Diksha Sundriyal
Joel Souza’s ‘Rust’ follows the story of an outlaw who discovers that his 13-year-old grandson is going to be hanged for accidentally killing a man. This leads him to get the boy and run from the law across the wild west, making both of them fugitives, who are chased by several parties. The story takes many twists and turns as the protagonist, Alec Baldwin’s Harland Rust, tries to do whatever it takes to keep his grandson alive. There are a lot of good things about the movie, but unfortunately, what it will go down in history for is the tragic accident that took place on its set and claimed the life of its cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins. The incident happened during a rehearsal scene, and for good reasons, the scene remains missing from the movie.
Joel Souza Removed all Hints of the Rehearsal Scene from Rust
The rehearsal scene that claimed the life of Halyna Hutchins and severely wounded the director, Joel Souza, was filmed in a church in New Mexico. Souza revealed that the scene focused on a wounded Harland Rust hiding from the men chasing him, including the bounty hunter and the sheriff. Considering the film’s plot, this scene would have been somewhere near the end, and it had to be one of the tensest moments in the story. The crew was still setting up the shot and was preparing to film the scene whose nitty-gritty still needed to be figured out when, unfortunately, things took a turn for the worse.
Following the incident, a legal procedure was carried out, and some time later, Souza was approached with the offer of completing the film. At first, he was repulsed by the possibility of returning to the set without Hutchins. However, he changed his mind when he discovered that her family had also agreed to the film being finished, with her husband joining the project as executive producer and receiving a portion of the profits with his son, Andros. With them on board, Souza knew he had to finish ‘Rust’ for his friend. However, he was also aware that the controversy surrounding the movie would invite viewers to be on the lookout for the scene where everything went wrong.
To prevent people from doing that, he decided to scrap the scene altogether. He completely rewrote the thing, creating a new scenario that has nothing to do with the church scene. He made sure that there was no trace of that scene. However, he and Bianca Cline, who joined the movie as its new cinematographer, ensured that Hutchins’ signature was all over the film. They tried to keep as much of Hutchins’ work in the movie as possible, and even with the new scenes, they tried to tell the story in the same visual language that she was going for. At the end of the day, finishing the movie was all about honouring Hutchins’ final work. Souza wanted ‘Rust’ to reflect her talent and love for filmmaking, which is also what he wants the audience to focus on, rather than the tragedy connected to it.
Read More: Rust Ending Explained: Is Harland Rust Dead?
