Did George Clooney take a swipe at Alec Baldwin? Actor reveals his method with guns
George Clooney has spoken out about Halyna Hutchins' death on the set of 'Rust'. The father of two said it was "insane and infuriating" that there were live bullets on the movie set which resulted in the death of the award-winning cinematographer. Among other things, Clooney pointed out there is no such term as "cold gun" which assistant director Dave Halls used to describe the firearm he handed to Alec Baldwin while saying it was safe to use. Clooney said it was shocking that Halls was allowed near the gun and was the person who handed it to Baldwin.
Clooney said Hutchins' fatal during which director Joel Souza was also injured was a "terrible accident" but claimed Halls shouldn't have been near the prop gun in the light of rigorous safety measures on sets which were implemented after the on-set deaths of Brandon Lee and Jon-Erik Hexum. Speaking on the 'WTF' podcast with Marc Maron, Clooney blasted the movie for "skimping" on production costs by hiring inexperienced armorers which is being viewed as a dig on Baldwin who is the producer of the movie.
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Did George Clooney take a swipe at Alec Baldwin?
Baldwin's woes won't end anytime soon as the paparazzi constantly keeps following his family. He has also been sued by the film's head of lighting, Serge Svetnoy. He has been, along with the other producers, been accused of negligence. Clooney too in his comments appeared to take a swipe at him. Speaking on the podcast, the actor said whenever he is required to use a gun on set he makes sure to follow a certain routine till the time he hands it back. He said he opens the gun, shows it to the person he is supposed to be pointing it at as well as the crew. Clooney said he then fires it six times into the ground before he hands it back to the armorers after every scene.
Speaking on the podcast, Clooney said, "I don't know Alec that well. I've been watching the news and I have to say, they've got the bad guy, which is going to be the first AD. He may be a d**k, I don't know the guy at all, but I've been on sets for 40 years and the person that hands you the gun, the person that is responsible for the gun is either the prop person or the armorer. Period" he said. "Every single time I'm handed a gun on set, I look at it, I open it, I show it to the person I'm pointing it to, we show it to the crew, every single take you hand it back to the armorer when you're done, and you do it again.
"Part of it is because of what happened to Brandon. Everyone does it. Everyone knows. Maybe Alec did that, I hope he did, but the problem is, dummies are tricky. Because they look like real bullets. They've got a tiny hole at the back where someone has taken the gunpowder out," Clooney added, before speaking on the inefficiency of the inexperienced producers. "And why for the life of me this low-budget film, with producers who haven't produced anything, wouldn't have hired, for the armorer, someone with experience... Maybe they weren't even using that gun to do target practice, but they had live ammo with dummies in her pack. That is insane, it's insane and it's infuriating."
"We need to be better at making the heads of department experienced and know what they're doing. Because this is just infuriating. Every time I get handed a six gun, you point it at the ground and you fire. You squeeze it six times. Always." He added: "I've never heard of the term 'cold gun', they're just talking about stuff I've never heard of. It's infuriating." Svetnoy's lawsuit further fans the flames of these claims made against the production. "They attempted to save money by hiring an insufficient number of crew members to safely handle the props and firearms." TMZ stated the suit further claimed that there were other concerns on the set including violating "industry norms, declining requests for weapons training days, failing to allow proper time to allow for gunfire, failing to send out safety bulletins and spreading the staff too thin."