There’s been a new development in the tale of Hateful Eight smashed Martin.
You may recall that in Quentin Tarantino 2015 western, one of the climatic scenes is when the 145 year old Martin acoustic – worth something in the region of $15,000 - that Jennifer Jason Leigh’s character Daisy Domergue plays, is snatched out of her hands by John ‘The Hangman’ Ruth, played by Kurt Russell. Russell declares “music time is over” and smashes it in front of her - and our - eyes.
The story goes that there was a mix-up and instead of one of the doubles, the real Martin ended up in smithereens. The scene has become so notorious that the smashed acoustic was actually displayed at NAMM the other year.
Now in a new twist, it seems that Russell smashing it up wasn’t a ghastly error after all…
Speaking on the Gear Gab with Eric Dahl podcast, Dick Boak, Martin’s in-house historian, has revealed that Tarantino absolutely knew what he was doing: “Tarantino filmed it at night on purpose so that the guitar tech wouldn’t be there. He (the tech) had gone home, and they never brought the papier-mâché guitars out. They just had the regular guitar. She (Leigh) played her little thing, and Kurt Russell grabbed it out of her hands.”
Boak said he was worried that the incident would get him sacked. He’s since retired and thus doesn’t really have anything to lose by telling all now.
“Tarantino wanted to get a genuine reaction out of her,” Boak says of the scene. “And yeah, he did. I’ll never forget it, you know – the reaction on her face and everything from that.”
Not surprisingly, Martin changed its policy regarding the loaning out of its museum instruments after this unfortunate episode. Too late for the $15,000 Martin, alas.
As for Russell, in an interview with Esquire last year, the actor disputed the idea the guitar was ever worth that much and claims that the whole thing was overblown. “Nobody ever said it was 145 years old,” he said. “Not that it was a priceless Martin guitar, because it wasn’t. Nobody said that. Nobody made that claim. But when we did the take – you can even see it – I give it an extra beat. And nothing, so I go ahead and smash the guitar.”
“I can tell when I grab her (Leigh) and sit her down, I can tell she’s not happy about this. Something’s wrong,” he continued. “As soon as it’s over I said, ‘Tell me that’s not the guitar that you’ve been practising with.’ And she went, ‘Yeah.’ I only felt bad about that. I (didn’t) give a shit about the guitar.”
