#Rust Assistant Director And Armorer Have Hired Legal Representation

There’s executive producer Allen Cheney, who is the son of a banker and native of Thomasville, Georgia, which bears the name of his production company Thomasville Pictures. Then there’s producer Ryan Donnell Smith who is Cheney’s business partner and a partner at Streamline Global LLC, which “helps wealthy individuals get tax breaks by investing in movies that use government incentives.” What a delight.

And of course, actor and producer Alec Baldwin, who fired the shot. There are a few other producers floating around as well, including Nathan Klingher, Ryan Winterstern, Matt DelPiano, and Anjul Nigam. According to some “Rust” crew members, more than a few of them were on set that day. 

While the involvement a producer has in the actual production of a film varies, Cheney’s statement paints a different picture than what we’ve heard from the set of “Rust,” one where everything was 100% above board and absolutely none of the producers were involved:

The six credited producers on the independent film “Rust,” Ryan Smith, Alec Baldwin, Nathan Klingher, Ryan Winterstern, Matt DelPiano and Anjul Nigam, collectively have more than 35 years’ experience producing small to mid-level film and television projects … “Rust” is a union-certified production, in good standing with all of the major production unions and guilds, including IATSE, the Teamsters, SAG, and DGA. Consistent with financing partners across productions of all sizes, Streamline Global, Emily Salveson and I received executive producer credit on the film “Rust,” having no involvement with the physical and day to day production.

Due to the number of producers and companies involved in the production of “Rust,” it is harder than it should be to tell who should shoulder the blame for the on-set conditions that led to the murder, and while it’s obviously not so they can get away with murder, it’s definitely puts maximizing profits above all else. As Travis Knox, professor of producing at Chapman University, so eloquently puts it:

Any producer that had worked on that film, that witnessed the alleged safety violations leading up to this, will no doubt have to hold a certain amount of accountability … There is no way that all six companies are responsible because some of those are just production companies in name. In today’s world, producer credits get handed out like Tic Tacs, and that’s what’s happened here.