A Tense ‘Rust’ Doc Screening Reveals the Painful Evolution of a Film About Dead Cinematographer
A tense Q&A session on Tuesday night at an FYC screening of a new documentary about late Rust cinematographer Halyna Hutchins suggests the film underwent substantial changes in tone and content from the filmmakers’ original intent.
Ever since Hutchins died on the 2021 set of the indie Western, the Ukraine-born cinematographer has slipped into the background, as the sprawling investigation into her accidental shooting death and the high-profile trials of Alec Baldwin and armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed have claimed the spotlight in news coverage.
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The documentary, Last Take: Rust and the Story of Halyna Hutchins, which will premiere on Hulu March 11, seemed like it might push Hutchins back into the center of the frame. Made by Hutchins’ close friends, Circus of Books and An Update on Our Family director Rachel Mason and producer Julee Metz, and executive produced by her widower, Matthew Hutchins, the doc had extraordinary levels of access. Mason and Metz were granted footage from the original set of Rust in Santa Fe and were allowed to shoot on the Montana set when the movie resumed production in 2023, and cast and crew including director Joel Souza, camera assistant Lane Luper, costume designer Terese Davis and the film’s new cinematographer Bianca Cline participated in interviews.
Mason, Metz and Souza, who was shot in the shoulder by the same bullet that killed Hutchins, appeared at the Q&A after the screening Tuesday night at the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood. When moderator Steve Chiotakis of KCRW asked Souza what it was like watching the documentary, Souza called it “a very moving film,” but expressed surprise at the doc’s direction.
“I hoped it might have a little more Halyna in it or been a little more about Halyna,” Souza said, addressing Mason and Metz. “I know that was your original intention when you talked to me about it. And I could tell when we would talk over the years in the intervening time that you were under some pressure.”
In a move highly unusual at an FYC event, which are typically anodyne mutual admiration fests, Souza then pressed his co-panelists to talk about why their movie changed course and explain what role their backers, which include the production companies Story Syndicate, Concordia Studio and Anonymous Content as well as Hulu, might have played. “I think we all know, anyone in this room who is a creative, what it’s like when the suits are swooping in to put their hands all over your movie,” Souza said. “And I’m just curious to know with the partners that you guys had, and maybe I’ll ask you this, Julee, did they try to protect Rachel’s vision?”
Metz answered that, “Rachel had a very clear vision in the beginning to tell Halyna’s story of her life and her work and some of her death, of course, because that’s where the story began. But over time, and as we gained new partners on this project, it became clear that there was a commercial value to the story of Rust. And that needed to be part of the story that we had to tell. So it became less about Halyna’s life and more about her death, but that’s what we ended up having to do.”
Hutchins died when a live round was discharged from a prop revolver Baldwin was holding during a rehearsal on the Rust set. A criminal case against the actor was dismissed in July 2024, but armorer Gutierrez-Reed is still serving an 18-month sentence for her involuntary manslaughter conviction and Baldwin and the other producers still face multiple civil suits.
Rust, which premiered at Camerimage last November, is still seeking distribution.
The Hutchins documentary is coming out as TLC is airing The Baldwins, a fly-on-the-wall reality show about Alec and Hilaria Baldwin and their seven children, which began shooting just as Baldwin’s manslaughter trial was about to begin in Santa Fe last summer. There is another, as yet unreleased documentary about Baldwin underway, directed by Rory Kennedy, which also had a crew at his trial.
Where Mason’s project was to be different from these was in its focus on Hutchins herself. In 2024, Mason, who met Hutchins when their sons were in preschool together, told THR that, “My motivation [for making the film] is to preserve someone I lost.”
At the FYC screening, when Chiotakis asked Mason about her biggest challenges on the film, she said that, “A film has these evolutions, it starts with the thing you imagine you can do and then you start working on it and you can’t really do that thing anymore. You shift.”
The evening got off to a rocky start early on, when a speaker in the theater that was to have played the film’s dialogue track wasn’t working, and after three false starts the filmmakers were eventually forced to screen from the Hulu press site.
While producers and event staff were trying to solve the sound problem, Mason, wearing Hutchins’ signature wide-brimmed hat, took the stage to kill time and began talking with the crowd, many of whom had known Hutchins or worked on Rust. When an audience member asked Mason a question about how difficult it was to make the film, Mason tried to redirect the crowd. “Maybe if anyone out here knew Halyna and would have anything to say,” Mason said. “It would just be awesome to hear a story about Halyna.”
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