about the pursuit of that dream, and his neighborhood harmonizes with him. Though the musical opened on Broadway in 2008, the film version feels “as permanent as the girders of the George Washington Bridge,” A.O. Scott wrote in his review for The Times. “It’s a piece of mainstream American entertainment in the best sense — an assertion of impatience and faith, a celebration of communal ties and individual gumption, a testimony to the power of art to turn struggles into the stuff of dreams.”SundayDOCTOR WHO 8 p.m. on BBC America. Jodie Whittaker will return for her third and final season as the protagonist of this long running British sci-fi show on Sunday night. The new season will kick off with a Halloween-themed episode, and is also set to be the final one for the show’s current lead writer, Chris Chibnall. He has taken on a new challenge for the occasion: This season will tell a single story in six episodes. More

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      How ‘Maya and the Three,’ ‘Encanto’ and ‘Vivo’ Animate Latinidad

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      A warrior princess, an enchanted family and a kinkajou musician are changing how Latino stories are told — at least in animation.Take “The Lord of the Rings,” but make it Mesoamerican. Pepper the plot with pop culture references, and you have “Maya and the Three.”Originally envisioned by the creator Jorge R. Gutiérrez as a film trilogy, “Maya and the Three” began to take shape in 2018 when Netflix executives asked him to pitch an idea that he loved but didn’t think he could get made anywhere else.“What came out of my mouth was: ‘I want to make three movies in a row about a Mesoamerican warrior princess who’s going to save the world,’” Gutiérrez said. Now reimagined as a nine-episode animated mini-series, the result arrived Friday on Netflix, with a vocal cast studded with Latino stars, including Zoe Saldaña (Maya), Diego Luna (Zatz, prince of bats), Gael García Bernal (the Jaguar Brothers), Stephanie Beatriz (Chimi) and Rita Moreno (Ah Puch).As singular as it sounds, “Maya and the Three” is part of a recent trend that also includes the films “Vivo,” which came out in August, and “Encanto,” slated for release next month. All are animated stories by Latinos and about Latinos. All highlight the importance of women and girls to their communities and aim to counter Hollywood’s history of attempting to create unrealistically flawless characters of color (when it has created them at all).And all three aim to dazzle and charm viewers with their narratives and aesthetics while also honoring distinct cultures and creating more complex portrayals of Latinos — in part, by reveling in their characters’ imperfections.“When you’re only representing one film with one Hispanic character, that character has to be everything for everyone,” said Rebecca Perez, an “Encanto” animator. “And that’s not fair, because no one’s perfect. We all bring our broken pieces and our perfect pieces.”When it came to creating the heroes of “Maya and the Three,” Gutiérrez, who also directed the series, received similar advice from his wife, the animator and illustrator Sandra Equihua. (Gutiérrez grew up in Mexico City, while Equihua is from Tijuana.) Equihua designed the show’s lead female characters and served as a creative consultant.“Early on, as a male writer, I go: ‘I’ve never had a female protagonist. I’ve got to make sure she’s perfect,’” Gutiérrez said in a joint video interview with Equihua, both of whom were in Los Angeles. “And she literally went: ‘What are you doing? You’re Mary Sue-ing this thing. You are making her flat as a character because she has no flaws — all the male characters are so flawed, they’re way more interesting.’”Equihua had reminded Gutiérrez that he loved folk art because of its imperfections, and she pressed him to treat his protagonist the same way. So at times, Maya falters: She does bad things for good reasons.As a society, “we’re realizing that there’s more layers than being the naysayer, the crybaby, Miss Perfect,” Equihua said. “There’s more layers to us as girls, as women, and we wanted to make sure that Maya was as human as possible.”Part of that humanity is purely physical. Equihua designed Maya to look almost vase-like: She has broad hips, a stout build and strong legs. (She is, after all, a warrior princess.) The illustrator tries to base her characters on what Latinas really look like.“Not all of us have the thighs and the hips and everything, but a lot of us do,” Equihua said. “And it’s good to celebrate it and see that there’s diversity in shapes, and not all of us have long, long, long legs and thin, thin, thin, thin tiny waists. And it’s just glorious to see that she could run around and be powerful.”Rather than have a traditional quinceañera on her 15th birthday, Maya embarks on a quest outlined by an ancient prophecy. Alongside three great warriors, she must battle the gods to save her family, her friends and herself.