“Rust” director Joel Souza, in his first interview since the movie’s fatal shooting in 2021, has recalled the moment that a prop gun held by Alec Baldwin shot him and cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, and how he later came to the decision to finish the film.
In a Vanity Fair article published online Thursday, Souza described the whole incident as “bizarre,” saying he remembered watching Baldwin’s 1990 spy thriller “The Hunt for Red October” as a kid and imagining himself now saying, “Hey, that guy…someday…”
“When I tell someone it ruined me, I don’t mean in the sense that people might generally think,” he said of the shooting, which killed Hutchins. “I don’t mean that it put my career in ruins. I mean, internally, the person I was just went away.”
Director Joel Souza testifies in a trial against Hannah Gutierrez-Reed on March 1, 2024.
Souza said he was positioned behind Hutchins on the film’s New Mexico set when there was an enormous bang — and not the “poof and a pop” associated with the blanks commonly used in movies.
A prop gun given to Baldwin had been loaded with live ammunition. A bullet passed through Hutchins’ chest and into Souza’s shoulder, where it became lodged — with the director saying it narrowly missing his spine and lung.
Souza staggered backward, he said, and amid his disorientation and the panic around him, he saw Hutchins being lowered to sit down as blood seeped through her white shirt. They were both rushed to hospitals, with him in an ambulance and her in a helicopter.
Members of the film community and others mourn the loss of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.
“At the hospital, the doctor was like, ‘You have a bullet in you.’ And I was just like, ‘What the hell are you talking about? You’re wrong,’” he said. “I kept explaining that I’d come from a movie set and it’s not possible for there to be a real bullet on a movie set. It’s not allowed. You can’t have it. This is the biggest sin you could ever commit on a movie set.”
Souza said he hadn’t spoken out publicly about what happened before now because of his grief — Hutchins was not only a colleague but a friend, he explained. He also didn’t want to impact the criminal cases that followed.
The film’s armorer who loaded the live ammunition, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, was sentenced in April to 18 months in prison for involuntary manslaughter. Assistant director David Halls accepted a plea deal and was convicted of negligent use of a deadly weapon for failing to check the prop and declaring it safe before handing it to Baldwin, who had an involuntary manslaughter charge against him dismissed last month. Souza said he doesn’t have a personal opinion on whether the dismissal was right or wrong, and said he has “no relationship” with Baldwin.
Gutierrez-Reed, a former armorer for the movie "Rust," listens to closing arguments in her trial on March 6, 2024.
Following some initial hesitancy, production resumed on the film a year and a half after the shooting, and the movie was completed this past March, Souza said.
He said he returned as director in part to help Hutchins’ family members; they reached a settlement with producers allowing them to collect a percentage of the film’s earnings. He also wanted to preserve Hutchins’ cinematography.
“If it was me that had gotten killed instead of her—as it should have been—she would do the same thing. She would push for my final work to be seen,” he said.
Much of the film was reshot — some of the younger actors had to be replaced due to the amount of time that had passed, all gunfire was edited in digitally, and a scene in a church where the shooting occurred was completely cut from the movie. But Souza said he did his best to preserve Hutchins’ work.
This aerial photo shows the Bonanza Creek Ranch that was used for the film "Rust."
Asked about the criticisms and rumors that swirled around the production’s low budget and safety standards immediately following the shooting, Souza dismissed much of them as misguided. On reports that the armorer was set to receive $7,900 for four weeks of work, Souza said to “extrapolate that out—that’s over $100,000 a year.” And a crew walkout on the day of the shooting only allowed for more time to prepare, he said.
“In that downtime, there was plenty of time for people to be doing things they needed to do,” he said. “There was plenty of time for the armorer to be checking through ammunition, to be loading the weapons. There was no rush that morning.”
He also said there was no evidence to back one rumor that crew members had been putting real ammunition in the prop guns to shoot bottles and cans for fun.
As for when “Rust” could be released, Souza said there is no date yet as it “hasn’t been shopped” to distributors.
Read more at Vanity Fair .
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