It could have been so cheap, easy and safe

By the way, there's one other situation where filmmakers always use fake prop guns. When they have a convicted felon in the movie who can't be in possession of a firearm, they make these real-looking props.

It's been reported that cops found real ammunition on the set of Rust and that crew members had been going out and "plinking" with the gun that killed Halyna Hutchins. They had been doing it that morning and apparently left a live round in the gun. 

But with these things, once people start testifying under oath, the facts often turn out to be different than what was reported in the press. 

It seems crazy when you're making a low budget movie---when much of the crew walks off because they hadn't been paid in weeks and because they had to drive to Albuquerque every night because hotels there were slightly cheaper---that you'd go the more expensive route for your prop guns. They shouldn't have been using real guns. And the stunts should have been done through editing so no one could possibly get hurt.  

There was the Soviet western, White Sun of the Desert, set in Kazakhstan in the 1920's. The public loved it but it got little respect from the Soviet movie industry because there were only one or two actual stunts in it. In one, a guy jumped out of second floor window and landed in some sand. I don't remember what the other one was. But the rest of it was done with montage. 

We see a guy climbing a ladder. We see someone shoot at him. Then a close-up him hanging by one hand. He lets go. Then a shot of him after he landed. I think that's how one thing went.

They do that anyway now. They won't do an action scene in one shot. They were bragging about Matt Damon learning karate for a movie, but then the fight scenes were pieced together from very short takes. Like the fight scene Chris Elliott put together as a joke on David Letterman.

Why do people make things difficult?

Right-wingers mouth off

One of these handsome fellows is Trump, Jr.

Donald Trump, Jr, has started marketing a T-shirt that says, "Guns don't kill people. Alec Baldwin kills people." 

Junior didn't take some anti-gun statement by Baldwin and throw it back in his face. It's just an old anti-gun control slogan proven false by the accident. The gun killed Helyna Hutchins. No one is seriously blaming Baldwin.

Someone named Candace Owens said the shooting was "poetic justice". Pretty indirect if it was.

 

Prop gun was used for target practice off set

Dummy rounds available on Amazon

I wondered how this could have happened. 

TMZ is reporting that the prop gun which killed DP Helyna Hutchins and wounded director Joel Souza had been used by members of the crew for target practice away from the set. 

And they found live ammunition stored alongside blank ammunition on the set.

If you're rushed and a bit sloppy in your work, can you mistake live rounds for dummy rounds? Did they use dummy rounds? Was the gun supposed to be loaded with dummy rounds? 

I keep thinking back to that jackass film prof who was incensed that college students would use anything but real guns in a student film.

Alec Baldwin has left New Mexico

Alec Baldwin left New Mexico and has presumably returned to New York. He spoke at the private memorial service for Halyna Hutchins. Director Joel Souza, and the first AD Dave Halls attended; Hannah Gutierrez, the gun handler, wasn't there.

It's been reported that other armorers were offered the job and passed on it because they had doubts about the film's budget and the large number of guns involved. So they gave the job to a beginner.

It was a Tier 1 movie which means it was budgeted at less than $6 million but more than $1.5 million. Below that amount would be considered an "Ultra Low budget" film if I'm reading this chart right:

https://chicagofilmmakersproducing.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/feature-film-budget-ranges.pdf

The movie's kaput, which isn't surprising. I doubt it's a great loss to cinema, but that's okay. 

I don't know what I think about the westerns they make now. They're low-budget and often extremely violent which I guess is the name of the game with that genre. It seems like they must be labors of love, but they're so generic.

Daily Beast reports on accident

The Daily Beast has an article blaming the weapons handler on the movie.

Read the whole thing HERE.

The article tells about concerns raised from the previous movies Hannah Gutierrez-Reed worked on.

“She was a bit careless with the guns, waving it around every now and again,” said a source, who worked alongside armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed on the upcoming Nicolas Cage film, The Old Way. “There were a couple times she was loading the blanks and doing it in a fashion that we thought was unsafe.”

 

On her last movie, she loaded a gun with blanks and handed it to an 11-year-old actress.

 

Concerned crew members intervened, demanding filming be stopped until Gutierrez-Reed had properly checked the firearm, the two sources said.

 

 “She was reloading the gun on the ground, where there were pebbles and stuff. We didn’t see her check it, we didn’t know if something got in the barrel or not,” one source said, explaining the crew waited until she double checked the gun for barrel obstruction.

The article mentions the Assistant Director's role:

The second production source told The Daily Beast that the first assistant director should be personally verifying whether a weapon is “hot” or “cold.” (A “cold gun” indicates there are no cartridges—including blanks—inside the firearm. A “hot gun” indicates the weapon is loaded with cartridges, either live ammunition or blank rounds.) “This check alone should’ve prevented this incident,” the person said.

