quote:

Originally posted by Gustofer:
After three weeks of investigations there are still no charges?

Why, pray tell?

If this was 5 people shooting a Tik Tok in the back yard the criminal case would already be on the court schedule.

Star Wars fans will get this one right away

quote:

Originally posted by Rightwire:
When Baldwin made that statement, I wonder if he realized the officer would have had to shoot him to prevent him from shooting the two victims.

This works for me.

I noticed that someone else is playing Trump on SNL.

quote:

Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:
I noticed that someone else is playing Trump on SNL.

Eh? SNL is still doing Trump? With all the President-Alleged Brandon "what day is it?" Shart material, whatever for?

Yeah I saw a brief clip.

[note: picture and hyperlinks at linked website article]

'Rust' conspiracy theories of 'sabotage' shot down by Santa Fe DA: 'We don't have any proof'

By Melissa Roberto | Fox News

Santa Fe County District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies is speaking out in opposition of attorneys who have been defending "Rust" crew members amid the investigation into Alec Baldwin's fatal shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.

"So prosecutors have to deal in facts and in evidence," Carmack-Altwies said in an interview that aired on "Good Morning America" on Wednesday.

Speaking to the controversy surrounding how live rounds ended up on the movie set in Santa Fe, the county district attorney said, "We don't have an answer to that yet."

"I know that some defense attorneys have come up with conspiracy theories and have used the word ‘sabotage.' We do not have any proof," Carmack-Altwies said.

Speaking on the "Today" show last week, armorer Hannah Gutierrez Reed's attorneys Jason Bowles and Robert Gorence claimed that the bullets their client loaded into the gun on the day of the shooting were taken from a box that was only supposed to contain dummy rounds that were incapable of firing. However, because the ammunition was left unattended from roughly 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. that day, they believe the opportunity was there for a disgruntled crew member to mix a live round into the box.

Carmack-Altwies then said if it were to be found that someone did, in fact, "sabotage" the set by placing live rounds in the vicinity of the cast and crew, her office would be looking at "certainly a higher level of murder charge than we would potentially be looking at with the facts we have now."

[note: multiple videos (set member speaks out on safety issues, defense attorneys suggest sabotage during interview, switch to Airsoft gun use, budgets/ salaries info etc..), pictures, and hyperlinks at the link, so I would suggest going to linked website for additional info.]

============================

Additional live rounds found on 'Rust' set; Santa Fe DA refutes sabotage theory

"We still don’t know how they got on the set. And how they got there, I think, will be one of the most important factors going into a charging decision," the DA said.

Nov. 10, 2021, 8:12 AM MST
By Marlene Lenthang

Additional live rounds were found on the “Rust” film set where actor Alec Baldwin fatally shot a cinematographer, the Santa Fe District Attorney said.

Mary Carmack-Altwies, who will decide whether to press charges in the tragedy, told ABC's “Good Morning America” Wednesday there were “many levels of failures” on the movie set.

Halyna Hutchins, the film’s director of photography, 42, was fatally shot and director Joel Souza, 48, was injured on Oct. 21 at the Bonanza Creek Ranch in New Mexico when Baldwin, 63, discharged a prop firearm loaded with a live round.

Carmack-Altwies acknowledged there were more live rounds found on set, but did not release any details on how many. She deemed it “concerning” that live rounds were found at all.

“We still don’t know how they got on the set. And how they got there, I think, will be one of the most important factors going into a charging decision,” she said. “It’s probably more important to focus on what led up to the shooting because the moment of the shooting, we know that at least Mr. Baldwin had no idea that the gun was loaded, so it’s more how did that gun get loaded, what levels of failure happened and were those levels of failure criminal?”

In the days following the incident, the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office recovered the “lead projectile” in the shooting as well as 500 other rounds, saying the set included blanks, dummy rounds and what investigators suspect are “live rounds.”

Carmack-Altwies said her office doesn’t yet have an answer as to how live ammunition ended up on set, but refuted any theories of sabotage.

“I know that some defense attorneys have come up with conspiracy theories and used the word sabotage. We do not have proof,” she said. When asked if sabotage is a possibility in the case, she responded, “No.”

Her statement comes a week after an attorney for the armorer on the movie set, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, 24, said he believes someone may have been trying to sabotage the set by putting a live round in a box of dummy ammunition.

“How did a live round get on set, and who put that live round on the set?” Jason Bowles asked on NBC’s “TODAY” show last week.

Authorities are looking at Gutierrez-Reed's qualifications for the job as part of their investigation, according to Carmack-Altwies.

She said her office knows who loaded the gun before the shooting, but declined to name the person.

If sabotage is found to be the case, the district attorney's office would consider “certainly a higher level of murder charge than we would potentially be looking at with the facts we have now,” she said.

She said her office is prepared to press criminal charges, "if the circumstances warrant it."

