U.S. Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) issued a showstopper of a response to coastal elitists' characterization of nonconforming American voters as ignorant. In addition to suggesting that Hollywood script-readers like Alec Baldwin and Sharon Stone are "just goofy," Kennedy intimated that President-elect Donald Trump's landslide victory was partly a response to their brand of denigratory rhetoric.
Prominent Democrats have a track record of belittling and dehumanizing Americans who come between them and power.
President Joe Biden called Trump supporters "garbage." Failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton called Trump supporters "deplorables" and characterized them further as "irredeemable." Former President Barack Obama complained that working-class voters in Pennsylvania who wouldn't vote for him were "bitter" and that "they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them."
This malicious reflex is not unique to leftist politicians. Every two years, wealthy Hollywood script-readers and the media personalities who support them similarly come out of the woodwork to tell the rest of the country how to vote. When that doesn't work, coastal elitists frequently condemn those who stepped out of line.
After the cast of Marvel's "Avengers" and other celebrities failed to convince the majority of Americans not to make the 45th president their 47th president, the condemnations came rolling in from the likes of Alec Baldwin — once again facing the possibility of a manslaughter charge in the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins — and Sharon Stone.
Both script-readers decided to denigrate their fellow Americans during panel discussions this week at the Torino Film Festival in Italy.
Blaze News previously reported that Stone blamed President-elect Donald Trump's landslide victory on American ignorance.
"You know, Italy has seen fascism. Italy has seen these things. You guys, you understand what happens. You have seen this before," said Stone, among the many celebrities who supported Harris' latest failed presidential bid. "My country is in its adolescence. Adolescence is very arrogant. Adolescence thinks it knows everything. Adolescence is naive and ignorant and arrogant. And we are in our ignorant, arrogant adolescence."
'They think they're smarter and more virtuous than the American people.'
Baldwin also concluded that Americans' re-election of the candidate who campaigned on peace, secure borders, healthy living, and the dismantling of the administrative state evidenced their ignorance. Unlike Stone, he suggested further that he and his peers offered the remedy.
"In my country, without going into significant detail, half the people in the country are very unhappy. It's a very difficult time in the United States," said Baldwin. "The only way people can learn what is happening — and film is unique in this way — not only what is happening in the United States but around the world, ... you might not learn from the news."
"Television news in the United States is a business. You have to make money," continued the actor, whose net worth is an estimated $70 million. "Not to go into great detail about that, but there's a hole, a vacuum — there is a gap, if you will, in information for Americans."
"Americans are very uninformed about reality, what's really going on with climate change, Ukraine, Israel, you name it — all the biggest topics in the world. Americans have an appetite for a little bit of information," continued Baldwin. "That vacuum is filled by the film industry. Not just the independent film industry, not just the documentary film industry, which are very important around the world, but by narrative films as well where the filmmakers and the buyers, the studios, and the networks and the streamers are willing to go that way."
When pressed about such remarks as well as the stated desire by a Democratic New York state senator to secede from the union following Trump's win, Sen. Kennedy told Fox News' Sean Hannity, "I think these people are goofy. They have the right to their opinion, but they're just goofy."
"They hate George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln and Dr. Seuss and Mr. Potato Head. They think our kids ought to be able to change genders at recess. They carry around Ziploc bags of kale to give themselves energy," said Kennedy. "To me, to each his own. To me, kale tastes like I'd rather be fat."
After teasing leftists, Kennedy got serious: "Now, these people are entitled to their opinion, but they have an unwarranted sense of moral and intellectual superiority. They think they're smarter and more virtuous than the American people. And they think we're not real people, but we were, and we are real people, and in this last election, we got real mad."
Referencing the Americans who gave Trump over 2 million more popular votes than his opponent and an 86-vote advantage in the Electoral College, Kennedy added, "We sent a message, clearly, unequivocally. And my message to all my friends and my enemies in America is: Happy Thanksgiving, and stay deplorable, my friend."
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“It wasn’t in the script for the trigger to be pulled,” said George Stephanopoulus.
"Well, the trigger wasn't pulled," replied Alec Baldwin. “I didn't pull the trigger.”
“So you never pulled the trigger?” asked Stephanopoulus.
“Oh no, no, no,” Baldwin insisted. “I would never point a gun at anyone and pull the trigger at them — never.”
