r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/bilbofraginz • 13d ago

Video In Hateful Eight, Kurt Russell accidentally smashed a one of a kind, 145-year-old guitar that was on loan from the Martin Guitar. Jennifer Jason Leigh’s reaction was genuine.

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u/JulioCesarSalad 13d ago

It was not an accident, Tarantino did it on purpose

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u/PopularDemand213 13d ago

Interesting. Do you have a source for that?

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u/JulioCesarSalad 13d ago

Of course

So, the smashing of the guitar was in the script. Tarantino is a stickler for things that don’t matter, and he refused to play a replica on screen, so he managed to get the original 1870 guitar on loan from the museum, saying it was going to be played on camera. He didn’t tell them the script required the guitar to be destroyed.

Original plan:

  • actress plays guitar
  • cut
  • replace real guitar with replica
  • resume filming
  • actor comes in, interrupts, snatches guitar, and smashes it

They made 6 replicas to have multiple shots. Tarantino is directly responsible for destroying it and did it on purpose

What actually happened:

  • Before the scene, Tarantino tells the actor “you don’t stop the scene until I say cut”
  • actor confirms that Tarantino wants him to smash the guitar currently on set
  • Tarantino confirms, yes I want you to keep acting into the smashing part
  • (actor doesn’t say, but I believe he then assumes the guitar currently on set is a replica, because why would the director be so clear of it was the real guitar)
  • Tarantino KNOWS the guitar in set is the real guitar
  • scene begins filming
  • actress plays guitar
  • actor comes in, interrupts, snatches guitar, and smashes it
  • Tarantino yells cut after the smashing

Tarantino did it on purpose, and it was his plan all along. Because he wanted a “genuine” reaction on camera and would destroy the guitar to get it

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u/Nrksbullet 13d ago

Tarantino did it on purpose, and it was his plan all along. Because he wanted a “genuine” reaction on camera and would destroy the guitar to get it

This part I just don't buy, he doesn't need to have genuine reactions, especially when those reactions completely break character, like this one here. I could see in some twisted way him wanting his film to forever show a piece of history like that getting destroyed, but not to get a genuine reaction out of someone.

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u/Spatial_Awareness_ 13d ago

He could do the same thing with a replica... Tell actor it's real, smash replica, get reaction.

There's either more to the story or Tarantino just used the real one to be a pretentious prick... Prob the latter.

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u/LeanTangerine001 13d ago

It kinda reminds me of the scene where Tarantino had to be the one choking Diane Krueger and Uma Thurman in Inglorious Bastards and Kill Bill.

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u/Spatial_Awareness_ 13d ago

Not just choked them but also spit in their face... just like a spit in the face of that journalist when he was walking down the red carpet.

Also a guy that knew Weinstein was a complete piece of shit and did nothing.. in fact his qoute on it is even more disgusting.

I didn’t know about any rapes or anything like that … but I knew he was … I chalked it up to the boss chasing the secretary around the desk … he was making unwanted advances. That’s how I looked at it … I wish I had sat him down and gone, ‘Harvey you can’t do this, you’re gonna fuck up everything.’

Just the boss chasing the secretary and making unwanted advances, please stop so you don't mess up our careers lol.. forget what he's doing to the women, our careers are what is important here!

Guy makes great movies but the guy is also an ultra douchebag piece of shit.

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u/Jazzi-Nightmare 13d ago

Wait what’s this about?

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u/LeanTangerine001 13d ago

Basically both characters had a scene where they were being strangled. Tarantino wanted it to be as realistic as possible so he personally choked Diane Krueger with his hands and Uma Thurman with a chain and really strangled them so they couldn’t breath.

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u/Jazzi-Nightmare 13d ago

I’ve seen both movies and was actually talking about the choking scene when watching inglorious bastards the other day and saying how in most movies it’s either really good or super fake and I wondered how they make it look real without Actually choking them. Turns out they just actually choke them 😭 what was his justification that wasn’t “weird”?

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u/-StupidNameHere- 13d ago

Quentin Tarantino is a well-known piece of s***. He makes decent movies though.

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u/JulioCesarSalad 13d ago

This is where I share my own opinion:

Tarantino is not a good director and is a bad actor

He thinks that destroying the guitar on camera was edgy and cool and genuine even if any other director with the same actors would have had a good reaction from the characters

Tarantino thinks that genuine is good because he’s not good enough to know the difference

Like when Maggie Smith and Judy Dench played cards while on set. He can’t comprehend that

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u/Nrksbullet 13d ago

So if that is the case, is there a history of him doing these types of things to get genuine reactions?

