Deadly “Rust” Shooting director Joel Souza “wasted”.
Souza, 55, was shot in the shoulder when a gun fired from Alex Baldwin’s hand on the set of Bonanza Creek Ranch on Oct. 21, 2021. The on-set shooting also claimed the life of “Rust” cinematographer Helena Hutchins.
“When I tell somebody it ruined me, I don’t mean it in the sense people usually think,” Souza said. Vanity Fair“I don’t mean it ruined my career. I mean that internally, the person I was was gone. It stopped.”
“It’s not like I was in love with the guy I loved before,” he said. “The day after it happens you look in the mirror, and now there’s somebody else there. One day I didn’t know anything about the world, and now I do. And none of them are good.”
Judge dismisses actor Alex Baldwin’s involuntary manslaughter case, giving actor a surprise win
Joel Souza admitted that Helena Hutchins’ fatal on-set shooting “devastated” him. (Courtesy: New Mexico Courts)
When the cast and crew, including Souza, returned to complete filming of “Rust”, the fatal scene was removed from the film.
“Not only that, but some of the stuff that came before that,” Souza revealed. “Everything there needed to be completely reimagined. Some of the things that came before just wouldn’t make sense for the story anymore. So we just scrapped that and came up with something completely different. I’m not going back to that. I’m glad you asked. I don’t want anyone who ever sees it to be looking forward to it. Nobody ever pushed to keep something like that.”
Baldwin returned to star in the Western film, but Souza has “no relationship” with the actor since the tragedy.
“It was tough to get through that. We got through it. I got the performance I wanted,” he explained. “We’re not friends. We’re not enemies. We don’t have a relationship.”
Alex Baldwin finishes filming “Rust” in 2023. (Reuters)
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Baldwin was criminally charged in connection with the fatal shooting, but his case was dismissed mid-trial after the judge found prosecutors had concealed exculpatory evidence from the defense.
“The state’s deliberate concealment of this information was deliberate and intentional,” Judge Mary Marlow Sommers said inside the New Mexico courtroom. “If this conduct does not rise to the level of bad faith, it certainly comes so close to bad faith that it shows signs of acute prejudice.”
“There is no way for the court to correct this mistake.”
Alex Baldwin reacts after a judge dismissed his involuntary manslaughter case for the 2021 fatal shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins. (Pool video by AP)
Baldwin cannot be charged again. “Rust” Armorer Hannah Gutierrez Reed She is currently serving a sentence after a jury found her guilty of involuntary manslaughter in March.
She was sentenced to 18 months in prison, but plans to appeal her sentence.
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Hannah Gutierrez Reed was sentenced to 18 months in prison. (Courtesy: New Mexico Courts)
Souza described the moment he was shot during his testimony. Gutierrez Reed trialThe director recalled what he was doing in the moments before the gun went off. Hutchins and Souza were preparing a close-up shot of Baldwin and the revolver when the gun fired from the actor’s hand – killing the cinematographer.
“I went inside (the church) again to try to see what the angle was, there was a lot of noise,” he recalled during his testimony. “I heard Alex’s voice. I heard Helena’s voice, everybody was talking at once. I don’t remember exactly how long I was standing behind her. I know I was standing behind her … to try to look at the monitor, and there was an incredibly loud bang that was not like the half and quarter loads you hear on the set. They were kind of, they were loud puffs and pops. It was deafening.”
“And it felt like someone had put a baseball bat on my shoulder. I remember it very well that I stumbled and bent back and screamed. I don’t remember exactly what I said.”
There was “a lot of chaos” on set immediately following the shoot.
“I remember they laid me down. I remember they laid him down next to me, even though we were facing opposite directions. My head was this way, his head was that way. I remember being very nervous. I still don’t understand what happened. All I thought was, ‘Was there something in the barrel that came out?’ But nothing made sense.”
