Kurt Russell has been a film star for longer than most of us have been alive. He’s a beloved pillar of the Hollywood institution, and he’s received various classics on his resume. (The Factor? Come on.) However a protracted public life comes with its share of regrets, and a few of these regrets will stick to an individual. For instance: Kurt Russell as soon as unintentionally smashed one of many oldest Martin guitars in existence, and he’s nonetheless not over it.
The fateful incident occurred when Kurt Russell was filming the 2015 Quentin Tarantino movie The Hateful Eight. Russell performs John “The Hangman” Ruth who’s bringing Jennifer Jason Leigh’s outlaw “Loopy” Daisy Domergue to the authorities once they’re each stranded in a tavern filled with harmful folks. Within the film, there’s a scene the place Leigh performs the Australian people ballad “Jim Jones Of Botany Bay” on acoustic guitar. Russell tells her that music time is over, and he grabs the guitar and smashes it. In that second, Russell didn’t understand that the guitar in query was a priceless Martin vintage, relationship again to the 1870s, that was on mortgage from the Martin Guitar Museum.
Within the film, Jennifer Jason Leigh reacts with horror to the guitar-smashing, and he or she apparently wasn’t performing. After the film got here out, sound mixer Mark Ulano advised SSN Insider the way it occurred: “The guitar was a loaner from the Martin Guitar Museum, and there have been six doubles made… What was imagined to occur was we had been imagined to go as much as that time, minimize, and commerce guitars and smash the double. Nicely, someway that didn’t get communicated to Kurt, so while you see that occur on the body, Jennifer’s response is real.” (Ulano implies that Tarantino may’ve deliberate the entire thing out to get a response from Leigh.) A rep for the Martin Guitar Museum advised Reverb that the entire thing was “very distressing” and vowed that it will “now not mortgage guitars to films underneath any circumstances.”
It’s been a very long time, however Kurt Russell evidently nonetheless feels fairly uncooked about it. In a latest Esquire video interview, Russell will get more and more pissed off whereas telling the story:
I really like how these tales evolve. Jennifer had a lot of guitars to work on this music that she was going to sing. The one specific guitar that she favored, I suppose, was this Martin. No one ever mentioned that it was 145 years outdated on the time. It was a Martin, and I bear in mind anyone on the factor saying, “I feel it’s value about $15,000.” I mentioned, “Oh, that’s cool.”
Then comes the day to shoot it. I knew that she’d been engaged on this one guitar, and since I’ve completed a thousand exhibits, I couldn’t even think about that they had been going to be utilizing the one guitar that she was going to be enjoying, not that it was a priceless Martin guitar. As a result of it wasn’t. No one mentioned that. No one made that declare. However once we did the take, you’ll be able to even see it. I type of give it an additional beat, and nothing. I am going forward and smash the guitar. I can inform — once I seize her and sit her down, I can inform she’s not comfortable about this. It’s like: One thing’s fallacious. In order quickly because it’s over, I say, “Inform me that’s not the guitar you’ve been working towards with,” and he or she [nods].
I solely felt dangerous about that. I give a shit concerning the guitar. Immediately now, inside every week, the guitar’s value $25,000. On the finish of the present, it’s value $45,000. And I promise you, in ten years, it’ll be older than Martin existed. I simply love how these city legends develop, to this point for me… [Changes voices to creepy whisper] I knew it was 145 years outdated! I do know it’s truly greater than that! It’s 182 years outdated, and it’s value $700 million!
Man, when he alters voices like that? That’s an actor!
