Rust director Joel Souza has said the accidental killing of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins during the film’s shooting “ruined” him. Souza was himself injured when a prop gun handled by actor Alec Baldwin went off during a rehearsal in New Mexico on 21 October 2021. “When I tell someone it ruined me, I don’t mean in the sense that people might generally think,” the director told Vanity Fair , speaking publicly about the tragedy for the first time.
“I don’t mean that it put my career in ruins. I mean, internally, the person I was just went away. That stopped.
” Baldwin has maintained that he pulled back the hammer, but not the trigger , and the gun fired a live round of ammunition towards crew members standing behind the camera. The bullet hit Hutchins in the chest, killing her, and struck Souza in the shoulder, fracturing his scapula. An American trial court later convicted prop armourer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced her to 18 months in prison for loading the live round into the gun.
Assistant director Dave Halls pleaded no contest to a misdemeanour charge of negligent use of a weapon and received a suspended sentence of six months of probation. Baldwin was charged with involuntary manslaughter, but the case was dismissed in July after it was revealed that the prosecutors had withheld evidence that could have shed light on how live rounds got onto the movie set. After the dismissal of Baldwin’s case, Gutierrez-Reed asked a .