‘outburst’

“The San­ta Fe Sheriff’s De­part­ment con­firmed Thurs­day night that Alec Bald­win ‘dis­charged’ the prop gun that killed Rust cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Ha­ly­na Hutchins and in­jured di­rec­tor Joel Souza on the set of the West­ern fea­ture film on lo­ca­tion in New Mexico.”
—An­tho­ny D’A­lessan­dro, Do­minic Pat­ten, Deadline
 

Years ago,
I was fired by a pro­duc­er for speak­ing up about the need to have a safe­ty meet­ing re­gard­ing the weapons on the set of a SAG feature. 

It was the first and only time in my life I’ve been fired from any­thing. I was devastated. 

I was the grown up who had to com­pose my­self to ap­proach the pro­duc­tion team/producer af­ter wrap to dis­cuss the is­sue. Was told rough­ly “you may make an­oth­er out­burst like that again, so I can’t have that on my set. And I can’t pre­dict if you will or take your word that you won’t. Plus, my mind’s made up. Once I’ve made up my mind, that’s it. Sorry.”

They claimed my “out­burst” on the walkie near video vil­lage dis­tract­ed our director.

Did­n’t even have the courage to fire me to my face at the end of the day. And there was no re­course for me as a non union trade worker.

I may not have had the most el­e­gant de­liv­ery, there was a sass tone when I ques­tioned the As­sis­tant Di­rec­tor on ch. 1, but if my at­ti­tude is a con­cern then re­spect­ful­ly pull me aside. The prob­lem, at­ti­tude or not, is that the **cos­tume as­sis­tant** shouldn’t be ask­ing for this.

At the time I was an on set cos­tume as­sis­tant … the last per­son in my mind who should be step­ping in to say some­thing. The en­tire crew felt un­nerved, I took the hit but I (still) have no regrets.

In film pro­duc­tion, dan­ger­ous calls are made every­day for the sake of sav­ing time and mon­ey. The usu­al re­sponse is­n’t to fix the prob­lem, it’s to get rid of the per­son ques­tion­ing it.

While de­tails are slow­ly be­ing re­leased about this trag­ic ac­ci­dent, I im­plore any­one work­ing on a set to re­mem­ber safe­ty is everyone’s responsibility. 

As much as it was a ter­ri­ble mis­take on the prop/armorer this is the rule:

1.  
NEV­ER. EVER. POINT A WEAPON AT SOME­ONE YOU DON’T IN­TEND TO SHOOT.
It’s not a joke. it’s not nec­es­sary for rehearsal.

2.  
Keep Your Trig­ger Fin­ger Straight
AGAINST THE FRAME
un­til you are pre­pared to fire,
NOT ON THE TRIGGER.

I’m not a gun ex­pert by any means. But the per­son in charge of the weapon/prop needs to be giv­en the time and space to teach/remind every­one on set the prop­er pro­to­cols and safe­ty measures.

Did we learn noth­ing from Sarah Jones??

Ig­nor­ing safe­ty “is fine” un­til it’s not. 

 

—michelle cosco

Flom­mist Michelle Cosco is an ex­is­ten­tial­ist try­ing to make sense of the over­whelm­ing sub­jec­tiv­i­ty of the world. Avid pho­tog­ra­ph­er and an­i­mal lover. She seeks to see oth­er peo­ples views in the pe­riph­er­al of her ad­ven­tures. Copy­right © 2021 Michelle Cosco.

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