Alec Baldwin is accused of negligence after the tragedy of the filming of ‘Rust’ | Culture

Things start to get complicated for Alec Baldwin after the tragedy of ‘Rust’. Serge Svetnoy, one of the technicians at the western where Halyna Hutchins died from an accidental shot on October 21, denounced the protagonist and producer of the infamous film on Tuesday. The plaintiff, the first to bring a complaint to court, accuses the production of negligence and lack of professionalism. It considers that it failed to implement the necessary security measures to protect the filmmakers during filming at the Bonanza Creek ranch in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

“They should never, ever have had real bullets on set,” Gary Dordick, Svetnoy’s attorney, said Tuesday morning when filing the lawsuit. Svetnoy was the gaffer from Rust, the lighting manager, one of the closest technical positions to Hutchins, the cinematographer. The filmmaker was one of the few present at the time of the shooting.

Svetnoy describes the timing of the accident in her lawsuit. He claims to have felt a “strange and terrifying” blow of air from the right side of his body and how gunpowder sprayed him on his face. The text describes how the life of Hutchins faded, whom Svetnoy claims to have held in his arms for “20 or 30 minutes” while she bled to death and lost consciousness after being wounded in the chest. “This will haunt him forever,” says Dordick of his client, who burst into tears after paramedics arrived at the filming site to airlift the photographer to a hospital in Albuquerque. Dordick claims that the lawsuit is not seeking to raise money for his client, but to improve security conditions in the filming.

In addition to pointing out Baldwin, Svetnoy blamed assistant director Dave Halls and armory manager Hannah Gutierrez Reed for the accident. It is not the first time that the technician distributes blame. A few days after the tragedy the gaffer He took to Facebook to question Gutierrez’s lack of professionalism. “I’m sure we had professionals in all departments except one, the department that deals with weapons … There is no way that a 24-year-old woman can be an arms expert,” he wrote on the social network. “To save some money, sometimes people are hired who are not fully qualified to do complicated and dangerous work. And they put the lives of others and their own at risk ”, he added then.

The case is still waiting for the Santa Fe district attorney to press charges. At a press conference in late October, authorities did not rule out accusing Baldwin, who pulled the trigger of a Colt .45 that appeared to contain a real bullet, or other members of the production who had to review the weapons used in a set tape. in the wild west of the late nineteenth century.

The inaction of the prosecution has caused the crossing of accusations and speculation among the protagonists of the tragedy. Jason Bowles, the lawyer for the gunsmith Gutierrez Reed has opted for the sabotage theory. In a televised interview, he claimed that someone sowed a real bullet in protest at the complaints of seven cameramen, who left the set after complaints of abuse and excesses of production. “We are convinced that this was sabotage and that Hannah is being set up,” Bowles said in a statement Wednesday following the lawsuit filed by Svetnoy.

Lane Luper, one of the cameramen who protested the working conditions, has emphatically rejected the allegations made by Gutierrez Reed’s defense. “The idea makes me sick … Saying that is irresponsible, slander and frankly disgusting,” said the filmmaker in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter.

Baldwin, in all light, has been cautious in the weeks after the incident. He spoke reluctantly in a tense encounter with the press. On Monday, he proposed on Twitter that police officers be present at all film and television shoots to monitor the weapons, regardless of whether they are true or false.

The death of Hutchins has already begun to leave consequences in the filming of the industry. The independent film The Locksmithstarring Ryan Phillippe and Kate Bosworth, which will also be filmed in New Mexico, will only use models of rubber weapons and the shots will be included in post-production in special effects.

Dwayne Johnson, one of Hollywood’s most influential actors, also recently confirmed that he will only use plastic weapons in upcoming productions for his company Seven Bucks. “I cannot speak for other production companies or for other studios, but I can say that this [el accidente] It has given me a new perspective on how we will handle things from now on, ”he said. The Rock during the premiere of Red Notice.

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