Though I have thoughts about the tragic shooting deaths on the set of the movie Rust, they are just personal presumptions, and I don’t have nearly enough information to make them even remotely meaningful. However, after indictments came down last week, I’ve seen a bit of professional commentary that tried to add legal and social perspective, but didn’t have much sense of what a movie set is like. And two reactions in particular struck me as -- well, I think the best way to describe them is “nuts.” And those are worth addressing. To be clear, this is a deeply serious matter, and I'm not dismissing that. In fact, that's the very point. Because it is so serious, that's why I think the analysis of it should be as accurate as possible, to reach the best understanding and ultimately the best results. The first was from a legal expert on MSNBC. While he thought certain people would be in trouble, he felt that the indictments against Alec Baldwin were wrong-headed and likely to go nowhere. Now, that might be true -- but if so, not for the reasons he gave. I was not surprised to find out later in the report that he was a defense attorney. But if he was the one in court, he'd likely be laughed out of the building. What he said was that there was no case against Baldwin because a prop gun is like giving a brick to an actor. The actor would have no expectation to think a brick can shoot a bullet and kill anyone, and so by the same token there’s no expectation an actor would ever have that a prop gun, which has been checked and given to him, is unsafe. It’s like a toy gun, the attorney said. He’s wrong. Incredibly wrong. A prop gun is a real gun. It’s called a “prop gun” because it’s used in the scene as a prop, not because it’s fake. Everything used in a scene is a prop. A car used on a movie set will be called a “prop car”…but it’s quite obviously a very real car. A prop kitchen knife, prop chair, prop rug are all real knives, real chairs and real rugs. And a prop gun is a very real gun, that can shoot very real bullets, as we tragically found out. When a prop gun is brought onto a movie set, the assistant director will call out a warning -- “Gun on set!!” They want everyone to know they should extra special care. No A.D. I’ve ever worked with has ever yet called out “Brick on set!!!” Nor do I expect ever will. If a defense attorney tried to make this same case, I'd love to see the prosecutor traipse in an endless line of people who have ever worked on a movie crew and asked under oath, "Do you consider a gun on the set to be nothing more than just like a brick?" The outraged laughter and cries of "Hell, no!!" would echo through the chambers. And a prop gun is not a toy gun. It’s a real gun. That has the capability to shoot very real bullets. (An episode of Columbo with William Shatner as the murderer has him breaking into the prop room of the TV show that his character is working on and taking the gun to use for committing his murder.) It's certainly possible to have a toy prop gun on a movie set -- but they don't shoot blanks, they don't shoot anything, they don't make noise, they don't emit smoke, and they most certainly aren't cared for protectively, cautiously as if they could. And no one on a movie set thinks real prop guns inherently are just toys. And even when they are toys, you make darn sure of it. Further, what the attorney overlooked is that Alec Baldwin was a producer of the movie and had a leadership responsibility for the safety of the crew. The lawyer did eventually address this, but only tangentially and dismissively, as if an afterthought and a minor matter. While some actors are just a producer in name only, and get the title merely as "vanity credit," which happens in Hollywood, that would indeed be a minor matter here. But if that’s not the case on Rust, a “name only” thing, then being the producer is a very real, very serious matter. And ultimately, the legal analyst was not addressing that, he was only focusing on the indictment as being actor-related, which it most definitely was not. The other instance was an editorial in the Los Angeles Times. Which, being the Los Angeles Times -- the paper of record in the movie capital of the world -- should know better. Should have a sense of how movies are made. If they didn't, well, there is no dearth of of people in town to ask. Like, even perhaps your waiter. It caught my eye when reading through Twitter last week, and I saw this -- I read that and thought, surely this was just poorly phrased as a tweet. So, I checked out the day's newspaper and, no, the tweet got it right. That’s what the editorial was suggesting -- banning guns from movie sets. You can read the full editorial here. It actually makes some good points in its opening discussion of the Rust tragedy. But then it plummeted into the abyss when it attempted to make suggestions that sounded like it knew what it was talking about. The point is that no one has to use any kind of gun on a movie or TV set. Even though accidental shootings like this are thankfully rare, too many things have to go right so that nothing goes horribly wrong. “Under the best circumstances, mistakes can be made, props that purposely look identical to each other can get mixed up, and the necessary handling of these props can cause malfunction,” says Spencer Parsons, associate professor and head of production at Northwestern University in the School of Communication’s Department of Radio/Television/Film.