The character Colton Briggs weeps through the body of Nicolas Cage. His brokenness is palpable, as he and his daughter confront the realities of death.
It was a fabrication so bold that even Stephanopoulus saw through it. The interview was huge news at the time: an exclusive with Baldwin a month and a half after the shooting on the set of the Western “Rust.”
Baldwin had been mostly silent. Or at least he didn’t give any interviews. We’d become acquainted with the photos of him sobbing on the set after the tragic accident.
We’ll get into the entire story in a future entry. For now, what matters is that a 24-year-old named Hannah Gutierrez was the armorer for “Rust.” That meant she was responsible for all of the guns on the set, including the replica Colt .45 that Baldwin haphazardly fired, killing cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.
Hannah Gutierrez had been fast-tracked to the position, thanks to her highly connected stepdad. “Rust” was only her second movie as an armorer. Her first was the Nicolas Cage film “The Old Way."
She had raised red flags during filming. On two occasions, she fired a gun near cast members without warning. The second time, Cage shouted, “Make an announcement! You just blew my f***ing eardrums out!” then stormed off the set.
Shortly after the film wrapped, Gutierrez appeared on the “Voices of the West” podcast, crowing that “The Old Way” was a “really badass way” to launch her Hollywood career. She also described the process of loading ammo as “the scariest thing.”
The fatal shooting on the set of "Rust" was a little more than a month away.
She added: “You know, I was really nervous about it at first, and I almost didn’t take the job because I wasn’t sure if I was ready, but, doing it, like, it went really smoothly. The best part about my job is just showing people who are normally kind of freaked out by guns how safe they can be and how they’re not really problematic unless put in the wrong hands.”
Cage begins “The Old Way,” his first Western, with a whopper of mustache.
Oddly, the film is exactly what you would expect from a low-budget Western from 2023 starring Nicolas Cage. To make it all the weirder, you can find it on Disney+.
Right out of the gate, we’ve got a man struggling to escape a noose as a preacher delivers a sermon, declaring, “Do you believe that anything happens without the will of God?”
Ominous figures loom in the shadows.
Cage plays Colton Briggs, a gunfighter who has to avenge his wife, and he’ll have to team up with his 12-year-old daughter to do it. This journey will bring them to — ah, what am I saying, none of this is interesting or new.
This movie is trash. I mean, it’s great to have on in the background. It’s relaxing. But it’s basically a hodgepodge of Western archetypes and tropes.
The centerpiece of the film is the father-daughter relationship. But Cage has played better fathers. Check out his performance in the suprisingly good animated film "The Croods" and its sequel.
The critical response to “The Old Way” seems apathetic and cold until you watch the movie.
The New York Times review is probably the most savage:
"The Old Way" is a cheap, run-of-the-mill western, which is an appealing quality … with Nicolas Cage sleepwalking through his role as the ruthless Montana cowboy Colton Briggs, roused from gunslinging retirement by a lackluster quest for revenge. … It’s a distinctly low-effort affair across the board, from the simplistic plotting (our heroes chase the bad guys, then find them) to Cage’s performance, absent any of the self-aware wit he demonstrated in last year's "The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent." And while it’s true that a certain tepid aspect is common to most B westerns, those of the ’30s and ’40s were made with a baseline competence that "The Old Way" is woefully lacking.
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First, come on, guys, this is Nicolas Cage.
Second, the reviewers are absolutely right.
And, third, they’re also being lazy. “The Old Way” isn’t entirely awful. The cinematography is gorgeous; the sets are huge and elaborate.
But “The Old Way” wouldn’t appear in this series without Cage at its core. It’s a mediocre film, full of stereotypes and tropes that were maybe never original to begin with. It lacks the creative brilliance, the psychedelic flourishes that cascade throughout “Slow West” (2015), not to mention the special effects and storytelling.
The music resembles an AI attempt at a generic Western soundtrack. The plot is equally stilted and uneventful. The dialogue is paunchy and awkward — Cage flatly rushes his lines for much of the movie, while some of the other actors get too dramatic. Which is not their fault: The characters are uninspired. The themes are broad.
But with Nicolas Cage holding the reins , these failures are trifling or at least amusing.
People are drawn to Nic Cage because he delivers a costumed, ornamental version of Nic Cage. Nobody else talks or scowls or laughs like he does, the king of reaction shots. His career has all the variety of a mid-range buffet, a magnet for hangovers.
