Filming of the western resumed on October 21, 2021 rust On a ranch 20 minutes from Santa Fe (New Mexico) after a lunch break, Alec Baldwin, his protagonist, fired a Colt 45 revolver in a test. Unfortunately, the weapon was loaded with several blank rounds and one live round, and the shot went directly towards the human team behind the camera, as it would have been filmed from that vantage point. The shot killed the director of photography Halyna Hutchins and the shrapnel of the bullet, after passing through the first victim, reached the shoulder of the director, Joel Souza, and remained a few centimeters from his spine.
Baldwin and the film’s gunsmith, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, were charged with manslaughter. It was up to her to check that the weapon was loaded only with blank bullets (in the USA, real pistols, rifles and shotguns are used; in Europe – and, therefore, in Spain – only blank weapons are used for shooting). props). The charges against Baldwin were dismissed in July 2024 for procedural reasons (the judge admitted a complaint from the actor’s defense about the manipulation of some bullets… which weren’t even on the set). Gutierrez-Reed had been convicted months earlier, in April, and sentenced to eighteen months in prison. The first assistant director, David Halls – who was the one who handed the gun to Baldwin and assured him, with the “cold gun” expression required by industry protocols, that it was unloaded – pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of negligent use of a deadly weapon.
The reports following the incident spoke of a certain lack of control on the set. In several interviews conducted last May regarding the launch of the new film in some American theaters and on payment platforms rust, Director Joel Souza denounced the shooting competitions on the set as a hoax, but that day “there was a languid pace”: part of the technical team had abandoned filming earlier in the day due to a dispute with the producers because they wanted to be moved to a hotel closer to the set, “and not sleep 100 kilometers away”. They were replaced by non-union employees.
However, before the judicial journey ended, filming resumed in Montana in the spring of 2023, with a new director of photography, Bianca Cline. Souza changed the script, eliminating the accident sequence, which was set in a church. Now, such a moment takes place in a living room. There was also a change of cast: the main child (Baldwin’s character, an outlaw, is this boy’s grandfather; but his name appears first because in addition to being a publicity stunt, he is one of the producers) and the sheriff They had to be replaced due to unavailability on the new dates. In another case, a new actor’s face was digitally incorporated onto previously shot shots. This production arrives today in Spanish commercial theaters, after having been presented last autumn at the Torún film festival (172,000 inhabitants) in Poland, dedicated to cinematographic photography, and its limited release in the United States.
Why did filming resume and the film end? Because Matthew Hutchins, the cinematographer’s widower, reached an out-of-court settlement with the producers for his son Andros (nine years old at his mother’s death) to receive a share of the financial benefits, which is why Matthew appears credited as executive producer. In Vanity Fair Souza says, “I knew that if the movie was finished it would benefit Halyna’s family financially, which is very important to me. And I know this may sound trivial to non-creative people, but the last thing she did is important. For people to see her last work is important. That was the turning point for me in the decision.” On the other hand, from Halyna’s home country of Ukraine, the deceased’s mother, Olga Solovey, and the cinematographer’s brothers have refused to attend any events related to the western “as long as Baldwin continues to refuse to apologize and take responsibility” and have filed a civil lawsuit in the United States against the producers.
On the screen, according to a sentence added to the new script, the boy protagonist, who has never shot anyone, looks halfway through the film at the family rifle hanging on the wall of his house and blurts out: “He ruined the lives of almost everyone he crossed his path: those Apaches, mine, Charles Gantry’s, my father’s… He committed suicide with this rifle a year after my mother’s death.” Because the narrative engine that starts Two Outlaws (Rust), In a disastrous coincidence, the boy accidentally shoots someone with that gun. In The Guardian, Souza, also a screenwriter, confesses: “Guns make me shudder. The idea of touching one, of taking one in my hand, is very unpleasant to me”, and in the British newspaper he insisted last May: “The idea of going back (to filming) repelled me, but then I found it attractive. And I couldn’t bear the idea of someone else finishing him”.
Souza had hired Hutchins, and it was his decision to hire the new head of photography, Bianca Cline, who followed the instructions of the deceased, who left a notebook with instructions and reflections. At the time of the accident half of the film had been shot, but much of what had previously been shot was re-shot due to the cast change. He also sat down with Baldwin and explained his condition: during the first filming, the actor changed the basic characteristics of his role at will; In April 2023 the criteria would have been imposed by the director, this is what his film was for.
Two Outlaws (Rust) is dedicated to Hutchins and his name appears in the credits in both Ukrainian and English. “I wanted to include it in honor of his mother,” Souza explains in The Guardian. The dedication is accompanied by a phrase that has become a mantra for Hutchins after every take: “How can we make this better?”
