Hacker Cinema
Rust
2021 · Film · documentary · 86 min
Directed by Marylou Tibaldo-Bongiorno
RUST is the third documentary in Newark filmmakers Marylou and Jerome Bongiorno's 3Rs Trilogy on Urban America. Following the success of critically-acclaimed, award-winning national PBS broadcast REVOLUTION '67 (2007) on riots/rebellions of the 1960's and THE RULE (2014) on urban school reform, RUST uses Newark, New Jersey as a microcosm to take a deeper look into Rust Belt poverty, racism and mass incarceration while detailing industrialization and deindustrialization.
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3 comments on Hacker News
Does it only have released movies? I was trying to find Alec Baldwin's infamous gun from Rust.
That's not correct.
"Alec Baldwin is producing and starring in the independent Western action movie “Rust” with Joel Souza directing from his own script, based on a story by Souza and Baldwin."
...
"Highland Film Group will launch international sales at the upcoming Marché du Film Online, which launches on June 22. CAA Media Finance is handling the domestic rights, and BondIt Media Capital is financing. "Baldwin is producing through his El Dorado Pictures banner alongside Anjul Nigam and executive producer Matthew Helderman. Baldwin and Nigam produced Souza’s “Crown Vic.” Anna Granucci is also producing with Elizabeth L. Barbatelli as an executive producer."
source: https://variety.com/2020/film/markets-festivals/alec-baldwin-western-rust-1234620085/
Many people here are discussing gun safety, which is orthogonal to the actual causes of the shooting.
There are hundreds of specialized pieces of equipment on a film set and a gun is just one of them. It's not anyone's job but the person responsible for that category of equipment to ensure safety. Here, that would be the armorer, who appears to be have gotten her job through family connections and is clearly a mortal danger to herself and others.
But the buck doesn't stop there. This wasn't even the first misfire on this particular set. A few days prior, when two rounds were negligently discharged, anyone responsible for weapons should have been immediately fired. This didn't happen, showing that the gun safety issues were not only the armorer's fault, but also a symptom of irresponsible and dangerous management at the higher levels of the production.
As a matter of fact, according to the article, the movie's managing team routinely cut corners on the filming environment, forcing crews to commute 100 miles round trip for 12 hour work days, delaying paychecks, and bringing in scabs to keep shooting (both cameras and guns, apparently) when a half dozen crewmembers walked off set to protest working conditions.
Underlying all of this, and at least partly to blame, is the hard truth that every dollar spent to make the set safer for the crew is a dollar that won't be going into the pockets of the people backing the film. Notably, one of the financiers for this movie is BondIt Media Capital, which specializes in lending to troubled or otherwise high-risk productions, and surely expects to be repaid commensurate with that risk.
So in the end, would gun safety have prevented this tragedy? Yes. But the gun was just the weakest link in a chain that was "Rust"ed through from the start.