CHICAGO (NewsNation Now) — A crew member who worked with the “Rust” movie armorer on a previous film said she was a rookie who put the cast in danger on multiple occasions.
“A few incidents happened that really got me upset and made me want to get her removed from the set because of it,” Stu Brumbaugh said on Banfield.
Brumbaugh was the key grip on the film “The Old Way” starting Nicolas Cage. The key grip on a film set is responsible for getting cameras and gear into place.
“There’s a protocol that we do on these movie sets that were broken on numerous occasions,” Brumbaugh said.
On Wednesday, investigators discussed their initial findings in the fatal movie-set shooting in which star and producer Alec Baldwin fired what was supposed to be a prop gun, killing a cinematographer and wounding the director.
The gun was one of three that the film’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez, had set on a cart outside the wooden structure where a scene was going to be filmed, according to the records.
During a podcast interview in September, Gutierrez said she had just finished her first movie in the role of head armorer — the project starring Cage.
“I was really nervous about it at first and I almost didn’t take the job because I wasn’t sure if I was ready, but doing it, like, it went really smoothly,” she said.
Allegations have surfaced that she walked onto the set with live rounds unannounced, had pistols tucked under her arm facing backward and allowed firearms to be aimed at people.
There is also widespread reporting of Cage getting angry because she fired off a blank round right next to him.
“There were just some red flags with Hannah,” Brumbaugh said.
Brumbaugh said he didn’t want to speak out to “vilify anybody.”
“What this really boils down to is just not having enough help on the set,” Brumbaugh said. “I don’t think that somebody being killed is any sort of, you know, a free pass, just because you’re young, obviously. There’s major things happening on these movie sets that that need to change significantly.”