It’s only a matter of time before a prop in a Quentin Tarantino movie, from paperbacks to instruments, is covered in blood or gets smashed into a million pieces. Unfortunately for the Martin Guitar Museum, the latter happened in The Hateful Eight to a rare guitar that dates back to the 1870s.
In the “crude, brilliant” movie, Kurt Russell’s Hangman grabs the guitar Jennifer Jason Leigh’s Daisy Domergue is playing, and, well, remember the “I gave my love a chicken that had no bones” scene from Animal House? Pretty much that. Russell assumed it was one of the copies of the Martin on set, not the genuine 145-year-old original, and the museum is not happy.
“We were informed that it was an accident on set,” [museum director Dick] Boak says. “We assumed that a scaffolding or something fell on it. We understand that things happen, but at the same time we can’t take this lightly. All this about the guitar being smashed being written into the script and that somebody just didn’t tell the actor, this is all new information to us. We didn’t know anything about the script or Kurt Russell not being told that it was a priceless, irreplaceable artifact from the Martin Museum.” (Via)
Hateful Eight sound mixer Mark Ulano said that Jason Leigh’s on-screen reaction to the demolishment is “genuine.” Can you blame Russell, though? No one told him it wasn’t a prop. He did what he was told to do, because:
(Via Reverb)
