Alec Baldwin gestures while talking with investigators following the fatal shooting last year on the movie set of 'Rust', in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Photo / AP
Alec Baldwin gestures while talking with investigators following the fatal shooting last year on the movie set of 'Rust', in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Photo / AP
In the thick of Oscar season, the Alec Baldwin shooting story has returned like a nightmare Hollywood can’t rouse itself from – or perhaps a dreadful cautionary tale that refuses to be ignored.
The latest development, announced by Santa Fe’s District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies yesterday evening, is that Baldwin is to be be charged with involuntary manslaughter over the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of his western Rust in October 2021; Hutchins was killed by a live round fired from a prop gun by Baldwin during a scene (Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the film’s armourer, is facing the same charge).
Carmack-Altwies also said that David Halls, Rust’s first assistant director, has agreed to plead guilty to a charge of “negligent use of a deadly weapon” after handing the loaded revolver to Baldwin before the shot was fired.
If Baldwin is found guilty, the consequences could be severe. The LA Times reported that the jury would be allowed to choose between two involuntary manslaughter charges: one with a maximum penalty of 18 months in prison, and the other – enhanced for use of a firearm – with a minimum sentence of five years.
Alec Baldwin being told by deputies that Halyna Hutchins had died. Photo / Youtube
Baldwin’s lawyer Luke Nikas described the turn of events as “a terrible miscarriage of justice”, adding: “‘We will fight these charges, and we will win.”
Reed’s own lawyers were no less bullish.
“Hannah is, and has always been, very emotional and sad about this tragic accident,” they said. “But she did not commit involuntary manslaughter… we intend to bring the full truth to light and believe Hannah will be exonerated of wrongdoing by a jury.”
Rust’s production company announced in October that a civil settlement had been reached with Hutchins’ widower, Matthew Hutchins, which specified that work on the film would resume this month. Yesterday’s charges, however, might upend these plans. Baldwin could be prevented from having contact with witnesses before his trial, for instance, while crew members might be hard to recruit, either through union edict or personal unease.
Additionally, it’s hard to see how in its finished form, Rust would now be of interest to anyone but cranks and ghouls. Baldwin now belongs to that subset of actors whose off-screen lives have bled irreparably into their on-screen personas, and the spectre of this sorry story will be hard to chase from informed viewers’ minds.
Perhaps that’s why the case feels somehow loosely connected to the #MeToo movement – though really, there are very few even remotely similar incidents with which it can be bracketed. When the story broke, many drew comparisons with the fatal shooting of Brandon Lee during the making of The Crow in 1993. That film, Rust’s producers will have surely noted, was released just seven months later, and Lee’s death became part of its mythology.
Cinematographer Halyna Hutchins died after being shot with a prop gun by Alec Baldwin. Photo / Instagram @halynahutchins
But in that case, the relevant district attorney said he had found no evidence of “wilful and wanton negligence”, and no criminal charges were filed. Nor was the man holding the weapon, also a producer, whose job involved maintaining a safe and disciplined set.
The actor who fired the shot on The Crow, Michael Massee, withdrew from the business for a year. Baldwin, by contrast, has remained staunchly in the public eye, making three further features. One is another project from one of Rust’s producers, Anjul Nigam – an action thriller called 97 Minutes, shot in Hampshire last year and slated for release next month – while the others were Italian-made Christmas comedies Kid Santa and Billie’s Magic World. There was, of course, also the flatteringly lit interview on CNN last August, in which the actor protested his innocence and heaped blame on Gutierrez Reed and Halls.
Will the charges leave Baldwin un-castable in Hollywood? Truth is, the Hollywood work for which he was known – the half-suave, half-shark-like character turns stretching from Beetlejuice to Motherless Brooklyn – had essentially petered out by 2020 anyway. And one last Boss Baby voice gig aside, he’s since found himself in the churn-and-burn VOD ecosystem of which Rust was (and apparently may yet still be) a part.
Whatever happens now, up to and including prison, there are corners of that system that would welcome him back: just look at Kevin Spacey and Johnny Depp, both still gainfully employed post-disgrace. The career Baldwin would have lost was already over. But if cinema still has places for Depp and Spacey, you had better believe it can find one for him, too.
