Repeated For Emphasis

 

Go back and read the part of the last post where I wrote the following:

Spare me your butthurt.

1) Movies are the dominant culture medium in America, and by America. On my side of that argument are nearly 53,000 MPAA-registered productions, just since the Hays Code. (India makes more than the U.S. year in and year out, but no one sees them outside of India. US movies go literally everywhere, by vast contrast.) Game over on that point.

2) Of those 53,00 or so, it's 99:1 if you're reading this, you've seen The Terminator (1984), Heat (1995), Saving Private Ryan (1998), Ronin (1998) , and/or Blackhawk Down (2001), if not all five. But in case you lived in a cave the last 30 years, some excerpts from each:

Shot in Tunisia, France, Ireland, and downtown L.A.

Now, the salient point: How many people were accidentally killed in those shootout scenes, with a combined round count in the thousands to tens or hundreds of thousands?

ZERO. That's Ze-fucking-ro. Period.

"Witchcraft! How can this be?!?" I hear you gasp.

Safety Bulletin No. 1: Recommendations For Safety With Firearms and Use of "Blank Ammunition"

Literally the very first (of 44, so far) Industry-Wide Safety Bulletins whose rules are, quite literally, written in blood.

Rigorous adherence to which, on all five productions, resulted in exactly no deaths whatsoever, despite using enough live arms, full-auto capable, to take over pretty much any country in South America or Africa, in any given year since 1900.

Let me underline that: the death toll from firearms at the US Capitol demonstration on January 6th (one person, Ashli Babbitt) was higher than the death toll of those five movies, combined. In fact, that panty raid had a higher body count by firearms than every movie made by Hollywood starting right after The Crow in 1993, until Thursday on the set of Rust up to 1PM, NM local time. Twenty-eight years of no deaths from firearms fuck-ups, in point of fact, on any movie or TV show.

(To whatever Hollywood industry anti-gun jackhole suggested banning all live firearms because of one death in that time - and some halfwit did, already - take those facts, and pound that dumbass idea right up your tailpipe with a shovel, good and hard. "Live guns" aren't the problem. Dumbass actors and slipshod productions are, every single time. Maybe require a minimum IQ to get a SAG card? Say 85 or so? Now you're onto something. Imagine John Lennon singing "Imagine no dumbass actors; it's easy if you try...")

Now, the "spare me your butthurt" part of that?

Weapons safety on set is not the job of actors, except to a very minor (almost negligible) degree. On purpose. The proof of the wisdom of that is the safety record you just read.

"Foul!" cries the peanut gallery. "The Four Rules!"

"Fuck off, dipshits!", sez I. The entire point of acting involves considered and deliberately breaking the Four Rules. 

Pay attention now:

Difficult as it is for some people's minds to grasp, "on a production set" is the one place in the universe where you should know that pointing a gun at someone, and pulling the trigger, will not result in any harm or destruction coming to them, or anyone else, ever, contrary to all rules of safe firearms handling elsewhere.

Otherwise, Hollywood would just use real bullets all the time, hire homicidal maniacs for lead actors, and fill out the rest of the cast with condemned prison inmates in their last starring roles. And movies would be called "non-fiction".

Anyone who cannot grasp that obvious truth is going to have their ass handed to them by the realities which proceed from that situation, and it will seem to them like Opposite World, whereupon their eyes will cross, then glaze over, smoke will issue from their ears, and vague seizure-like activity of the whole body may afterwards be noted.

Case in point:

Okay, actually 25 cases in point, if he'd updated it for the latest films. Total bodycount for all those scenes: zero. Yawn. Over nearly sixty years.

(Total number of people, anywhere, ever, who've whinged that Sean Connery/George Lazenby/Roger Moore/Pierce Brosnan/Daniel Craig "broke the Four Rules" by pointing right at the camera (and the camera operator[s], DP, director, and any number of other crew persons) in all that time: zero, in the history of the Internet, or in print before that.)

Look, I've wanted to spoof that exact opening shot, and have bodies dropping like flies while the camera wobbles and people start running and screaming, spurting blood everywhere, but the comedy in that is because that's never happened, not even once, on that set. Or damned near on any other, for decades. And add in the other 100 takes of those title openers they did, and the count - dead and wounded - is exactly the same.

