TV producer bans use of real guns on set after Alec Baldwin tragedy
At least one TV producer says he won’t allow real guns to be used as props on his set anymore after the filming tragedy involving actor Alec Baldwin, while some movie bigs had already banned the “archaic practice.”
“Any risk is too much risk,” Alexi Hawley, executive producer of ABC TV’s “The Rookie,” wrote in a memo to the police drama’s crew Friday while announcing that there “will be no more ‘live’ weapons on the show.”
Craig Zobel, who directed the Kate Winslet movie drama “Mare of Easttown,” added on Twitter, “There’s no reason to have guns loaded with blanks or anything on set anymore.
“Should just be fully outlawed,” he said. “There’s computers now. The gunshots on ‘Mare of Easttown’ are all digital. You can probably tell, but who cares? It’s an unnecessary risk.”
The comments came after Thursday’s tragedy on the New Mexico movie set of “The Rust,” when Baldwin was inadvertently given a gun with a real round instead of a blank. He fired the weapon, and the shot struck and killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and wounded director Joel Souza.
Typically, real guns loaded with blanks are used in Hollywood flicks.
Bill Dill, a top cinematographer who mentored Hutchins, chided the “archaic practice of using real guns with blanks in them” instead of “inexpensive computer graphics,” as Zobel suggests.
“There’s no excuse for using live weapons,” said Dill, whose work includes the flicks “The Five Heartbeats” and “Dancing in September.”
The tragic New Mexico shooting has spawned a petition on change.org calling for a ban on on-set real weapons — with nearly 16,000 signatures by midday Sunday.
“We need to make sure that this avoidable tragedy never happens again,” the petition reads. “There is no excuse for something like this to happen in the 21st Century.”
The petition calls on Baldwin “to use his power and influence” to push the ban and urge the industry to lobby for a proposed “Halyna’s Law,” which would make the use of real guns illegal on move sets.
Baldwin’s niece, Hailey Baldwin, said her 63-year-old uncle was “heartbroken” over the fatal mishap, calling the incident “truly unimaginable.”
A similar tragedy cost actor Brandon Lee, the son of martial arts legend Bruce Lee, his life during the 1993 filming of movie “The Crow.”
With Post wires
