Three long years after the accidental shooting that killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and injured director Joel Souza, Rust finally had its premiere last week at Poland’s EnergaCamerimage Festival. Alec Baldwin wasn’t there. According to festival organizers, the film’s star—who was holding the prop gun when it discharged—was not invited to the screening.
It doesn’t sound like he was too torn up about the exclusion, though. At a different festival in Torino—the first Baldwin has attended since the tragedy and his ensuing (dismissed) manslaughter trial—the actor told Variety that he has not seen the final cut of the film. He has no interest right now, “only because this is obviously the most difficult thing I’ve ever dealt with in my life… The film doesn’t stand by itself. It’s always going to be overshadowed by this.”
Despite these understandable qualms, Baldwin did return to Montana to finish the project after Souza decided he wanted to complete it in order to honor Hutchins’ last work. “It’s been such a tragedy, which of course we would do anything to undo. But we arrived to the reshoot and it was a better film in a lot of ways. Other than Halyna,” he said.
There was some financial motivation behind Baldwin’s decision as well, although not in the way he says it’s been represented in the media. “I waived my fee. I gave them back the fee in the budget. I waived all my backend. I gave everything to her husband,” he explained. “He owns the film. Her husband, I believe, is the sole owner of the film, though I could be wrong. Everything was done with that in mind.” (Hutchins’ husband, Matthew, is credited as a producer.) The idea that Baldwin is profiting off of Rust in any way is “absolutely wrong,” he insists.
At this point, he “want[s] all things Rust to just leave my windshield, so I can go and do other things and be a father to my children.” Beyond the “victims themselves,” the hardest part has been the ways the situation affected his wife, Hilaria, the actor said. “My wife has been very, very traumatized from this. There has been a lot of pain. When you are married to somebody and everything was going fairly well and we had seven kids… and the floor falls out. It’s very frightening and very disturbing,” Baldwin went on. “The last two years of this situation have just hammered me, just drained me. And I have an obligation like any other man who is a father, or couples of fathers—two men who have children, whatever—we have an obligation to save some of our best for our kids. And that’s been the tough part for me.”
Rust is currently seeking distribution.
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