‘Rust’ Assistant Director Linked to Injury of 74-year-old Actress on ‘Freedom’s Path’
Before Dave Halls was fired from the set of the upcoming film
Freedom’s Path in 2019, following the unexpected discharge of a firearm, two other people suffered on-set injuries that raised red flags about the assistant director’s attention to safety, a crew member tells
Rolling Stone.
Quinton Rodriguez, a first assistant camera operator on
Freedom’s Path who witnessed the discharge, says Halls declined to take a recommended precaution that could have prevented an injury suffered by veteran actress Carol Sutton.
Sutton, who died last year at age 76, was in a scene that called for her to drop to her knees in anguish upon learning of the death of another character, Rodriguez says.
“I remember turning to Dave, and I was like, ‘Dave, should we get her a crash pad? We should get her a crash pad,’” Rodriguez recalls. “He was like, ‘No, she’s not going to fall all the way.’ So we had like a furniture pad instead. And she ended up fully falling over and injuring herself. A furniture pad is not a pad that you would want to fall on. You should have a crash pad. We had stunts on set. It would have taken 60 seconds.”
Halls is now under intense scrutiny after he admittedly handed
Alec Baldwin a loaded Colt revolver on the set of the Western movie
Rust last Thursday and declared it a “cold gun” — indicating it was unloaded — shortly before the actor pulled the trigger and fatally shot cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.
In yet another incident before he was fired from
Freedom’s Path, Halls allegedly failed to step in when a crew member ran into a shot to remove an errant coat and subsequently fell and injured herself to the point that she “couldn’t get up and out of the shot,” Rodriguez said.
“Traditionally, that would be where the first assistant director, whose job is safety, would call ‘Cut,’ and then step over to make sure the person was alright. That didn’t happen. My second assistant camera [operator] ended up stepping in to make sure she was alright. I cut camera on my own,” Rodriguez recalls.
“A lot of his mentality was just, ‘Get the shot. And get the shot on time.’ He seemed willing to cut whatever corners were necessary to make that happen,” Rodriguez says of Halls.
Rodriguez says he also was on hand the day that
Halls was fired. According to producers, the termination came after a gun “unexpectedly discharged,” causing “a minor and temporary injury” to a crew member.
That incident was
previously reported by CNN, but Rodriguez gives new insight into what happened that day. He says the period movie involved handmade, muzzle-loaded firearms that would be filled with enough gunpowder to cause a flash when fired.
“We started out in a wide shot, and we ended up doing it a couple times, and then we had to cut in the middle of the take, before the gun would have been fired in the shot,” he explains. “Then we moved into the close-up on the shot, and the gun obviously had not been cleared to become a ‘cold’ weapon. We went in for the take, and to literally everybody’s surprise, all eight people within a 10-foot range, the gun ended up firing right in our boom operator’s face.”
He said the boom operator immediately “threw his headphones off to the ground, dropped the boom mic and essentially ran from the set.”
“He caught the full volume of this gun going off in his ears, which is what caused him to have that reaction,” Rodriguez said. “Had that been an actual blank, it could have caused some proper damage.”
Rodriguez says Halls was fired over the incident because the gun should have been cleared once they moved from a wide shot to a close-up that didn’t even show the barrel of the weapon: “Normally, we would have gone through the whole take, the gun would have fired, and then, when we moved on to the next take, it would have already have been emptied. But because we ended up cutting early, the gun wasn’t fired. What should have happened was the armorer should have cocked the gun and shot it to show everybody it was cleared, that it was a ‘cold gun.’ And then it should have gone back to the actor. That didn’t happen.”
He says Halls was blamed because “a big part of the first AD’s role is safety. When the gun didn’t go off and we moved on from the shot, he should have made sure going into the next shot that it was a ‘cold gun,’” Rodriguez says.
According to a statement from producers, “Halls was removed from set immediately after the prop gun discharged. Production did not resume filming until Dave was off-site.”
Asked about the prior incident involving Sutton, the producers declined to comment Wednesday.
“Unfortunately, we cannot comment any further as all communication moving forward will be between production and the Sante Fe Sheriff’s Department,” they told
Rolling Stone.
Halls did not respond to a request for comment.
Dave Halls allegedly declined to give a “crash pad” to Carol Sutton for a scene that required her to fall to the ground, a camera operator tells Rolling Stone
www.rollingstone.com
An experienced prop master said he rejected a job on 'Rust' because it was 'an accident waiting to happen'
An experienced prop master said he rejected a job offer on the "Rust" movie because he saw it as "an accident waiting to happen."
Neal W. Zoromski, who has worked in the industry for 30 years,
told the Los Angeles Times that he had a "bad feeling" following four days of meetings with the "Rust" film managers after he was asked to join the crew.
