Pixel Scroll 10/23/21 The White Witch Has Made It Always Pixelter But Never Scrollmas

(1) S.L. HUANG ON MOVIE GUN SAFETY. [Item by rcade.] S.L. Huang, who won a 2020 Hugo Award for the short story “As the Last I May Know,” has worked in movies as a stuntwoman, gun trainer and gun safety expert (a job with the title of “film armorer”).

She has posted a Twitter thread on the shooting accident that killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins this week. Thread starts here. Here are a few excerpts:

(2) UNRAVELED RAPIDLY. [Item by Danny Sichel.] Earlier this week, a group of six popular YA writers announced that they were co-launching a shared world project which would be called “Realm of Ruin”, and which would involve NFTs and reader submissions and quite a lot of details which hadn’t been properly thought out.

By Friday, the project had been canceled.

@BadWritingTakes tracked the details in a thread that begins here.

(3) RUH-ROH! New episodes of Scooby-Doo and Guess Who? started streaming on HBOMax October 1, and they’ve really upgraded the roster of guest stars — Cher, Sean Astin, Jessica Biel, Terry Bradshaw, Lucy Liu, Jason Sudeikis, and Run DMC.

(4) SID KROFFT, INSTAGRAM STAR? “How Sid Krofft, at 92, became an Instagram Live star and why celebs ask to be on his show” at Yahoo! Either he’s worked with them, or they loved his work when they were kids. He did his 75th show October 3.

…[Sid] Krofft is best known through his collaborations with his brother Marty on TV shows like “Land of the Lost,” “Sigmund and the Sea Monsters,” “The Banana Splits Adventure Hour,” “The Brady Bunch Variety Hour” and “H.R. Pufnstuf,” whose 17 episodes from 1969 were a syndication staple through the 1970s and again in the ’90s…. 

Killian says he was 90 at the time, and though they bicker like an old married couple, he reluctantly tried it out. What he found was that his penchant for storytelling helped him connect online like he had with audiences through his puppetry or through TV, and that many people remembered and revered him not only for his work but how it influenced them.

“You just don’t know, after all these years, that the fans still hang out and they know all the songs and everything that you’ve done,” says Krofft.

Those fans include many who are now stars in their own right. Just the other day, according to Krofft, Seth Rogen came to visit him. Why? Because he admired his work.

He says he didn’t know most of the stars he’s interacted with. “They searched me out! A few days ago, Anderson Cooper contacted me. I don’t know Anderson. And Katie Couric. People are reaching out to me that I never knew. I wanted to, but I never met them. Half of the people that I have had on, they reached out to me. I’m floored over that.”…

(5) TRIBUTE TO SF ARTIST POWERS. Scott Robinson’s Higher Powers: a Richard M. Powers Centennial Concert will be staged Saturday, October 30 in Brooklyn, NY.

It is no exaggeration to state that surrealist painter Richard M. Powers (1921-1996) was one of the most startlingly imaginative and prolific artists of the twentieth century. The otherworldly landscapes, perplexing quasi-machines, and extra-dimensional biomorphic forms he produced for countless science fiction book covers of the 1950s and 60s were a powerful early inspiration for composer/multi-instrumentalist Scott Robinson, who brings his “aRT” trio with Pheeroan akLaff and Julian Thayer to Roulette for this centennial multimedia concert event.

The evening will begin with a pre-concert discussion with the artist’s son, writer Richard Gid Powers, and longtime broadcaster David Garland. Robinson’s short award-winning video, “Powers100,” will also be shown. Following an intermission, the aRT trio will then take the stage for the World Premiere of Higher Powers, an improvisational multimedia piece in which live video feed of the performers will be interactively intermixed in real time with Powers imagery chosen from among his vast output…some of it unpublished, never before seen by the public. The use of monitors for the performers, along with computer technology to blend and meld images on the large screen above, is a method that aRT developed in collaboration with sculptor Rob Fisher in 1991 which allows for full, 360° interactivity. The performers literally enter the work, and become it… and vice versa. Extremely rare instruments from Robinson’s arsenal will be seen and heard, including a sub-contrabass sarrusophone, a Model 201 theremin which was Robert Moog’s very first creation (one of only 20 he made), and one of the world’s largest saxophones. Rare footage of the artist at work will also be shown, and there will be a reception following the performance.