“One of the themes in ‘Maya’ is the sacrifice that Latinas have to make: for their families to go on, for the countries to go on, for the culture to go on,” Gutiérrez said. “They’re the pillars that hold up the continent, and a lot of times it’s a thankless endeavor.”In “Encanto,” Mirabel, center, voiced by Stephanie Beatriz, lives in an enchanted Colombian town with her family.Disney/Disney, via Associated Press“Encanto,” a Disney film coming to theaters on Nov. 24, tells the story of the Madrigal family, which lives in an enchanted town in the mountains of Colombia. The family matriarch, Abuela (María Cecilia Botero), first arrived there after fleeing violence, losing her husband along the way.The enchantment, bestowed upon Abuela to protect her from harm, has given a magical gift to each child in the family — except Mirabel. But when she realizes that the enchantment itself is in danger, Mirabel sets out to save her family.Perez, one of the film’s animators, said that her Cuban grandparents came to the United States in very much the same fashion, packing their bags and giving up everything they knew. “I made very conscious choices to be present in every meeting, and be authentically me,” Perez said in a video interview from Burbank, Calif. “Even if it meant being a little uncomfortable — both me being uncomfortable, and the person I’m talking to, whether it be a director or producer, and expressing my point of view.“Always respectful, but the only way you’re going to get to a great place is to go through the bumps. Then you’re going to have honest conversations.”Perhaps without realizing it, Perez mirrored the experience of Mirabel Madrigal, the film’s bespectacled protagonist. In “Encanto,” conflict is resolved only through open, honest conversation between Mirabel and Abuela, bridging generational gaps amid a cloud of golden butterflies. The rest of the Madrigal family runs the gamut of body types, skin tones, hair colors, accents and magical powers.Like “Encanto,” the Netflix film “Vivo” includes details that the average viewer might miss. Someone who is part of the relevant culture, however, will instantly pick them up. In “Encanto,” Mirabel gestures to a present for her younger cousin by pointing with her lips, a classic Colombian gesture. In “Vivo,” a Dominican American mother drives a car with a bumper sticker: the Dominican flag inside an outline of the country.Carlos Romero, a story artist on “Vivo” of Dominican and Panamanian descent, loved the bumper sticker — he saw it everywhere growing up in the Bronx.“It’s all about absorbing all of that and making sure we’re doing right by their culture,” he said. It was also important, he added, to make sure that “people from those different countries can watch this and feel pride, too — and feel like, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s exactly someone I know,’ or, ‘That’s exactly what I’d say.’”“Vivo” is centered on a Domincan American tween (voiced by Ynairaly Simo) and a musical kinkajou (Lin-Manuel Miranda). SPAI/Netflix“Vivo” follows the unlikely adventures of a kinkajou named Vivo (Lin-Manuel Miranda), a musician from Cuba, and a girl named Gabi (Ynairaly Simo), an energetic Dominican American tween. When the two run away from home to deliver a long-lost love letter, Gabi’s mother, Rosa (Saldaña), becomes worried. Then she becomes upset.There was a lot of worry on set, Romero said, surrounding Rosa’s emotions. Was she too angry, especially for a Dominican American woman onscreen? Romero understood the desire to avoid stereotypes, he said, but he thought the portrayal was realistic: Any mother would furiously scour the city for her lost child.“We need to show them as dimensional characters that experience fear; they experience worry and anxiety for their kid, pride when they do good,” Romero said. “You shouldn’t be afraid of touching all the emotions because Latinos are dimensional people that should be portrayed realistically onscreen.”“And the more of them we get,” he added, “the less we have to worry about presenting them perfectly in our films.” More

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      Here's Why Films Use Real Guns as Props on Set

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      Safety protocols for firearms on set are well established and straight forward, and injuries of any kind are rare.LOS ANGELES — Hollywood was in a state of shock on Friday, one day after Alec Baldwin fired a gun being used as a prop on a New Mexico film set, killing a cinematographer and wounding the director. Real firearms are routinely used while cameras are rolling, and injuries of any kind are rare. The reason is that safety protocols for firearms on sets are well established and straight forward.Weapons must be tightly managed by an armorer, sometimes credited on films as a “weapons master,” who holds various government-issued permits. Some states, for instance, require an entertainment firearms license in addition to standard gun licenses. Cast members should be trained in gun safety in advance. Guns should never be pointed directly at anyone, especially in rehearsals but even during actual filming, since camera trickery can be used to compensate for the angle. If necessary, plexiglass is used to protect the camera operator and surrounding crew members.And no live ammunition, ever.“Protocol had to have been broken,” said Daniel Leonard, an associate dean of Chapman University’s film school who specializes in set procedures. “We will have to see what the details are, but the industry has a very specific set of guidelines to follow to prevent something like this from happening.”I am gutted and just so mad right now. No shot, no scene and no movie is worth the loss of life. #RIPHalynaHutchins— Rachel Morrison (@morrisondp) October 22, 2021