He has delivered some objectively stellar performances — “Adaptation” (2002), “Leaving Las Vegas” (1995), and “Raising Arizona” (1987).
But his cinematic mastery involves far more than great acting in the traditional sense. His prolific career, consisting of more than 100 movies, resembles a waterfall of brilliance and spam.
He played Benjamin Franklin Gates in the “National Treasure” series. He is Ghost Rider. Can you imagine any other actor being able to shape-shift so dramatically?
He doesn’t always make this transformation. Sometimes, in “The Old Way” for instance, he seems to phone it in. But even this is a spectacle worth beholding. You still get to watch Nicolas Cage navigate his craft, even if the movie is a stinker.
New York Times magazine described him as “Hollywood’s greatest surrealist, whose personal and creative unpredictability has led him to attain near-mythological status in certain corners of the internet.”
He’s so iconic that he has his own style of acting: nouveau shamanic, a process of surrender that Cage views as an authentic alternative to the traditional method of acting, which he views as deception: “I don’t act. I feel and I imagine and I channel.”
The goal of nouveau shamanic is to follow impulses. This wildness of heart and eagerness to explore the depths of the subconscious mind resonate with iconic director David Lynch, who characterized Cage as "the jazz musician of American acting."
Ethan Hawke has lauded Cage’s ingenuity, describing him as "the only actor since Marlon Brando that's actually done anything new with the art of acting."
Nouveau shamanic often results in “mega-acting,” an approach that some viewers and critics have interpreted as showy overacting. This assumption is a mistake. It forswears the possibility of a kind of cinematic enlightenment.
You can see it in Werner Herzog’s “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans” (2009). Cage let his inner turmoil spill into the derangement of an unhinged police lieutenant who spirals into drug abuse and corruption — of every kind.
In “Matchstick Men” (2003), he unleashed the painstaking impulses of a con artist stricken with OCD. Cage really lets the pathologies breathe.
Nic Cage is pure Hollywood. He credits James Dean with inspiring him to begin an acting career — without needing to mention the fact that his actual last name is Coppola, as in “The Godfather,” “Apocalypse Now,” and “American Graffiti.”
Cage has appeared in big-budget movies and no-budget movies and every level in between.
Here’s a typical Cage paradigm: He shuffles through highbrow and lowbrow, sometimes all at once. After winning an Oscar for his portrayal of a suicidal alcoholic writer in “Leaving Las Vegas” (1995), he landed a string of empty yet lovable blockbusters.
They were all approximations of cinema. Pure blockbuster. Full of overacting done in total earnestness. We loved every moment of it. This string of films is now coded into the American experience.
He played gaudy characters, excessively makeupped and badly costumed. And he owned the big screen in the late 1990s — “The Rock” (1996), “Face/Off” (1997), “Con Air” (1997), “City of Angels” (1998), “Snake Eyes” (1998), “8MM” (1999), and who could forget his frantic yet cool appearance in “Gone in 60 Seconds” (2000)?
None of those films saw the slightest hint of critical acclaim.
It’s not until recently that his performances have earned him praise again. He has been sharp, with “Mandy” (2018), “Pig” (2021), and “Dream Scenario” (2023), all of which are lower-budget endeavors by independent production companies with lots of clout, including highbrow darling A24, which distributed “Dream Scenario."
In the “Western Movies Today” episode of the “How the West Was Cast” podcast, co-host Andrew Patrick Nelson points out that modern Westerns are made largely as passion projects and often with the intent of winning awards.
Compare this to the Western at its height, when over a hundred Westerns came out each year. In that same period, none of them won Best Picture. Westerns only really started winning Oscars after the genre had supposedly collapsed.
“The Old Way” doesn’t quite fit either paradigm, but for good reason.
I know I've disparaged the film for most of this article, but “The Old Way” does have at least one standout moment of cinematic brilliance.
An hour into the movie, there’s this lovely campfire scene. The setting is reminiscent of the powerful scene in “True Grit” (1969), when Rooster finally tells Mattie his story.
Briggs faces his daughter, surrounded by night, and unburdens his sorrow, the loss of his true love, crying for the first time. And the tears are genuine. The character Colton Briggs weeps through the body of Nicolas Cage. His brokenness is palpable, as he and his daughter confront the realities of death.
It’s the fullest example we get of Cage’s acting method. It’s just enough to inspire hope that there will be more Nicolas Cage Westerns in the future.
