Kurt Russell is one of the most recognizable Hollywood actors. He appeared in productions while still a child actor and became famous for his roles, among others: in the series “UNCLE”, TV movie “Elvis”, “The Something”, “Tango and Cash” Whether “Vanilla Sky”.
In 2007, he appeared for the first time with Quentin Tarantino – he played in “Grindhouse: Death Proof”. The film was not appreciated by critics, unlike the duo’s next collaboration, i.e “The Hateful Eight” from 2015. In the latter, she was his on-screen partner Jennifer Jason Leigh. During one scene, Leigh performs an Australian folk ballad on the guitar “Jim Jones Of Botany Bay”and Russell’s irritated figure forbids her from continuing to play, snatches the instrument and smashes it against the wall.
As the actors recalled, this particular model was to be used throughout the entire film except for one scene – the one that Russell played after a while. JJ Leigh was rehearsing the song, and she was going to give it back to her assistants, exchanging it for a perfect, modern copy. “The guitar was on loan from the Martin Guitar Museum, and six copies were produced… We were supposed to get to that point, stop, replace the guitars and break the double guitar. Well, somehow that wasn’t passed on to Kurt, so when you see it on the screen, the reaction Jennifer is authentic,” he said in an interview with SSN Insider Mark Ulanowho mixed the sound for the film.
The antique guitar was insured for only PLN 40,000. dollars and was created in the 1870s – so it was about 140 years old at that time. The museum, which agreed to lend the instrument, announced that it would never lend any guitar to film productions again.
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Kurt Russell, almost 10 years after the incident, seems tired of constantly revisiting the blunder. In a recent interview with Esquire, he was annoyed that journalists kept coming back to this – admittedly – quite unusual event. The 72-year-old actor explains that no one told him which guitar the actress would play on the set. Only when he saw Jennifer’s reaction did Jason Leigh realize that he had destroyed the original instrument. “I can tell – when I grab it and smash it, I can see she’s not happy with it. It’s like she’s saying something’s wrong. So as soon as we finished (the shot), I say, ‘Tell me that’s not a guitar, by the way. you practiced,’ and then she (nods),” Russell recalled.
In his defense, he says that it was just a guitar and he never felt guilty about destroying it. “I felt bad just for that. I don’t give a damn about the guitar. Suddenly, in one week, the guitar is worth $25,000. By the end of the show, it’s worth $45,000. And I promise that in ten years she will be older than Martin,” he says. At the end, however, he joked that he actually knew what he was doing from the very beginning, and the guitar itself was worth up to $700 million.