(6) TROPE REJECTED. Slate’s Tyler Austin Harper  says Invasion gets one thing right — “Apple TV+’s Invasion, Tomorrow War, Watchmen: Stop with the fantasy that aliens will fix racism”.

…Yet, despite signaling aspirations to tackle big-picture issues from a global perspective, Invasion’s diversity is largely ornamental, a toothless, paint-by-number multiculturalism of the sort you see on college brochures. It’s as though the show’s creators assumed that simply writing in an immigrant or a person with a disability would magically create compelling television in and of itself—no need for intrigue or conflict or any of the flesh-and-blood details that make an audience care about whether or not a character gets sent off to the alien glue factory.

Yet, for all that, Invasion remains an interesting cultural document because it is doing something different from the great bulk of science fiction out there about what happens when creatures from another galaxy show up on our doorsteps. Namely, it presents a world in which the arrival of space invaders does not magically fix race or class divides by uniting the human race against a common enemy, a trope that has now been a staple of science fiction for more than a century….

(7) PAIZO UNION RECOGNIZED BY MANAGEMENT. Bleeding Cool says the recently-announced union has had a breakthrough: “Paizo Announces Recognition Of United Paizo Workers” reports Bleeding Cool.

Last night, Paizo formally announced that they have officially recognized a union of their own staff which has been named the United Paizo Workers. The company issued the statement and quote from their president below, which revealed they had voluntarily recognized the United Paizo Workers union, which is affiliated with the Communications Workers of America (CWA). This is a pretty major step for the company considering their staff announced they were unionizing just a week ago.

Jeff Alvarez, President of Paizo [said:]

“The next steps will involve the United Paizo Workers (UPW) union electing their bargaining representatives and then meeting with Paizo management to negotiate terms for a collective bargaining agreement. We expect this process to take some time, but we are committed to the effort and hope to settle a contract in due course. Until an agreement is reached, the Paizo staff continues to focus on creating amazing Pathfinder and Starfinder products.” 

(8) SAND DOLLARS. Dune set a studio opening day record reports Deadline.

Dune posted the best opening day for a Warner Bros. theatrical/HBO Max day and date title with $17.5M. While Warners is calling the weekend currently at $33M, rivals believes it’s higher, in the high $30Ms range, which would also indicate a record weekend for a Warner/HBO Max title and filmmaker Denis Villeneuve as well.

The industry estimate for Saturday’s drop is around -30%. Hopefully, the HBO Max of it all doesn’t drag the movie further down, as US folks with HBO subscriptions discover they can watch Dune at home for free. Between Thursday and Friday, there was a significant amount of moviegoers who decided to see Dune at the last minute, with 67% of the crowd either buying their tickets the day of, or the day before.

Dune‘s Friday is bigger than that of Villeneuve’s previous sci-fi reboot, Blade Runner 2049, which saw a Friday of $12.6M, and also that of Legendary and Warner Bros. previous reteaming, Godzilla vs. Kong, which saw a Friday of $11.8M, that being the first of the studio’s tentpoles on HBO Max at Easter….

(9) WINDYCON DEAL. Chicago’s annual Windycon is on the brink, financially, and is offering incentives to make its room block:

Windycon is giving away convention memberships with hotel room bookings, if you book a room for two nights by October 25.

Want to see Carlos Hernandez or Seanan McGuire in person? Come to suburban Chicago November 12-14! Help save a venerable fan-run SF convention that, I promise, is taking Covid precautions VERY seriously!

Per the press release:

We all know the last few years have been rough. We had to go virtual with Breezycon last year, and this year we are struggling to provide a safe environment for us to gather. In order to help keep Windycon going, we need to make our room block. We’ve extended our room block deadline to Monday, October 25 but we are still low.

