Since the days of silent pictures, the American film industry has grappled with on-set accidents and tragedies. Among the earliest was in 1914, when director Owen Carter and actress Grace McHugh drowned while shooting a sequence of a bandit’s daughter crossing the Rio Grande (in this case, the Arkansas River in Cañon City, Colorado, was subbing for the real thing) for the silent feature “Across the Border.” On-set deaths have shadowed the movies ever since, from the accidental shooting of Brandon Lee on “The Crow” set in 1993 to the 2014 death of “Midnight Rider” assistant camerawoman Sarah Jones on a Georgia train trestle.
But those are just the ones we know about: Media attention around on-set tragedies and mishaps, especially the manslaughter charges against “Rust” actor and producer Alec Baldwin and armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, formally filed on Tuesday, is a modern phenomenon. In the early days, the lack of a 24/7 news cycle allowed many accidents and deaths to go unreported.
“The coverage was less in those days [silents and beyond],” Jonathan Kuntz, film historian and lecturer for the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, told TheWrap. “They could keep things secret. [Plus] it’s out on location, no one will ever know what happened.”
There was also nothing like the safety protocols and protections we have today.
“Workplace safety was something that [up until the 1930s] the individual determined whether he wanted to do the stunt or do not. The studio took no responsibility whatsoever,” said film historian and author Alan K. Rode. The mentality was, Rode said, “Do you want the job or not?”
According to Rode’s book on director Michael Curtiz, from 1925-1930, 10,794 people were reported injured in movie productions filmed in Hollywood. Of these, 55 — mostly stunt men — were killed.
Unions and talking pictures brought lawsuits and safety protocols, silent film historian Ben Model said. The 1930 feature “Such Men Are Dangerous” lost 10 men in an in-air collision, including the cinematographer, assistant director, two cameramen, two prop men and director Kenneth Hawks (brother of fellow filmmaker Howard Hawks). Only five bodies were recovered. A family lawsuit favored the studio — and not for what would be the last time. In fact, it’s one of several indications of how the “Rust” trial could go.
Before the infamous “Twilight Zone: The Movie” accident of 1983, the lack of press coverage of on-set accidents allowed for productions to continue. Cecil B. DeMille’s 1915 feature “The Captive” bears eerie resemblance to the “Rust” incident: The director ordered extras to fill prop guns with blanks, but a live round ended up in one, accidentally killing extra Charles Chandler. It’s unknown if DeMille suffered any consequences, but he went on to helm another five features where members were hurt on-set.
“Making movies, at least a certain kind of movie, is an inherently, somewhat hazardous activity,” said author Stephen Farber, whose 1988 book “Outrageous Conduct: Art, Ego, and the ‘Twilight Zone’ Case” dives deep into the accident that took the lives of actor Vic Morrow and child extras Renee Shin-Yi Chen and Mycah Dinh Le.
It was the first high profile on-set accident that, according to Farber, led to some soul-searching and safety upgrades. But it’s hard not to see much of the same old lip service being paid in the “Rust” accident, Farber said.
“There hasn’t been a model of safety on movie sets,” Farber said, adding that independent productions like “Rust,” shot in New Mexico, have less oversight than big studio movies — moreso when they aren’t filmed in Hollywood.
“There [are] many jobs in New Mexico that are dependent on a thriving film industry,” said Johonniuss Chemweno, CEO of on-set health and safety services company VIP StarNetwork. Chemweno says the “Rust” production contacted VIP StarNetwork about their services but didn’t have the budget to retain them.
The world of on-set safety has certainly expanded over the years, particularly with first-responders in the wake of the COVID pandemic, Chemweno said. But with each production crafting its own individual safety protocols, there’s still too much room for error.
“Everybody who works on a movie should be active in making sure the things that they’re doing are safe [and] they should ask a lot of questions, even if the questions are uncomfortable,” Farber said. “People should not be afraid.”
Independent productions breed an atmosphere of keeping quiet to keep things moving, Farber said, adding that even Baldwin should have at least asked questions to make sure others were safe.
“I don’t say that he’s the only one responsible, but there should have been more questions asked,” Farber added.
Long-term fallout from “Rust” is still up in the air, with a criminal trial process that could take months or years. The “Twilight Zone” trial was a 10-month affair ending with director John Landis and four other members of the production acquitted of manslaughter. In the “Midnight Rider” case, director Randall Miller and executive producer Jay Sedrish pleaded guilty to felony involuntary manslaughter and criminal trespass in a deal with prosecutors.
Convicted or not, Baldwin’s career is by no means over; others have rebounded from worse. But even Landis acknowledged years later that the fallout had followed him.
In a 1996 interview about the “Twilight Zone” case, Landis said: “There was absolutely no good aspect about this whole story. The tragedy, which I think about every day, had an enormous impact on my career, from which I may possibly never recover.”
But while Landis was on trial, his movies “Spies Like Us” (1985) and “Three Amigos!” (1986) were released; the former was a box office hit while the latter has become a cult classic. Landis’ 1988 feature “Coming to America” came out a year after the verdict, grossing $288 million worldwide, the highest earning feature for Paramount that year.
The 64-year-old Baldwin may not have as much runway as Landis, who was 32 in 1983. And remember that the shooting happened on “Rust” — the very type of tiny, low-budget, self-produced indie that Baldwin has been making in recent years.
“I don’t know that [Balwin’s] career was raging anyway,” Farber said. “He’s not a hot leading man at the moment.”
But Farber maintains that, as with Landis, the case will no doubt follow Baldwin: “There’s so much publicity about it, and there will be going forward,” he said. “I think he will be affected by it. Maybe he’ll recover from it at some point, but I don’t think it’s going to be like John Landis going right back to work on another movie.”
Can sets be made safer? Chemweno thinks the Baldwin case could set a precedent, and legislation is certainly a possibility.
Farber seems more realistic. Like with “The Crow” and “Twilight Zone,” even going back to the likes of the early days of cinema, accidents bring up a lot of discussion and sometimes a few changes (like the banning of live ammunition after an accident on 1932’s “Scarface”) but without federal rules, there are still gaps.
“A highly publicized incident like this brings much more consciousness about safety to the forefront, at least for a time, but will it lead to profound, lasting change? I don’t think so,” Farber said.
