Trotskyists comment on Rust shooting, prosecutions

With all the talk about how great zero-budget film is, the way anybody can make some kind of a movie now on digital video, there's this, perhaps ironically, from the World Socialist Website on the accident on the set of the movie Rust:

...Local and state officials, with the complicity of the film industry and the industry’s unions, have made every effort to scapegoat Gutierrez-Reed, a young, inexperienced film worker, 24 years old at the time, and, as an actor, Baldwin. This is part of a joint effort to divert attention from the dangerous conditions on film and television sets and the consequences in particular of low-budget filmmaking, with inadequate staffing and training, undertaken in the interests of cutting costs and boosting film company profits.

In the new motion to dismiss, Baldwin’s attorneys claim that New Mexico state prosecutors have abused “an innocent person whose rights have been trampled to the extreme.” The lawyers, however, place all the blame on Gutierrez-Reed, arguing that the armorer “is the autonomous decision maker with regard to gun safety” and that Gutierrez-Reed was responsible for Hutchins’ death because “it was foreseeable that Baldwin would not check the gun.”

The attorneys also cite a report from the New Mexico Occupational Health and Safety Bureau that “demonstrates that Baldwin was not part of Rust management and that his authority on set was limited to creative decisions.”

His legal team is attempting to defend Baldwin as an actor, while claiming that Baldwin the producer was not actually on the set in a management position. Prosecutors allege that Baldwin was responsible both as the actor who held the weapon and in his capacity as a co-producer.

Rust, whose filming was eventually completed in Montana, is known in the film industry as an Ultra-Low Budget film. This is part of a tier structure agreed to by the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), which allows producers to hire nonunion crews if union members are unwilling to accept the low wages and poor conditions.

Immediately preceding the October 2021 accident, several workers who had made written complaints about safety violations the previous night, including three weapon misfires on the set in the last week, were fired and escorted off the set by security. Numerous workers reported not being paid for weeks and having to sleep on the set due to working 14- to 16-hour shifts, and having to drive 50 miles to their hotels. The Rust shooting also occurred mere days after IATSE called off an impending strike in which one of the issues would have been the conditions workers throughout the industry face daily.