• JokeDeity@lemm.ee
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    2 days ago

    Surprised they dragged it out this long. He’s rich and white, did anyone think this was ever going anywhere else?

  • RedC@sh.itjust.works
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    2 days ago

    I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Alec Baldwin is guilty of at least negligence with a firearm, although I’d go for manslaughter.

    Being an actor doesn’t absolve you of all responsibility. Anyone else who accidentally kills someone else get charged with manslaughter. The fact that the public doesn’t see this obvious fact proves the stranglehold the rich have on American ideals. In any other professional job if I killed someone accidentally, whether it be with a gun, a car, or my own two hands, I would expect to atleast get tried for it.

    That and Mr Baldwin straight up LIED about how it even happened. He told a story of the gun firing itself that several firearms experts, including the agency that was investigating, all said is impossible on the model of firearm he had. Yet everyone believes he shouldn’t be charged.

    If you had nothing to worry about, you wouldn’t lie. He lied because he knows he didn’t do his job.

    • Allonzee@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Very much disagree. This was the responsibility of the firearms master and barring that the prop master.

      As an actor on a professional set, it would be irresponsible to mess with a potentially dangerous prop in a way not indicated by the individual in charge of it. It could be a specialized gun modified in such a way that trying to remove a round makes a specialized effect charge go off. Way to go Alec. Now we need to take a 2 hour break as the prop master resets your fuck up when you were supposed to set off that smoke charge pulling the trigger.

      It’s the actor’s job to get into the moment and act, there are other roles explicitly in charge of on set safety. Their prop master failed at their job. A professional pretender is one of the few situations where it is not their responsibility to actually know everything about what they’re supposed to be pretending to do.

      It isn’t an actor’s job to send a sample of sugar glass to a lab to make sure it’s safely fragile enough to throw a co-star through, or rip open the foam bag they’re supposed to push a Co star “off a building” into to check for sharp objects. Such a disruptive actor wouldn’t get very far in their career.

      • Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        “It isn’t an actor’s job”

        Yeah… But he wasn’t just an actor. Baldwin was a Producer. An actor and producer who ON THE DAY BEFORE HIS WEAPON WENT OFF had his stunt double have an accidental discharge of a weapon on set that fired a real ass bullet. I repeat. He had a complete dry run of the accident with his own fucking stunt double where nobody gor hurt because of complete chance after which he had crew approach him with extreme concerns over which a number resigned in protest. If he had been working on a union show they would have shut the whole thing down for a bloody week when the stunt double discharged that bullet but they didn’t… Because union shows and studios have chains of safety liability that are designed to stop productions cold when they are in danger of causing a death. This serves not just to protect workers but Producers because if something goes wrong they are liable. Studios generally employ Production Managers who in exchange for veto power over Producers decisions assume the liability for safety.

        Independent shows do not have those safety nets. If your Production manager comes to you and says “This has to stop” in an independent show that’s more of a suggestion then a firm veto. In this case, the Producers flagrantly ignored those warnings and said that they would continue as is. People generally don’t know what a Producer’s role is… Hell Producers sometimes do not realize their full list of responsibilities because a lot of the less fun parts get outsourced but tje fact is if you are paying to make a show you are an employer who is liable for the safety of your employees.

        In 2014 camera assist Sarah Jones was killed on a film set because Producers decided to okay a camera set up on train tracks for a shot. All but one was charged with manslaughter. The whole trial situation here missed the fucking point. They just as well told these rich independent nut jobs that they can get away with making shows under dangerous work conditions as long as they are popular.

      • dukeofdummies@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        Ordinarily I would agree, but there are a few issues with that.

        For one, he’s not just an actor. He’s also credited as one of the 13 producers and co-producers. That producer hat does not disappear once the director yells action. That alone should open up a door for all 13 of these guys to get charges applied if they ignored warnings about safety. Not saying it’s an open and shut case, hell maybe he’s only producer in name for bragging rights and never attended a meeting, it’s a valid argument he can make. But I think it definitely opens the door.

        Secondly, the amount of star power he has does give him some power in this film. If people are complaining about safety and he’s domineering over people going “Shut up! I need filming done in 3 months so I can move to x film, give me the gun lets go”. He’s culpable in my eyes. He actively silenced and ignored concerns in that hypothetical and proceeded to roll the dice himself. Again no idea if that happened but it would absolutely open the door for charges.

        The fact that the case is being dropped suggests that maybe they thought they had a case in these two veins, but ultimately couldn’t make the argument to a reliable degree.

    • TachyonTele@lemm.ee
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      2 days ago

      I realize you hate the actor for whatever reason, but the fact of the matter is in the article you won’t read.

      Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer dismissed the case on the third day of the trial, after learning that the prosecution had failed to turn over key evidence — a cache of bullets — to the defense. The judge blasted Morrissey’s handling of the case, calling it “so near to bad faith as to show signs of scorching.”

      • grue@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        Not shooting his coworkers, for starters.

        Also, IIRC he was the producer or something as well as an actor, so he was the firearms handler’s boss and ultimately in charge of everything including on-set safety to begin with.

        • Plastic_Ramses@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          As an actor in the same movie hes not allowed to adjust weaponry on set or his whole production would be uninsurable.

          The weaponmaster is where the buck stops.