"We will do our best to get justice for Halyna Hutchins and Joel Souza," Carmack-Altwies said.

After the shooting incident, Baldwin released a statement saying he's cooperating with the police investigation and is in contact with Hutchins' family.

"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," the actor wrote.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Modern Day Savage,

quote:

Speaking on the "Today" show last week, armorer Hannah Gutierrez Reed's attorneys Jason Bowles and Robert Gorence claimed that the bullets their client loaded into the gun on the day of the shooting were taken from a box that was only supposed to contain dummy rounds that were incapable of firing. However, because the ammunition was left unattended from roughly 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. that day, they believe the opportunity was there for a disgruntled crew member to mix a live round into the box.

Carmack-Altwies then said if it were to be found that someone did, in fact, "sabotage" the set by placing live rounds in the vicinity of the cast and crew, her office would be looking at "certainly a higher level of murder charge than we would potentially be looking at with the facts we have now."

It's not my fault! It never is! It's someone else's fault that this happened!

I wonder if they'll ever find the Patsy?

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:


Star Wars fans will get this one right away

HA! OK let me throw this one out here:

The Lawsuits Begin...

Four defendants named as having handled the gun before the fatal shooting.

First of many ...

‘Rust’ Crew Member Sues Gun Handlers, Producers and Alec Baldwin

By Julia Jacobs, Adam Nagourney and Graham Bowley • Nov. 10, 2021

A crew member for “Rust” filed a lawsuit on Wednesday against the movie’s producers, Alec Baldwin and several other members of the crew who were tasked with handling guns on set, accusing them of failing to follow safety protocols that would have prevented the fatal shooting of the film’s cinematographer on the set last month.

Serge Svetnoy, the gaffer, or chief lighting technician, on the film, was standing about six or seven feet away from Mr. Baldwin on the set in New Mexico as the crew prepared for a scene in which Mr. Baldwin’s character drew a .45 Colt revolver from his shoulder holster and pointed it in the “general direction of the camera,” according to the lawsuit.

.......

The lawsuit accuses producers and other crew members of failing to properly inspect the revolver before it was handed to Mr. Baldwin. According to court papers, the movie’s first assistant director, Dave Halls, called out “cold gun” before handing it to Mr. Baldwin, which indicated that it did not contain live ammunition. Law enforcement officials later determined that it did contain a live bullet, which killed the cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, 42, and wounded the director, Joel Souza, 48.

...

The lawsuit described the chain of possession of people who handled the .45 Colt shortly before the shooting on Oct. 21, and accused each person of failing to properly check the gun. According to the lawsuit, Sarah Zachry, the prop master on “Rust,” handed the gun to Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the armorer, who loaded it. Then, the lawsuit said, Mr. Halls “failed to thoroughly and properly inspect it” before declaring it safe to handle.

The lawsuit also accused Mr. Baldwin of behaving negligently when he failed to ensure that the gun “was indeed ‘cold’” before he practiced with it, saying that he should have double-checked to make sure that it contained no live ammunition and that duty called for him to handle the gun “as if it was loaded and to refrain from pointing it at anyone.” The lawsuit said that the scene did not call for Mr. Baldwin to shoot the revolver.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/1...it-alec-baldwin.html

The latest accounting for most plausible theory...an un-named person with ties to the set asserts that the gun used in the incident was used for live target practice that very morning.

TheWrap

(Note: you may only get one reading of the article before prompting for your email address.)

quote:

Originally posted by kkina:
The latest accounting for most plausible theory...an un-named person with ties to the set asserts that the gun used in the incident was used for live target practice that very morning.

TheWrap

(Note: you may only get one reading of the article before prompting for your email address.)

This was my assumption from the beginning. Shooting live ammo after hours and someone effed up when they returned it to property by live ammo ending up with dummy rounds. I SO want this pursued and come to find out that Baldwin took part in the festivities.

An opinion piece from The Wall Street Journal.
Agree or don’t agree about what should or shouldn’t be, this addresses something I discussed earlier in this thread.

===============================================

The Truth Behind Alec Baldwin’s Gun
Actors seek reality. They’ll use whatever helps them find it.

By Matthew Hennessey

There’s a famous story from the set of “At Close Range,” the 1986 film starring Christopher Walken and Sean Penn as father- and-son criminals. In one scene, Mr. Penn points a gun directly at Mr. Walken’s face. According to the story, Mr. Walken was diligent about checking the pistol before every take to make sure it wasn’t loaded. Moments before the cameras rolled, Mr. Penn grew frantic.

“Give me the other gun,” he shouted at a crew member, who duly complied. At that moment, the director called “Action!” The terror on Mr. Walken’s face is real, and it’s in the movie.