Because of this shortfall we are offering free registration for the hotel reservations that meet these qualifications

If you don’t have a room yet and book 2 nights, or more, you will receive a free registration for Windycon 2022. Book 4 or more and get 2 free registrations for Windycon 2022

If you already have a reservation but extend it for a 3rd night, or more, you will receive a free registration for Windycon 2022. Extend it for 4 and get 2 free registrations for Windycon 2022

If you have booked your room and it’s for 2 nights we will put your name in a drawing for 10 registrations. Plus, as a reward for already booking early, you will qualify for a $10 reduction of your Windycon registration fee next year.

(10) ANOTHER CALL FOR ASSISTANCE. “StarShipSofa Is In Desperate Need of Funds” says Tony C. Smith. Obviously, it has evolved to have a very different model than when it won the Best Fanzine Hugo in 2010.

There’s no getting away from it… StarShipSofa needs a little help in funding. We have been going 16 years now (wow) and I have had this silent goal to take SSS to 20 years, say goodbye one last time then bow out and walk away… or better still – drift into the deep universe and beyond.

Truth is… we won’t get there if our funding keeps reclining. We have lost nearly 200 Patreon supporters since we started and now are stuck financially, scraping together enough funds each month to put out only two shows.

This is such a shame.

Please support via Patreon. Monthly donations are the perfect cure to help me achieve my goal. Let me get to 20 years of StarShipSofa – after that who knows.

(11) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.

1959 – “Picture of a woman looking at a picture. Movie great of another time, once-brilliant star in a firmament no longer a part of the sky, eclipsed by the movement of earth and time. Barbara Jean Trenton, whose world is a projection room, whose dreams are made out of celluloid. Barbara Jean Trenton, struck down by hit-and-run years and lying on the unhappy pavement, trying desperately to get the license number of fleeting fame.”

Sixty two years ago, Twilight Zone’s “The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine” first aired on CBS. It starred Ida Lupino who was the only individual to have worked as both actress and though she was uncredited at the time as a director in the same episode of The Twilight Zone.  She will be credited with directing of “The Masks” which she appeared in. She was thereby the only woman to direct an episode of The Twilight Zone

(12) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born October 23, 1880 Una O’Connor. Actress who appeared in the 1930s The Invisible Man as Jenny Hall. She had a bit part in Bride of Frankenstein, and a supporting role in the genre-adjacent The Adventures of Robin Hood. Though not even genre adjacent, she was Mrs. Peters in the film adaptation of Graham Greene’s Stamboul. Great novel, I’ll need to see if I can find this film.She’s in The Canterville Ghost, and shows up twice in TV’s Tales of Tomorrow anthology series. And that’s it. (Died 1959.)
  • Born October 23, 1935 Bruce Mars, 86. He was on Trek three times, one uncredited, with his best remembered being in the most excellent Shore Leave episode as Finnegan, the man Kirk fights with. He also had one-offs in The Time Tunnel, Voyage to the Bottom of The Sea, and Mission: Impossible.  He is now Brother Paramananda with the Self-Realization Fellowship in Los Angeles which he joined shortly after ending his acting career in 1969. 
  • Born October 23, 1953 Ira Steven Behr, 68. Best remembered for his work on the Trek franchise, particularly Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, on which he served as showrunner and executive producer. As writer and or producer, he has been in involved in Beyond RealityDark AngelThe Twilight ZoneThe 4400Alphas, and Outlander
  • Born October 23, 1955 Graeme Reavlle, 66. New Zealand composer responsible for such genre soundtracks as  The CrowFrom Dusk Till DawnThe Saint (the 1997 version), Titan A.E.Lara Croft: Tomb RaiderDaredevil and Sin City.
  • Born October 23, 1959 Sam Raimi, 62. Responsible for, and this is not a complete listing, the Darkman franchise , M.A.N.T.I.S., the Jack of All Trades series that Kage loved, the Cleopatra 2525 series, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess series and the Spider-Man trilogy. 
  • Born October 23, 1969 Trudy Canavan, 52. Australian writer who’s won two Ditmars for her Thief’s Magic and A Room for Improvement novels and two Aurealis Awards as well, one for her “Whispers of the Mist Children” short story, and one for The Magician’s Apprentice novel.  It’s worth noting that she’s picked up two Ditmar nominations for her artwork as well. 
  • Born October 23, 1986 Emilia Clarke, 35. She’ll be most remembered as Daenerys Targaryen on the Game of Thrones. Her genre film roles include Sarah Connor in Terminator Genisys and Kira in Solo: A Star Wars Story. She was also Verena in Voice from the Stone, a horror film. Not to mention Savannah Roundtree in Triassic Attack, a network film clearly ripping off Jurrasic Park.
  • Born October 23, 2007 Lilly Aspell, 14. She’s a Scottish-born performer best known so far for portraying the young Diana in Wonder Woman and its sequel. She voiced the role on DC Super Hero Girls. She was Newschild in Holmes & Watson, and Megan in the alien invasion flick Extinction