          • RedC@sh.itjust.works
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            2 days ago

            As a producer in the same movie he also has a duty to make sure the weapon master knows what they’re doing. Again I’m not saying he’s the only one responsible, but to me the buck stops with the guy who pulled the trigger.

            • Plastic_Ramses@lemmy.world
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              2 days ago

              It doesnt matter what you think.

              On set heirarchy exists for a reason and that reason has resulted in only two gun related deaths since 1993 despite being the mostly widely used weapon in all of cinema.

            • bane_killgrind@slrpnk.net
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              2 days ago

              Well yeah, he did. The person is a credentialed expert, and he delegated all responsibilities to that person.

      • RedC@sh.itjust.works
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        2 days ago

        What exactly do you mean? He’s an actor. My point is that that doesn’t absolve you of firearm safety

        • Dkarma@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          Yes but his point is that Baldwin wasn’t responsible for firearms safety on the set at all he was just an actor the armorer is the one who’s responsible. Just like the person who hires the Hitman is responsible for the death, the person who is the armorer on the set is responsible for this person’s death.

        • chunkystyles@sopuli.xyz
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          2 days ago

          Rule #1 of firearms safety is to not point a gun at anything you don’t want to shoot.

          How the fuck would that work in a movie, exactly?

          • weew@lemmy.ca
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            2 days ago

            Lots and lots of cuts, lol. Green screen everything. In an action scene, every single actor must be in completely different room, or shoot their part at different times, then composite everything together. No movies will ever have the weapon pointed at the camera, ever. Such scenes are now banned.

            Also, if any scene involves picking up a weapon, they must cut, the actor must check the weapon, then resume filming after. This must be done on every take.

            • bane_killgrind@slrpnk.net
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              2 days ago

              What’s the actor going to check? How heavy it is? They don’t have a clue.

              If by “check” you mean somebody who is an expert or is informed by experts makes a judgement about the weapon and announces it, that happened.

              Court submissions say assistant director David Halls did not know the gun contained live ammunition, and indicated it was unloaded by shouting “cold gun!”

              The armourer who provided the weapon did receive a manslaughter conviction. It was their responsibility, and they either screwed up or let themselves get bullied into screwing up by the asshat AD.

              It is revealed assistant director David Halls had been sacked from a previous production, war drama Freedom’s Path, over gun safety violations in 2019.

              https://abcnews.go.com/US/rust-assistant-director-david-halls-sentenced-deadly-set/story?id=98268586

              He was sentenced already for negligence.

    • simple@lemm.ee
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      2 days ago

      Maybe try understanding what happened before posting whiny comments?

        • ursakhiin@beehaw.org
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          2 days ago

          Ah. Ok. I mean, I’m of the opinion that he has every reason to believe he wasn’t going to shoot her when he pulled the trigger.

          But I just wasn’t sure if you were misunderstanding the headline or if you were in the camp of punish everybody all the time.

            • ursakhiin@beehaw.org
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              2 days ago

              Personally, I just don’t think Baldwin is the one who deserves the charge. There were people on set responsible for ensuring his gun wasn’t loaded. Those people failed in their job.

              • araneae@beehaw.org
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                2 days ago

                Folks really wanted Baldwin’s balls over this because he was Trump on SNL. A large part of this whole case was disguised political animus.

              • realcaseyrollins@thelemmy.club
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                2 days ago

                But wasn’t Baldwin not even supposed to be shooting at the person he killed? If he had shot someone he was supposed to fire a blank at, I understand. Aren’t you supposed to practice gun safety even with replicas? Don’t point at anything you’re not willing to shoot?

                • ursakhiin@beehaw.org
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                  2 days ago

                  He was following the directions of the director and everybody involved, including the woman who died, agreed to do the scene. She wasn’t just some random person on set, she was behind the camera because she was the director of photography.

                  If she didn’t feel the scene was safe to film, she had the right to say no to using a realistic prop. This is an obviously sad incident. But Manny people were found or pleaded guilty to the events. Baldwin just isn’t I’ve of them. Actors can’t be expected to be experts and have to defer to experts on set all the time.

        • TachyonTele@lemm.ee
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          2 days ago

          There are, yes. Unfortunately no one has written any articles about it, and multiple people haven’t gone to court over the situation either. It’s really too bad, it’s just a big black hole of information. The only thing all of us can do is simply read a headline and make emotional guesses as to what happened.

        • 4am@lemm.ee
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          2 days ago

          It was on a movie set where it is to be reasonably expected that the armorer will clear weapons to be safe on set and that actors aren’t expected to be firearms experts so that they are able to perform with them.

          It should also be expected that said armorers do their job as expected and NOT shoot real ammo out of prop guns. And if they do, they’re expected to properly clear them; even though they never should in the first place.

          But yeah, this was totally about Alec Baldwin the elite bourgeois flexing his real ultimate power of wealth and crushing the matter-nothing proletariat, the people have lost once again because he was not held accountable for someone else’s actions.

          I’m all for eating the rich but let’s not just make shit up, that makes us look ridiculous.

          • realcaseyrollins@thelemmy.club
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            2 days ago

            A really cheesy way to put it but I generally agree. However I don’t think that Alec Baldwin pressured the prosecutor to back off, I think the prosecutor didn’t want the smoke from other entities like Baldwin’s managers or business partners, or Alec Baldwin’s fans