With each successive lawsuit and media interview, the Alec Baldwin saga looks more and more like the famous standoff scene from Clint Eastwood’s “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.”
Baldwin has already fired the first shot, but it’s anyone’s guess who will stand victorious in the end.
The actor’s legal team filed an arbitration demand this week reiterating Baldwin’s claims of innocence and casting further blame on the movie’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez Reed, and deceased cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins.
“An actor cannot rule that a gun is safe. That is the responsibility of other people on the set,” Baldwin said in legal papers filed Friday. He insisted that every single mistake leading up to the October 21 shooting on the set of the movie “Rust” was “performed by someone else.”
Specifically, Baldwin claims that Gutierrez Reed gave him explicit instructions not to check to make sure the gun was safe.
Baldwin says Gutierrez Reed had told him on multiple occasions that “it was her job to check the gun — not his.”
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Gutierrez Reed fired back in a statement this week, telling CNN that “Mr. Baldwin knew that he could never point a firearm at crew members under any circumstances and had a duty of safety to his fellow crew members.”
“Yet he did point the gun at Halyna before the fatal incident against all rules and common sense,” she added.
Gutierrez Reed further claims that Baldwin and the production team resisted firearms training and failed to call her onto the set prior to the fatal shooting. She said Baldwin “had a duty and responsibility to call Hannah in for inspection of the gun and safety instruction before any gun scene was conducted.”
“Hannah was not called into the Church before the impromptu gun scene rehearsal and she should have been,” according to the statement cited by CNN.
Baldwin also used his latest court filing to cast additional blame on Hutchins.
“[Hutchins] directed Baldwin to hold the gun higher, to a point where it was directed toward her,” it says. “She was looking carefully at the monitor and then at Baldwin, and then back again, as she gave these instructions. In giving and following these instructions, Hutchins and Baldwin shared a core, vital belief: that the gun was ‘cold’ and contained no live rounds.”
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Baldwin asked Hutchins if she wanted him to pull back the hammer, and she said yes, the filing says.
“Baldwin then pulled back the hammer, but not far enough to actually cock the gun,” it says. “When Baldwin let go of the hammer, the gun went off.”
Only when Baldwin was shown a photograph of the projectile did he realize he had fired a “live bullet.”
“Baldwin recognized the object as a live bullet, and he finally began to comprehend what had transpired on the set of ‘Rust’ that day,” the filing says. “He was shocked.”
It’s unclear whether Baldwin will face criminal charges for killing Hutchins, but he is the subject of several civil suits, including one leveled by Hutchins’ husband.