[imagesource:here]

George Clooney once gathered together 14 of his best friends and gave each of them $1 million in cash.

Alec Baldwin wasn’t one of those 14 and I doubt he’ll even get as much as a Christmas card from Clooney this year.

The two have butted heads recently regarding on-set gun safety protocols.

The fatal Rust shooting has sent shockwaves through the industry, with Baldwin giving his first public interview to ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos this week.

His statement that he didn’t actually pull the gun’s trigger was attention-grabbing and now we have the full interview to go on.

Let’s start with what Clooney said last month during in an interview on WTF with Marc Maron via The Independent:

 “Why for the life of me this low-budget film, with producers who haven’t produced anything, wouldn’t have hired, for the armourer, someone with experience.”

He then called the situation “insane” and “infuriating”.

Clooney also detailed his experience of working with guns on movies: “I’ve been on sets for 40 years and the person that hands you the gun, the person that is responsible for the gun is either the prop person or the armour. Period.”

The Hail Caesar star added: “Every single time I’m handed a gun on set, I look at it, I open it, I show it to the person I’m pointing it to, we show it to the crew, every single take you hand it back to the armour when you’re done, and you do it again. Everyone does it.”

That’s highly critical of armourer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, who is responsible for handling all the on-set weapons, as well as Baldwin.

Just to get a final dig in, Clooney said that when an actor is handed “a six gun, you point it at the ground and you fire. You squeeze it six times. Always.”

During the interview with Stephanopoulos Baldwin hit back. This again via The Independent:

…Baldwin said [the comments] were “misplaced” and unhelpful.

“Well, there were a lot of people who felt it necessary to contribute some comment to the situation, which really didn’t help the situation at all,” he said.

“If your protocol is you’re checking the gun every time, well, good for you. Good for you,” he added.

“My protocol was to trust the person that had the job. And it worked up until this point.”

Until it didn’t and then Halyna Hutchins lost her life.

I don’t think it’s fair to lay too much blame at Baldwin’s feet but I also don’t work in the industry.

In terms of PR, I’m not too sure who told him this was a good angle to take:

When asked if he felt guilt over her death, the actor and producer, 63, said: “No. No. I feel that… someone is responsible for what happened and I can’t say who that is, but I know it’s not me. Honest to God, if I felt that I was responsible, I might’ve killed myself if I thought that I was responsible. And I don’t say that lightly.”

Perhaps he’s been advised to refrain from admitting feeling any guilt due to those lawsuits.

Baldwin also told Stephanopoulos that his career could well be over.

If you’re so inclined, here’s the interview in full. It’s been uploaded to ABC News’ YouTube channel in three parts:

[sources:independent&independent]