To start with, no, the point actually is that guns are not a danger on a movie set at all. Bullets are. Live ammo. The issue with Rust is not that there was a gun on the set, but that somehow real bullets were in the barrel, rather than blanks. With blanks in the gun, the tragedy wouldn't have occurred. (We mustn't conflate guns and ammo on a movie set with the Fourth Amendment. Guns exist perfectly fine on movie sets without ever touching a bullet.) There also are not "too many things" that have to go right. Very few things do. The armorer has to check the barrel to make sure it has blanks, and the assistant director has to do the same. As for the lightbulb suggestion of, hey, here's an idea to try, why can't special effects be created to simulate the discharge of gun shots from live guns, in fact that's already done and has been in use for a while – and should be used when it can. It's don't done as often as it should, though, because special effects are expensive and especially would be prohibitive for a low-budget movie, or even perhaps a TV episode. But the "point" of the editorial was not about simulating the effects of a gun shot (which should be done when it can), but to literally get rid of the guns themselves, indeed very specifically recommending that movies be made “without having a real weapon on set.” Really?? How is that supposed to work?? Imagine now making a Western. Or a cop show. Or an action movie with big shoot-outs. Without having guns on the set. Never mind, again, that guns aren't the problem on a movie set, live ammo is. While it might sound technologically adept to throw in phrases like “Hollywood screen wizards” and reference an AI doll from a current hit, they have no bearing on the special effects work required to bizarrely replace how guns are used in a movie. Could it be done? Replacing all guns, rifles and semi-automatic weapons in movies with special effects? Whether it could or couldn't be accomplished some day, it's a false argument because the issue is not how they created “M3GAN,” and suggesting that they’re the same is like saying, “If we can put a man on the moon, why can’t my TV get better sound?” And again, having real guns on a set, rather than special effects ones is not the problem -- live ammunition is. A personal disclaimer. I wish I didn’t have to address the comment from the professor at Northwestern who heads the Radio/TV/Film production department. In part for what was said, but more because I not only went to the beloved Northwestern, but got my degree from that very department. It sounded scholarly on the surface, but in the real world I don’t have a clue what he’s talking about. An issue like the one on Rust had absolutely nothing to do with mixing up similar looking props, nor a malfunction. The gun tragically worked like a gun is supposed to -- the problem was the mishandling of protocol. Further, to be clear, accidental shooting deaths like this are not only “thankfully rare,” as the editorial calls them, but in the over 100 years of making movies, they are almost unprecedented. There have tragically been far more deaths from other causes on movie sets than because of gun shots. That is not to dismiss them or excuse them, but to put a perspective on the problem. Deaths from gun shots are so monumentally rare over 100+ years because there are procedures in place to keep them monumentally rare. The reason it occurred here, with Rust, is what is being investigated because those safety procedures -- that keep movie sets very safe from such things -- weren’t followed. What I do agree with in the editorial is that efforts, whether within in the film industry or labor regulations, should be made to ensure that movie sets are as safe as possible. But for situations like this, solutions can be far simpler and significantly more basic. For instance, as long as we're on the topic of safety suggestions, here's one: require that the armorer on a movie set has to not only check a gun before handing it over to the assistant director, but sign off on a form that it was done, which creates proof of accountability. And then, the A.D. has to additionally check the gun and also sign the form that it was, creating extra proof of accountability. And then, the actor shouldn't be allowed to just accept that the gun given is fine…but also must check the gun and sign the form. Three levels of documented accountability. Without which, it wouldn't just be someone's word that they checked or were told everything was okay, but creating a level of individual responsibility on the record. And if you wanted to add a fourth level, with a separate producer or director checking and signing, fine, all the more protective. Again, I don’t know how live ammunition got on the Rust movie set. I don’t know where procedures broke down. But when analyzing the outside analysis, I know two things -- that a prop gun is not the same as a brick, and that guns are not the problem on a movie set, bullets are.
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AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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