In a heartbreaking 911 call, script supervisor Mamie Mitchell also seemed to reference Halls as she urgently asked a dispatcher to send an ambulance to the set at Bonanza Creek Ranch, on the outskirts of Santa Fe.

Mitchell can be overheard telling someone nearby, “this fucking AD that yelled at me at lunch asking about revisions, this motherfucker. Did you see him lean over my desk and yell at me? He’s supposed to check the guns. He’s responsible for what happened.”

The weapons handler on the movie

From Showbiz 411 :

EXCLUSIVE Hannah Gutierrez has been identified as the armorer or weapons handler on the movie, “Rust.” According to reports, she laid out three guns on the Santa Fe set. One of them wound up killing Halyna Hutchins and wounding director Joel Souza, fired by an unwitting Alec Baldwin.

Gutierrez’s LinkedIn page includes a resume note from this past spring and summer working at Yellowstone Film Ranch in Montana from March through June. She described her job there: “Loading firearms with appropriately sized blanks. Ensuring gun safety on set along with instructing actors on how to use their guns.”

She is young and pretty, and according to LinkedIn a student at Northern Arizona University from 2017 to 2020 in “creative media and film.”

It’s unclear if Gutierrez was union approved or licensed, or still a student. But she comes from a family of “armorers.” Her father is the famous armorer and movie gun consultant Thell Reed, who she said trained her in an affidavit.

 

The Rookie switching to airsoft

In response to the accident on the set of Rust, ABC's cop show, The Rookie, will start using airsoft guns as props on their show and add muzzle flashes digitally. 

I assumed there was some good reason why they didn't do this years ago, and maybe there was, but they're changing.

It seems insane to keep on with the blanks when they're that big a hazard. Even if you do everything safely, it's a lot of work.

In the '50's, the studio where they filmed The Untouchables was robbed. Burglars made off with several (real, fully functional) submachine guns. 

 

A little more about the accident on the set of RUST

Six union camera crew members walked off the set of Rust over safety concerns just hours before the accidental shooting which killed the DP and nailed the director in the collar bone. There had already been a couple of accidental discharges of prop weapons. 

According to the L.A. Times:

Safety protocols standard in the industry, including gun inspections, were not strictly followed on the “Rust” set near Santa Fe, the sources said. They said at least one of the camera operators complained last weekend to production managers about gun safety on the set.

Three crew members who were present at the Bonanza Creek Ranch set that day said they were particularly concerned about two accidental prop gun discharges on Saturday.

Baldwin’s stunt-double accidentally fired two rounds Saturday after being told that the gun was “cold” — lingo for a weapon that doesn’t have any ammunition, including blanks, one of crew members who witnessed the episode told the Los Angeles Times.

“There should have been an investigation into what happened,” said the crew member. “There were no safety meetings. There was no assurance that it wouldn’t happen again. All they wanted to do was rush, rush, rush.”

A colleague was so alarmed by the prop gun misfires he sent a text message to the unit production manager. “We’ve now had 3 accidental discharges. This is super unsafe,” according to a copy of the message reviewed by the Times.

According to Showbiz 411, Rust is a "Tier 1" movie, meaning it's being made for under $6 million. I don't know how much under.

It's like they're blaming Alec Baldwin

The headlines about the death of DP Halyna Hutchins now seem intent on blaming Alec Baldwin, like it was his fault whatever happened. It's misleading to say that he accidentally shot and killed someone, like it wouldn't have happened if he had been more careful.

I listened to a couple of "serious" filmmakers on the internet a few years ago. They were so serious that they were infuriated that anyone would use anything but real guns in a movie. El Mariachi used toy guns, and I saw a long, long action sequence made to showcase a director's ability that was done with airsoft and BB guns. There are Non Guns used in movies and TV shows, although they don't have anything that would work in a western.

Blanks are dangerous, loud and expensive and, every so often, they kill someone.

There are a couple of teens in the cast of Rust. I hope they didn't witness this horror.

Still, I hope they let the kids kill a few people in the movie (if they continue, and it's hard to imagine they will). I've mentioned before that, with the thousands and thousands of westerns that have been cranked out over the last 125 years, it's only been recently that women and children have been allowed to shoot anyone. I know Grace Kelly killed a guy in High Noon. The exception proves the rule. 

But I wouldn't let a child actor use real guns loaded with blanks. Maybe there was a very good reason they were never allowed to shoot anyone.

Propgun misfire kills director of photography, injures director

Director of photography Halyna Hutchins was killed and director Joel Souza was wounded on the set of the movie Rust being filmed in New Mexico in an accident involving a gun loaded with blanks fired by Alec Baldwin. 