      Weapons on sets vary. Some are rubber props (used for shots when actors are far in the distance) and others are airsoft guns that fire nonlethal pellets. Often, however, productions use real guns.Studios prefer to digitally create the actual firing in postproduction whenever possible. Sometimes it is not. Even in a filmmaking age where visual-effects artists use computers to convincingly create disintegrating cities, it can be difficult to replicate the weight and recoil of a real gun, studio executives say. Some actors have a hard time faking it.Depending on the complexity of the scene, effects wizardry is also expensive, Mr. Leonard noted, and independently financed movies like “Rust,” the film that Mr. Baldwin was making in New Mexico, operate on shoestring budgets.When the guns need to be fired, they are loaded with blanks, which are cartridge cases with no bullets. People tend to think that blanks are like toy cap guns for children — a little pop and some smoke. That is not the case. Blanks can still be dangerous because they involve gunpowder and paper wadding or wax, which provide a flame and spark, which look good on camera. (When people are injured by firearms on sets, it usually involves a burn, safety coordinators said.)“Blanks help contribute to the authenticity of a scene in ways that cannot be achieved in any other manner,” David Brown, a Canadian movie firearms safety coordinator, wrote in American Cinematographer magazine in 2019. “If the cinematographer is there to paint a story with light and framing, firearms experts are there to enhance a story with drama and excitement.”A production safety coordinator, working with the armorer, institutes rules for keeping a safe distance from the muzzle of a gun loaded with a blank. At least 20 feet is a rule of thumb, according to Larry Zanoff, an armorer for films like “Django Unchained.” Mr. Brown wrote that “safe distances vary widely depending on the load and the type of firearm, which is why we test everything in advance.”“Take the distance that people need to be away from a gunshot, and then triple it,” Mr. Brown wrote. He declined a telephone interview on Friday but added in an email: “Firearms are no more dangerous than any other prop on set when handled responsibly. All the safety procedures in the industry make these situations virtually impossible when firearms are handled by professionals who give them their undivided attention.”If a movie involves gunfire, safety planning usually begins long before anyone gathers on a set, according to studio executives who oversee physical production. First, the armorer is brought on board to analyze the script and, working with the director and prop master, decide what weapons are needed. Studios tend to work with the same armorers over and over again; one such expert, John Fox, has credits in 190 films and 650 episodes of television over 25 years.Larry Zanoff is an armorer who worked on “Django Unchained.”Mel Melcon/Los Angeles Times, via Getty ImagesArmorers own the weapons themselves or rent them; Mike Tristano & Company in Los Angeles has a vast prop gun inventory that includes AK-47s in blank-firing, blank-adapted and nonfiring versions. Armorers (or sometimes licensed prop masters) are responsible for storing them on set. Guns are not supposed to leave their hands until cameras are rolling; actors hand them back as soon as “cut” or “wrap” is called and the cameras stop.“There’s a big difference between being an expert with firearms and handling them on a set,” said Jeremy Goldstein, a prop master and licensed armorer in Los Angeles whose credits include films for Netflix, Amazon and Universal. “On a set, you’re around people who have never held guns and who don’t understand the gravity of what can happen.” (Mr. Goldstein, like Mr. Zanoff and Mr. Brown, has no connection with “Rust.”)Studios typically require any cast members who will be performing with firearms to undergo training on a shooting range in advance. There, they are taught safety and given general information about how guns work. Independent productions, for reasons of cost and time, may handle safety demonstrations on set. Various unions operate safety hotlines where anyone on set can anonymously report concerns.It is not clear precisely what kind of gun was being used in “Rust,” what it was loaded with or what exactly was happening on the set when it was fired. It was also not known what kind of training the cast members had. “Regarding the projectile, a focus of the investigation is what type it was and how did it get there,” said Juan Ríos, a spokesman for the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office.A New York Times reporter got a sense of what usually happens on a set right before a scene involving simulated gunfire. It happened in October 2015 on the Baton Rouge, La., set of the remake of “Roots.” Before the cameras rolled, a crew leader stood in the middle of the wooded location, with dozens of performers and crew watching, and gave a safety speech in an urgent, serious tone. The scene they were about to film involved cannons and gunfire from period weapons.“All right everybody,” the crew leader said. “We have to discharge the gun. So we’re not playing with toys, guys. If something goes wrong, I’m going to yell cut, and we’re all going to back off calmly.“The cannons are all faced out. We’ve all been through this training, we’ve rehearsed it over and over, we all get it. But pay attention, this is not a game. I keep saying that, guys. These guns are for real.”Melena Ryzik More