‘Rust’ Director Joel Souza On Why Alec Baldwin Shooting “Ruined” Him & Why Finishing Film In Halyna Hutchins’ Honor Was Important
Joel Souza, the Rust director who Alec Baldwin shot during a rehearsal of a scene, is breaking his silence on the fatal day that took the life of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.
“Things get a little fuzzy for me,” the director told Vanity Fair on the fatal shooting day. “The noise was much louder. It felt like a horse kicked me in the shoulder or someone hit me with a bat. The whole right side of my body went numb, completely numb, but it also hurt excruciatingly at the same time.”
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Souza says he has “quick flashes” of the incident, adding, “There’s panic, and I’m sitting there going, ‘What…?’ My initial thought was that I was very angry. I was furious at that moment. I remember looking up, and they were lowering Halyna to sit in front of me, and there was blood coming through her white shirt. It felt like it just all happened so quickly.”
The filmmaker also said, “When I tell someone it ruined me, I don’t mean in the sense that people might generally think. I don’t mean that it put my career in ruins. I mean, internally, the person I was just went away. That stopped.”
Souza continues his grief over the death of Hutchins, saying, “I felt like, ‘Wow, this is somebody that I feel a really instant bond with.’ I had hoped it was a bad dream. It was just the beginning of the aftermath, and the beginning of a lot of grief for everybody. I was trying to pick up the pieces, such as they can be picked up. There was still so much disbelief.”
Baldwin’s involuntary manslaughter trial was thrown out last month due to the mishandling of evidence. Armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed is currently serving an 18-month prison sentence for involuntary manslaughter.
Souza initially said he didn’t want to complete Rust but changed his mind and said that in Hutchins’ honor he wanted the film to be finished.
“I knew that the movie being finished would financially benefit Halyna’s family, which is very important to me. And I know this can sound trite for people who aren’t creative, but her last work matters. People seeing her last work matters. That was the tipping point for me in the decision,” he said.
He continued, “I do feel confident in saying that she would have wanted her last work to have been seen. If it was me that had gotten killed instead of her—as it should have been—she would do the same thing. She would push for my final work to be seen. It’s also important to Matt. He knows it’s cathartic for people who cared about her and people who might have appreciated her work to see that.”
Souza mentioned that the shooting scene in the original film has now been scrapped and they have done the best to preserve all of the scenes Hutchins was involved with to honor her work.
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