The way it works on a movie set is that the weapons master is supposed to check to make sure the weapon is 100% safe if the trigger is pulled and then hands it to the actor. The actor has to be in the head space to do their role properly, which would not include worrying about whether or not the gun is loaded since, in their mind, it’s loaded. That’s exactly why the job of weapons master exists. In this case, it’s the weapons master who fucked up. Baldwin fucked up by creating unsafe workplace practices, not because he pulled the trigger.
Gutierrez-Reed was likely specifically hired because she was inexperienced. Movie sets are chaotic, the work is fast paced and rushed, and safety protocols slow things down. As they say: Time is money. She may not have specifically been hired by Baldwin, but she wasn’t really in a position to push back against it. (she should have, and she’s every bit as negligent.)
However, Baldwin has had a long, long acting career, much of it handling firearms. He- as a professional actor- should have known what the protocols should have been, and should have said something like “hey, you’re not the armorer”, when Dave Halls handed him the pistol.
What a lot of people seem to be misunderstanding is that more than one person can be responsible. Gutierrez-Reed, Halls, Baldwin were all negligent in a variety of ways.
The simplest of ways to have prevented this was to not be using a functional fire arm. There are movie props that are near-perfect replicas (and, on film, would look perfect.) without being capable of firing. This is particularly true considering they weren’t doing live shoots. they were doing blocking, which is a process by where they set up the cameras and check for issues. One of the issues they should have been looking for is, “is this a safe direction to point the gun”.
if you need any more reason to realize you can’t ever assume a firearm, or any other weapon, is “100% safe”, I suggest you give Anna Hutchin’s family a call.
as for his “headspace” do you really think it’s normal for actors to be totally, completely and wholly unaware of what they’re doing? that in fight scenes they’re actually fighting, rather than following a script in perfect choreography? that they’re allowed to not pay attention to safety? No. Every one is always most concerned with safety. Or they should be. yes. that includes the actors.
I think fighting in fight scenes can and often does cause serious injury resulting in hospitalizations, so I’m not sure why you think that’s an especially good argument. It doesn’t have to even be a fight scene. I just read yesterday that Nancy Travis cut her the tip of her finger off with a knife during So I Married an Axe Murderer because she was laughing at what Mike Myers was doing- intentionally making her character laugh in the scene. They could have used a dull knife, but they didn’t.
A better example would be Stallone ending up in the ICU for a week because he wanted the fight at the end of Rocky IV to be realistic, so he told Dolph Lundgren to forget the choreography and Lundgren punched too hard. May I remind you it was Stallone who was directing that movie and still wanted to actually be punched in a boxing ring so he could be in the acting headspace.
There are also character actors like Daniel Day-Lewis who live their characters 24/7 starting long before filming begins and not stopping until it ends. All of his blades in Gangs of New York were razor sharp unless it was known for certain that they would be connecting with someone- but you can’t be certain of that.
That’s just how movies and actors are.
Could they have used a realistic prop gun? That I don’t know about. I would say it would depend on just how realistic we are talking when shot close-up with a high-definition digital camera and blown up to fit an IMAX screen. I’m guessing there gets to be a point where just buying the gun makes more sense than trying to buy a lookalike that looks good enough.
Method acting has its draw backs and one of them is safety.
“That’s just how actors are” is a shitty, pathetic excuse for putting other people at risk.
Particularly when that risk is from a weapon fundamentally designed to kill people, and it certainly doesn’t absolve anyone of criminal liability.
