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From the beginning of movies to the 1970s, thousands of Westerns were made, with millions of shots fired

posted 3 years ago by whynotwriteme (7725)
83 replies | jump to latest

Directors like John Ford, Howard Hawks and especially Sam Peckinpah had real guns on their sets. They fired so many shots you could never count them. Peckinpah used more ammunition in The Wild Bunch than was used in the actual Mexican Revolution, And nobody died for real.

Sure, there were Jon Erik Hexum and Brandon Lee' s deaths in the 80s and 90s, but those films were not Westerns. The people who worked on Westerns back then had a feel for the West and an understanding of guns. They did not hire little pink-haired, nose-pierced, tattooed 25 year old girls as Weapons Advisers. They did not star flaming Liberal actors, either, for the most part.

I guess it's just going along with the trend. People in the past did not need warning labels on their hot coffee or telling them not to eat detergent or drink car battery acid, either.

[–] Otter (24464) 3 years ago

May I ask you much research you've done into how many gun accidents there were on Western movie sets, during the Studio Era of Hollywood? Because I doubt that's a question that can be answered with a quick google search, given how good the film studios were at hushing up bad things that happened on film sets. A lot of stuff has come out over the years, by people who're interested in who was sleeping with whom and what drugs were given out by the studio doctors, but has anyone ever done any serious digging into safety issues on Western movie sets?

Sure, Gary Cooper was never put on trial for accidentally shooting anyone and neither was anyone else of note, but do we actually know that nobody was ever killed or injured by stray bullets? Because in those days, stunt men who got injured generally got a payoff and a warning, the entertainment press didn't want to anger the studios by running stories about negligence, and nobody in the LA area gave a rat's ass about the cowboys and roughnecks who did stunts in Western films.

[–] brux (14736) 3 years ago

Nice

[–] Otter (24464) 3 years ago

It's my understanding that the cowboys and stunt riders who did background work on Western film were pretty much at the bottom of the Hollywood professional and social hierarchy. Yes, Hollywood needed their skills with horses, cattle, and guns, but they were working in a low-budget, low-esteem genre, and were looked down on for their country ways and lack of education. There was no OSHA, unemployment insurance, or Workers Comp in those days, if an extra was injured then they didn't work until they were well enough, if they made a legal complaint against a studio they'd never work again, and if they died because of studio negligence then who knows if any records were even kept... but we *do* know that the film studios were superb at hushing things up.

Hollywood didn't have any sort of safety standards for film sets at all until 1929, when three extras were killed during a spectacular flood sequence for a version of "Noah's Ark". And then safety standards were largely left up to the studios themselves, and these were the people who thought it was perfectly safe to give amphetamines to teenaged actors like Judy Garland. So anyone who thinks that everything was great in the Good Old Days... knows nothing about the old days.

[–] whynotwriteme (7725) 3 years ago

Well, seeing as there are no records of any gun-related deaths on a Hollywood set until Jon Erik Hexum, I guess the burden of proof to find an earlier one is on you skeptics.

There are plenty of stories about people dying doing other kinds of movie stunts; falls, explosions, car or horse-related, etc. If your theory is correct, I wonder why they would specifically hush gun deaths up, but release full info on movie set deaths from all other causes?

[–] Otter (24464) 3 years ago

It's very hard to prove anything didn't happen during the studio era, when the studios were so good at hushing everything up. Information from the studio era is incomplete, the human memories are gone, the official records are likely to be incomplete, and the press had a hands-off policy.

Which means that an expert historian could spend a lifetime researching the question and still not come up with a definitive answer, so I'm not going to try because I have another job, and that anyone who categorically states that everything was great back then is an idiot.

[–] whynotwriteme (7725) 3 years ago

Just saying that there are countless recorded instances of Hollywood deaths from that era in falls, horse or car accidents, explosives, etc, but apparently the only death attributed to guns on a movie set prior to J. E. Hexum's occurred in 1915. So why would they be so hush hush ONLY about gun deaths???

[–] acidraindrop (3055) 3 years ago

Did you seriously just ask why the studios would be more hush hush over gun deaths vs car accidents and falls?

Come on lol.

[–] whynotwriteme (7725) 3 years ago

You're just as dead if you break your neck from a fall as you are if a blank shot sends skull fragments into your brain.

[–] acidraindrop (3055) 3 years ago

Yes...no one is suggesting that all deaths are not equally fatal, but nevertheless thank you for pointing that out to the class.

[–] whynotwriteme (7725) 3 years ago

You guys are all wearing your tin-foil hats. "Hurr-durr, the Hollywood elite hides all the countless deaths from blank guns, because, like, the Conservative gun lobby, maaaannnnn."

[–] Otter (24464) 3 years ago

Where exactly did you get all this detailed information about types of deaths in Hollywood movies? Google?

[–] Valerian (-273) 3 years ago

The long, tragic history of prop gun accidents on movie and TV sets: A timeline

https://latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2021-10-22/alec-baldwin-prop-gun-accidents-in-movies-tv

[–] degray9 (1126) 3 years ago

So the only example of a guy being accidentally killed by a prop gun before the 90s was in 1915? I’d say that’s a pretty good track record.

[–] brux (14736) 3 years ago

The days of being able to blame all mistakes or crimes that happen to be committed by some minority group that the Right-wing doesn't like on all the members of that minority group to vilify them and further marginalize them are ending. They really should be over.

Someone with pink hair, or
someone with a pierced nose, or
someone with tattoos ( much as I dislike them ), or
even girls
can be as capable of being "weapons advisors" as anyone else with the experience and skill, and the as yet unsubstantiated fact that this particular person might have screwed up fatally, and this unhappy awful tragedy should not be an occasion where some Right-wing-nut gets to howl about every right-wing meme he's ever heard on Fox or from Limbaugh.

[–] whynotwriteme (7725) 3 years ago

Fine, Brux. You go ahead and feel free to trust your life around firearms to a little girl who looks like a living anime cartoon. I'll just play it safe with the R. Lee Ermey type advisors.

And BTW, using the little pink-haired girl who worked on Rust as an example of "anyone can be a firearms advisor with the right experience and skills" is a very bad choice. She had little to no experience, she doubted her own abilities, and had fucked up already on another set.

[–] brux (14736) 3 years ago

Read the post I just posted for the movie Rust ... then re-evalute your BS view of the world.

https://moviechat.org/tt11001074/Rust/6177d46cab7b1e02d69abc5e/Hold-on-to-your-hat-have-your-world-rocked-Rust-realities-are-POLITICAL

As Feldman says, the day that set became a non-union set is the day they put that girl in charge and someone died. This is all about money laundering and tax dodges.

[–] whynotwriteme (7725) 3 years ago

So because Baldwin is a greedy con man, he's automatically a conservative? I don't think so. There's plenty of precedent for money-grubbing and cheating among the Left. BLM Communist leadership in multi-million dollar homes, for example. Crooks come in all political persuasions.

[–] brux (14736) 3 years ago

And because Trump is a greedier con man, he automatically is a conservative. Yeah.