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Kurt Russell Accidentally Destroyed Priceless Guitar On Hateful Eight Set

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Don’t lend anything to Quentin Tarantino that you don’t want smashed into a thousand pieces.

This is a lesson learned to its cost by revered guitar makers C.F. Martin, after it loaned a priceless six-string guitar to his latest movie ‘The Hateful Eight’ from its Martin Guitar Museum in Pennsylvania.

In a scene from the movie, Kurt Russell’s John Ruth takes a guitar from Jennifer Jason Leigh’s Daisy Domergue, and smashes it.

And it appears that the look of horror on Leigh’s face is because the instrument Russell destroyed was a 145-year-old museum piece, and not one of the prop replicas which was going to be swapped back in.

The film’s sound mixer Mark Ulano revealed the details of the incident in an interview with industry website SSNInsider.

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“Well, somehow that didn’t get communicated to Kurt, so when you see that happen on the frame, Jennifer’s reaction is genuine,” he said.

Quite understandably, the custodians of the instrument are very upset.

Speaking to Reverb, Dick Boak, the director of the museum, has spoken of his shock at discovering what had happened to the guitar, which was hand-crafted in the 1870s.

“We were informed that it was an accident on set,” he said.

“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 artefact from the Martin Museum.”

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As if this wasn’t enough, the museum is only being compensated for the purchase price of the instrument, not for its value as an 'irreplaceable artefact’.

After finding out about the incident, the company asked for the pieces of the guitar back to see if restoration would be possible.

“Upon inspection of the pieces, we realized that the guitar was beyond fixing,” said Boak. “It’s destroyed.

“We want to make sure that people know that the incident was very distressing to us. We can’t believe that it happened. I don’t think anything can really remedy this.

“We’ve been remunerated for the insurance value, but it’s not about the money. It’s about the preservation of American musical history and heritage.”

Boak added that 'as a result of the incident, the company will no longer loan guitars to movies under any circumstances’.

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Image credits: The Weinstein Company