Are blanks still necessary? Bruce Willis suffered hearing loss from firing blanks in a closed space in a Die Hard movie; they killed Brandon Lee and Jon-Erik Hexum.

I don't remember who the director was---maybe Al Adamson---who loaded a rifle with a blank cartridge and handed it to an actor who immediately aimed it at him. The director dived for cover. The actor was disappointed. "I wanted to shoot you!" He didn't know that, at that distance, the blank would have killed him.

I know people have complained about digitally added blood spatter in movies, but are muzzle flashes no good, either? No one has been killed in a blood spatter accident.

The movie is a western called Rust starring Alec Baldwin, with teen actor Brady Noon.

The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (1976)

You'll be glad to know that Jodie Foster's 20-year-old sister acted as body double for her nude scene. On the other hand, a co-star really slapped the poor girl in the face. It's hard to fake in a movie, so Jodie told the actress to just go ahead and hit her. Her character had given the woman a mouthful of sass over her pedophile son (Martin Sheen) who tried to molest her.

Reportedly one of Foster's least favorite movies.

She plays a girl whose dying father arranged for her to conceal his death. So she lives alone in a rented house. She's home schooled which means she's supposed to educate herself. She's stalked by Martin Sheen and befriends neighbor Scott Jacoby but is otherwise isolated.

And she kills a couple people, but you can hardly blame her for that.

Based on a novel. Reportedly conceived as a stage play. Most of the film takes place in one location with no more than three people per scene.

Available on Amazon Prime.

Cat Women of the Moon (1952)

"You're too smart for me, baby. I like 'em stupid."
--One of the men

Objectionable, but it wasn't that bad. I never understood what people had against Sonny Tufts. The Cat Women talk about "genocide" just eight years after the term was coined.

Originally in 3-D. There's been at least one remake.

 

"Strange. I should care what happens to them. Yet I don't."
--Man-hating lady astronaut

The Monster of Piedras Blancas (1959)

 

The main thing I remember was the 10-year-old boy with a leg brace. He was the director's son. He finds a dime on the ground, goes into the store to spend it and finds the shop owner dead. He runs--hopping two steps in his good leg for ever one with his bad one--to his mother at the graveside service for the monster's last victim. 

"He didn't have any head!"

It was painful seeing a child suffering from the effects of polio. It gave his character a backstory. The little fellow had been through enough without finding a headless body. He appeared in another movie his father made and went on to direct a few himself. 

A creature-from-the-black-lagoon-like fish man terrorizes a coastal community. The lighthouse keeper had been feeding it. I don't know if that was a mistake on his part.

With Les Tremayne and Don Sullivan. 

I watched it on Pub-D-Hub which means it's public domain and must be available on a lot of other streaming channels.

Wayne Wang's Chan is Missing (1982) on the Criterion Channel

I don't remember what it cost, but it was the first really low budget movie I remember hearing about. The black & white 16mm really looked nice after all these years of digital video.

A couple of Chinese-American cab drivers in California want to operate their own taxi. They gave Chan several thousand dollars to help them get a license through another cab company but now he has disappeared. There was a conflict between those siding with Taiwan with supporters of mainland China which led to a murder and other issues that may have led to Chan's disappearance.

Made before home video took over. Getting a movie shown in theaters was your only hope. Look at Feature Filmmaking at Used Car Prices by Wang's former collaborator, Rick Schmidt. The book focused on the possibility of getting your movie released theatrically.

Available with other Wayne Wang movies on The Criterion Channel.

Russia beats Tom Cruise

Russian actress Yulia Perisild.

A two person Russian film crew is leaving the International Space Station where they filmed the first movie in space. They return to Earth on Sunday.

According to RT: 

The film plot centers around a female cardiac doctor who is called to go into orbit and perform heart surgery on a cosmonaut who got stranded there due to a condition. Further details of the plot remain undisclosed. 

90-year-old William Shatner just went into space, so it shouldn't be too great a strain for elderly California millionaire Tom Cruise. Cruise was reportedly going to film a scene on the space station. I don't what his movie will be about, but now it won't be the first. 

NASA thinks that seeing 59-year-old Tom Cruise in space will get kids interested in science.

Russia has wisely declared two Scientology-linked organizations "undesirable" and will likely ban them. So there's another blow they've struck against Cruise.

 

THE DESPERATE HOURS, William Wyler, 1955

The first time I heard about this movie was in junior high school. I was in a "citizenship" class. The movie was based on a real incident. A family named Hill had been taken hostage by escaped criminals in 1952. There was an article about it in Life magazine at the time. You'll be happy to know that the criminals treated the Hill family courteously, so the Hills felt they were misrepresented by the magazine's claims that their nine-year-old was roughed up and that their adult daughter bit one of the men. The family sued. They won, but the Supreme Court turned on them and deprived them of their winnings. They ruled that the cost of a free press is crooked, money-grubbing "journalists" making up phony stories about you.