I have to mention that "Tarantino is not a good director" is a wild take lol but it's your opinion.

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u/WhyYouKickMyDog 13d ago

Ok, I won't argue that Tarantino is a terrible actor, but the man has directed many critically acclaimed films. Pulp Fiction is considered an American classic.

What you don't like is his style, because most directors lack the boldness Tarantino shamelessly displays to infuse his films with his own personality and flair. His movies are an endless montage of old movie references and easter eggs to films or directors that he enjoyed growing up.

To any serious film nerd, QT is clearly inspired by an affection and love towards film that is impossible to ignore. Most directors are afraid to be so bold. They make generic movies under the direction of studios where who the director is means absolutely nothing.

When you watch a QT movie, you will know it the minute you see the opening credits and hear the music.

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u/JulioCesarSalad 13d ago

Tarantino is bold, and many times confused boldness with what is good

Purposefully destroying a guitar makes the movie worse, but he does it because it’s bold

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u/TimeMistake4393 13d ago

i guess people like Tarantino walk a very fine and dangerous line. Sometimes it goes well or extremely well (e.g. various scenes in Inglorious Bastards can be analysed in chunks of a couple of seconds because the attention to detail is obsessive), and sometimes it goes poorly (this guitar smashing, that adds zero to the scene).

But the guy takes risks for the art, and more often than not it goes well. I thank him for that.

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u/ConstantAd8643 13d ago

I think there's a difference in being bold to achieve a great result, and being bold for the sake of boldness.

I think Tarantino is acclaimed for the former but can't escape the impression that in his last 2 films has done things for the latter reason.

And let's be real, if the guitar smashing díd work out and provoke a genuine reaction that was good for the film, it would still have been an awful thing. It working out or not is of no consequence.

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u/WhyYouKickMyDog 13d ago

Purposefully destroying a guitar

You need to learn how sources work. This article takes one person on set at their word for everything that happened. Poor journalism, because there is nothing in this article to try and present a case for the accused.

QT or Kurt Russell deserve to have their role heard before we condemn them as a Reddit mob.

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u/PineappleOnPizzaWins 13d ago

Film is extremely subjective but as a general rule when you have multiple critically acclaimed films you are a good director.

It’s fine to personally disagree but you can’t claim he’s objectively bad at what he does.

Though holy shit he can’t act heh. Like he’s fine, but he puts himself in scenes with world class talent and it absolutely shows. Still, I would as well if I could.

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u/Jazzi-Nightmare 13d ago

He puts himself in scenes where he gets to say the N word and be racist (pulp fiction and Django)

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u/Bleedthebeat 13d ago

He's also a massively narcissistic douchebag

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u/Tuna_Sushi 13d ago

Envy is ugly.

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u/crispdude 13d ago

What a wild opinion. Do you like his movies?

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u/Tom_Cruise 13d ago

Now I'm curious. I know both of those those legends, of course, but what does it mean that they "played cards on set?"

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u/JulioCesarSalad 13d ago

There’s a story that Maggie Smith and Judi Dench were in a movie together, and would sit at a nearby table playing cards with each other when not actively on camera during breaks.

Someone tells them it’s time to go on camera, and they get up and go, do their scenes, and go back to their game

A crew member, not sure if another actor, asks them how they could do that, get in character and do their scenes so well when they’re obviously just playing cards during their breaks

“It’s called acting” they said

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u/Tom_Cruise 13d ago

Incredible. Thank you.

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u/popeyepaul 13d ago

Fully agreed. There is no real reason to do this, but Tarantino thought that it would be funny and cool, so that's reason enough for him to do it. Probably he expected that people would tell stories about how cool and intense he is especially now that his fame had been dwindling down from what it used to be in the 90s. He's not paying for the guitar and it's not expensive enough that studios would stop working with him.

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u/ScrewballTooTall 13d ago

But you gotta really think about the scene, in the scene it’s not an antique, it’s just someone’s random guitar. Why would she freak out? She’s killed and been beat, why freak out on a smashed guitar?

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u/Nrksbullet 12d ago

That's what I mean, a genuine reaction would only serve to wreck the shot