(13) COMICS SECTION.

(14) FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD HELL. Randee Dawn continues the “Halloween Haunts” series at the Horror Writers Association Blog with “Suburbia is Hell” – just as Pohl and Kornbluth foretold.

Suburbs are hell.

This said by someone who grew up on cul-de-sacs, down streets named after Ivy League universities, on parcels of farmland carved up into intentionally bland, vaguely descriptive development names, on land that was almost certainly stolen from the original inhabitants, then re-distributed and tamed. Or attempted to be tamed….

(15) MAKING MAGIC. The CBS Saturday Morning show a few weeks ago featured “Zach King on how his magic tricks reach millions”. Watch the video at the link.

At 31 years old Zach King has already amassed an extensive catalog of accomplishments and compiled a massive catalog of accomplishments. His magic trick videos have reached millions and millions on several different social media platforms. King opens up to Dana Jacobson about how the fun isn’t just making the magic, it can also be found when revealing the illusion.

(16) COUNTING THE DAYS. There’s more than one reason not to let this collectible come in contact with water. “Gremlins Countdown Calendar review” at OAFE.

One of the oddest trends in 2020 was the rise of the geeky advent calendar. You may recall we reviewed the one from Boss Fight Studio, but it was far from the only one available – many were even in normal stores, like Walmart or Target. They began showing up on shelves in late October, which in at least one case was a problem.

This set is based on a horror movie. And it’s got 31 days, not 24 – so obviously this was not meant to be a Christmas calendar, but a Halloween calendar. Not much use on October 20th. But hey, there’s nothing saying it’s only good for a specific year, right? So buy one on post-holiday clearance, and store it away for next October!

(17) ZOOM WITH GRADY HENDRIX ABOUT HAUNTING. Northern Illinois University’s “Future Telling” webinar series features “The Haunted Mind,” a free virtual presentation with Grady Hendrix, author (Horrorstör, My Best Friend’s Exorcism) and Konrad Stump, Local History Associate, Springfield-Green County Library, on Wednesday, October 27, at 6:00 p.m. Central. Register here.

Why do some people believe they have experienced a haunting? Understand the science behind environmental and neurological conditions that shape people’s belief in ghosts or their tendency to experience delusions. Join host Gillian King-Cargile as she talks with author Grady Hendrix (The Final Girl Support Group, The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires, Horrorstör), librarian Konrad Stump, a local history expert and co-chair of Horror Writers Association Library Committee, and other experts in psychology and neurology. Don’t miss this spirited discussion on spooky science.

The goal of the “Future Telling” webinar series is to “introduce writers to bleeding-edge concepts, to invigorate STEM experts with mind-bending views of the future, and to celebrate the connections between STEM and storytelling.”

(18) CINEMATIC INSPIRATION. [Item by Ben Bird Person.] Artist Bugboss did this piece based on the 1973 movie Fantastic Planet

(19) NETFLIX ALL-TIME MOST-WATCHED SHOWS. [Item by David Doering.] More evidence we won the Culture War: Netflix announced last week their All-Time most watched shows. Their #2 and #3 shows globally were SF/F. “’Bridgerton’ tops Netflix’s list of most watched TV shows ever, while ‘Extraction’ leads among movies”.