Late last year, Cage told Vanity Fair that he was done with acting: “I may have three or four more movies left in me.”
He said that after appearing in six films — some of his best work to date — in 2023 alone.
He has also since appeared in three additional films, including “Longlegs” (2024), with another three in various stages of production, including “The Gunslingers,” his second Western.
Still, it’s hard to forget what he said to Vanity Fair: ”I do feel I’ve said what I’ve had to say with cinema. I think I took film performance as far as I could. … I do want to get much more severe and stringent in my selection process. … I want to say ‘Bye’ on a high note.”
But who knows?
Who knows where Nicolas Cage’s performance starts and ends, how far it extends beyond the spectacle and mania of his presence on screen? Who knows if there are even limits to what he feels and channels and imagines?
Alec Baldwin's defense team said that even if he did pull the trigger on the set of "Rust," he wouldn't be guilty of homicide.
Baldwin's team has been adamant throughout court proceedings he did not pull the trigger when the gun went off, killing cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of the Western movie.
However, the 66-year-old's defense attorney Alex Spiro said in his opening statement for Baldwin's manslaughter trial that Baldwin may be wrong and may have pulled the trigger. This was the first time that the team alluded to this as a possibility, reports show. Spiro also argued though that this fact would still not make Baldwin criminally negligent.
"On a movie set, you're allowed to pull the trigger," Spiro said, per Variety. "Even if he intentionally pulled the trigger ... that doesn't make him guilty of homicide."
Baldwin himself has previously denied ever pulling the trigger, claiming instead that the gun malfunctioned.
'If he did, of course, that would only make his statement incorrect.'
As Blaze News reported, the FBI claimed it was not possible for the gun to fire without the trigger pull, but the agency was blamed by Baldwin's defense for breaking the gun during its testing. An FBI examiner hit the gun with a mallet to see if it would accidentally fire from the force and broke three components of the gun.
Lucien Haag, a firearms expert who examined the Colt .45 used by Baldwin, testified that the gun was indeed working properly before the FBI analyzed it. Haag also testified that the live rounds used on the set of "Rust" were "hand loaded," meaning they were made by an individual rather than a manufacturer.
The latter was integral in the trial of Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the film's armorer. She was convicted of involuntary manslaughter but acquitted of a lesser charge of tampering with evidence. She was sentenced to 18 months in prison.
David Halls, the first assistant director on "Rust," pled no contest to negligent use of a deadly weapon and has been sentenced to probation.
The prosecution reportedly intends to attempt to prove Baldwin did pull the trigger, stating that numerous firearm experts will testify that the gun was working properly when Baldwin allegedly fired it.
Baldwin's defense argued, however, that the owner's manual of that particular model of gun — Colt .45 pistol — states that the gun can go off if the hammer is dropped on a live primer.
At the same time, attorney Spiro also reportedly urged jurors to acquit Baldwin even if it is found that he did pull the trigger.
"If he did, of course, that would only make his statement incorrect," the lawyer said. "That would mean he would have misspoke."
Even if he did misspeak, Spiro continued, it still wasn't Baldwin's fault that a real bullet was loaded into the gun.
"When this issue [is] discussed, it's easy to sort of pull yourself into courtroom-land and away from a movie set," the attorney theorized. "[Baldwin] did not know, or have any reason to know, that the gun was loaded with a live bullet. That's the key. That live bullet is the key. That is the lethal element."
The prosecution is bringing in gun manufacturer Alessandro Pietta from Italy to inform jurors about quality-control measures. Pietta's company made the gun in question, according to the Sante Fe New Mexican.
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The armorer on the set of "Rust" back in October 2021 when 42-year-old cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was shot and killed has been given the maximum sentence.
Last month, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed was convicted of involuntary manslaughter but acquitted of a lesser charge of tampering with evidence, Blaze News previously reported. As armorer, Gutierrez-Reed was responsible for checking the safety of all ammunition and guns on set. She was also the person who loaded a live round into the weapon that fired the fatal shot.
Gutierrez-Reed, who was just 24 at the time of the shooting, sobbed throughout her sentencing hearing on Monday. Her attorney, Jason Bowles, had requested that she be given conditional release along with counseling, claiming she was a "scapegoat" for the shooting and insisting she "has endured and will continue to endure collateral consequences far harsher than most defendants ever must face."
