Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. We haven't done a segment yet on this show about the fatal shooting on the set of the movie Rust with the prop gun fired by the actor, Alec Baldwin. There've been so few details released about what actually happened that we didn't want to just speculate or turn this tragedy into a sensationalized celebrity story, but now more details are coming out, even though one of the issues is how slowly officials in New Mexico and with the production company are releasing details. We know we have many listeners in the TV and film industry.

Many of you in the union, I artsy called in recently when you were on the verge of a strike part of which would have been over safety concerns. You're going to get the phones in this segment too. As we also talked to special effects and props expert, Steve Wolf, let's bring him on first. Steve Wolf is the President of Wolf Stuntworks, and founder of Science in the Movies, an organization that teaches physics and chemistry through stunt demonstrations.

His bio page says he has worked on a long list of movies, TV shows, and videos from Do the Right Thing to Law & Order to Whitney Houston's music videos, he's appeared in the last few days on Rachel Maddow and Morning Joe on MSNBC to talk about this incident saying among other things that they were trying to do this film on the cheap. That was probably a contributing factor. This is probably the only time we've had the same guest as appeared on TMZ the day before. Steve, thank you for coming on. Welcome to WNYC.

Steve Wolf: Hey, thank you so much, Brian. It's such a pleasure to meet you.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners who work in television or film, what do you think is important to say about this tragedy? You're invited to call in at 212-433-WNYC, 433-9692. Remember, we've shifted back now to our usual pre-pandemic call-in number. It's back to 12-433-WNYC, 433-9692. Are accidents and injuries in this case, of course, a death and an injury, more common than we in the audience realize are safety protocols follow to different degrees and different productions? If it didn't involve somebody as famous as Alec Baldwin, maybe this would barely have been a news story.

Listeners in the industry, use the opportunity of this publicity to say, if you think this incident shines a light on reforms that need to take place in a more systemic way if you work in TV or film or video production where danger is ever involved, we're inviting your calls for whatever you think is important to say following the death of cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins and the wounding of director, Joel Souza, 212-433-WNYC. With the President of Wolf Stuntworks, Steve Wolf.

Steve, I guess my biggest question as someone who's never worked on a movie set is why do they ever use real guns rather than fake guns? Why do they even need the sound of a real gun during the filming of a scene rather than just lay it in as a sound effect later?

Steve Wolf: Excellent points, Brian. The answer is there's no reason not to. The sound effects and even the CGI for muzzle flash work fine. Even if they're not 8,000% realistic, who cares where you're watching a movie, we give the benefit of the doubt. So far as the use of real guns on set, that's fine if they're modified to make sure that they can't have live in ammo introduced into them. Let's say, live ammo is two inches long and a blank is one-inch long, you modify the cylinder or the chamber to only be one-inch long so that you can't put ammo into it.

Then it's fine, but if you have guns that are capable of firing live ammo, and you put live ammo in them, and you point the gun at someone, and you press the trigger, don't be surprised if you get a hole in someone because that's what that equipment is designed to do.

Brian Lehrer: Three crew members were quoted in the New York Times saying there were two previous accidental weapons discharges during the making of this film. Also, it's been reported that six union workers from the crew walked off the set to protest unsafe working conditions prior to the shooting. Guess what? They were then replaced by non-union workers. What's your best understanding of the safety concerns that the crew had before the shooting and how common or unusual are they to movie sets?

Steve Wolf: They're quite common and typically as the budget diminishes, the safety risks increase. Low-budget movies, frequently cut corners. They bring in inexperienced people, they rush because they're trying to get the movie done in X number of days, they don't take the time to walk through the safety meetings. They don't take the time to explain the hazards to people. When people engage in any hazardous activity, they have a right to do that, but it has to be an informed choice.

If you don't tell the crew, "Hey, we're using real guns here. Hey, there's live ammo on the set," then you're not giving people the information that they need to decide whether they should go home or seek employment elsewhere, or whether they want to stay in and face the risk. Communication of the risk is very important as a matter of equity, but not being stupid is also important, not bringing the wrong guns onto the set, not having live ammo on the set, not pointing a gun at a person who poses threat.

These are all important as well. When you cut these corners, take these chances, people get hurt and it happens all too often.

Brian Lehrer: I think Justin in Sparta is calling in. That Sparta, New Jersey, not the other one, with something related from his experience. Justin, you're on WNYC. Hello. Justin, are you there?

Justin: Hello?

Brian Lehrer: Hi, we've got you. We've got you now.

Justin: Hi. Sorry about that. Thank you for taking my call. I've worked on multiple TV shows and movie sets as a production assistant. The real issue comes down to the fact that they try to do 12-hour hard out. and then they say they want to do a 12-hour turnaround, but usually, it turns into an 8 to 10-hour turnaround. Most people don't really live in the city that work in the industry. They live outside of it. People having to drive in. On top of it, they really don't take care of the lowest man on the totem pole as well, like production systems, for instance.