A recent on-set tragedy, in which Alec Baldwin fired a live bullet and killed a cinematographer during a rehearsal, has many in the industry calling for a prohibition against working firearms on Hollywood sets. There’s one problem: Actors love real stuff.

A century’s worth of American film actors have been trained to re-create reality as faithfully as possible when they work. They’ll go to almost any length to contribute an added measure of truth to a scene. If a script says a character has been up all night, an actor will come to work without sleep. Actors will gain weight, lose weight, hang out of airplanes, learn the saxophone, eat bugs and have teeth removed if they think it will help sell the audience on the reality of what appears on screen.

Acting is a head game. You try to fool the audience, but first you need to fool yourself. All drama is manufactured reality. An actor who plays Hamlet doesn’t know what it feels like to have an uncle murder his father and marry his mother. But he may have some real tragedy or misery in his own life to draw on. He uses his imagination to help fill in the gaps of his experience. It gets him halfway there.

Costumes and props serve the same function. When an actor puts on his character’s clothes, he is transformed. When you dress like a cowboy, you tend to walk like a cowboy. Most actors like to work with as few gaps as possible. Why? So it looks real. So they don’t feel phony. An actor wants the audience to look at the screen and see a cowboy, not an actor pretending to be a cowboy.

Actors themselves will probably resist any ban on the use of real guns on set. A rubber gun doesn’t feel like a deadly weapon when you hold it in your hand. It feels like a toy. A real gun has weight. It has heft. You can feel its power. When you pick one up, it changes how you behave. As an actor, you know what to do. You act differently when you’re holding a toy.

I’ve been out of the game a long time, but I still have actor friends. One of them recently sent me a link to a five-minute short in which he plays a guy who sleepwalks into the kitchen at night and drinks a healthy shot of Heinz Mayochup straight from the squeeze bottle.

“Did you really chug that stuff?” I asked.

“You know it!” he replied. Everyone agrees safety must come first. But I know actors. They won’t give up their grip on reality so easily.

LINK

My access to Washington Post, subscribed to get their opinions during the Amy Coney Barreyy confirmation hearings, will soon expire. But here is one last article from them, unabridged. Another lawsuit against Rust et al ...

https://www.washingtonpost.com...tchell-alec-baldwin/

‘Rust’ script supervisor sues producers, including Alec Baldwin, saying scene did not call for gun to be fired
By Sonia Rao • Yesterday [11/17/2021] at 5:27 p.m. EST

Another lawsuit has been filed alleging negligence and unsafe workplace conditions on the set of “Rust,” the New Mexico film production on which cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was killed last month.

Script supervisor Mamie Mitchell is suing “Rust” producers and several production companies, as well as actor and producer Alec Baldwin, who fired the revolver that killed Hutchins on Oct. 21; Hannah Gutierrez, the armorer in charge of safely handling firearms on set; and Dave Halls, the first assistant director who handed Baldwin the gun. Mitchell said she was also injured during the incident, and is seeking damages for assault, intentional infliction of emotional distress and deliberate infliction of harm.

The complaint, filed Wednesday in Los Angeles Superior Court, makes the notable assertion that Baldwin intentionally, and “without cause or excuse,” discharged the firearm despite the fact that his upcoming scene did not call for a gun to be fired. It also states that he pointed the revolver toward Mitchell, Hutchins and director Joel Souza “even though protocol was not to do so.”

“It was discussed that there would be 3 tight camera shots when filming resumed,” the lawsuit reads. “One camera shot would be focused on DEFENDANT BALDWIN’S eyes, one would be focused on a blood stain on DEFENDANT BALDWIN’S shoulder, and the third would focus on DEFENDANT BALDWIN’S torso as he reached his hand down to his holster and removed the gun. There was nothing in the script about the gun being discharged by DEFENDANT BALDWIN or by any other person.”

The Washington Post has reached out to representatives of Baldwin, Gutierrez and Halls for comment.

News of Mitchell’s lawsuit arrives a week after chief lighting technician Serge Svetnoy sued around two dozen people involved with the “Rust” production, also including Baldwin, Gutierrez and Halls. His was the first known lawsuit related to the shooting, which also wounded Souza. Svetnoy said he cradled Hutchins’s head as she lay bleeding, adding at a news conference that he “tried to save her life.”

“What a tragedy and injustice when a person loses her life on a film set while making art,” he said.

A number of crew members were assembled inside a church on Bonanza Creek Ranch in Santa Fe when Baldwin fired the .45 Long Colt revolver. Mitchell, standing in close proximity, called for help after Hutchins and Souza were shot. In 911 call audio obtained by The Post, Mitchell placed blame on the “AD that yelled at me at lunch asking about revisions,” referring to Halls.

“He’s supposed to check the guns,” she said. “He’s responsible for what happened.”

