In the ‘Rust’ set shooting death, a sharpened focus on the assistant director

The outrage and disbelief over the death of “Rust” cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, shot by actor and producer Alec Baldwin during rehearsal of a scene Thursday, have many in the Hollywood production community talking about one man at the center of the tragedy: first assistant director Dave Halls. An industry veteran with credits dating to the early ’90s, Halls has worked on films such as “Bone Tomahawk,” “Balls of Fury,” “A Prairie Home Companion,” “Bad Santa,” “The Matrix Reloaded,” “A Simple Plan” and “Fargo.” In a grim coincidence, he worked as the first assistant director on the second unit of the 2000 movie “The Crow: Salvation,” the sequel to “The Crow,” the film on which Brandon Lee died in an on-set gun accident in 1993. Halls also was first assistant director and had a small on-screen role on the 2019 film “Darlin’,” for which Hutchins was the cinematographer. Filmmaker Aaron B. Koontz, who also knew Hutchins, worked with Halls twice: on the 2020 film “The Pale Door” and the 2017 film “Camera Obscura.” “Dave is extremely efficient and he’s very good at keeping the pace going and just moving at the speed that you have to move at in order to make your days,” Koontz said Saturday, emphasizing he has no direct knowledge of what happened on the “Rust” set.