Wounded 'Rust' Director Speaks Out On Fatal Shooting, Decision To Finish Movie

“Rust” director Joel Souza, in his first interview since the movie’s fatal shooting in 2021, has recalled the moment that a prop gun held by Alec Baldwin shot him and cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, and how he later came to the decision to finish the film.

In a Vanity Fair article published online Thursday, Souza described the whole incident as “bizarre,” saying he remembered watching Baldwin’s 1990 spy thriller “The Hunt for Red October” as a kid and imagining himself now saying, “Hey, that guy…someday…”

“When I tell someone it ruined me, I don’t mean in the sense that people might generally think,” he said of the shooting, which killed Hutchins. “I don’t mean that it put my career in ruins. I mean, internally, the person I was just went away.”

Souza said he was positioned behind Hutchins on the film’s New Mexico set when there was an enormous bang — and not the “poof and a pop” associated with the blanks commonly used in movies.

A prop gun given to Baldwin had been loaded with live ammunition. A bullet passed through Hutchins’ chest and into Souza’s shoulder, where it became lodged — with the director saying it narrowly missing his spine and lung.

Souza staggered backward, he said, and amid his disorientation and the panic around him, he saw Hutchins being lowered to sit down as blood seeped through her white shirt. They were both rushed to hospitals, with him in an ambulance and her in a helicopter.

“At the hospital, the doctor was like, ‘You have a bullet in you.’ And I was just like, ‘What the hell are you talking about? You’re wrong,’” he said. “I kept explaining that I’d come from a movie set and it’s not possible for there to be a real bullet on a movie set. It’s not allowed. You can’t have it. This is the