George Clooney has been discussing the use of prop firearms in the wake of Halyna Hutchins’ tragic death on the set of Rust.
George Clooney has been relaying his own personal experiences with prop firearms following the tragic and avoidable death of cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, on the set of the independent production, Rust. Speaking on the WTF with Mark Maron podcast, Clooney questioned just how actors and producers were using the props.
He told Maron that “every single time I’m handed a gun on the set — every time — they hand me a gun, I look at it, I open it, I show it to the person I’m pointing it too, I show it to the crew. Every single take”.
Then, he said, “you hand it back to the armourer when you’re done. Part of it is because of what happened to Brandon. Everyone does it. Everyone knows that is the protocol to follow. Maybe Alec did that — hopefully he did do that. But the problem is dummies are tricky because they look like real [rounds]. They got a little tiny hole in the back [from which] somebody’s [removed] the gunpowder”.
Clooney referenced there the tragic death of Brandon Lee during the production of 1994’s The Crow, and seems upset that on-set gun safety hasn’t improved in the quarter-century since that tragedy. His take on firearm safety is partly based on personal responsibility, with the actor stating that “every time I get handed a six-gun, or a gun that holds six cartridges, you point it at the ground and you squeeze it six times, it’s just insane not to.”
Clooney is the latest to speak out about prop gun use, with Dwayne Johnson already stating that all of his future films will use dummy weapons moving forwards. Clooney however, is clearly irritated by the processes that failed Hutchins and other filmmakers, as he concluded by wondering why he had never heard of some of the methods used on the production of Rust, despite all of his filmmaking experience.
“I’ve never heard the term ‘cold gun,’” Clooney said of his years on set, “I’ve never heard that term. Literally. They’re just talking about stuff I’ve never heard of. It’s just infuriating.”
You can listen to the episode of WTF in question right here.
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