“Bridgerton,” a period piece about 19th century British royalty produced by Shonda Rhimes, premiered in December. French series “Lupin: Part 1? and season one of “The Witcher,” a fantasy series starring Henry Cavill, tied for second on the list, with 76 million accounts.

Naturally, as an anime fan I consider “Lupin” part of our genre. Some could even argue that Bridgerton has an element of “fantasy” to it as well.

(20) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In “Honest Game Trailers:  Diablo II Resurrected,” Fandom Games says this game is a barely revised version of Diablo, but Blizzard Games didn’t want to face “the righteous anger of one billion nerds” by offering something gamers wouldn’t already be used to.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Andrew Porter, Michael Toman, rcade, Cassy B., Rob Thornton, Rich Lynch, Chris Barkley, Nancy Sauer, Ben Bird Person, David Doering, Danny Sichel, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, and JJ for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]

40 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 10/23/21 The White Witch Has Made It Always Pixelter But Never Scrollmas

  1. Saw Dune a la Villenueve today and here’s a few spoilerfree notes:

    —Noticed that Kevin J. Anderson was on the credits as “Special Consultant” or something like that.
    —This movie sticks very close to the book and is generally rewarded. The director expertly tucks exposition away in appropriate places that inform without getting in the way.
    —Unfortunately just getting the essentials of the story in position requires all of the directors effort, which means that a lot of the density in the novel is either thinned out or lost. This did not stop me from enjoying the movie immensely and it won’t stop me from recommending it, I just know that some fans are going to be a little displeased.

  2. @ Soon Lee

    The day that Dune The Novel has voice-driven weaponry is the day I acknowledge the supremacy of the Lynch version.

  3. @Rob Thornton,

    To clarify, any adaptation of “Dune” that is better than the Lynch version is a good version IMO. (That’s how high/low my bar is set.)

  4. The best version of Dune to date is the BBC full cast audio recording. Yes, it’s theatre of the mind “only”, but it’s absolutely stunning in how magnificent it is.

  5. @Rob Thornton,

    No problem. Over time, I have developed a soft spot for the Lynch version. The sets are spectacular & it has an amazing cast. It helps me to think of it as an operatic adaptation of Dune.

  6. 19) I believe Squid Game has now overtaken Bridgerton for the number one spot. Bridgerton is definitely romance, which continues to be a very successful but not respected genre.

  7. Soon Lee says No problem. Over time, I have developed a soft spot for the Lynch version. The sets are spectacular & it has an amazing cast. It helps me to think of it as an operatic adaptation of Dune.

    The cast is spectacular, the sets are amazing, the script sucks. And of course fitting that novel into two two hours and change wasn’t going to happen which is why I’m very happy this Dune undertaking is being split into two films.

  8. BravoLimaPoppa says Cat, thank you for pointing me to the BBC version. This is a blast!

    You’re welcome. BBC has done some spectacular audio fiction including of Neverwhere and a Torchwood story that I’ve very fond of, Golden Age, set in the height of British Imperial India (sort of).

  9. Paul Weimer asks is that the version on audible (of the Dune audiobook) or is it available elsewhere?

    Yeah, it’s on Audible. If you search there, it’s the version narrated by Scott Brick et al. I’ve no idea where else it’s available as I have only used Audible for the last twenty years though I’d assume it is available on other services.

  10. I’ve managed to find it in CD (sorry for something like this I want to own a physical copy) under ISBN 9781427201430.
    I think I may need to give my local bookstore an order at the start of the month.

  11. “Gun safety”. My SO and I were talking about that this morning, and during the day, I read that he was handed the gun and told it was safe. There was one bullet in there.

    In out opinion, this was deliberate, and not on the actor’s part. Someone intended to disrupt the filming at the least, and make the actor an involuntary murderer.

