This image is a movie still. A double actually. It’s both a still from the movie Peacean American western starring Alec Baldwin that was partly shot in New Mexico last year, as a still from the movie called Real Life, which sometimes turns out to be even more terrible than the screenwriter had envisioned.
This image is also proof. For the Santa Fe Sheriff and his people, for the lawyers and the judges, for the journalists and the ever curious social media community, of course. So for everyone who wants to know exactly what happened on October 21, 2021 on the set of Peacewhen actor/producer Alec Baldwin pointed a revolver at camerawoman Halyna Hutchins and accidentally shot her dead while, he would later explain, he didn’t even pull the trigger.
Last Monday, Sheriff Adan Mendoza released a bunch of images and documents. Why he did that was not entirely clear to me. The investigation into the events on the set is still ongoing, there are a lot of loose ends. For example, it is still not clear how it could have happened that there was a real bullet in the gun instead of a fake, which would have been recognizable by a rattling noise or a hole in the side (you learn something from such a case) . No one has a satisfactory answer to that, not even the woman responsible for the weapons on the set. In one of the released police photos, the vintage revolver is in a cardboard box.
The 64-year-old actor has repeatedly claimed that there was something wrong with the gun. That the thing just went off. That he didn’t pull the trigger. That he is not responsible for the death of Hutchins. He gave an emotional interview, in which he repeated all that. And now there are images that clearly show his right index finger resting on the trigger. Half of Twitter knew: ‘Guilty!’
The material is nevertheless quite confusing. The video from which the above still comes was taken with a bodycam by someone on set, just before the fatal moment. So it’s kind of like a movie scene, with Baldwin the actor going into his role and aiming his weapon at an enemy. It is closely followed by videos of the tragic events that followed, made by police officers: Hutchins lying on the floor in the small wooden church where the film scene took place, alongside director Joel Souza, who was hit by the same bullet and survived. . Hutchins being wheeled into an ambulance on a stretcher.
There is also an image of a wonderfully calm Baldwin, being questioned by Sheriff Mendoza, who is clearly uncomfortable, because yes, gosh: Alec Baldwin. In a cowboy suit, with a cowboy hat. On a Hollywood film set, where two people have just been shot, as happens in a western – oh no, not.
The way film and reality merge here is bizarre. That realistic film set suddenly became a surreal one crime scene, where disguised actors and uniformed police officers cross each other. You hear Mendoza ask Baldwin if he’s willing to answer some questions and if his clothes can be photographed. There’s blood on his cowboy boots.
“That’s fake blood,” Baldwin reassures him with a smile. Fake blood from whoever he would shoot in the movie, not from the one he accidentally shot in real life with a vintage colt that he didn’t pull the trigger on, because you never do as an actor in a movie. Get over it, Sheriff.