h/t Mike
Some days, we have to work for a post. Like think, and stuff.
Other days, the muse gift-wraps them, and drops them in our lap.
Today is definitely the second kind of day.
Alec Baldwin kills DP, shoots director on set
To whom this set of observations applies, spare me your butthurt.
1) Of course they use guns (albeit heavily modified) on movie sets. Since ever. File under "Duh!"
2) Some propmaster dun fucked up, massively, and should shortly be charged for manslaughter and aggravated battery via gross negligence. There should NEVER, NEVER, NEVER, NEVER be live rounds on the main set, let alone anywhere near prop weapons.
3) It's not the actor's job to ensure safety of prop weapons used on set, it's the propmaster and the weapon's handler's job. Weapons are supposed to be double-checked on loading to prevent this sort of cock-up.
4) It's likely that when Baldwin was shooting, he was, almost certainly exactly per rehearsals and blocking, aiming at the camera. Which is where the director of photography and director sit, 90% of the time. And in real life, there's no way to tell you've fired a real bullet rather than a blank after the first shot, until bodies hit the ground. Blood doesn't explode from people's chests, they just crumple. Be glad it was a western, and not a gangster film. He could have taken out a swath of people, instead of just the two he hit.
{We add in amendment, that if, instead, Baldwin was waving the gun around off-camera, and pulling the trigger, or some other form of jackassery, he should be charged and convicted like any other perp. We find that unlikely in the circumstances, but not entirely impossible. See #6, below. We look forward to a definitive explanation as this story develops.}
5) Andrea Widburg's witless commentary about gun safety at American Thinker regarding this incident only proves she's a cinematic idiot, who should STFU when she's in over her head. But she won't. Firearms Safety is literally the first and second topics in the official industry-wide safety bible. It's lifted directly from NRA guidelines, and then amplified. So by definition, when something like this happens, rules written in blood were obviously and flagrantly violated. I say it again: STFU Andrea; you're abusing the internet privilege to be an uninformed jackass with a keyboard.
6) I said for 20+ years in motion picture production, going back to the beginning of this blog, that even allowing for "only using blanks", it borders on professional incompetence for any propmaster to ever hand an actor any weapon not made of rubber. Because they're idiots. Like 99.9999% of them, by actual observation. (FFS, John Wayne even shot Ward Bond in the face on a bird hunting foray IRL. That should tell you something.) Triply so around weaponry of all types, or anything even sharp.
7) The takeaway isn't that @$$hole Baldwin will not be charged; he bears exactly no culpability nor intent for the crime AFAWK. That's as it should be. Don't be stupid about this. And if time changes that, we look forward to Baldwin getting what he deserves.
8) What you should be focusing on, is that despite that reality, you can now claim, FOREVER, that exactly like Ted Kennedy's car, Alec Baldwin has killed more people with guns than your/my/anyone's collection of misnamed "assault" weapons have, ever.
9) He'll NEVER be able to escape that legacy, not even when he dies, and he's going to hear it 1000 times a day until that happy occasion. It's going to be on bumper stickers, lapel buttons, memes, and a gajillion other things, for all time. He's just taken himself out of the anti-gun speaker's pool forever!
10) If that reality, and not the imaginary injustice of not charging him with the killing that likely wasn't his fault, doesn't warm your heart, you're simply a lunatic.
Learn to take "YES!" for an answer from the Fates.
And just to doubly piss you off a little more, this is one of the reasons that motion picture productions that have fled SoCal to non-union states always have these sorts of fuck-ups. When productions go off the reservation and hire unprofessional non-union fuck-ups for a cut rate, they get what they pay for. In this case, a dead DP, a wounded director, and an actor who will, to a metaphysical certainty, be justifiably scarred for life. Not to mention metric fucktons of bad publicity for the event.
Baldwin's a victim of both a cheap-ass production (he's one of the producers, btw: Own Goal Achievement - Unlocked), and a total fuck-up homicidal weapons master.
And karma is a cast-iron bitch.
QED
(And rest assured, Gentle Readers, while we are giving Baldwin the benefit of the doubt at this point, if it turns out, against likelihood, that @$$hole Baldwin was, in fact, totally and jackassically responsible, we will revise and amend our judgement of him the moment his homicidal culpability becomes apparent, and add to the clamor for his prosecution and conviction. We would hope, at that point, for the entire judicial machinery of the state of New Mexico to fall on him, from a great height. We're certain, when the whole truth comes out, he'll get what's coming to him. He's only done, to best recollection, three things right in Hollywood: played a great ghost in Beetlejuice; absolutely nailed Jack Ryan in Hunt For Red October; and warmed our heart when he fell into the bear pit in the climactic scene of The Edge. We still haven't forgiven him for taking Kim Basinger off the market at the time.)
Double bonus: I think we've seen the last SNL Baldwin-Trump skit forever. With any luck, Baldwin just retired permanently from everything.
UPDATE: You might want to read this article in the Daily Beast, that just confirmed everything I already told you about amateur propmasters and cheapskate production, which was why those crew members on the camera crew walked off the set, and saved their own lives.
Imagine that: We got it right, 5 hours before they did, and we didn't have to talk to anyone there. Almost like we might know WTF we're talking about where such on-set shenanigans are concerned.