  12. mark: Self-evidently he had to be pointing it at these two crew members who were hit when he pulled the trigger, and it hasn’t been explained yet in what context he was pulling the trigger at all.

  13. There had already been 3 “accidental” gun discharges on the set, I believe 2 of them were on the previous day. The armorer was an inexperienced 24-year-old. Earlier on the day of the death, the camera crew had walked off the set after repeated protests about safety issues were ignored. The production brought in non-union camera crew in order to keep filming.

    The only people who had the ability to make this “deliberate” (the Director, the First AD, and the Armorer) are the same people who are all now facing manslaughter charges. I think this was a clear-cut case of trying to make a film as cheaply as possible, using inexperienced crew and cutting lots of corners (including safety protocols) in order to keep to a schedule that was too aggressive in order to get filming finished as quickly as possible.

  14. I sincerely doubt it was deliberate. If you’ve ever seen a shot where a character loads a gun, then you’ve seen an actor loading dummies (no explosive, no projectile) into a gun. If in the scene the character cocks it (which is very likely) then the dummy is chambered. It can’t be fired because there’s no explosive. However, if for the next scene the gun needs to be fired, then a blank (explosive, no projectile) is loaded. If the dummy hadn’t been cleared then when the blank is fired the dummy will be shot out of the barrel.

    When a set is cutting corners to save time or money, this is the type of accident that can happen. There are union safety protocols that are designed to prevent this and it’s quite clear that several of the safety protocols were not followed on that show.
    The actor shouldn’t have had a fireable gun for rehearsing, blocking or lighting a shot (which is what seems to have been happening). When a shot calls for a gun to be fired and the cameras are literally ready to roll film, the weapons expert (often a weapons licensed prop master) demonstrates that the chamber is clear and test fires into the ground to show there’s no dummy loaded. Only then does the weapons expert load the intended blank ( blanks can come with various levels of explosive), plus there should be a safety shield in front of the camera and only the operator would be behind the shield. All other crew would be cleared from the line of fire.

    Reports are that the 1st AD handed the gun to Baldwin thinking it was unloaded and told him it was unloaded. But that shouldn’t have happened. Only the weapons expert should hand a gun (fireable, loaded, unloaded, doesn’t matter) to an actor. As sympathetic as I am, while the New Mexico crew may not have had the experience, Baldwin has had enough experience in filmmaking to know that wasn’t the correct procedure. He should have called for the weapons expert to demonstrate the gun was cold and he didn’t. That, and the prior misfires with blanks that have been reported on the set, indicate there are a lot of people who contributed to the unsafe set and this tragedy.

    Unfortunately, because no one high up in the food chain is ever personally held to account (expect perhaps in a civil litigation) these tragedies keep happening. After more than 25 years in filmmaking, I’m just so angry that mistakes due to cutting corners keep taking lives when there are safety protocols that could have prevented it.

  15. Thanks for the link to Huang’s Twitter. It’s always good to have someone with real knowledge comment.

    She doesn’t address the general safety briefing (with respect to firearms) that actors/crew would be given, and I don’t know how it would work on this or othere movie sets, but within firearms instruction in general, Jeff Cooper’s Four Rules are ubiquitous. (LTC Cooper was a Marine who became a prominent firearms writer and instructor after he left the military.) They are four rules to promote gun safety and to reduce accidental discharge (I insist that my son, and anyone else I shoot with, know them). They overlap and reinforce each other, and in every firearms accident I’ve ever known or read about, one or more of them was not followed.
    1. Always assume a gun is loaded.
    2. Don’t let the gun point at anything that you aren’t willing to destroy.
    3. Don’t put your finger on the trigger until you are ready to shoot.
    4. Know what your target is, and what is behind it.

    Even if Baldwin was not specifically instructed about safety on this set, it is difficult to imagine that, given how many movies he’s been on that used guns, he’s never had to engage the Four Rules. If any of the details that have been leaking out turn out to be true, then he violated one or more of the rules. (For example, it is not enough to rely on a crew member’s statement that a gun is unloaded; the armorer, as Huang describes, must show you that it is [see Rule 1]).
    Here is an attorney (and NRA-certified firearms instructor) writing (with some speculation) about how much criminal or civil liability Baldwin may bear from the incident — was it simply a horrible accident, or was Baldwin reckless or negligent, which may open him to charges of involuntary manslaughter?