They get the lowest amount of pay and they're seen as disposable. If you look at Rust like your expert, Mr. Wolf says, they tried doing it on the cheap, so they didn't bring anybody or the union people walked off and they brought in non-union members. You get people that aren't experienced in doing things that you need, somebody that's been doing this job for decades.

Brian Lehrer: Justin, thank you very much. Steve, I don't think anyone is saying the non-union replacement workers were a factor in this explicitly.

Steve Wolf: I'm not. The fact that 3% of your money goes to somewhere else doesn't make you any more of an expert. The fact thereof expertise is not a matter of non-union versus union. It's a matter of experience versus inexperience. If they're an inexperienced people in the union and they're highly experienced people who aren't in the union, that's really not the factor here.

Brian Lehrer: To close the loop on what Justin brings up, do you have an opinion about the role of hiring union workers in a shoring movie sets safety in general? I realize I'm asking somebody.

Steve Wolf: It does in general bring a higher margin of safety, yes.

Brian Lehrer: How does somebody get experience being something like an armorer, the person who handles the guns on a movie set until they start doing it?

Steve Wolf: They work as an apprentice or as an assistant. In that way, they can learn without having the ultimate safety responsibility. The responsibility lies in the hands of someone who's been doing it for a long time, and along the way, there'll be teaching someone who will be coming up in the industry who one day replace them.

Brian Lehrer: Did that not happen in the case of this armor who has been singled out as possibly the source of the error?

Steve Wolf: Well, I'm surprised. Her dad's cell is an amazingly experienced armorer, but apparently, she had yet to absorb all of his wisdom and to carry on the tradition of excellence that he had set. She was young and just lacked some of the experience and maturity to have the job of the only person on set. If they mess up their job, results in the death of other crew members. The camera operator, the caterer, everyone can screw up. You can have a crappy writer, bad lighting, crummy makeup, those things just make a movie worse, but no one dies, but the special effects and the armorer have jobs where death is the consequence of poor job performance so that is the last place to skip, the last place to save money, and the last place you want to bring in someone who lacks experience.

Brian Lehrer: Bob in Riverside Connecticut says he doesn't work in the industry but has a lot of experience with firearms. Bob, thank you for calling in. You're on WNYC.

Bob: Good morning, Brian, and thank you for taking the call. Ordinarily, it'd more cheerful occasion. I started handling firearms, I believe, I was about age nine at the day camp, and that was a long, long time ago measured many decades. Since then, I was in the Navy as a gunnery officer and on and on. The basic teaching of going back to the NRA and 10 rules, 10 commandments of gun safety, one of them is that a firearm is always loaded.

It is incumbent upon anyone handling a firearm that he or she has the adequate training to handle it safely and including being able to actually open the action, and check to see if it is clear and even then you don't point "an empty" firearm at anyone.

Brian Lehrer: Bob, thank you very much for that. What's the movie set context of what Bob just said, Steve?

Steve: Well, first, Bob, thank you for your service, and what you said is absolutely right. It is incumbent on anyone who is handling firearms to educate themselves or to be educated by another member of the production company, typically the armorer, in how to handle the firearm safely. That's really not a path to say, "I'm just an actor. I just rely on other people to tell me what to do." That's not true. Actors prepare for their roles and if one of the functions of your role is to handle firearms, then you learn how to do it properly.

Brian Lehrer: Well, on what was happening at the moment of the shooting, the injured director, Joel Souza, reportedly said in an affidavit that I saw quoted on CNN that, "Alec Baldwin was sitting in a pew in a church building setting and he was practicing cross draw." CNN says, "A cross draw is when a shooter a pulls the weapon from a holster on the opposite side of his body from the draw hand." Can we say, at least, that Baldwin was not fooling around, he was rehearsing, obviously not trying to hurt anyone, and had reason to believe that what he was doing was within the protocols of the rehearsal?

Steve: Yes, I don't think that he was screwing around. I think that he was practicing a cross draw as the affidavit says. In a cross draw, the gun starts, essentially, pointing behind you and ends up pointing in front of you, which means that you're sweeping the gun across a 180-degree arc, which means that anything in that 180-degree arc is in danger and therefore shouldn't be there so that means if you're cross drawing with your right hand, that means that the gun goes from your left hip to in front of your body.

In which case, all of the crew should be off to his right side so that the guns are not pointing at them but the way this was orchestrated, the gun went from pointing away from camera to pointing right at camera and then also he pressed the trigger so the gun didn't just go off. They don't do that. If the gun fired, someone fired-- and so in order for a bullet to get into Halyna, he had to point the gun at her and press the trigger.

Brian Lehrer: With that pressing the trigger not have been routine in rehearsals like that?

