Posted on 10/22/2021 4:39:44 PM PDT by Copernicus
Red Flag warning! Blue Bloods Gun Safety Amateur Hour!
David Codrea highlights an incident on the set of Tom Selleck’s television show “Blue Bloods” wherein Mr Selleck chastises a bit player for “waving a real gun around with his finger on the trigger”.
In news reports NRA Director Tom Selleck is cast heroically for his response to the extra’s faux pas.
Aside from the well established notion it is bad juju to publicly humiliate “the little people” the larger point should not be ignored as well: if you have joined a ship of fools about to wreck in the shoals it may make you feeeeel better to yell at the cabin boy but it sure will not keep the ship from capsizing!
As one message board commentator observed– it was the worst kind of Hollywood celebrity prima donna temper tantrum–all sound and fury with no productive outcome.
Yes, hardly a poster boy for on-screen displays of gun safety, hero Selleck has pretty big feet of clay. At the end of the day he is just one more Hollyweird drama queen who does not know squat about which he rants.
Finger on the trigger when he slaps in the magazine! Good thing the slide was not locked back!
If the situation on his show has gotten to the point an extra in costume is “waving a gun around” many, many highly paid staffers failed in their appointed duties before the extra even auditioned for the role.
While Mr. Selleck was correct to react with alacrity, his fury more properly is, and ought to be, directed toward both the prop master and producer of his show.
This is a clear-cut case of Pot. Kettle. Black.
(Excerpt) Read more at johnjacobh.wordpress.com ...
Always avoid stupid people in large groups
I remember. Decapitated Vic Morrow and the child he was carrying; crushed the other one to death. I don’t think Landis suffered any type of accountability on that iirc.
Everything was caught on film. From multiple angles I believe.
Yep, Vic and 2 little Vietnamese kids playing extras. Helicopter got caught up in the pyrotechnics and ended up crashing into the set.
CC
"Landis said about the accident in a 1996 interview: "There was absolutely no good aspect about this whole story. The tragedy, which I think about every day, had an enormous impact on my career, from which it may possibly never recover."
Your career? 3 people died, you son of a bitch. Screw your career!
CC
Exactly. That’s what I’m talking about...no accountability. And the bigger they are (Landis) the less accountability they have.
horrible
Yeah, that sounded like some backstage chatter with someone standing next to the caller. In my brief experience with local amateur theater I quickly learned there was as much drama offstage as onstage. Some was justified, some not so much. I suspect movie production is not all that different, just more money riding on the outcome. “Hollyweird” is more than a description —for many an actual state of mind.
You may have missed the point of the commentary.
I thought the main idea was the focus on the chain of events that lead up to the precipitating incident. Selleck was correct in a too-little-too-late sort of way. Just like Alec Baldwin. As producer this tragedy was 100 percent his responsibility.
Read the last line of the editorial:
*********************************************************
Sorry Mr. Selleck, chalk up a demerit for yourself in this little tale.
You owe the bit player an apology. He has an excuse. He is an ordinary idiot. But your production staff and crew- what is THEIR excuse???
*******************************************************
And by the by, you HAVE read the comments your real life namesake Mark Twain made about guns?
A quick taste:
Don’t meddle with old unloaded firearms. They are the most deadly and unerring things that have ever been created by man. You don’t have to take any pains at all with them; you don’t have to have a rest, you don’t have to have any sights on the gun, you don’t have to take aim, even. No, you just pick out a relative and bang away, and you are sure to get him. A youth who can’t hit a cathedral at thirty yards with a Gatling gun in three-quarters of an hour, can take up an old empty musket and bag his mother every time at a hundred. Think what Waterloo would have been if one of the armies had been boys armed with old rusty muskets supposed not to be loaded, and the other army had been composed of their female relations. The very thought of it makes me shudder.
- Advice to Youth speech, 4/15/1882
I was armed to the teeth with a pitiful little Smith & Wesson’s seven-shooter, which carried a ball like a homopathic pill, and it took the whole seven to make a dose for an adult. But I thought it was grand. It appeared to me to be a dangerous weapon. It had only one fault—you could not hit anything with it. One of our ‘conductors’ practiced awhile on a cow with it, and as long as she stood still and behaved herself she was safe; but as soon as she went to moving about, and he got to shooting at other things, she came to grief.
- Roughing It
George Bemis . . . wore in his belt an old original “Allen” revolver, such as irreverent people called a “pepper-box.” Simply drawing the trigger back, cocked and fired the pistol. As the trigger came back, the hammer would begin to rise and the barrel to turn over, and presently down would drop the hammer, and away would speed the ball. To aim along the turning barrel and hit the thing aimed at was a feat which was probably never done with an “Allen” in the world. But George’s was a reliable weapon, nevertheless, because, as one of the stage-drivers afterward said, “If she didn’t get what she went after, she would fetch something else.” And so she did. She went after a deuce of spades nailed against a tree, once, and fetched a mule standing about thirty yards to the left of it. Bemis did not want the mule; but the owner came out with a double-barreled shotgun and persuaded him to buy it, anyhow. It was a cheerful weapon—the “Allen.” Sometimes all its six barrels would go off at once, and then there was no safe place in all the region round about, but behind it.
- Roughing It
Old school but effective no doubt.
To me the point of the article was things should never have reached the stage where Selleck needed to comment at all in any way.
The outburst itself was not incorrect, the on-set culture was completely incorrect.
Warmest regards,
So if he pointed a prop gun at people with his finger OFF the trigger that would be okay?
That is certainly the attitude His Lordship Baldwin takes toward everyone else.
Good for the goose good for the gander?
As everyone INSIDE the 2nd Amendment community knows the recipient of a weapon remains responsible for the condition and safe handling of said weapon while in his possession.
Alec Baldwin DID NOT check the condition of the weapon.
Alec Baldwin DID NOT keep his finger off the trigger.
Alec Baldwin DID NOT point the muzzle in a safe direction.
Alec Baldwin violated a virtual laundry list of protocols to singlehandedly injure two people in a work environment both as an actor and as a producer.
Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!
But for the grace of God there go we all!
I will BELIEVE he is ONE OF US when he starts ACTING like ONE OF US. Where was he when Wayne La Pierre was looting the NRA for 30 years?
The question is, did Tom Selleck do the right thing to stop an unsafe event as it was happening? The answer is yes.
Do we know what happened afterward, were there repercussions to the staff, which allowed the events to occur? I do not see evidence of it, one way or the other.
However, as this was a rare event, it appears the staff acted correctly most of the time.
Yes, I have read Samuel Clements remarks on pistols.
It was an early version of today's anti-Second Amendment screed, done with humor, and therefore more effective. I cringed when I first read those words, about 40 years ago. I still do today.
Clemens was not skilled with weapons, and he was not willing to become so; so he derided their effectiveness.
Clemens was a proto-Progressive.
He had considerable talent. I can see, now, how it was used to tear down the society which produced him.
Man, coffee, keyboard, nose, etc......
The extra was yelled at for pointing it AT people with his finger on the trigger. He was yelled at for TWO actions. Read my post again. The story claimed he was simply waving it around which wasn’t the case.
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