How California has reacted to the Alec Baldwin ‘Rust’ shooting

Good morning, and welcome to the Essential California newsletter. It’s Tuesday, Oct. 26. I’m Justin Ray.

The news remains shocking. Cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was accidentally killed by a prop gun fired by actor and producer Alec Baldwin. The tragedy occurred Thursday afternoon during filming of a gunfight for a movie called “Rust.” Hutchins’ career was just taking off.

The latest development in the story has to do with a newly released search warrant; it reveals, among other things, that Baldwin was practicing removing a revolver from its holster and aiming toward the camera during rehearsal when director Joel Souza heard “what sounded like a whip and then a loud pop.”

The killing on the set at Bonanza Creek Ranch near Santa Fe has had reverberations here in California. Here are four ways the Golden State has been effected:

• A California state senator has called for a ban on live ammunition on movie sets and in theatrical productions. Sen. Dave Cortese (D-San Jose), chair of the Senate Labor Committee, said he would introduce legislation. However, with the Legislature now in recess, details of any bill are not likely to be available until January. “It is important that California establish new safety standards and best practices for all those who work in the industry and particularly in our own state,” Cortese said in a statement.
• ABC’s popular procedural “The Rookie” has banned the firing of real guns on the show. Alexi Hawley, the showrunner of the cop drama starring Nathan Fillion as a Los Angeles Police Department newcomer, wrote to crew members Friday with the new policy. Instead, replica toy guns will be used, with computer-generated muzzle flashes added in postproduction, he said.
• A petition is going around calling for the creation of Halyna’s Law, which would “ban the use of real firearms on film production sets and create a safe working environment for everyone involved.” Actors Olivia Wilde, Holland Taylor and others have tweeted their support for the petition. It currently has more than 28,000 signatures.
• On Sunday night, a crowd of some 300 film workers gathered in Burbank to pay tribute to Hutchins. “We’re here to mourn,” said Michael Miller, vice president of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE). “But I’m afraid we are also gathered with some frustration and a little bit of anger. Anger that too often the rush to complete productions and the cutting of corners puts safety on the back burner and puts crew members at risk.”

The deadly accident came on the heels of a major IATSE labor dispute in entertainment. The union, which represents Hollywood crews, recently reached an agreement on a new contract with major studios. The crews were upset about conditions like long hours and pay; apparently those issues were present on the New Mexico set.

Producers have announced that they are going to “pause” work on “Rust” as law enforcement officials investigate Hutchins’ shooting death.

Further reading:

— As further details emerge about a lack of safety protocols that led to the accidental firing of a prop gun on the New Mexico set of “Rust,” a portion of the script obtained by The Times depicts the scene in question.

— Productions regularly use operational firearms, arguably to add realism to the scene and authenticity to an actor’s performance. A story we published explains how weapons are usually handled on sets, and the precautions usually taken to ensure the safety of crew.

And now, here’s what’s happening across California:

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Northern California saw record rainfall Sunday from an atmospheric river storm system. Downtown Sacramento reported an all-time record 24-hour rainfall total of 5.44 inches, surpassing a mark set in 1880, officials announced early Monday. Rain began to taper off in the region by daylight, after pounding the area the previous day. About 125,000 residents across the state — from the Bay Area to Sacramento and Lake Tahoe and down to San Luis Obispo — were without power Monday morning, according to PG&E. Los Angeles Times

A pedestrian wades down a flooded street on Oct. 24, 2021, in Kentfield, Calif.

(Justin Sullivan / Getty Images)

Disneyland and neighboring California Adventure Park raised most daily ticket prices Monday and are adopting an even higher price to visit on the most popular days of the year, such as Christmas and New Year’s Eve. Daily ticket prices are jumping 3% to 8%, with standard daily parking rates going up by 20%. The parks last raised ticket prices by as much as 5% in February of 2020 — shortly before the parks closed for 13 months due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Los Angeles Times

Visitors walk toward Sleeping Beauty’s Castle at Disneyland in Anaheim.

(Associated Press)

L.A. STORIES

In L.A., at least our corrupt officials don’t have much power. The city’s political scandals look pretty small potatoes compared to those of some other places. That may be in part because of how L.A. city government is designed: to spread out power and keep too much of it out of the hands of any one politician. “If our City Hall scandals are not usually so brazenly corrupt as other cities’, it might not be for want of trying. But civic power is so flabby and diffuse that it’s hard to pull off a truly magnificent swindle,” Patt Morrison writes. Los Angeles Times

POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT

How the Claremont Institute has provided an academic movement to preserve Trumpism after Trump. In this essay, Tin Nguyen explains that the institution has molded commentators like Dinesh D’Souza, Laura Ingraham, and Ben Shapiro who have given an “intellectual” backing to the platform shaped by 45. “For the Claremont Institute, it was a largely seamless transition from criticizing immigration, affirmative action, and multiculturalism in obscurity to doing so more popularly in the name of defending Donald Trump.” Puck News

Californians next year could vote on a proposed initiative that would give parents more power to challenge policies they regard as problematic for kids’ schooling. It could set up legal battles with the state’s teachers unions and school districts. Currently, the state’s Constitution requires California to fund public education, but doesn’t say anything about the quality of that education. The proposed initiative, called the Constitutional Right to a High-Quality Public Education Act, would amend the Constitution to assert that all students have the right to a high-quality public education that “provides them with the skills necessary to fully participate in the economy, our democracy, and our society.” Sacramento Bee

HEALTH AND THE ENVIRONMENT

In a bid to stop overdose deaths, California could allow drug use at supervised sites. Deaths from drug overdoses have surged during the pandemic, claiming more than 90,000 lives last year across the country, according to federal data. As the numbers have soared, many experts, advocates and lawmakers have promoted an idea still fresh to the United States: giving people a safe place to inject drugs under supervision. Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) and other lawmakers are pushing to allow San Francisco, Oakland and the city and county of Los Angeles to approve entities to run such programs. Los Angeles Times

CALIFORNIA CULTURE

In some of the world’s most volatile regions, terrorist content and hate speech proliferate because Facebook remains short on moderators who speak local languages and understand cultural contexts. According to internal company documents from the former product manager-turned-whistleblower Frances Haugen, the platform has failed to develop artificial-intelligence solutions that can catch harmful content in different languages. “The root problem is that the platform was never built with the intention it would one day mediate the political speech of everyone in the world,” said one expert. Associated Press

An 18-year-old student at UC San Diego died early Saturday after he fell out of a bathroom window of a campus dormitory, county officials said Sunday. The San Diego County Medical Examiner’s office reported that Aaron Fan was at a party on the eighth floor of the dorm. Following a noise complaint, a campus officer entered the room and saw Fan go into the bathroom, the report said. A short while later, around 11:44 p.m. Friday night, witnesses saw Fan fall out of the bathroom window to the ground. He was transported to Scripps Memorial Hospital La Jolla, where he was diagnosed with multiple injuries and was pronounced dead early Saturday morning. San Diego Union-Tribune

CALIFORNIA ALMANAC

Los Angeles: 71 San Diego: Get a cool trash bin! 70 San Francisco: 63 San Jose: Get a kinetic table! 67 Fresno: 65 Sacramento: 62

AND FINALLY

Today’s California memory is from David Ollier Weber:

For the record: Friday’s newsletter misspelled musician Ritchie Valens’ first name as Richie.

If you have a memory or story about the Golden State, share it with us. (Please keep your story to 100 words.)

Please let us know what we can do to make this newsletter more useful to you. Send comments to essentialcalifornia@latimes.com.