In fact, AFAIK, the body count of dead people from firearm screw-ups on production sets could be counted on your thumbs (until Alec Baldwin got into the act this week):

1) Brandon Lee catching a wad in the gut on The Crow in 1993;

2) John Eric Hexum cancelling his show Cover Up (and himself) in 1984;

3) Director of Photography Halyna Hutchins getting capped Thursday by Alec Baldwin.

That's. It.

In fact, for the cherry on the cake, peruse this:

Let's grant the nonsensical premise of everyone screaming "Baldwin on a rope!" because "Who would ever shoot a prop gun at a person on a movie set?"

We join the case as the defense calls Alec Baldwin to the stand, after showing the two video clips to the jury.

Mr. Baldwin, what is your occupation?

I'm an actor, sir.

For how long have you been working as an actor?

Forty-one years, sir. Since 1980. 

 And that movie was made in...?

 1989.

So, tell us, Mr. Baldwin, how dangerous were those scenes?

Not very.

"Not very" dangerous? How can that be? There was gunfire, three people carrying weapons, bullets hitting and ricocheting off the hull of a nuclear submarine. That sounds extremely dangerous.

As I mentioned, sir, I'm an actor. That was a movie.

Can you please explain what difference that makes to the jury, sir?

Of course. First of all, there was no nuclear submarine, those are all miniatures in a swimming pool tank. We were on a sound stage in Hollywood a couple miles from downtown Los Angeles. The guns were real, but they were loaded with blanks. Nothing comes out of them. They're loaded, there's a bright flash, but no projectiles issue outwards. It's all make-believe. Sean Connery isn't a Russian submarine captain, I'm not a CIA agent pretending to be a US Navy officer, and the man playing the cook wasn't a Russian KGB agent. The sparks that fly are shot off by a special effects man with a paintball gun shooting pellets that make a spark on anything they hit, even grass or hay bales. It's all for the camera. 

So you're saying nothing we saw was real?

Oh, no, just the opposite. It was all "real", but it wasn't what was being portrayed. I was really there, the cook was really there, Mr. Connery was really there. The blanks were fired, with the guns pointing at each other, they made loud "bangs", there were flashes, brass cases were ejected. The sweat on my face was real, but it was sprayed there just before each take by a makeup person. The clothes were real, the walls were real. But they were just painted luan, with blinking lights, to make it look like the missile deck on a Russian submarine, rather than a big empty soundstage on a movie lot. 

I see. And how many times did you shoot that scene?

Well, I'd have to look at the production notes, but my best recollection from thirty-two years ago is that we shot the scenes about four times apiece, and we filmed Mr. Connery getting shot, and the cook getting killed twice.

Wait! So Sean Connery was "shot" two times, and the cook was shot two times, over and over?

Yes sir. 

And each time, the props and weapons people would do what?

They reloaded the weapons, checked them in between takes, got them all ready, and then just before we were ready, they handed them to each actor.

I see. And how many times did you fire your weapon? And how many times did you and Mr. Connery get shot at?

Well, I got shot at probably 50-70 times on the various takes, and I shot the cook at least ten times, maybe fifteen or so. On one take I fired until the gun was empty, so maybe 100 shots fired, for that one scene.

And how long did that take?

Most of the afternoon.

 Why so long? And why so many shots for just a few takes?

Well, we had to shoot everything from both perspectives, ours and the cook's; and we had to move along, plus reloading the guns, re-applying my sweat, and I had a lot of movement the camera had to cover, from in front of me looking at me, and over my shoulder towards the other guy.

And yet no one was hurt, despite all of you shooting off all those guns?

No sir. That's how it works. They tell us we're ready to go, and we can blast away. And then break for lunch.

So everyone is okay now?

Well, Mr. Connery passed away from natural causes last October, 30 years after the movie, and the guy who played the KGB agent/cook has been acting pretty consistently ever since, so apparently shooting him 10-15 times hasn't hurt his acting career. And until this incident, I've done alright myself.

How can you take a gun and point it right at someone, and deliberately shoot it at somebody all afternoon, and no one gets hurt?

It's Hollywood, sir, THAT'S WHAT WE DO.

And then one of the jury members says "Duh!", and the deliberations last about two seconds, and they find Baldwin not guilty on all counts.