    All this is to say that it was not simply a breakdown of procedure by the production crew — anyone handling a gun has personal responsibility for doing things safely.

  16. bill on October 23, 2021 at 10:35 pm said:
    Here is an attorney (and NRA-certified firearms instructor) writing (with some speculation)

    I thought this line was interesting given the overall tenor of the website you linked to:

    “That guns are inherently dangerous is common knowledge presumed to be known to everyone. “

  17. “That guns are inherently dangerous is common knowledge presumed to be known to everyone.”

    I suspect that actors who are accustomed to working on films with competent First ADs, Unit Production Managers, Armorers, and safety protocols which are followed, get complacent and assume that things are properly taken-care-of.

    After all, Baldwin’s been in several movies where guns were involved, so he should know better. But he was probably too oblivious or too cost-conscious to recognize that all of the cost-cutting he was doing (crew members had been promised hotel rooms on-site in Santa Fe but instead had been forced to drive 50 minutes each way from Albuquerque every day, in addition to 12-13-hour working days) had affected the level of safety measures being followed.

    The Armorer being inexperienced (and apparently not properly trained) certainly contributed to the tragedy, but by all accounts the First AD (who is in charge of safety) was quite experienced and should have known – and done – better.

    I expect that this will result in productions adhering more closely to safety protocols for a few years, as they did after Brandon Lee’s death, and then a few years down the road, the memory will fade, and people will get complacent again. 😐

  18. Huang explained cinematographers are at particular risk because it is common to have the gun pointing at the camera.

    Technical solutions: Remote operated cameras. Motion capture and CGI instead of real weapons.

    Artistic solutions: Guns are cliché. Let’s have more dinosaurs instead.

  19. Tom Becker on October 24, 2021 at 1:15 am said:
    Artistic solutions: Guns are cliché. Let’s have more dinosaurs instead.

    “A well regulated Dinosaur Theme Park, being necessary to the entertainment of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear carnivorous theropods with tiny arms, shall not be infringed.”

  20. @ Tom Becker: If it’s too dangerous for a camera operator, we lock the camera down, the operator starts it and then clears the area. And CGI is used when the shot is too dangerous to do on set.

    The problem really isn’t finding safe ways to do things: it’s following the safe ways to do things that are already in place.

  21. Talking of full cast recordings on the BBC, here’s a few of the genre related ones that are available to listen to at the moment.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0001stk

    The Prisoner. As deeply weird and unfathomable as the TV series. What better recommendation could there be?

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000nm66

    Pilgrim – The Timbermoor Imp. The immortal Pilgrim’s latest adventure, striving as always to prevent the Fair Folk disrupting human lives.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/series/b009sm1v

    The Destruction Factor. I haven’t listened to this one myself yet, but James Follett’s Earth Search, back in the eighties, was my introduction to radio drama, so I’m happy to give it a go.

  22. Self-evidently he had to be pointing it at these two crew members who were hit when he pulled the trigger, and it hasn’t been explained yet in what context he was pulling the trigger at all.

    The LA Times offered this explanation:

    Cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was huddled around a monitor lining up her next camera shot when she was accidentally killed by the prop gun fired by Baldwin.

    The actor was preparing to film a scene in which he pulls a gun out of a holster, according to a source close to the production. Crew members had already shouted “cold gun” on the set. The filmmaking team was lining up its camera angles and had yet to retreat to the video village, an on-set area where the crew gathers to watch filming from a distance via a monitor.

    Instead, the B-camera operator was on a dolly with a monitor, checking out the potential shots. Hutchins was also looking at the monitor from over the operator’s shoulder, as was the movie’s director, Joel Souza, who was crouching just behind her.

