In wake of Baldwin charges, Cortese to reintroduce film set safety bill

With news that actor Alec Baldwin will face two counts of involuntary manslaughter over the death of a cinematographer on the set of his film “Rust,” Democratic state Sen. Dave Cortese of San Jose has vowed to reintroduce legislation to establish rules for using guns in movies.

Last year, Cortese and Sen. Anthony Portantino, D-Burbank, introduced dueling bills in response to the accidental shooting death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins during the October 2021 filming of “Rust” in Albuquerque, N.M.

Portantino’s proposal, Senate Bill 829, was backed by the Motion Picture Association (MPA); Cortese’s SB 831 had the support of film industry unions. Portantino, as chair of the Senate Appropriation Committee, held both bills in committee in May because the competing stakeholders couldn’t reach an agreement.

Now, with the Santa Fe County District Attorney’s recent announcement that both Baldwin and movie-set armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed will be criminally charged in the well-publicized shooting death, Cortese says he plans to draft a new version of his proposal, which sought to regulate the use of firearms and blanks on movie productions and establish a “set safety supervisor” role for film crews.

Currently, there are no state regulations over the use of firearms and live ammunition on film sets, which is a surprising legal void given that the movie industry is based in California, a state known for its gun-control laws.

Cortese, chair of the Senate Labor, Public Employment and Retirement Committee, has until the Feb. 17 bill introduction deadline to introduce his revised proposal.

“Based on my most recent conversation with the MPA, they want to get this done,” Cortese said, noting that the variety of industry unions have also been supportive of legislation regulating gun use on set.

Currently, there are no state regulations over the use of firearms and live ammunition on film sets, which is a surprising legal void given that the movie industry is based in California, a state known for its gun-control laws.

“We’ve been encouraged by the [Senate] Pro Tem to keep moving on this,” he said, adding that his goal is get a bill without any opposition to the governor’s desk for Gavin Newsom’s signature.

Aaron Leong, a Sacramento-area cinematographer who directed movies like “Mamaboy,” staring Stephen Tobolowsky, Gary Busey and Alexandria DeBerry, and “Notorious Nick,” staring Cody Christian, Elisabeth Röhm and Kevin Pollak, said standardized rules like the ones Cortese has proposed would be helpful for the film industry overall because, “Every production has their own sort of ideas of safety.”

“The problem isn’t with the filmmakers, it’s with the producers,” he said. “The producers are out there to make a buck and to save money.”

Meanwhile, Leong said, the writers and directors have “grandiose ideas” for bombastic, eye-catching shots – but they don’t often consider the actual risks of staging, say, a car explosion on a bridge.

The combination of penny-pinching producers and ambitious filmmakers who are only focused on their art means that safety is sometimes overlooked or even totally discarded on a movie set, he said.

“With the amount of CGI [computer-generated imagery], there is no reason to blow anything up on a bridge anymore,” he said.

Regarding guns on set, Leong said their use absolutely “needs to be certified and needs to be regulated.”

“The armorer currently is just some dude on set who’s in charge of the weapons,” he said. “There’s no certification for them, there’s no mentorship program.”

Leong said typical protocol on a film set is that only the armorer handles a weapon before giving it to an actor to use, and the armorer first announces the weapon’s presence on the set.

“But it’s not a certified thing,” he said. “It’s not something that everybody follows. Not everybody knows the protocol.”

“The armorer currently is just some dude on set who’s in charge of the weapons,” he said. “There’s no certification for them, there’s no mentorship program.”

A legal requirement that on-set armorers receive education would be helpful, as would a binding rule in law preventing anyone on set other than a certified armorer from handling a weapon prior to giving it to an actor, Leong said.

“If you’re a part of the DGA, the Directors Guild of America, as a producer, as a director, as a First AD [Assistant Director], you have to go through certain classes,” he said. “You have to take classes for safety. You’ve got to know things, like, if there’s a lightning strike 15 miles from the set, everybody goes indoors…

“Things like that, those rules are in place to basically save lives, right? And directors and producers and whatever, they have to go through that. Why not gun safety? I mean, of all the things, why not gun safety, right? Almost every movie has a gun in it nowadays.”

Indeed, the French-Swiss film director Jean-Luc Godard once famously said, “All you need for a movie is a girl and a gun.” The ubiquity of firearms on movie sets, and the lack of regulations over them, makes this an issue ripe for successful legislation, Cortese said.

“Producing a movie should be very, very safe,” he said.