Steve: No reason to do it. Certainly, no reason to do it without having personally checked the gun. If I told you, Brian, "Hey, you're going to point a gun at that another actor," and then you're going to press the trigger, what do you want to know that there's nothing in the gun? Wouldn't you personally want to know? Would you take someone else's word for it or would you just take two seconds to open the cylinder, look inside yourself, and make sure you're not going to kill someone?

Brian Lehrer: What's the protocol, not being experienced with guns? If I took it, I would be afraid to mess around with it at all and if the person whose responsibility it was to say loaded, not loaded, loaded with blanks, whatever, and I wouldn't want to mess with that.

Steve: If I handed you the gun, Brain, and I told you it was safe, it's safe. If somebody left that gun on a table, it was unattended, nobody knows what his condition was, and then assistant director, whose job is simply to move the production along fast tells you, "Don't worry, cold gun," but you haven't seen them check it and the armor is nowhere in sight, then I think there's a lot of exposure there.

Brian Lehrer: Could the firing have been accidental?

Steve: If you mean, did he press the trigger by accident? I'm not sure what you mean by accidental.

Brian Lehrer: That is my question, yes.

Steve: Well, it's a single action gun, and it fires fairly easily if it's cocked. It's very low trigger weight, but it's still an intentional act when you contract the muscles of your forefinger and have them exert pressure against the trigger, so I don't think that's accidental.

Brian Lehrer: Tom in Manhattan, a cinematographer. Tom, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Tom: Hello, let me just turn down radio for a second. I appreciate the tremendous amount of expertise of your guest. I agree with almost everything you're saying, but I think you're stopping a little low on food chain. The question that needs to be asked is, what was the pressure on the set to move things in a way that became unsafe? Now, there was a record over the last several days of firing incidents on the set, mistakes on the set, under the same assistant director.

There's a note from the script supervisor that the assistant director was yelling at her over lunch, so this is a set where, first of all, people are relatively inexperienced in their jobs below the line of director and cinematographer, at least, certainly some of them, and they're being rushed to make the days in a schedule that's hard to make, which is an independent feature. It takes a very, very skilled and diplomatic first assistant director to run a set that is both safe and fast.

This guy has had a record of not doing that and he was kicked off a set in 2019 because that was a firearm incident. Plus, he had a record of this kind of bullying and other kinds of complaints against him. Why did the production hire this guy? Well, the only reason that I can forward either they were ignorant, which I doubt, it's hard in this business to be ignorant of a person's record, or they think that he will make help them make their days and save the money and, of course, the other actions toward the crew of making them longer drives in the morning indicate that.

Brian Lehrer: Tom, thank you. Yes, and that was reported that there were requests to be put up in a hotel near the set after very long days by some of the crew members that were denied so they had to stay where they had been put up, an hour's drive away, each way. Your reaction, Steve, to any of those issues that Tom raised?

Steve: Yes, I agree with Tom on everything. It doesn't matter how many rules you have if you don't hire people who have the experience to follow them and that's really what happened. There's no new safety protocol that needs to come out of this. The safety protocols around handling firearms are long and well-established and well-proven, but if you don't follow them, they do no good and so you have to hire people who have the experience to understand the value of these protocols, and to implement them and not rush through them.

Rush people through lunch if you have to, rush people through whatever, but don't rush people through safety protocols because the consequence is death.

Brian Lehrer: Well, you anticipated my next question, which is probably going to be my last question as we're running out of time, but does this incident which is getting so much publicity, really because of who was involved and because it was during the filming of the movie have even larger lessons for workplace safety generally, in this industry, or any industry and the temptation of owners to cut corners to make more money at anything?

Steve: Yes, they really have to think in terms of penny-wise, pound-foolish. They saved whatever they were going to shave a couple of bucks off the budget, and now they'll face multimillion-dollar losses and the loss of a life they can never be replaced, so I hope that this ripples through not only the film industry but every other industry and that safety is not a word but a way of living and a way of practicing the work because there's really no job worth of someone's losing their life.

Brian Lehrer: Hey, on a lighter note, before you go, do you want to take just 30 seconds because that's all we have to talk about your educational organization called Science in the Movies, which teaches physics and chemistry through stunt demonstrations?

Steve Wolf: Sure, I've got a website at scienceinthemovies.com. I've been dedicated for the last 30 years to getting kids engaged in STEM, and doing that through movie stunt and special effects demonstrations in school so that kids realize when they see whether it's a shooting in a movie or someone set on fire or a car crash, that it's really the work of physicists and chemists who happen to work in the service of the film industry. Everything that you watch on TV that looks so exciting, it's all science.

Brian Lehrer: Steve Wolf is President of Wolf Stuntworks and founder of Science in the Movies, an organization that teaches physics and chemistry through stunt demonstrations. Thank you for joining us.

Steve Wolf: Thank you so much, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC.

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