Prosecutor Kari Morrissey stated she might have been persuaded to recommend a lighter sentence for this "unprecedented case" — until she found out Gutierrez-Reed had apparently been referring to jurors as "idiots" and "a**h***s" on recent phone calls from jail.
In addition, reports indicate that while awaiting trial, Gutierrez-Reed violated the conditions of her release by drinking alcohol. She also allegedly misled prosecutors about her work history and encouraged her mother to confront them in the bathroom at court, the New York Post reported.
Gutierrez-Reed "continues to deny responsibility and blame others," prosecutors explained in a letter last week.
"It was my sincere hope during this process that there would be some moment when Ms. Gutierrez took responsibility and expressed some level of remorse that was genuine. That moment has never come. Ms. Gutierrez continues to refuse to take responsibility for her role in the death of Halyna Hutchins," Morrissey said at the hearing.
District Court Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer agreed, sentencing Gutierrez-Reed to 18 months in prison, the maximum sentence for involuntary manslaughter in the state of New Mexico, where "Rust" was filmed. "You alone turned a safe weapon into a lethal weapon," the judge told the defendant. "But for you, a husband would have his wife and a little boy would have his mother."
Bowles previously indicated that the defense intends to appeal. Gutierrez-Reed has remained behind bars since her conviction.
Several of Hutchins' loved ones gave impact statements at the hearing, explaining how the loss continues to affect their lives. Emilia Mendieta, one of Hutchins' closest friends, blamed Hutchins' death on "a massive system failure," of which Gutierrez-Reed was a part. "Why was there a live bullet on set? … That is where Hannah Gutierrez-Reed failed Halyna. It was her job to check the gun, check the bullets, to ensure that Halyna was safe," she said.
According to family friend Steven Metz, Matt Hutchins, Halyna's widower, "basically ... died" when his wife died. "There is really no excuse [for her death]," he added.
Actor Alec Baldwin also faces a charge of involuntary manslaughter in connection with the case. Though all evidence suggests he fired the shot that killed Hutchins, Baldwin denies ever pulling the trigger, claiming instead that the gun malfunctioned. His trial is scheduled for July.
David Halls, the first assistant director on "Rust," pled no contest to negligent use of a deadly weapon and has been sentenced to probation.
Filming of "Rust" was placed on hold following the shooting, but it was eventually completed. No release date has been announced. As part of the settlement of a wrongful death lawsuit, Matthew Hutchins was named an executive producer.
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The armorer for the movie "Rust," who was deemed responsible for the bullet that killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, has been found guilty of involuntary manslaughter.
A jury decided that Hannah Gutierrez-Reed was indeed guilty when she loaded a live bullet into Alec Baldwin's Colt .45 pistol on the set of the movie. The gun was meant to contain only dummy rounds.
Baldwin fired the pistol while rehearsing, killing Hutchins.
Gutierrez-Reed faces a sentence of up to 18 months in prison, but her sentencing is not expected until April 2024, Variety reported. She was acquitted of a different charge of tampering with evidence, however.
Defense attorney Jason Bowles had argued that Gutierrez-Reed has been smeared and scapegoated, the New York Post reported. He attempted to convince the jury that management was to blame for failing to give Gutierrez-Reed adequate time to do her job, which included checking the dummy rounds for safety.
During the trial, jurors were shown a police interview with Gutierrez-Reed from November 2021 during which she said she used dummies on "Rust" that were actually left over from a previous movie, "The Old Way," which Gutierrez-Reed had worked on a few weeks earlier.
"I went back through a bag that I had," the armorer said in the interview. "This bag had a bunch of loose dummies in it. I went through and I checked all of them, and I put them into two boxes. … They were in my car for like two weeks," she added.
Later in the interview, Gutierrez-Reed said that she typically shakes each dummy round to see if it rattles, which is reportedly a safety feature that lets users know the rounds can't be fired.
"I am shaking all of them most of the time," Gutierrez Reed said, words that were highlighted by the prosecution.
Producers testified against the armorer, saying she never requested additional time and disregarded a logging system to make sure the weapons were being attended to properly, TMZ stated.
Prosecutor Kari Morrissey argued in her closing statement that Gutierrez-Reed's actions showed an "astonishing" failure to adhere to safety protocols and that she never properly tested the rounds.