The movie is rather tense as you might imagine. The father (Fredric March) is trying to keep his wife and kids from provoking the escapees; Humphrey Bogart, meanwhile, is trying to keep a giant violent moron (Robert Middleton) he's escaped with from murdering them. Gig Young as the daughter's boyfriend who won't go away no matter how many times she tells him that it's not a good time and he can't come in.

With Martha Scott and Mary Murphy.

Also with Ray Collins, Arthur Kennedy, and Alan Reed (the voice of Fred Flintstone).

Joe Flynn from McHale's Navy as an additional hostage.

Dewey Martin played Bogart's younger brother. He died in 2018. The two kids, Richard Eyer who played the son and Louis Lettieri who played his friend, may be the only two left. 

Several years ago, someone noted that Robert Blake was one of the few actors left who worked with Humphrey Bogart, but Richard Eyer was in a lot more scenes with him. He even attacked Bogart at one point. Blake had a small role in Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

Filmed in VistaVision even though most of it took place in a house.

Available on The Criterion Channel or on Pluto.

Frank Perry's MAN ON A SWING (1974) Cliff Robertson, Joel Grey

It's like the old commercials for psychic hotlines. They showed the psychics talking to callers but only telling them things they already knew.

In Man on a Swing, a "clairvoyant" (Joel Grey) calls the police. He knows details of a murder that were never made public. Police aren't idiots. They know something's not right, and the guy acts like a jackass.

At one point they have psychologists question the clairvoyant confronting him with serious problems in what he's saying, that he's doesn't have a normal reaction to his horrible visions. Police chief Cliff Robertson is annoyed that the guy is using a murder to get attention for himself.

Based on a real case.

Might make a double feature with The Boston Strangler. Boston cops had a psychic to contend with and were initially impressed.

The psychic in The Boston Strangler was Peter Hurkos. Born in Holland. He used his accent to his advantage. He once appeared on a radio talk show and did psychic readings for people who called in.

"I see---DOOK!" he said.

"That's right!" the caller enthused. "My dog is right here with me!"

Free on The Criterion Channel or $2.99 on Amazon Prime.

 

Small Sacrifices, TV miniseries, 1989

My mother wanted to see this again, a TV miniseries about a local murder case. I found it on eBay, but it looked like someone made their own DVDs from a VHS tape. If they did, it's the only version available.

Farrah Fawcett  plays Diane Downs, a postal worker who delivered mail to the school where my mother worked. 

Downs' story was that she was that she had recently moved to Oregon. She was driving with her three children on a country road at night, "sightseeing" in the dark. A shaggy haired stranger waved her down. She naturally stopped and got out of the car. He demanded the keys. She refused so he leaned into the car and shot the three children. She still refused so he shot her in the arm. So she pretended to throw the keys away and having thus distracted him, she jumped in the car and drove away.

Downs claims to have driven as fast as she could to the hospital. Other drivers said she was blocking traffic, going around ten miles per hour.

When they reached the hospital, her seven-year-old daughter was dead. Her 3-year-old son was left paraplegic and her 8-year-old daughter suffered a stroke. 

Downs had been stalking a married man played by Ryan O'Neal. She offered to murder his wife so they could be together. He didn't want to be a father to her children which was her reason for trying to murder them. 

I found the scenes of the children in the emergency room and later the daughter testifying in court difficult to watch. 

There were scenes of Diane Downs at home with her parents. The scenes added nothing and had no basis in fact.

A friend and I attended the trial one morning. I saw some of the testimony that was dramatized in the miniseries. The defense attorney asked a detective if he had planted any of the evidence. The detective was indignant but the actor in the mini-series overplayed it. Downs' father later self-published a book his daughter wrote in prison. She characterized the detective's response very differently, that he hung his head in shame and mumbled his denial.

Doris Wishman's DOUBLE AGENT '73 (1974)

I kept wondering if you could get away with making anything this bad today.

It was Doris Wishman's Double Agent 73, starring Israeli stripper Liliana Wilczkowska aka "Chesty Morgan". She cashed in on her medical condition. She suffered from breast hypertrophy and had a 73 inch chest. 

I averted my eyes through a lot of it.

Chesty Morgan plays Jane, a secret agent. She has a camera implanted in one breast so she has to take her top off every time she wants to photograph documents or take a picture of a man she's killed. And, if she doesn't return to CIA headquarter in time, the camera will explode.

Sequel to Deadly Weapons. Both are available on the Criterion Channel. Yes,  the CRITERION CHANNEL!

Reportedly made for $50,000, more than a quarter million dollars today. Don't ask me where the money went.