An affidavit filed by a detective from the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office states that Gutierrez had set up three firearms on a gray cart outside the building, from which Halls grabbed one. It said he yelled, “Cold gun!,” a term indicating it did not contain any live rounds, and handed the revolver to Baldwin. Halls later told the detective he was unsure whether the weapon had been checked thoroughly enough.

Experts previously told The Post that assistant directors aren’t supposed to handle firearms on set; only the armorer or a designated props person is authorized to hand an actor a gun. Mitchell’s lawsuit repeats this characterization of duties and states that “Mr. Baldwin, being an industry veteran, knew that the gun in question should not have been handed to him by the Assistant Director.” It added that he should have either had the armorer demonstrate that the gun was unloaded, or checked it himself.

The lawsuit also noted claims that Gutierrez allowed firearms and ammunition to be left unattended during a lunch break, despite industry protocol calling for them to be “secured throughout the production.” Jason Bowles, an attorney for Gutierrez, said on the “Today” show earlier this month that Gutierrez had no idea how a live round got into the box labeled “dummy.” In a statement, Bowles and fellow attorney Robert Gorence wrote that Gutierrez had been spread thin while working on “Rust” due to having been hired for two separate positions, armorer and key props assistant.

“Mr. Baldwin chose to play Russian Roulette with a loaded gun without checking it and without having the Armorer do so,” Mitchell’s complaint reads. “The fact that live ammunition was allowed on a movie set, that guns and ammunition were left unattended, that the gun in question was handed to Mr. Baldwin by the Assistant director who had no business doing so, the fact that safety bulletins were not promulgated or ignored, coupled with the fact that the scene in question did not call for a gun to be fired at all, makes this a case where injury or death was much more than a possibility — it was a likely result.”

Mitchell alleged that the “Rust” producers’ efforts to cut costs and stick to a shoestring budget wound up endangering the lives of crew members, claims of negligence echoed in Svetnoy’s lawsuit and comments made publicly by first camera assistant Lane Luper. Luper resigned from “Rust” the day before Hutchins’s death, later explaining on “Good Morning America” that he had expressed
concerns to producers about relaxed covid policies, a housing situation requiring crew members to drive long distances and a lack of gun safety on set.

“I think with ‘Rust,’ it was a perfect storm of the armorer, the assistant director, the culture that was on set — the rushing,” he said. “It was everything. It wasn’t just one individual. Everything had to fall into place perfectly for this one-in-a-trillion thing to happen.”

In a statement shared with The Post by her attorney, Gloria Allred, Mitchell said the tragedy “has taken away the Joy in my life.”

“Halyna was a woman who spoke the same language of film as I did,” Mitchell said. “I have been robbed of my new friend. I am very sad and heartbroken for her son and husband, her sister and family and all of her friends who are suffering this preventable and unimaginable loss. I never want what happened on our set to ever happen to anyone else.”

Didn't take long for Gloria Allred to show up. Baldwin is going to spend the rest of his life fighting lawsuits and writing checks until the money runs out.

“Cold gun!”
We all know there is no such thing. I’ll retell a true story that reflects this, but tragedy was avoided by the simple act of checking the weapon.

Nearly 30 years ago I was at a VA gun show and looking over the wares at a vendor with several pistols. One was a nice looking Beretta Bobcat in .22LR which I had an interest in so I asked to look at it. Like all guns of the day, it was a closed slide, mag inserted. I hefted it, then out of habit popped the barrel release lever to find a round in the chamber. The mag was fully loaded. I shudder to think what might have happened if some idiot had gotten there first and dry fired it into somebodies back. Baldwins negligent discharge was eminently preventative at several junctures and everyone that was involved up to the asshat himself are accountable.

quote:

Originally posted by gearhounds:

Nearly 30 years ago I was at a VA gun show and looking over the wares at a vendor with several pistols. One was a nice looking Beretta Bobcat in .22LR which I had an interest in so I asked to look at it. Like all guns of the day, it was a closed slide, mag inserted. I hefted it, then out of habit popped the barrel release lever to find a round in the chamber. The mag was fully loaded. I shudder to think what might have happened if some idiot had gotten there first and dry fired it into somebodies back. Baldwins negligent discharge was eminently preventative at several junctures and everyone that was involved up to the asshat himself are accountable.

I had a similar experience at a gun show. The vendor left his friend watch the booth. I looked at a few guns and as always, I checked. The guy watching says something like, "they are all empty". Then I said, "except this one". Magazine was out, but someone failed to check the chamber. The guy looked panicked. That's why you always check and adhere to the gun safety rules!

I was at a gun show in Longmont back in the 80's. Picked up a sweet Marlin lever gun in 22 cal. Opened the action to clear it, and a round fell out. The guy managing the booth couldn't apologize enough. I left the show shortly thereafter. Stuff like this scares ya.

So when is Alec gonna be charged? You or I would still be in jail.