The Terrible Accidental Shooting

THE NEWS OF THE ACCIDENTAL SHOOTING during the filming of what would have probably been an entirely forgettable western movie certainly proves that Hollywood will never, ever get things right unless they are forced to by law or by ruinous lawsuit (yeah, right, as if that would happen).   As details and rumors from the production come out it's clear that it was not an isolated incident as people warned that there had already been two or three accidental "discharges" I would imagine meaning guns were fired when they should have been.  Yet this still happened. 

It reminds me of that interview of the Canadian playwright Judith Thompson conducted by the Canadian actor R. H. Thompson I posted last summer in which he said that the only actor he knew of who refused to hold a gun in his career was Dustin Hoffmann.  It also made me think of the author Marilynne Robinson who remarked on the appalling amount of fiction that centers around the crime of murder - I wonder if there has ever been a "western" movie that has ever not had that as a central feature or a plot device.   Like Marlboro cigarettes, it certainly hovers in the background in that genre, the violence and gun fanaticism it fosters is a major blight on the United States and elsewhere.

I wonder what the motives of those in charge of the production, the producer, the director, maybe even the actors who had the decision to use actual discharges from a gun, a "prop gun" in the filming when others use computer effects to mimic them, if they wanted "authenticity" that would come from something containing an explosion of powder.   The idea that that, clearly dangerous thing could be one of the very few things that they needed to make "authentic" when everything about movies is as phony as a carny side-show is absurd.   I heard one person who works in that part of the industry who said that in order for the "mistake" to have been made, in which, movie-like, a bullet was put in the thing instead of a dangerous-enough-to-be-stupid-to-use blank, not one but at least three violations of the written rules on using a gun in a production would have had to be committed.   I hope whoever was responsible for breaking those rules is or are prosecuted for whatever New Mexico law would allow them to charge them with.

I would be curious to know if anyone was ever killed in the making of a radio drama.  Apart from one make-believe Ellery Queen who-done-it I seem to vaguely remember - and it was poison in that case - I don't remember ever hearing of one.  I despise Hollywood.