By Morgan Lee
SANTA FE, NM (AP) --The judge hearing the wrongful death lawsuit against actor Alec Baldwin and an array of producers and crew linked to a fatal film set shooting agreed Monday to seal from public view the terms of a proposed settlement agreement in the case that benefits the son of slain cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.
The New Mexico judge said the right to privacy for Hutchins' 10-year-old son overrides obligations for public disclosure and ordered that settlement documents and approval hearings be sealed in the civil lawsuit that argues that Baldwin and other film crewmembers ignored industry gun safety standards on the set of the Western film "Rust" ahead of the 2021 shooting.
"What is driving my decision is really the interests of the minor child. And that is one of the very most powerful reasons to seal a matter," District Court Judge Bryan Biedscheid said in a videoconference hearing of the Santa Fe-based court.
Baldwin, an actor and coproducer of the film, was pointing a pistol at Hutchins during a rehearsal on the film's set outside Santa Fe when the gun went off, killing her and wounding director Joel Souza. He and other defendants have disputed the accusations that they were lax with safety standards.
Widower Matthew Hutchins filed the wrongful death suit last year against "Rust" producers, including Baldwin, as well as members of the film crew with safety responsibilities and an ammunition supplier. Son Andros Hutchins, who was 9 at the time of the shooting, is also named as a plaintiff.
Attorneys for they boy said Monday that secrecy provisions are paramount to protect his privacy and finalize a settlement with "Rust" producers.
Knowledge of the settlement terms also will be off limits to people beyond "Rust" producers who were named as defendants in the lawsuit, including weapons supervisor Hannah Gutierrez-Reed. Several of those defendants objected to being left in the dark on details of the settlement, though approval of the agreement should end their involvement in the wrongful death suit.
Gutierrez-Reed and Baldwin are also confronting criminal charges of involuntary manslaughter in separate court proceedings and have pleaded not guilty, with two weeks of evidentiary hearings scheduled in May.
Matthew Hutchins outlined a proposed settlement agreement in October that opened the way for filming of "Rust" to resume in Montana. He'll serve as a producer.
Jennifer Kent On Why Her Feature Directing Debut, “The Babadook,” Continues To Haunt Us
"The Babadook," when it was released 10 years ago, didn't seem to portend a cultural sensation.
It was the first film by a little-known Australian filmmaker, Jennifer Kent. It had that strange name. On opening weekend, it played in two theaters.
But with time, the long shadows of "The Babadook" continued to envelop moviegoers. Its rerelease this weekend in theaters, a decade later, is less of a reminder of a sleeper 2014 indie hit than it is a chance to revisit a horror milestone that continues to cast a dark spell.
Not many small-budget, first-feature films can be fairly said to have shifted cinema but Kent's directorial debut may be one of them. It was at the nexus of that much-debated term "elevated horror." But regardless of that label, it helped kicked off a wave of challenging, filmmaker-driven genre movies like "It Follows," "Get Out" and "Hereditary."
Kent, 55, has watched all of this โ and those many "Babadook" memes โ unfold over the years with a mix of elation and confusion. Her film was inspired in part by the death of her father, and its horror elements likewise arise out of the suppression of emotions. A single mother (Essie Davis) is struggling with raising her young son (Noah Wiseman) years after the tragic death of her husband. A figure from a pop-up children's book begins to appear. As things grow more intense, his name is drawn out in three chilling syllables โ "Bah-Bah-Doooook" โ an incantation of unprocessed grief.
Kent recently spoke from her native Australia to reflect on the origins and continuing life of "The Babadook."
Q: Given that you didn't set out to in any way "change" horror, how have you regarded the unique afterlife of "The... Read More