Rust director Joel Souza hopes that people who are on the fence about watching the film — three years after cinematographer Halyna Hutchins died in an accidental on-set shooting in 2021 — “give it chance.”
Souza, 51, opened up about his years-long collaboration with Rust star Alec Baldwin, Hutchins’ legacy and the public’s reception in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter on Wednesday, Nov. 20, when Rust made its world premiere at the 2024 Camerimage Festival in Poland.
“If people don’t want to watch this movie, for any reason, they certainly don’t need to and there’s no hard feelings from me,” Souza told the outlet. “But what I hope is that people give it a chance — and if they do, that they look closely at the visual aspects, particularly the cinematography.”
“It’s a very unique opportunity to look through Halyna’s eyes and see how she saw the world,” he continued. “How much she is missed is evidenced by the fact that so many people came back to finish this film for her. They came back and stepped into a very difficult and loaded situation because they were touched by her, and it was important to them to finish this for her.”
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Hutchins, 42, died on Oct. 21, 2021, after a prop gun Baldwin, 66, held discharged during a rehearsal in New Mexico. Souza was also hit in the shoulder by the bullet, and Baldwin has insisted he didn’t pull the trigger or know why the prop gun contained live ammunition.
The actor was indicted on an involuntary manslaughter charge in January, but a judge later dropped the criminal case against him in July after Baldwin’s lawyers argued that the prosecution buried evidence.
In September, Rust armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to 18 months in prison.
Now, Souza wants people to see Rust to honor Hutchins.
“A large part of our business only got to know Halyna’s name because of what happened to her — and I think that’s a shame,” the director told THR at the Rust premiere. “So if you watch the film, you’ll get to look through her eyes and get to understand a little more about the artist she was.”
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Souza also revealed his favorite sequence that Hutchins created.
“Some of the horseriding montage shots are stunningly beautiful,” he told the outlet. “But there’s one we did together that I love, which is where Frances Fisher’s character has just come to town and she’s standing in this courtroom, speaking to these sort of town fathers.”
“She’s silhouetted in the doorway, and we do this long, slow push-in for about a minute of dialog, and we have the actors staggered at different lengths. And it’s just a beautiful, powerful shot,” Souza continued.
The director recalled to THR that he and Hutchins had to create an impromptu alternate shooting strategy due to “terrible weather.”
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“So Halyna and I sort of huddled together and came up with a way to do it in one [take] — and it was very exciting for the camera team. They were excited about it because we were trying something cool, and we all kind of knew in our gut that it completely worked,” Souza remembered.
“Sometimes you take a swing and you think, ‘Oh my god, that didn’t work.’ But this time, we stuck at it and it was just perfect,” he added. “Afterwards, Halyna sort of hooked her arm around me and we practically went skipping away off to the next set-up, because it was just that exciting. That one, for me, will always be my favorite shot in the movie.”
Rust does not have a U.S. release date yet.
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