    Baldwin removed the gun from its holster once without incident, but the second time he did so, ammunition flew toward the trio around the monitor. The projectile whizzed by the camera operator but penetrated Hutchins near her shoulder, then continued through to Souza.

    Here’s a story that says the crew had been using the gun for target practice earlier and that’s how a live round might have been left behind in it.

  23. Bill and rcade: Thanks for the links to LEGAL INSURRECTION and the LOS ANGELES TIMES. The TIMES’s account seems very plausible.

  24. Part of the problem with every safety process (for every kind of situation) is that the common premise of all safety process is “Humans are untrustworthy” but a premise of social interaction is “Treating people as untrustworthy is rude.” Checklists can be useful, because they can be a way to lessen the perceived rudeness of doublechecking things when lives are at stake.

  25. @Martin Wooster

    Thanks for the links to LEGAL INSURRECTION and the LOS ANGELES TIMES

    Other extensive coverage can be found at Daily Variety and Hollywood Reporter. (Searchfor “Halyna” at each site to easily capture all of the relevant articles. )

  26. I recently rewatched Lynch’s Dune, on a big screen, and I was unsurprised that I still liked the production design and the psychedelic sequences, but I was a little surprised at how much the rest of the filmmaking bothered me, more than it used to. I mean, beyond the clumsy script and studio-mandated abridgement, there are so many purely directorial choices that I just can’t stand— things that would make me say “this is a badly made movie, except for the production design” regardless of what the script was or whether it was supposed to have anything to do with a book I liked. I think probably I’ve just seen too many good movies, and far better David Lynch movies, since the last time I saw this. And also since I’ve had a little acting experience since then, it’s painful for me to watch a good cast struggle with the combination of that script and a director who seems almost totally uninterested in human behavior; Kenneth McMillan and Dean Stockwell were just about the only ones not being badly wasted. The hilariously excessive use of voiceover (including for things that aren’t even secret thoughts, just a person narrating a thing we can already clearly see) made me wonder if Lynch really didn’t realize that that doesn’t work on screen in remotely the same way it works on the page, or if he knew it was bizarre but wanted to lean into that as an experimental gesture. But if the original screenplay PDF that’s floating around online is legit, he originally wanted to do even more voiceover.

    I’m now seeing a lot of friends say stuff like “the new movie is boring and there are too many familiar movie stars in it, the 1984 movie was so much cooler and David Lynch is a better filmmaker” and…….. well it’s pointless to argue, and maybe I won’t like the new movie, but all I can say is David Lynch being a great filmmaker in other things doesn’t make me like that movie any better.

  27. I watched Lynch’s Dune when it was new, and my college roommate and I discussed it a lot afterwards, so mostly I remember the jokes that we made about it – some of which may reflect actual faults in the movie:

    About Irulan’s opening monologue, we added a bit of text in which she explains that even when her face disappears, it’s still her talking (because her face disappears and reappears during the narration)

    The Emperor at one point interrupts his own rant to define ‘genocide’ which seems awkward.

    “Tell us of your homeworld, Usul” is delivered in such a way that it’s very hard to believe someone could think that Usul was the name of a planet, and not that they were being addressed as Usul.

    And my favorite – when Stilgar notes that someone is “worth 10 times their weight in water” the actor hesitates before “water” in such a way that it really seems as if the actor was seeing that line for the first time, and couldn’t quite believe that the word was really supposed to be “water”

  28. So, a scroll I missed! Cider sniffed it out for me; that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. We will avert our eyes from the fact that she, um, distracted me from it on in the first place.

    I think that Baldwin may be at more legal risk as the producer (more focus on cost-cutting rather than safety) than as the actor who happened to be the one holding the gun when that lack of focus on safety went bad.

  29. There are five other producers attached to the film. I expect Baldwin is a producer only in the ‘its in the credits’ sense, not in the actual doing a producer’s job sense.

  30. @rochrist–

    There are five other producers attached to the film. I expect Baldwin is a producer only in the ‘its in the credits’ sense, not in the actual doing a producer’s job sense.

    Ah! Yes, that seems quite likely.

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