Alec Baldwin and ‘Rust’: What to do with a film after a tragedy on set

On October 21, 2021, filming of the western Rust resumed at a ranch 20 minutes from Santa Fe, New Mexico, after a lunch break. Alec Baldwin, the film’s star, fired a Colt .45 revolver during a rehearsal. Unfortunately, the gun was loaded with several blanks and one live round, and the shot was aimed directly at the crew behind the camera, as the scene was to be filmed from that perspective. The shot killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, and shrapnel from the bullet, after passing through the first victim, hit director Joel Souza’s shoulder, stopping just centimeters from his spine.

Baldwin and the film’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, were charged with involuntary manslaughter. It was her responsibility to ensure the gun was loaded with blanks only (real pistols, rifles, and shotguns are used in the U.S. film industry; in Europe film sets only use prop guns). The charges against Baldwin were dismissed in July 2024 on procedural grounds (the judge accepted a complaint from the actor’s defense regarding the handling of bullets that weren’t even on the set). Gutierrez-Reed was found guilty months earlier, in April, and sentenced to eighteen months in prison. The first assistant director, David Halls — who handed the weapon to Baldwin and assured him, using the phrase “cold gun,” as required by industry protocol, that it was unloaded — pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of negligent use of a deadly weapon.

The reports that followed the accident revealed a certain lack of control on set. In several interviews conducted last May for the release of Rust in some U.S. theaters and on streaming platforms, Souza dismissed as a hoax the idea that there were shooting competitions on set, but admitted that on that day “there was a sluggish pace”: part of the technical crew had left the set at the beginning of the day due to a dispute with the producers, as they wanted to be transferred to a hotel closer to the location, “and not sleep 60 miles away.” They were replaced by non-unionized employees.

However, before the end of the legal battle, filming resumed in Montana in the spring of 2023 with a new director of photography, Bianca Cline. Souza altered the script, removing the accident sequence set in a church. Now, a similar incident takes place in a living room. There were also cast changes: the child protagonist (Baldwin’s character, an outlaw, is the boy’s grandfather) and the sheriff had to be replaced due to scheduling conflicts. In another instance, a new actor’s face was digitally superimposed onto previously filmed footage. This cut arrives in Spanish theaters on November 7, after premiering last fall at the Toruń Film Festival in Poland — dedicated to cinematography — and its limited release in the U.S. in May.

Why did filming resume so the movie could be finished? Because Matthew Hutchins, the cinematographer’s widower, reached an out-of-court settlement with the producers so that his son Andros (nine years old when his mother died) would receive a share of the profits. That’s also why Hutchins is credited as an executive producer. Speaking to Vanity Fair, Souza explains: “I knew that if the film was finished, it would financially benefit Halyna’s family, which is very important to me. And I know this might sound cliché to people who aren’t creative, but what she did last is important. It’s important that people see her last work. That was the turning point for me.” In contrast, from Ukraine, Halyna’s country of origin, her mother, Olga Solovey, and the cinematographer’s siblings have refused to participate in any event related to the western “as long as Baldwin continues to refuse to apologize and take responsibility.” The family has initiated their own civil lawsuit in the U.S. against the producers.

On screen, in a line added to the new script, the young protagonist, who has never shot anyone, looks at the family rifle hanging on the wall of his house halfway through the film and says: “It’s ruined the life of almost anyone it’s ever come across: those Apaches, me, Charles Gantry, my father… He killed himself with this rifle a year after my mother died.” Because the narrative engine that drives Rust, in a tragic coincidence, lies in the fact that the boy accidentally shoots someone with that weapon. In The Guardian, Souza, who also wrote the screenplay, confessed: “Guns make me recoil. The idea of touching one, picking one up, I find very off-putting,” and he insisted: “I’d been repelled by the thought of going back [to filming], but now it started to appeal. And I couldn’t live with the idea of someone else doing it.”

Souza had hired Hutchins, and it was his decision to bring in the new director of photography, Bianca Cline, who followed the instructions of the deceased, who had left behind a notebook with directions and reflections. At the time of the accident, half the film had been shot, but much of the previously filmed material was reshot due to the cast changes. He also sat down with Baldwin and laid out his condition: during the initial filming, the actor had changed fundamental aspects of his role at will; As of April 2023, the director would dictate the terms, since it was his film.

Rust is dedicated to Hutchins, and her name appears in the credits in both Ukrainian and English. “I wanted to include that for her mother,” Souza explained to The Guardian. The dedication is accompanied by a phrase that became a mantra for Hutchins after every take: “How can we make it better?”

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