Kurt Russell has, unbeknownst to him at the time, managed to destroy an irreplaceable guitar during a scene in Quentin Tarantino’s recent film The Hateful Eight.
The scene in which Russell’s paranoid bounty hunter snatches a guitar from Jennifer Jason Leigh’s character, as she is playing a particularly haunting song and smashes it against a pillar while quipping, “music time’s over!”, was supposed to feature a stand in guitar instead of the one-of-a-kind Martin from the 1870’s which he inadvertently turned into wood chips.
The guitar was on loan to the film studio from the Martin Guitar Museum, and the studio didn’t seem all that keen on revealing what had happened to the over a century old guitar, merely telling the museum that an “accident” had occurred. Dick Boak, the director of the museum, archives, and special projects for C.F. Martin & Co has expressed his sadness over the incident to Reverb.
“We want to make sure that people know that the incident was very distressing to us, we can’t believe that it happened. I don’t think anything can really remedy this. We’ve been remunerated for the insurance value, but it’s not about the money. It’s about the preservation of American musical history and heritage.”
When Mark Ulano, the movie’s sound mixer spoke to SNN Insider, he was kind enough to explain that the whole incident came down to a simple miscommunication.
“What was supposed to happen was we were supposed to go up to that point, cut, and trade guitars and smash the double. Well, somehow that didn’t get communicated to Kurt, so when you see that happen on the frame, Jennifer’s reaction is genuine.”
The Hateful Eight has made headlines over its music in the past, and hopefully future headlines about the film won’t involve the destruction of priceless musical instruments, which might now be a little harder to obtain since Dick Boak also mentioned that, “as a result of the incident, the company will no longer loan guitars to movies under any circumstances.” That’s probably for the best.
Watch the scene:
Image Credit: Slate.com