Springtime for Baldwin

 

Springtime for Baldwin

©2021 Ross Williams

Alec Baldwin has a tortured personal life and a smug professional life. He's a decent actor – not great, but not bad. I appreciate his acting in many films and TV shows. He has great range as an actor, able to elicit the subtle nuances of personality from the characters he portrays.

He was the perfect arrogant, clueless, narcissistic twit Hollywood boyfriend of Julia Roberts in Notting Hill. He was the perfect arrogant, clueless, narcissistic twit Hollywood bubbleboy star in State and Main. He was the perfect arrogant, clueless, narcissistic twit television network head in 30 Rock. It's impressive how he pulled together so much self-centeredness for these roles – possibly while trying to play Words With Friends during take-off – with nothing in his personal life from which to draw.

Maybe.

I felt bad for him, though. Once. He had been married to Kim Bassinger. But that's not what I felt bad about. Hubba hubba. He and Kim had a child. A daughter. Then he and Kim got divorced. And Kim was given custody [go figure].

Then – according to everything in the papers – the daughter, Ireland, began to display classic behavioral symptoms of parental alienation syndrome toward Alec. Which meant that Kim was committing emotional abuse upon the child, poisoning the child's impression of her own father, a crime far too many custodial mothers commit and which is never prosecuted for what it is. It's barely even acknowledged.

Apparently channeling the self-centered characters he so often plays, he failed to understand that a child of divorced parents living almost exclusively with just one of those parents will, quite rapidly, take on the custodial parent's attitude toward the non-custodial parent. And then act on it.

After weeks or months [actually, six years] of enduring his daughter acting out the ire that his ex-wife had for him, Alec Baldwin thoughtlessly left his 11 year-old a voice mail calling her a “thoughtless little pig”. In the same voice mail, he referred to Kim Bassinger as a “thoughtless pain in the ass” which, given the circumstances, would make sense. Like divorced mother-with-custody like daughter of divorce.

The blame the victim icing on this soured wedding cake is that the phrase “thoughtless little pig” was brandished as a weapon to accuse Baldwin of the emotional child abuse Bassinger had been committing. This caused a thoughtless little petit Napoleon attached to the divorce court to suspend visitation. “Visitation”. The ritualistic duty we give to the recently deceased. That's modern American divorce for ya.

Diverging from this clueless self-centeredness, though, Alec Baldwin has portrayed political figures on comedy shows in generally non-comedic ways, always to rave reviews of his work by those whose appreciation of comedy turns on non-comedic properties.

Abandoning the smug arrogance of so many of his character portrayals, he has publicly mocked those who've killed others in accidental shootings for the political mileage his [non-arrogant, non-clueless, non-narcissistic] personal gun-control views gain. Taking political advantage of others' tragedy is a noble and sensitive thing to do. Such noble sensitivity is just so Hollywood.

Then this last week on the set of, Rust, a B-movie Western he's starring in, Alec Baldwin gets handed a prop gun to rehearse a close-up for a gun fight scene. He's supposed to fire it at the camera for the dramatic at the audience view.

The gun had a live round in it, instead of a blank, when he pulled the trigger. ...as it was pointed at the camera. The film's cinematographer behind the camera was shot, and the film's director standing behind the cinematographer was hit by the pass-through bullet.

The cinematographer died.

Of course, many people who don't appreciate the subtle nuance of his out-of-nowhere portrayals of arrogant, clueless, narcissistic twits or his completely opposite real-life personality that mocks the unwitting perpetrators of similar tragic events, have taken to mocking him for being an arrogant, clueless, narcissistic twit who unwittingly took another's life. And it's truly unfair to Alec. After all, there's an entire professional Hollywood chain of command responsible for the safety and proper disposition of weapons used in television and films long before the prop gets handled by the doofus actor plying his craft.

First, there's the prop master, the “armorer”. The professional Hollywood prop master on this film was making her professional debut. Her professional credentials include having a quick draw exhibitionist and Hollywood firearms consultant for a father, having professionally multi-hued hair and “body art”, and having her professional Tik Tok twerking followed by 2,600 people.

Next, there is the assistant director, a consummate professional with a long trail of complaints about movie set safety behind him and, possibly, ahead of him once again. He professionally handed the gun to the doofus actor claiming, without checking, that it was unloaded despite the same gun having been test-fired by a stunt double twice earlier with identical live-round discharge.

One may be inclined at this point to suggest that perhaps the professionalism on this movie set was not exactly knowledgeable about what firearm safety consists of. This would be completely unfair. Oh, sure, there were continuing complaints of unprofessionalism on the set. The film's union camera crews did indeed vacate the set earlier in the day complaining about unprofessional working conditions. The working conditions they were complaining about were being put up in hotels an hour's drive from the set and not getting paid on time. ...which is what professionalism consists of to Hollywood union workers. In order to continue shooting, the producers replaced the union camera crews with non-union crews, which is totally unprofessional. Naturally.

But that brings us to the third level of the professional chain of command for the proper disposition of weapons used in films: the producers. Those who front the money to hire the right people who know what they're doing, and enough of the right people that no one gets overworked and careless.

Even if you wish to unfairly impugn the professionalism of a doofus actor known for arrogant, clueless, narcissistic personal behavior and professional characterizations, a movie set armorer on her first armoring job, and an assistant director with a history of safety issues, it still boils down to the producers of the film providing enough money to hire the right crew.

And The Producers are...