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.

Woody Allen not retiring just yet

 

From the World of Reel website:

Allen has hinted that ”Coup de Chance,” his 50th film, might not be his last one. He keeps reiterating that it all depends on whether he can get financing, which would most likely come from European money.

Some good news. In a new interview with Spanish filmmaker David Trueba, the 88-year-old Allen confirms that he is currently trying to launch a new film, which could start shooting as early as this summer in Italy. No other details were given.

Last fall, Allen had stated that he had a “great story” for a film set in NYC and that “it's one of the best ideas I've ever had.” Has he just moved the setting to Italy? Maybe this is a totally different film.

He's just a couple years older than the president will be at the end of the term if he's re-elected. Other countries have movie directors in their 90's or older. I saw a movie made by a guy who was 103. It's probably a good thing to drive home to film students and would-be film students that film is an old person's art although I think Allen himself said just the opposite recently.  

House on Telegraph Hill (1951)

Polish concentration camp inmate Victoria Kowelska (Valentina Cortese) takes on the identity of a dead friend whose child had been sent to live with a relative in the United States. Victoria does this in hopes of reaching the U.S. herself.

She arrives in the U.S., meets and marries a guy related to her by marriage (Richard Basehart) and moves in with him in a huge old house on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco. There's a playhouse where the child was nearly killed in a large explosion supposedly cause by his chemistry set. There's a nanny for the child who tries to come between him and Victoria. There are couple of plot twists.

In one scene, someone has cut the brake line on her car. As she speeds out of control, she goes past a place that looked like one of the intersections in Bullitt. The Steve McQueen movie was filmed just 18 years later, so it could have been the same place.

The movie took place five years after the concentration camp had been liberated. I would have thought the experience would have had some lingering effects but she seemed to adapt pretty well to her new life.

Available on The Criterion Channel.

They explained why a Tiger was in Africa

Forbidden Jungle (1950)

A safari of sorts slowly makes its way through the jungle. They all appear to be white, but several of the men are forced to carry a cage holding a tiger. They somehow made it clear they were in Africa. The hunter leading the group explains that he caught the tiger in India and was heading for North America but on the way he got another assignment in Africa, to find a 30-year-old jungle boy who had grown up with the animals. He was afraid of losing the tiger so he put it in a cage and carried it with him into the jungle. It was a stupid explanation, but at least they explained it.

Not much to say about it. In the opening shot you can see that the movie was filmed in a studio in front of a painted backdrop. Maybe they planned on cropping the image to make it a wide-screen movie, because you could see the top of the backdrop. But it was part of the aesthetic. Of all the things wrong with it, that was pretty minor.

A lot of stock footage of wildlife. With Crash Corrigan in a gorilla suit.

Available on Pub-D-Hub. It's public domain, so probably available other places as well.

Dr Strangelove, Fail Safe (1964)

My sister wanted to watch a movie so we made it a double feature, two nights in a row. Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb was the first night. I'm usually disappointed in Peter Sellers movies, but this was his best work. With George C. Scott, Slim Pickens, Sterling Haden and James Earl Jones. A deranged Air Force general orders a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. Only he know the code to recall the B-52's carrying out the attack. The president of the United States (Peter Sellers) calls the Soviet Premiere from the War Room to alert him. British actors playing American characters with very good American accents are common now, but that was a trail Sellers blazed. He also had the title role playing a "former" Nazi scientist who changed his name to Strangelove to sound more American and British Group Captain Lionel Mandrake who kept trying to humor Sterling Haden to get the code to recall the bombers.

One thing that bothered me about the movie was that everyone had a "funny" name. Keenen Wynn played a Colenol named Bat Guano. 

Fail Safe had an almost identical plot. In fact, the author of the novel on which Dr Strangelove was based sued the author of the novel Fail Safe for plagiarism. 

A wing of supersonic Vindicator bombers (actually supersonic B-58 Hustler bombers) are sent to nuke Moscow. Their radios are jammed and they can't recall them until after they've entered Soviet airspace. The pilots were carefully selected to be mindless automatons who would carry out the attack no matter what. The voice of the president calling for them to turn back doesn't matter because the Soviets could imitate his voice, so they bring in the pilot's wife to plead with him but he won't listen to her, either.

The president keeps ordering people to commit suicide. U.S. fighter pilots pursue the bombers, launch their missiles and crash into the arctic ocean. The U.S. ambassador in Moscow is ordered to stand on the roof of the embassy and wait for death.

Dom DeLuise's movie debut. With Henry Fonda as the president, Larry Hagman as his Russian interpreter, and Sorrell Booke, with Walter Mattheau in an early role playing an evil professor who keeps arguing for the U.S. to launch an all out war on the USSR, making the same arguments George C. Scott did in Dr Strangelove.

Joe Camp, RIP

Joe Camp died yesterday at age 84. He made the Benji movies including Oh, Heavenly Dog starring Chevy Chase. Also made a mystery, The Double McGuffin.

I saw Benji in a theater back in 1974. I must have been 11 and it bothered me that the dog wasn't really an actor and didn't understand the storyline he was acting out. Bob Barker once said it was his favorite movie and, according to IMDb, it was a "guilty pleasure" of Alfred Hitchcock.

One of the sequels, Benji the Hunted, was attacked by Michael Medved who lashed out against it because Benji doesn't come when his owner calls him and stays in the woods to save some orphaned baby animals.

Bowanga, Bowanga (1951)

Three white guys are abducted by white African women in two piece swimsuits.

A little more realistic than similar films. The women barely speak English and it takes place in a desert rather than a jungle. Good-size women. They beat up the men.

"You don't think they're cannibals, do you?"

"...They could be treacherous in other ways."

Not much you can say about it. The women must have been wrestlers.

Available on Pub-D-Hub.