"There were massive red flags," he said.
He told the LA Times that he felt the movie was prioritizing saving money over protecting people's safety, and he ultimately turned down the job.
"After I pressed 'send' on that last email, I felt, in the pit of my stomach: 'That is an accident waiting to happen,'" he said.
Zoromski's concerns appeared to echo those of the "Rust" chief electrician Serge Svetnoy, who
criticized the lax gun safety on set and said the movie's producers cut corners.
The actor Alec Baldwin fatally shot the cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of "Rust" last Thursday after he
discharged a prop firearm that a later affidavit said was loaded with
a live round.
Neal W. Zoromski told the Los Angeles Times he had a "bad feeling" after talking with "Rust" film managers for four days.
www.insider.com
‘Rust’ Line Producer Had a Previous Labor Violation
Gabrielle Pickle, who served as line producer on the Alec Baldwin film, fired members of a 2018 film crew for attempting to unionize and called the police on them.
A line producer on
Rust was named in a previous unfair labor practices settlement, parts of which mirror treatment that crew have said they experienced on the New Mexico set of the
Alec Baldwin indie Western before that production shut down on Oct. 21.
In October of 2018, crewmembers on the set of the low-budget Atlanta production
Keys to the City grew concerned about safety and began trying to flip their set from nonunion to union. The production’s two line producers, one of whom is Gabrielle Pickle, the line producer named on the call sheet for
Rust, began interrogating the seven-person camera crew that had been a part of the push. Pickle ultimately fired the camera crew “because they signed union authorization cards,” violating the National Labor Relations Act, according to a 2019 settlement agreement reached between IATSE and the production company, Tier 2 Films.
Pickle also called police in an attempt to get union members arrested when they picketed on a public sidewalk, according to a source with knowledge of the production. In the settlement agreement, the NLRB characterized Pickle’s calling of law enforcement on union members as “interfering with, restraining, and coercing employees in the exercise of the rights guaranteed in [the National Labor Relations Act].”
On the
Rust set on Oct. 21, the day Baldwin fatally shot cinematographer
Halyna Hutchins while rehearsing a gunfight scene, producers on that film also called police on union crew who had returned after walking off the set in frustration, according to a person with knowledge of the production.
On the
Keys to the City set, the camera crew expressed concern about safety issues, including that they were asked to suspend an 80-pound camera over an actress’s head without using safety cables to protect her, and that they were being forced to move too quickly to guard against accidents. Leadership on that movie dismissed those concerns, according to a person familiar with the case, which is what prompted the camera crew to seek to flip the set, turning it more than 51 percent union and requiring the implementation of union rules. After Pickle fired the camera crew, the union drive failed.
IATSE brought a complaint to the National Labor Relations Board, and the production company had to pay the fired camera crew members — Robbie Corcoran, Josh Looby, Brian Murie, Ken Scofield, Benjamin Truitt, William Vinci and Walker Whited — for the days they would have worked.
A spokesperson for IATSE confirmed the accuracy of the settlement agreement but declined to comment on the specifics of the case, or about labor practices on
Rust.
“Historically, there is a disturbing trend where the bosses willing to engage in illegal union-busting also tend to be more likely to be willing to cut corners on safety,” says Jonas Loeb, IATSE director of communications. “This is nothing new, and is exemplified by the horrific 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, which killed 146 garment workers because factory foremen locked the exit doors to keep out union organizers.”
Pickle, who is a member of the Producers Guild of America according to her bio on the website of a company called 3rd Shift Media, is also the listed line producer on
SuperCell, another movie Baldwin made with some of the
Rust producers (Emily Hunter Salveson, Ryan Donnell Smith and Ryan Winterstern), which shot in Montana in the spring.
The
Rust producers have hired the law firm Jenner & Block to conduct an investigation into the fatal Oct. 21 incident and issued a statement that, “We have halted production on the film for an undetermined period of time and are fully cooperating with all investigations and inquiries.”
During a
press conference on Wednesday, Santa Fe District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies said, “If the facts and evidence and law support charges, then I will initiate prosecution at that time. … I cannot stress the importance of allowing the Santa Fe sheriff’s office to continue with their investigation, which is both serious and complex.”
Pickle did not respond to a request for comment. She had been posting photos from the
Rust set on her social media accounts, including an exterior shot of cast and crew with horses on Oct. 8 captioned “Safety meeting — it’s stunts day in 1880.”
Gabrielle Pickle, who served as line producer on the Alec Baldwin film, fired members of a 2018 film crew for attempting to unionize and called the police on them.
www.hollywoodreporter.com