"The evidence wasn’t sufficient to convict," defense attorney Bowles said after the trial. "It was a lot of guesswork, a lot of speculation," he added. The lawyer said he would appeal the verdict.
Gutierrez-Reed got the job in large part due to her father, Thell Reed, according to Variety. Thell Reed is a legendary film armorer who has worked on movies like "3:10 to Yuma."
While he was not called to testify, he was mentioned by ammunition supplier Seth Kenney, who was accused by the defense of supplying the ammunition for the movie.
Kenney reportedly asserted that Gutierrez-Reed and her father were trying to claim that "the live ammunition on the set of Rust … somehow came through" him, Deadline reported.
"Knowing Thell and having been friends with him for a few years at that point, I know how much he loves his daughter," Kenney said of the 81-year-old.
Alec Baldwin will face a manslaughter trial in July 2024.
He has maintained that he did not pull the trigger, with his defense questioning whether the gun was functioning properly at the time of the shooting.
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The armorer for the movie "Rust" was revealed to have stated in an interview that the dummy rounds she had on-set were from a previous film she worked on, noting that she checks all of the dummy rounds "most of the time."
Armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed is on trial for involuntary manslaughter stemming from the death of Halyna Hutchins, a cinematographer who was killed after Alec Baldwin fired a gun on the set of "Rust" that was supposed to have dummy rounds in it but instead had a live round.
Gutierrez-Reed, who was 24 at the time, has been accused by the prosecution of bringing a box of dummies that had multiple live rounds in it. She loaded the gun Baldwin used.
Jurors were shown a police interview with Gutierrez-Reed from November 2021 during which she said she used dummies on "Rust" that were actually left over from a previous movie, "The Old Way," a Western action film with Nicolas Cage. Gutierrez-Reed had worked on the film a few weeks earlier.
"I went back through a bag that I had," the armorer said in the interview, Variety reported. "This bag had a bunch of loose dummies in it. I went through and I checked all of them, and I put them into two boxes. … They were in my car for like two weeks," she added.
Later in the interview, Gutierrez-Reed said that she typically shakes each dummy round to see if it rattles, which is reportedly a safety feature that lets users know the rounds can't be fired.
"I am shaking all of them most of the time," Gutierrez Reed, using words that were highlighted by the prosecution.
"Most of the time," prosecutor Kari Morrissey emphasized to the jury.
Gutierrez-Reed faces more than 18 months in prison if convicted. Her defense has maintained that she was not responsible for bringing the live bullets onto the set and has blamed the movie's gun and ammunition supplier, Seth Kenney.
Attorney Jason Bowles has argued that Gutierrez-Reed has been smeared and scapegoated, the New York Post reported.
Actor Alec Baldwin will face trial in July 2024 for involuntary manslaughter charges. He has maintained that he did not pull the trigger, with his defense questioning whether the gun was functioning properly at the time of the shooting.
While the FBI claimed it was not possible for the gun to fire without the trigger pull, the FBI was blamed by Baldwin's defense for breaking the gun during its testing. An FBI examiner hit the gun with a mallet to see if it would accidentally fire from the force and broke three components of the gun.
Lucien Haag, a firearms expert who examined the Colt .45 used by Baldwin, testified that the live rounds used on the set of "Rust" were "hand loaded." Meaning, they were made by an individual, rather than a manufacturer.
Haag testified that the gun was indeed working properly before the FBI analyzed it.
Gutierrez-Reed's defense lawyers have not disputed the gun's functionality but have blamed Baldwin for negligently pulling the trigger.
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The armorer for the film "Rust" was offered a "favorable" outcome by the prosecutor if she was able to explain how live ammunition made it on to the set of the movie. The live rounds were ultimately given to actor Alec Baldwin before he fired a gun that killed a cinematographer.
Armorer Hannah Gutierrez Reed faces up to three years in prison for involuntary manslaughter and tampering with evidence in connection to the death of Halyna Hutchins, cinematographer for the movie "Rust." Hutchins was shot by Baldwin while preparing for a scene when he pulled the trigger on a gun that was supposed to have "dummy rounds," Variety reported.
Gutierrez Reed was reportedly warned that if she refused to provide information as to where the real bullets came from, she would face additional charges. Detectives had asked the woman why there was live ammunition on the set, to which she replied "I have no idea."
Several other live rounds were also reportedly recovered from the scene, but their origins are still unknown.
