Alec Baldwin’s western film “Rust,” burdened by the tragic fatal shooting of its cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and the wounding of its director, Joel Souza, is finally being released in theaters though in an extremely limited way.

In a new interviews with The Guardian and the Washington Post, Souza didn’t say whether he’ll go out to see it. If he wanted to, he could presumably travel from his home in Pleasanton to the town next door, Livermore. A theater there appears to be the one place in the Bay Area it’s being screened. Otherwise, anyone curious to see “Rust,” even in a morbid, rubber-necking way, can catch it on demand on Friday.

Joel Souza, Fremont-born director and screenwriter, in 1999. 

But the Fremont-reared director and screenwriter told The Guardian that he definitely didn’t want to watch “The Baldwins,” the reality TV show that Baldwin co-starred in with his influencer wife, Hilaria Baldwin.

The TLC series, which premiered in February, showed the couple talking about how the shooting affected them, while also presenting them as soldiering on as parents to seven young children, amid the luxuries of their Manhattan penthouse and Hamptons mansion.

Critics blasted the show as “unnecessary” and “distasteful.” Souza told The Guardian he didn’t watch it. “I think I was busy hitting myself in the face with a frying pan that night,” he said.

In the interviews, Souza talked about the other challenges of trying to survive in the aftermath of the shooting during the October 2021 production.  He even told The Guardian that he wishes he never wrote the script in the first place, in light of how the production so drastically altered his life and ended Hutchins’ life. On Day 12 of the production, while he, Hutchins and Baldwin were rehearsing a gunfight scene in an old church on the film’s New Mexico set, an old-fashioned revolver that Baldwin was handling fired.

It was supposed to be loaded with dummy rounds but a live round had found its way into the chamber. The Ukrainian cinematographer was fatally wounded, while Souza was hit in the shoulder by the same bullet that killed her.

Souza still goes over that October day in his head, as he told The Guardian. “You think about the chain of events that started that morning. Bad decision after bad decision was made.” When asked if he, as the film’s writer-director, wishes he could have done anything different, he said. “Talk about the butterfly effect. I wish I never wrote the damn movie.”

In the aftermath, a criminal investigation was launched and lawsuits were filed, all trying to assign blame and find someone to hold responsible. In March 2024, the movie’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter; she received an 18-month sentence. In July 2024, Baldwin also went on trial for involuntary manslaughter but the case against him was dismissed after a judge determined that some of the evidence had been mishandled.

Amid the criminal investigation and case settlement talks, Souza and Baldwin went back to work on finishing the movie. Eighteen months had passed since Hutchins’ death and her family, including her husband and young son, hoped that “Rust” could be completed in order to honor her work on the film she started.

“I’d been repelled by the thought of going back, but now it started to appeal,” Souza told The Guardian. “And I couldn’t live with the idea of someone else doing it.”

That meant that Souza had to go back to work with the actor who shot him. At least, Souza said, the famously temperamental Baldwin agreed to fall in line after they originally had disagreements over the nature of his character. Baldwin plays Harlan Rust, a grizzled 19th-century outlaw who must come to the rescue of his fugitive grandson — who, in a sad coincidence, is wanted for accidentally shooting someone.

“There were fights I needed not to have,” Souza said. “That was the only way I could get through this.”

Souza told The Guardian that the crew helped him get through the shooting. “I was a mess going in and a mess coming out,” he said. “The crew carried me through. My family carried me through. Emotionally, I was all over the map.”

Souza also told the Post that he expects that the production was “emotionally fraught” for Baldwin. But since the production wrapped, he apparently has had no contact with the actor, who was not invited to the film’s premiere in November at a film festival in Poland meant to celebrate the art of cinematography.

Souza was reluctant to say much else about the actor to The Guardian or the Post, though he previously told Vanity Fair: “We’re not friends. We’re not enemies. There’s no relationship.”