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Not Worth Dying For
 The Twilight Zone deaths echoed in my mind as I read about another horrible wrong, the October 21 death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the New Mexico set of Rust, a Western starring Alec Baldwin. While rehearsing a scene Baldwin used what was supposed to be an unloaded gun. Instead, it fired a live round, killing Hutchins while critically wounding director Joel Souza. Hutchins was an emerging talent in a field still heavily dominated by men. Born in the Ukraine, Hutchins worked on British film productions in Eastern Europe and graduated from the American Film Institute Conservatory in 2015. She took many different jobs on production crews to further learn her trade, and then was building her career as a cinematographer. By all accounts from those who knew her and worked with her, she was bright, hard-working, creative, and generous. Her future appeared so promising, but now she’s gone, leaving a husband and a child behind. And for what? Why did this have to happen? Yes, this was an accident, but not a random “hand of God” one. Much more remains to be learned, but what we already know shows, at a minimum, wanton carelessness. As he handed the firearm to Baldwin, assistant director Dave Halls yelled “Cold Gun!” meaning no live ammunition. We don’t know if Halls checked the gun thoroughly first, but common sense would indicate that he didn’t. According to the New York Times, Hannah Gutierrez, the film’s armorer, claimed she checked the guns that day, but admitted that afterwards they were left unsecured on a tray, the same tray where Halls grabbed the gun he gave to Baldwin. Dig deeper and the story grows even more troubling. Forbes magazine reports that “Crew members have since come forward to say that the set was rife with ‘cut corners’ that made it unsafe. In addition to protesting low pay and long commutes, the staffers who quit their jobs also called out the lack of gun safety on set ... After the walkout, a new non-union crew was brought in so filming could resume.” The Los Angeles Times quoted a crewmember saying that days before the tragedy Baldwin’s stunt double accidentally fired live rounds after also being told the gun was “cold.” The Times quoted a crew member saying that after the stunt double’s accident “There should have been an investigation into what happened. There were no safety meetings. There was no assurance that it wouldn’t happen again. All they wanted to do was rush, rush, rush.” Clearly warning signs were there, and just as clearly these warning signs were ignored. Safety problems are far from new in Hollywood. James Cagney’s biographer recounted that the star was told to perform in a scene with live bullets. Cagney refused, and was vindicated when a bullet later ricocheted to where he would have been standing. Much more recently Sarah Jones, a camera assistant, lost her life on the set of Midnight Rider. The freight train company CSX had denied the production’s request to film on one of its tracks. The production tried to film on the tracks anyway, then had to scatter as a train approached. Many in the crew were hurt, while Jones was killed by debris that the train struck. The director, who had a long history of ignoring safety violations, and the executive producer later pled guilty to felony involuntary manslaughter. Another tragedy even more closely parallels what happened to Hutchins. In 1993, actor Brandon Lee was shot and killed on the set of The Crow. In this case the gun was supposed to have “dummy” cartridges, which look more real than blanks. To save money, the crew were told to make their own dummy cartridges from real bullets rather than buy the real thing. Some parts of the real bullet remained in the gun, and later struck Lee. On that fateful night, production also sent the firearms specialist, who might have spotted the error, home early. Again, trying to save money by cutting corners. Filmmakers taking shortcuts takes us right back to The Twilight Zone. The two child actors who died on the film never should have been there in the first place. California's child labor laws prohibited children to work an hour past curfew and mandated that a teacher-welfare worker had to be present when kids worked. John Landis, who directed this segment of the movie (Steven Spielberg, Joe Dante, and George Miller directed other segments) knowingly disregarded these laws. He wanted two Vietnamese children for a scene where they would be rescued from a firebombing by Morrow’s character. Film historian Joseph McBride, in his biography of Steven Spielberg, chillingly describes how Landis brushed off warnings: “The complicated hiring process began five weeks before the accident, when Landis and (associate producer George) Fosley described the scene involving the children to casting directors Mike Fenton and Marci Liroff. Liroff, who had worked on E.T. and Poltergeist, told the filmmakers that working children late at night was illegal under California labor laws. She added that the scene ‘sounded kind of dangerous.’ Since the children did not have speaking parts, Fenton told Landis and Fosley, ‘Then they’re extras, and our office doesn’t hire extras.’ ‘The hell with you guys,’ Landis gruffily replied. “We don’t need you. We’ll get them off the streets ourselves.’That’s exactly what Landis and Fosley did, finding two children, not listing them as part of the cast, and paying off their parents in cash. In the subsequent involuntary manslaughter trial of Landis, Fosley, and others involved with the crash, the children’s parents testified that they were not told how dangerous the scene would be. To simulate the firebombing, the production set off explosions near a helicopter flying just 25 feet above the three actors. One of those explosions blew too close to the helicopter veering it out of control and down into the three victims. According to the National Transportation Safety Board “The proximity of the helicopter to the special effects explosions was due to the failure to establish direct communications and coordination between the pilot, who was in command of the helicopter operation, and the film director, who was in charge of the filming operation.” Stephen Lydecker, a camera operator on the film, later testified that Landis ignored safety warnings and constantly yelled for the chopper to fly lower through the explosions. McBride wrote how, while Landis’s career continued virtually unabated, Lydecker “found himself tagged as a troublemaker and blacklisted after twenty-six years in the film business (he turned to a career in real estate.)” Spielberg was also one of the film’s producers, and quickly tried to distance himself from the fallout. He was not on the set that day, and claimed he had no knowledge of the children’s illegal hiring. Spielberg also cut off contact with Landis, whom had previously been a close friend. A year after the accident, Spielberg remarked in an interview that “A movie is a fantasy – it’s light and shadow flickering on a screen. No movie is worth dying for. I think people are standing up much more now than ever before to producers and directors that ask too much. If something isn’t safe, it’s the right and responsibility of every actor or crew member to yell ‘Cut!’” No one would argue with Spielberg’s statement. The problem is that no one wants to be blacklisted as Stephen Lydecker was. Crew members, especially younger ones struggling to build careers for themselves, would naturally think twice about holding up a movie for safety concerns. And then what happens if they do raise these concerns? By all accounts that's what the union crew of Rust did, only to find themselves replaced by non-union labor. The producers clearly prioritized keeping costs down above all else. That’s understandable. Making movies, even lower budget movies, is expensive. Every day shooting costs more money. The financial and logistical pressures to move quicker and cheaper must be considerable. Those pressures would logically be particularly acute on independent productions, such as Rust, which don’t have big-studio resources. But the lower cost first mentality can have severe consequences, as was painfully illustrated. One penny-pinching example particularly sticks with me. The Rust team hired Hannah Gutierrez for two jobs, armorer and assistant prop master. This meant she had to divide her time between managing the firearms and securing other props needed for the film. At a minimum, shouldn’t someone who is entrusted with keeping the gun use safe be allowed to focus solely on that critical responsibility? The more hours in a day crew members have, and the more competing demands for their time, the more likely they are to miss something. The only good news coming out of this tragedy is that film crew members and others in the industry are speaking up about productions more concerned about cutting costs than ensuring safety. Some have argued for removing all real guns from film sets, which makes sense. If real guns do remain, they should be monitored constantly by trained professionals who have that task and nothing else. Union crews, and compliance with union rules, must be honored and never cast aside for convenience. Any film with firearms, explosions, or other features that could even potentially be dangerous must establish clear safety rules at the outset, and then those rules must be followed throughout, including having regular safety meetings. Stunt men and women sometimes have to risk their lives for their craft, but no one else in the film world should have to. The only way for Hutchins’s death to have meaning is if real measures are taken to ensure that what happened to her doesn’t happen again. It would have meaning if, as Spielberg said, any actor or crew member could yell “Cut!” for safety concerns and then have those concerns addressed. Only time will tell if that happens or if filmmaking goes back to business as usual. For the only fate worse than what happened to Hutchins would be if her lessons were ignored and some other future soul were to share her fate. Adam Spector November 1, 2021 Contact us: |
