Welcome back to What I'm Hearing...

I’m Matt Belloni, former editor of The Hollywood Reporter and an entertainment attorney.

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But first...

The Halyna Hutchins Tragedy: 5 Questions

The killing of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins by a gun fired by Alec Baldwin on the set of Rust is too sad. And details are still coming out, so it’s too early for me to offer an assessment today. For now, I’ve just got five questions:

1. How did an inexperienced, 24-year old armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, come to preside over a live round being put into the gun that was then given to Baldwin? Especially after guns were already accidentally discharged?
   
   
2. What accountability, if any, will Baldwin have here? Not for pulling the trigger, but for his role as a producer on a shoot that it seems was far from properly managed?
   
   
3. “We’ve now had 3 accidental discharges. This is super unsafe.” That’s a text message from someone on set to the unit production manager, which the L.A. Times reported was sent before the Thursday shooting. If true, who failed to act on this specific warning? That text is presumably going to be the first line of any civil lawsuit filed on behalf of Hutchins’ family.  
   
   
4. If conditions on set were so bad that some crew members had walked out, why was the shoot allowed to continue with non-union workers?
   
   
5. The Brandon Lee death on The Crow led to widespread industry reforms. What will the long-term impact be here? ABC already banned “live” guns on The Rookie. More will certainly follow, right? 

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How Netflix Is Changing the Cancel Culture Conversation

It’s an open secret in Hollywood that many feel the movement toward greater accountability and inclusion sometimes goes too far—and are terrified of getting called out, themselves. Now Netflix has become an unwitting signpost in the culture wars, and some believe it may signal a turning point.

Don’t lie, you’ve had the “cancel culture” conversation. Probably many times. It’s an open secret in Hollywood that a sizable chunk of its power players feel the movement toward greater accountability and inclusion in public forums sometimes goes a bit too far. I hate that term, “cancel culture,” but it usually comes up when people criticize the recent shift in entertainment that, very broadly speaking, encompasses everything from aggressive efforts to increase race and gender representation to a lower tolerance for hateful speech and offensive personal behavior.   

You don’t hear it publicly, of course, but it’s a topic at lunch or via texts when a filmmaker is fired over old tweets or a studio apologizes for an insensitive casting decision. Some of it is just backlash from people for whom progressive change is threatening or uncomfortable. Others make a more legitimate point that Hollywood is currently dealing with a lot of threats to its existence that are probably more pressing than whether, say, a gay character is played by a gay actor. Either way, many people are terrified of doing something objectionable and getting called out. 

That’s why it was interesting to pick up chatter this week about the impact of the Dave Chappelle controversy. Netflix co-C.E.O. Ted Sarandos was faced with a choice...

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