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Kurt Russell Smashes a 150-Year-Old Martin Guitar…ooops.!

It turns out Kurt Russell went a little too far in portraying a cagey bounty hunter in Quentin Tarantino’s latest movie "The Hateful Eight."

The actor is responsible for destroying a 145-year-old guitar during shooting.

The guitar, which Jennifer Jason Leigh’s character plays in one scene until it’s snatched by Russell, who then smashes it against a pillar, was a one-of-a-kind Martin from the 1870s that was on loan from the Martin Guitar Museum.

In all fairness, Russell didn't know he was handling an antique in the scene. And according to Dick Boak, the director of the museum, archives, and special projects for C.F. Martin & Co., the production didn't fess up to exactly how the guitar was destroyed.

“We assumed that a scaffolding or something fell on it,” Boak toldReverb. “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.”

So what went wrong?

The film’s sound mixer, Mark Ulano, filled in SSN Insider:

"What was supposed to happen was we were supposed to go up to that point, cut, and trade guitars and smash the double,” according to Ulano, who said six doubles were made of the Martin guitar. “Well, somehow that didn’t get communicated to Kurt, so when you see that happen on the frame, Jennifer’s reaction is genuine.”

Here’s the destruction of the Martin in the movie (check out Leigh’s reaction at the end):

Boak told Reverb that the museum has been remunerated for the insurance value of the guitar.

But that wasn't enough to heal the matter.

"As a result of the incident, the company will no longer loan guitars to movies under any circumstances,” Boak told SSN.

Business Insider contacted Boak to try to get an idea of the value of the destroyed guitar. He said he wouldn't provide more comments about the matter, only stating, “It’s not replaceable.”

;-(

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Permalink Reply by Fomhorach on April 11, 2016 at 12:01pm

Oops

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Permalink Reply by Murdoc_420 on April 12, 2016 at 1:32pm

Exactly, they have 5 duplicates made, would anyone have known the difference if one of those was seen/played/smashed?

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Permalink Reply by Fomhorach on April 11, 2016 at 8:15pm

I wonder what happened to the bits? Pass them here please! I can still use them.;)

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Permalink Reply by the anonymous pick on April 11, 2016 at 8:39pm

(Kurt) ... " ummm.. sorry ,, no bits left . i tossed em in the fireplace .. honest .... and there must have been 7 replicas me thinks ... " ;-}

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Permalink Reply by Fomhorach on April 11, 2016 at 8:46pm

It's amazing the lengths that Fender fans will go to convince the world that the Stratocaster was a good design.

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Permalink Reply by Scott aka Farmer Ted on April 12, 2016 at 8:06am

A Fender Stratocaster wouldn't have splintered to kindling like the Martin did...(hypothetical, of course, since the Stratocaster hadn't been born yet).

But like them or hate them, it's hard to argue that some of the best guitar players and their music would not have sounded the same on a different guitar than a Strat.

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Permalink Reply by the anonymous pick on April 12, 2016 at 11:05am

;-) i cant argue with that ..;-)

(click to enlarge)

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Permalink Reply by Murdoc_420 on April 12, 2016 at 1:33pm

It needs to go back into the museum, now it's famous and has history on top of being priceless and valueless.

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Permalink Reply by the anonymous pick on April 12, 2016 at 1:45pm

right beside jimmies fender lol.

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Permalink Reply by Cause the Blue rat on April 11, 2016 at 11:57pm

You have to think about the environment these actors work in. Their clothing is fake. I personally know someone who makes clothing for these kind of movies. Most of the sets are fake. Your surrounded by plastic representations of the real thing all day. So why would the guitar be real? I don't think anyone watching this movie would be old enough to remember what that guitar sounded like when it was new. So why use the real thing? Just dumb.

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Permalink Reply by the anonymous pick on April 12, 2016 at 12:26am

i have to agree , even set back then , the guitar would not be as aged as the real one was , which would hurt the authenticity look i would think. so why ? unless it was used as a model for the props and then mistakenly used . ?

and i hardly think Kurt is to blame .(or even "responsible" as the copy and pasted post from well Reverb above words it ) . i think it was more a chain of events and / or lack there of ,and lack of communication that caused it .

sad none the less.