Kari Morrissey, the special prosecutor assigned to the case, reportedly told the defense lawyer in September 2023 that she believed Gutierrez Reed knew more about the incident than she was willing to say.
"I feel very strongly she has some notion of how the live rounds came on set," Morrissey wrote. "I certainly respect her right not to come forward with that information and to stay silent, however if she were to come forward and answer some of these questions that plague the victims in this case that would go a long way toward getting her a favorable resolution."
"If she chooses not to ... while I respect her decision, I will proceed with the additional felony charges we spoke of," Morrissey added.
Just over two weeks later, Gutierrez Reed was indicted on a charge for carrying a firearm in a liquor establishment, a fourth-degree felony, after allegedly bringing a gun into a bar in October 2021. This was less than two weeks after the "Rust" incident.
Evidence for the charge allegedly stemmed from a search of pictures and data on Gutierrez Reed's phone, which was turned over to authorities in relation to the shooting incident.
Gutierrez Reed’s lawyer, Jason Bowles, has taken all the aforementioned actions as a misappropriation of authority. Bowles reportedly saw the offer of a "favorable" outcome as a method by prosecutors to invoke a false confession.
The lawyer has also sought to have the additional charges dismissed and argued that they were filed vindictively as a retaliation.
"This is an extremely rare case in which we have a statement of the prosecutor’s motive behind charging," Bowles wrote. "That charge was solely designed to pressure Ms. Gutierrez Reed into giving up her Fifth Amendment right to silence (to provide information she didn’t have) or face felony criminal prosecution on a totally unrelated charge."
Bowles had also argued that the prosecutor's scope was meant to be limited to the "Rust" case and that she was operating outside her authority when she charged Gutierrez Reed for the gun possession.
Alec Baldwin\xe2\x80\x99s reaction when he was told that cinematographer Halyna Hutchins had passed away after she was accidentally shot with a live round discharged from a revolver used as a prop by the actor.— (@)
Actor Baldwin was initially charged with involuntary manslaughter, but charges were dropped in April 2023.
Prosecutor Morrissey said that "additional facts have come to light" that warranted charges against the actor, but though she claimed the charges would be brought within two months, nothing materialized.
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Alec Baldwin was confronted in New York City by contentious protesters supporting Palestine, asking if he denounces Israel.
Baldwin was seen in a video provided by the Daily Mail, standing in a crowd of police and protesters in New York City. As Baldwin listened to a conversation between police and a protester, another activist came up behind the actor and began questioning him.
With a phone camera in Baldwin's face, the protester immediately became hostile.
After a muffled statement by the protester through a bandana, Baldwin replied, "What do you mean?"
"You work in Hollywood. ... Do you condemn Israel?" the seemingly young, seemingly male asked.
"You've already got your mind made up," the 56-year-old declared. "I'm in Hollywood?" Baldwin rhetorically asked.
"Is that your answer?" the protester shockingly replied.
"You ask stupid questions," Baldwin announced as he started getting in the smaller man's face. "Ask me a smart question. Ask me a smart question," he demanded.
"That's a stupid question..."\n\nHollywood actor Alec Baldwin refuses to condemn Israel and squares up to pro-Palestinian protestors in New York.— (@)
The West 29th Street altercation was broken up by police, who then tried to escort Baldwin away from the fray. As police surrounded the actor, other activists began yelling things toward him from the crowd.
"Oh, big man!" was coupled with more questions of "Do you condemn Israel?!"
The same protester, now without a bandana covering his face, circled around to confront Baldwin again.
"Why'd you even come here?" he asked.
"I'm going down the street," Baldwin simply replied, still being escorted from the scene by law enforcement.
Another voice from the crowd allegedly shouted, "Who the f**k do you think you are?" and "Go f**k yourself!" the Daily Mail reported.
"Shut the f**k up!" Baldwin reportedly chimed back as police ushered him away.
"Stop crying! I can't believe you're crying so much! Stop crying!" Baldwin went on as protesters continued to vehemently ask if he condemns Israel.
While moving between cars and the New York City sidewalks, Baldwin seemingly pointed toward a protester holding a camera and said, "I want peace for Gaza, though."
The actor then escaped through a secured door in the side of a building.
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As our most recent election demonstrated, the American people are realizing that there is indeed a misinformation crisis in America — and that the deluded, patronizing leftists are the primary culprits.
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