Then the entire jury looks over at the prosecutor and says

 

My point in all this is that unlike "reality", Hollywood is making film fantasy, and they're friggin' jet-fuel geniuses at that, unlike you, or any 500 or 5000 dipshits you know personally.

If you cannot grasp that difference between actual reality, and realistic fantasy, I have some other shocking news for you: the castaways aren't really on an island 200 miles southwest of Hawaii, Sheldon Cooper didn't win a Nobel Prize, Steve Rogers can't stop bullets with his vibranium shield, Wakanda isn't real, and you can't go off a cliff and run in place in midair with an anvil on your back for several seconds before gravity kicks in.

When all that sinks in, try not to get dizzy and throw up on the carpet.

What you think you know about how this goes, or should go, is quite simply wrong.

The rules don't apply, and you don't want them to, unless you're a moron.

Do you want an assclown like John Eric Hexum ("Just blanks, see? BLAM!") in the safety loop on determining whether a gun is safely loaded with blanks?? HELL NO! 

Do you want well-known public assholes like Tom Sizemore (amazingly in three of the five referenced clips, above) or frothing moonbats like Robert DeNiro in any sort of position of responsibility for deciding what constitutes safe firearms handling and use?? FUCK NO YOU DON'T!!!

The director and the 1st Assistant Director are responsible for blocking the shot and safety on set.

The prop master (and any weapons handler[s]) are responsible for making sure weapons are loaded properly, safe to operate, and taking custody of them before, after and between takes, and in all respects where firearms are concerned.

The Grip department and Special FX are responsible to make sure there are shields and screens erected to protect crew, bystanders, and actors from inadvertent harm from wadding, muzzle flash, and anything else.

How does that system work out, in actual practice, versus the one in your head that's used nowhere, on any set, ever?

One dead person in 28 years, over 25,000 movies since 1993. Your local shooting range doesn't have that kind of safety record, in all likelihood. Three dead in the entire industry in half a century, AFAIK.

And with overwhelming likelihood that either the actor, or more likely the amateur hack propmaster, or both, broke the guidelines in Safety Bulletin No. 1 about ten different ways, to a metaphysical certainty.

So look, the fact that he was holding a loaded movie weapon, and pulled the trigger on it, does not ipso facto make known blowhard boob Alec Baldwin guilty of anything but being there, prima facie.

IF it turns out Baldwin was horsing around between takes, that's different.

IF this was a case of pointing a weapon with blanks at someone else too close, he's culpable.

IF someone loaded a live round into the gun, they deserve to go to prison, and probably will.

But trying to pretend there weren't any ten other people, far more circumspect (or at least supposed to be, both morally and legally) is fun, but jackassical in real life. Which is what we're talking about.

I repeat what I also said yesterday:

Alec Baldwin is now the Ted Kennedy of firearms safety: he's killed more people with his gun than most of you will ever kill with your entire collection, whether that's one gun, or one hundred, even if they're all misnamed "assault" weapons, which are no such thing.

That takes all the anti-gun gas out of him, and probably ends his career. Boo frickin' hoo. Sweetest revenge would be Trump getting back into office in 2024, and Baldwin a washed-up has-been unable to even get a gig on SNL.

If he performed some additional jackassery that leads to him getting charged, well and good.

But ixnay on the yapping about how this shoulda/coulda/woulda gone if only we used your imaginary rules. Hollywood does a better job on firearms fuck-ups than the Capitol Police, since EVER. So unless you have some wee understanding of set operations, and who's responsible for what, please, for the good of all concerned, STFU.

Hate Baldwin for being an @$$hole if you must. But stop trying to pin something on him that in all likelihood, wasn't his direct fault.

Wanna dish on him for being a cheapskate producer of a schlock production using non-union amateur propmasters? Go on ahead. Hollywood will, I assure you.

As for the rest? Spare me your butthurt, until and unless something more damning than your predilection comes to light. If that happens, they'll be plenty of time to pile onto Quickdraw McJackass, and we promise, we'll be riding on that posse too. Until then, salve your buttcheeks, and get over it.

And if it doesn't turn out that way? Chill the fuck out, and enjoy the fact that besides pulling the trigger on a homicide, morally and legally culpable or not, Baldwin probably just shot his career in the heart as well.

Learn to take "Yes!!" for an answer from Fate.

Otherwise, apply the recommended balm, fill out the form below, and file it: