Guilty Pleasures
By Associated Press
Gun and ammunition evidence is the focus as Baldwin trial starts second day
SANTA FE, N.M. | Prosecutors sought to cast Alec Baldwin as someone who flouts rules and has little regard for safety at the first day of his New Mexico trial in the shooting of a cinematographer.
Special prosecutor Erlinda Ocampo Johnson repeatedly referred to Baldwin playing “make-believe” with a revolver on the set of the film “Rust,” and said it led to very real danger and the death of Halyna Hutchins, whom she called “a vibrant 42-year-old rising star.”
Ocampo Johnson told jurors in her opening statement Wednesday that Baldwin “requested to be assigned the biggest gun available” and that during a training session for it, he had “people filming him while he’s running around shooting this gun.”
The prosecutor said behind-the-scenes video will show Baldwin casually disregarding basic firearm safety.
“You will see him using this gun as a pointer to point at people, point at things,” Ocampo Johnson said. “You will see him cock the hammer when he is not supposed to cock the hammer, you will see him put his finger on the trigger when his finger’s not supposed to be on the trigger.”
Hutchins’ death and the wounding of director Joel Souza nearly three years ago sent shock waves through the film industry. The fatal shooting led to the felony involuntary manslaughter charge against Baldwin, the 66-year-old star of “30 Rock” and frequent host of “Saturday Night Live,” that could result in up to 18 months in prison.
His wife Hilaria Baldwin, younger brother Stephen Baldwin and older sister Elizabeth Keuchler sat behind him in the gallery again Thursday as the trial got off to a stumbling start on its second day.
Baldwin’s attorney Alex Spiro asked crime scene technician Marissa Poppell detailed questions about how she collected and handled the gun and the live rounds that somehow ended up on the set, but he was frequently interrupted by objections from the prosecution and subsequent sidebars with the judge.
The day’s testimony was expected to focus largely on the collection of evidence and the revolver Baldwin used.
Seated in two rows of eight each, jurors and alternate jurors scrawled notes as they listened to testimony. Jurors have their own close-up view of visual exhibits, with six monitors installed in the jury box.
Poppell’s questioning by the prosecution a day earlier allowed them to see in person the revolver and the spent round that killed Hutchins.
Spiro emphasized in his opening statement that Baldwin on the “Rust” set did what actors always do.
“He must be able to take that weapon and use it in the way that the person he’s playing would,” Spiro told jurors.
That includes pulling the trigger. Baldwin has said the gun fired accidentally, but Spiro said that it still would not be manslaughter even if he had willfully fired it.
“On a movie set, you’re allowed to pull that trigger,” Spiro said.
Spiro called the shooting an “unspeakable tragedy” and that an “amazing person” dies, but said the responsibility lies with the film’s armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, who has already been convicted of involuntary manslaughter, and of assistant director David Halls, who told Baldwin the gun was “cold.”
“It had been checked and double checked by those responsible for ensuring the gun was safe,” Spiro said. “He did not tamper with it, he did not load it himself. He did not leave it unattended.”
The first witness to take the stand was Nicholas LeFleur, the first law enforcement officer to arrive at the movie set at Bonanza Creek Ranch after the shooting, and his lapel camera video gave jurors a glimpse of the chaotic scene: a grim view of an apparently unconscious Hutchins as LeFleur and others worked to revive her.
Later in the video, LeFleur can be seen telling Baldwin not to speak to the other potential witnesses, but Baldwin repeatedly does.
“Was Mr. Baldwin supposed to be talking about the incident?” special prosecutor Kari Morrissey asked him.
“No ma’am,” LeFleur replied.
“Does he appear to be doing it anyway?” Morrissey asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” LeFleur said.
Shelley Duvall, star of ‘The Shining,’ ‘Nashville,’
dies at 75
Shelley Duvall, the intrepid, Texas-born movie star whose wide-eyed, winsome presence was a mainstay in the films of Robert Altman and who co-starred in Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining,” has died. She was 75.
Duvall died Thursday in her sleep at her home in Blanco, Texas, her longtime partner, Dan Gilroy, announced. The cause was complications of diabetes, said her friend, the publicist Gary Springer.
“My dear, sweet, wonderful life, partner, and friend left us last night,” Gilroy said in a statement. “Too much suffering lately, now she’s free. Fly away beautiful Shelley.”
Duvall was attending junior college in Texas when Altman’s crew members, preparing to film “Brewster McCloud,” encountered her at a party in Houston in 1970. They introduced her to the director, who cast her in “Brewster McCloud” and made her his protege.
Duvall would go on to appear in Altman films including “Thieves Like Us,” “Nashville, “Popeye,” “Three Women” and “McCabe & Ms. Miller.”
“He offers me damn good roles,” Duvall told The New York Times in 1977. “None of them have been alike. He has a great confidence in me, and a trust and respect for me, and he doesn’t put any restrictions on me or intimidate me, and I love him. I remember the first advice he ever gave me: ‘Don’t take yourself seriously.’”
Duvall, gaunt and gawky, was no conventional Hollywood starlet. But she had a beguiling frank manner and exuded a singular naturalism. The film critic Pauline Kael called her the “female Buster Keaton.”
At her peak, Duvall was a regular star in some of the defining movies of the 1970s. In “The Shining” (1980), she played Wendy Torrance, who watches in horror as her husband, Jack (Jack Nicholson), goes crazy while their family is isolated in the Overlook Hotel. It was Duvall’s screaming face that made up half of the film’s most iconic image, along with Jack’s axe coming through the door.
Kubrick, a famous perfectionist, was notoriously hard on Duvall in making “The Shining.” His methods of pushing her through countless takes in the most anguished scenes took a toll on the actor. One scene was reportedly performed in 127 takes. The entire shoot took 13 months. Duvall, in an interview in 1981 with People magazine said she was crying “12 hours a day for weeks on end” during the film’s production.
“I will never give that much again,” said Duvall. “If you want to get into pain and call it art, go ahead, but not with me.”
Duvall disappeared from movies almost as quickly as she arrived in them. By the 1990s, she began retiring from acting and retreated from public life.
“How would you feel if people were really nice, and then, suddenly, on a dime, they turn on you?” Duvall told the Times earlier this year. “You would never believe it unless it happens to you. That’s why you get hurt, because you can’t really believe it’s true.”
Duvall, the oldest of four, was born in Fort Worth, Texas, on July 7, 1949. Her father, Robert, was a cattle auctioneer before working in law and her mother, Bobbie, was a real estate agent.
Duvall was 20 when she met Altman. She was also engaged to the artist Bernard Sampson, whom she married in 1970. They divorced four years later. Duvall was in a long-term relationship with the musician Paul Simon in the late ‘70s after meeting during the making of Woody Allen’s “Annie Hall.” (Duvall played the rock critic who keeps declaring things “transplendent.”) She also dated Ringo Starr. During the making of the 1990 Disney Channel movie “Mother Goose Rock ‘n’ Roll,” Duvall met the musician Dan Gilroy, of the group Breakfast Club, who she remained with until her death.
Duvall’s run in the 1970s was remarkably versatile. In the rugged Western “McCabe & Mrs. Miller” (1971), she played the mail-order bride Ida. She was a groupie in “Nashville” (1975) and Olive Oyl, opposite Robin Williams, in “Popeye” (1980). In “3 Women,” co-starring Sissy Spacek and Janice Rule, Duvall played Millie Lammoreaux, a Palm Springs health spa worker, and won best actress at the Cannes Film Festival.
In the 1980s, Duvall produced and hosted a number of children’s TV series, among them “Faerie Tale Theatre,” “Tall Tales & Legends” and “Shelley Duvall’s Bedtime Stories.”
Duvall moved back to Texas in the mid-1990s. Around 2002, after making the comedy “Manna from Heaven,” she retreated from Hollywood completely. Her whereabouts became a favorite topic of internet sleuths. A favorite but incorrect theory was that it was residual trauma from the grueling shoot for “The Shining.” Another was that the damage to her home after the Northridge Earthquake was the last straw.
To those living in Texas Hill Country, where Duvall lived for some 30 years, she was neither in “hiding” nor a recluse; But her circumstances were a mystery to both the media and many of her old Hollywood friends. That changed in 2016, when producers for the Dr. Phil show tracked her down and aired a controversial hourlong interview with her in which she spoke about her mental health issues. “I’m very sick. I need help,” Duvall said on the program, which was widely criticized for being exploitative.
“I found out the kind of person he is the hard way,” Duvall told The Hollywood Reporter in 2021.
THR journalist Seth Abramovitch wrote at the time that he went on a pilgrimage to find her because, “it didn’t feel right for McGraw’s insensitive sideshow to be the final word on her legacy.”
Duvall attempted to restart her career, dipping her toe in with the indie horror “The Forest Hills” that filmed in 2022 and premiered quietly in early 2023.
“Acting again — it’s so much fun,” Duvall told People at the time. “It enriches your life.”
Library of Congress awards prize for American fiction to James McBride
NEW YORK | The Library of Congress has awarded a lifetime achievement prize to James McBride, whose acclaimed novels include “The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store,” “Deacon King Kong” and “The Good Lord Bird.”
Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden announced Thursday that McBride, whose story lines have ranged from the crusades of abolitionist John Brown to a Brooklyn neighborhood in the 1960s, is this year’s winner of the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. The award, previously given to Marilynne Robinson and Don DeLillo among others, is given to an American author who excels as a prose stylist and creative thinker.
“I’m honored to bestow the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction on a writer as imaginative and knowing as James McBride,” Hayden said in a statement. “McBride knows the American soul deeply, reflecting our struggles and triumphs in his fiction, which so many readers have intimately connected with. I, also, am one of his enthusiastic readers.”
McBride, 66, said in a statement that he was wished his mother were alive to hear of his prize. He then joked, “Does it mean I can use the Library? If so, I’m double thrilled.”
McBride has been among the country’s most honored authors in recent years, winning a National Book Award for “Good Lord Bird,” the Kirkus Prize for “The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store” and the Carnegie Medal for “Deacon King Kong,” which Oprah Winfrey chose for her book club. In 2016, he was given a National Humanities Medal.
On Aug. 24, he will discuss “The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store” at the National Book Festival in Washington, D.C., a gathering hosted by the Library of Congress.
Man suspected of killing the family of BBC radio commentator has been found
LONDON | British police said they found Wednesday the man suspected of killing three women, the wife and daughters of a well-known BBC radio commentator, near London in a brutal crossbow attack.
In a statement, Hertfordshire Police said 26-year-old Kyle Clifford was found in the Enfield area of north London, near his home, and that he is receiving medical treatment for his injuries. Police did not say how those injuries happened but stressed that they had not fired any shots.
The BBC confirmed that the women killed were members of the family of its commentator John Hunt — his 61-year-old wife Carol Hunt and their daughters Hannah, 28, and Louise, 25.
Footage from Sky News showed the suspect being carried on a stretcher out of Lavender Hill Cemetery in Enfield, which is close to his home and around 17 miles to the east from the site of the killings. Armed police officers, forensic personnel and ambulance staff had massed around the cemetery through the day.
The public had been urged not to approach Clifford, who the BBC reported had been in the British Army for a brief period of service in 2022.
“Following extensive inquiries, the suspect has been located and nobody else is being sought in connection with the investigation at this time,” said Detective Inspector Justine Jenkins from the Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire Major Crime Unit.
“This continues to be an incredibly difficult time for the victims’ family and we would ask that their privacy is respected as they come to terms with what has happened,” she added.
Jenkins said the investigation is moving “at pace” and that formal identification of the victims is yet to take place. She also said that the “premature” naming of the victims “caused great upset.”
Police had been scouring a park in north London, near the home of Clifford, after being alerted Tuesday about the killings in a house in Bushey, a residential area in northwestern London. Police and ambulance crews tried to save them, but they were pronounced dead at the scene.
John Hunt is the main racing commentator for BBC 5 Live, the corporation’s main news and sports radio channel. His voice is known to millions through his coverage of the world famous Grand National and The Derby.
A colleague of Hunt’s and BBC 5 Live’s lead presenter Mark Chapman struggled to hold back the tears as he expressed everyone’s shock and pain.
“We have a football match to bring you tonight … and we will start our buildup to it shortly but this has been a heartbreaking day,” he said as he opened Wednesday’s coverage on 5 Live of England’s semifinal match against The Netherlands in soccer’s European Championship.
“John Hunt is our colleague and our friend, not just to the current 5 Live sport team but to all of those who’ve worked here with him over the past 20 years, and also to all of you who have enjoyed his superb commentaries,” Chapman said. “So on behalf of everyone connected to 5 Live Sport, our love and thoughts and support are with John and his family.”
The Daily Mail newspaper and others reported that Hunt found the bodies early Tuesday evening, after returning home from reporting at Lingfield Park racecourse south of London.
Police did not say how or whether Clifford was connected to the women, but British media had reported that he was an ex-boyfriend of one of the daughters.
Chief Superintendent Jon Simpson suggested the attack was not random and that the suspect knew the family.
Local council member Laurence Brass, who lives nearby, described the area as “a typical leafy British suburb” as he recounted his experience from the previous night.
“At about eight o’clock last night, I was watching the football on television, and suddenly a helicopter landed in the lawn outside my flat, which is at the top of this road, and then my phone started going, and I was told that there was a major incident here in Bushey and we should all keep away because there was somebody apparently on the run,” he told the BBC.
Britain’s new home secretary, Yvette Cooper, was kept “fully informed” about the “truly shocking” incident.
People in Britain do not need a license to own a crossbow, but it is illegal to carry one in public without a reasonable excuse.
A spokesperson for the Home Office said Cooper will “swiftly consider” the findings from a recently launched review into whether further controls on crossbows should be introduced.
—From AP reports
