Aguila Blanca
Staff
You may be right, but I think the incident itself and the continuing fallout have already made the point.stagpanther said:The worst part about this isn't whether or not Baldwin gets a suitable spanking by his cellmate--it's that the core issue of prevention of a live round making its way onto the set might not be adequately addressed.
At the outset, I was of the opinion that the armorer, Hannah Guttierez-Reed, was being made a scapegoat. Recently, I read that she had asked the company in Albuquerque that supplied the guns, blank ammo, and dummy ammo if they would send out some live ammo so she (and some of the crew, I guess) could use the prop guns for plinking off the set during breaks. The company's answer was a resounding "No."
The fact that she would even consider allowing live ammo on the set and anywhere near prop guns shows that she was unqualified to be a movie set armorer. The same article also more or less said that Ms. Reed enjoyed chemical substances that are frowned upon by the federal government. That's another strike against her. Despite her baby face, I no longer feel any sympathy for her.
It was known from early on that Guttierez-Reed got the armorer job because every experienced, qualified Hollywood armorer the producers approached refused to take the job due to the low pay and doubling up as a prop assistant. Now that it has been proven graphically what happens when you don't follow the rules and when you don't hire properly-qualified people at an appropriate pay scale -- I doubt we'll see any repeats.
Some directors have already decided they won't use any real guns in their films, that they'll do it all with dummy guns and post-production editing.