[In a video on Facebook, actor Alec Baldwin encouraged Hollywood
workers to fight bad labor conditions. A commenter quickly accused his
own production.] [[link removed]]

PORTSIDE CULTURE

STORIES OF TERRIBLE CONDITIONS ON “RUST” SET WERE EMERGING EVEN
BEFORE FATAL SHOOTING  
[[link removed]]


 

Noah Lanard
October 22, 2021
Mother Jones
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_ In a video on Facebook, actor Alec Baldwin encouraged Hollywood
workers to fight bad labor conditions. A commenter quickly accused his
own production. _

Security stands at the entrance to a film set in New Mexico where
Alec Baldwin fired a prop gun on Thursday, killing cinematographer
Halyna Hutchins., Cedar Attanasio/AP

 

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[[link removed]].

The camera crew had walked off
[[link removed]] the
set earlier that day in protest of working conditions. Producers
threatened to call security on them before bringing in non-union
replacements. The prop gun had already misfired multiple times. These
are just some of the details emerging about the events that led up to
Alec Baldwin fatally shooting
[[link removed]] cinematographer
Halyna Hutchins on Thursday, according to a new _Los Angeles
Times _report
[[link removed]].

The shooting is first and foremost a tragedy. Hutchins, who was 42,
leaves behind a husband and a 9-year-old son. Director Joel Souza was
hospitalized.

But the incident also begs the question how these conditions
[[link removed]] are
able to persist on sets. The events that prompted workers to walk off
the set in New Mexico appear to have been detailed in a series of
Facebook replies written before the shooting. A person who identified
themselves as a member of the camera crew on _Rust_, the movie
Baldwin was co-producing and starring in, wrote a series of posts
about how the crew was being treated like “Absolute dog shit.”

In the comments, a person who identified themselves as a member of the
camera crew on “Rust” said the crew was being treated like
“Absolute dog shit.”

The posts were written in response to a video
[[link removed]] of
Baldwin expressing his solidarity with Hollywood’s blue-collar
workforce, which is now deciding whether to ratify a labor agreement
reached on Saturday between producers and the leaders of their union,
the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees. “I want
to say to the people in IATSE, do what you need to do,”
Baldwin said
[[link removed]] about
the upcoming vote. “You don’t like that contract? You think the
contract could be better? You want to go on strike? Go on strike.”

Under the video, the crew member, whose Facebook page identifies them
as a member of IATSE Local 600, highlights conditions similar to the
ones described in the _Times_: 

At the moment I’m fighting to get my crew, on this movie, hotel
rooms when we go long or are too tired to drive the hour back from
location to albuquerque. They either say no or offer a garbage
roadside motel that’s used as a homeless shelter. In fact the line
producer on the flick complained the motel she booked charges her 10
bucks more per night than the homeless. They haven’t even paid the
crew a proper check.

“We left,” the crew member wrote in another reply posted before
the shooting on Thursday. “I’m sure y’all will hear about it
today.” The _Times _article names three anonymous sources that say
six hours after the crew walked off Baldwin fired the shot that killed
Hutchins. 

The event is a reminder of how little we usually hear about the
conditions that recently led IATSE’s members to authorize a strike
[[link removed]] for
the first time in the union’s 128-year history. The results of the
vote were overwhelming, with nearly 90 percent of members casting
ballots and 98 percent of those members voting to authorize a strike.
Even before Thursday, reaction to the deal it led to had been mixed
[[link removed]].
Many objected to the fact that it would still allow for workdays as
long as 14 hours, not including time spent commuting. Although it may
still end up being ratified, news of the shooting is likely to lead
more people to oppose the agreement. 

On Sunday, I spoke with
[[link removed]] Fae
Weichsel, a member of IATSE Local 600 who works as a first assistant
camera, about the deal that had been reached the night before.
Weichsel, whom I’d got in contact with through IATSE’s press shop,
said they were leaning toward voting yes. On Friday, after seeing
what had happened in New Mexico, they told me they were leaning toward
no.

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