CLEVELAND — Richard Fike has spent a career on movie sets from the “Avengers” to “Tomorrow Man” directing fight scenes and teaching actors how to properly handle prop firearms.
“If you don’t take them seriously that’s when mistakes happen,” he said.
Fike, who lives east of Cleveland, said he was shocked when he learned a live round was allowed on a movie set.
According to a search warrant obtained by the Associated Press, an assistant director on the film "Rust" handed actor Alec Baldwin the prop gun with a live round.
Moments later, records show Baldin fatally shot his cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, in the chest and injured his director.
The Screen Actors Guild Labor and Management Safety Committee states "live ammunition is never to be used nor brought onto any studio or set.” It’s unclear if the actors on set for "Rust" were union or not. If it was not, the directive would not apply.
Fike said movie sets employ people like him, called armors, whose job it is to make sure guns are safe to fire and that assistant directors don’t hand actors guns.
“The armor will walk the weapon onto to set, place it in the actor's hands, but prior to that will show the actor and the casting crew that this is an empty weapon, here’s the blank that we are going to be using,” he said.
Fike said he was devastated when he heard the news of the shooting because he knows how it will impact everyone involved.
“It’s a tragic situation. You are thinking about the people who are injured and who lost their lives,” he said.
Shortly after the shooting, a Change.org petition was created calling to ban real firearms from film sets.