“She’s a rookie”: Rust’s armourer comes under fire
As investigators continue to determine what led to the fatal shooting of a cinematographer on the set of Rust, complaints about armour Hannah Gutierrez-Reed have emerged from her last movie.
The 24-year-old armourer was the subject of several complaints from crew members working on the 2022 film The Old Way, including the film’s key grip, Stu Brumbaugh.
The Western film, starring Nicolas Cage, was Ms Gutierrez-Reed’s first job as head armourer after she graduated from Northern Arizona University in 2020.
Mr Brumbaugh told TheWrap that Ms Gutierrez-Reed failed to follow basic gun safety protocols.
He said Nicolas Cage yelled at Ms Gutierrez-Reed after she discharged a weapon for the second time in three days without warning, saying: “Make an announcement, you just blew my f**king eardrums out!” before walking off set.
Mr Brumbaugh said he urged the assistant director to fire the armourer, and said the film’s low budget led to her filling the role despite her lack of experience.
“After the second round I was pissed off. We were moving too fast. She’s a rookie,” he said.
He also argued that Ms Gutierrez-Reed should have had additional help on both The Old Way and Rust.
“I would have had minimum two more people. She was doing everything by herself in that movie and on the other movie (Rust),” he said. “If there was one more person in the other movie the tragedy wouldn’t have happened.”
Two anonymous sources also told The Daily Beast that Ms Gutierrez-Reed about worrisome gun safety issues on the set. According to the sources, the armourer gave a gun to child actress Ryan Kiera Armstrong without properly checking the weapon first and was “a bit careless with the guns”.
“There were a couple of times she was loading the blanks and doing it in a fashion that we thought was unsafe,” one source added.
However, Jeffrey W. Crow, the prop master who supervised Ms Gutierrez-Reed in her first armourer role, told the LA Times that despite his initial doubts, she was scrupulous.
“All the armourers I knew and tried to bring in were working already, so I left it up to producers,” Mr Crow told the publication.
“I had never heard about Hannah until I was informed she would be my armourer, but my skepticism of her initially, about her lack of experience, was allayed after I’d worked with her.”
As for the incident on the set of Rust, Mr Crow said he was “surprised that any of this happened under her watch”.
“I thought she was exceptionally young, up-and-coming, very eager and talented armourer,” he said.
“She was without a lot of experience, but coming from her family lineage, I thought she was exceptional, professional, and I thought she had - and I still think she has - many years of an amazing career ahead of her.”
Although he didn’t want to speculate on what had occurred on the day of the fatal shooting, Mr Crow shared his hopes that Ms Gutierrez-Reed would be exonerated.
“This is not a typical role for women - especially a young woman,” he said. “I had a lot of faith in her, and I still do. I’m gonna be surprised if there was anything she was ultimately responsible for in all this, just seeing how she acted in the past. This is all such a surprise.”
Signage directing people to the set for “Rust”. Image: Getty Images
On October 21, actor Alec Baldwin accidentally discharged a gun while pointing it at the camera, injuring one of the filmmakers and fatally injuring cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.
According to documents released earlier this week, the star was rehearsing drawing the revolver across his body while Ms Hutchins and Joel Souza were checking camera angles.
Investigations by the Santa Fe County have also revealed that Mr Baldwin fired a lead projectile, with authorities seizing approximately 500 rounds from the film set.
Image: Twitter