In the wake of prosecutors in New Mexico announcing criminal charges in the 2021 fatal shooting on the set of Rust, California State Sen. Dave Cortese has voiced his intention to reintroduce legislation mandating additional safety protocols on film and television sets.
The senator said in a statement on Monday that he is planning on drafting a new version of a bill he introduced in 2022, which sought to introduce a “set safety supervisor” role and govern the use of firearms and blanks on productions. That bill — and rival proposed legislation that sought to take a different approach to set safety — ultimately died in the Appropriations Committee last year.
“Over the past several months, I’ve been working with stakeholders and leaders in the industry, including many entertainment workers, to push these real reforms forward and to avoid yet another tragedy on set,” Cortese said in a statement on Thursday. “What we’ve learned is this is an issue that needs to be addressed across the industry, rather than incident-by-incident, to bolster safety as a whole and ensure we keep productions safe for everyone.”
[The likely result of such a bill would be to push production out of state — although perhaps the decision in New Mexico to press criminal charges against Alec Baldwin might have Hollywood producers thinking twice about going places where their influence wanes. Besides, SAG-AFTRA has a pretty solid safety program already for its members. It just needs to be enforced. — Ed]
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