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The Vancouver Province
January 5, 2003 Sunday Final Edition
SECTION: News; Pg. A12
LENGTH: 1587 words
HEADLINE: 'Stand by! Weapon going off!': Cameron Smith supplies guns for movies -- and makes sure things are done right when their triggers are pulled. Especially by nervous reporters
SOURCE: The Province
BYLINE: Lee Bacchus
BODY:
Uneasiness is a warm gun.
The reporter with the clammy palms is clutching a loaded semi-automatic Colt 1911 -- the 45mm firearm used by U.S. Army soldiers in both World Wars, and the American gangster's weapon of choice in the '20s and '30s.
Actually, it's a replica of a Colt 1911, and it's loaded with blanks. But even blanks can kill. It happened to Jon-Erik Hexum on the set of Fox's Cover Up TV series in the mid-'80s, when the young actor held a blank-loaded gun to his head, declared "Let's see what would happen," and then pulled the trigger.
Oops.
Bad things can happen with replicas, as well. Two weeks ago, Vancouver police shot a man on East Pender, believing his handgun was real. It wasn't. Theirs was. He died. And a little over a decade ago, Vancouver stuntman Lauro Chartrand took a point-blank shot from a blank-loaded handgun during the filming of the Vancouver-made Chuck Norris vehicle The Hitman.
The blast sent a fragment from the gun into his abdomen, leaving him in critical condition. Fortunately, Chartrand survived and now is the fight co-ordinator for Tom Cruise in the in-production feature The Last Samurai.
"STAND BY! WEAPON GOING OFF!"
The loud warning issued to the other people in the large Burnaby warehouse where the reporter is taking aim with the Colt comes from Cameron Smith, lead armourer for KMS FX -- one of several Lower Mainland companies that supplies real guns and gun lookalikes to film and TV companies.
Smith, a burly 36-year-old native of North Battleford, Sask., has allowed the visiting reporter to play with some of his toys.
Instead of interrogating phantom prey ("Are you feeling lucky, punk?" "You talkin' to me?"), the reporter only questions himself: Will the blank fail and the gun explode in his hand? Will the concussion from the blast snap his wrist like a dry twig? Will the noise penetrate his ear-protectors and leave him forever unable to enjoy his John Tesh collection?
Fortunately, his fears are unfounded. Although he has trouble merely switching the safety off, the reporter finally pulls the trigger. The Colt fires with more of a thuddish pop than a bang (only slightly louder than Smith's warning), and the concussive wave ripples up his arm rather than snapping it in two. Despite the fact he is notoriously anti-gun (he loved Michael Moore's National Rifle Asssociation-mocking Bowling for Columbine and winces every time his seven-year-old son begs for a pellet gun), he finds squeezing off six or seven fast rounds from the Colt, well, kind of exhilarating.
Smith's acting experience (he was the sheriff in Fox's Millennium series, among other small background roles) and a stint as an infantry soldier in the Canadian Armed Forces make him a perfect fit for his current job. As an armourer, Smith goes to film and TV sets, and for a fee ranging from a few hundred dollars to several thousand dollars, supplies requisite real or replicated weapons.
That could be anything from a vintage .38 revolver to an Austrian-made Heckler & Koch MP5 9mm submachine-gun wielded by Keanu Reeves in The Matrix -- and he coaches actors on how to handle the guns for both safety and credibility.
Smith didn't work with Reeves but he has advised Wesley Snipes, Marc Singer, Ian Tracy, Lou Diamond Phillips, Dennis Hopper and Kiefer Sutherland when they've done film and TV action work in Vancouver. Smith says Snipes, in particular, was a very keen and attentive student when the subject was weapons.
"Wesley puts a lot of background research into every role he's doing," he says.
Smith says Sutherland is very, very cautious about handling guns. He recalls working with the 24 star on a 2002 film called Dead Heat, in which Sutherland did a "suicide contemplation" scene that required him to load a .357 Magnum and hold it to his head.
Even though the bullets in fact were "pea rounds," non-firing cartridges, Sutherland balked. Looking down the barrel of a .357 Magnum -- even loaded with duds -- requires a long leap of faith. Smith says the problem was solved by breaking the scene into separate shots -- one for the loading and after a cut, another for when the gun is pointed at his head (now with an empty chamber).
"We will do whatever is necessary to make an actor feel confident and secure," Smith says. He adds that his respect and safety concerns around guns have led some people in the industry to describe him as a "zealot."
"And that's fine, because as far as I'm concerned there is absolutely no room for arrogance or ego on a film set. If anyone has ever had the misfortune to see what happens when a bullet hits a human body, then they'll understand."
Jim Dunn, a 47-year-old Vancouver stunt co-ordinator and stuntman for the last 19 years, says that when he started in the business, "actors, extras, stuntpeople, everyone was running around pointing guns at one another, just playing.
"The armourers came along and changed all that. They made safety a priority. They also made getting the shot more efficient. Ten years ago guns were always jamming, holding up the production."
Tom Adair, executive director for the B.C. Council of Film Unions, says armourers are a crucial part of the filmmaking business. Adair says armourers are highly regulated, uniquely licensed professionals who are allowed to amass caches of weapons that would otherwise arouse suspicion in this terror-sensitive era.
"If Iraq had what some of the armourers had, they'd be attacked," Adair says.
Smith is standing in his office boardroom, where there are enough guns to make NRA President Charlton Heston blush. You have your Smith & Wesson 45mm sidearms (standard issue for RCMP officers), your M-16 assault weapons, your Glock 9mms (preferred by Vancouver police) and your Cobray M-11s submachine-guns (favoured by "gang-bangers and drive-by shooters," says Smith).
Oh, and let's not forget the military-issue rocket launcher -- deactivated, naturally. Some on display are eerily accurate rubber replicas that are cast from real guns and can cost anywhere between $300 and $600.
As recently as the 1960s, live ammunition was used in Hollywood filmmaking. For instance, Smith says Steve McQueen fired off some real bullets in the 1960 classic The Magnificent Seven.
"Hollywood would actually bring in real sharpshooters for some of the scenes," Smith says. "You still find instances of filmmakers wanting to use live ammo."
As both the need for safety and the craving for realism increased, Hollywood turned to replicas and blanks for firepower, and something called a "squib" -- a small explosive charge taped to a blood-filled bag (often a condom) on the actor's body and detonated electronically -- to mimic the bullet's effect.
"The first squibs actually were used back in the 1950s on the TV series The Untouchables," Smith says.
If you really want to get Smith going, ask him about the authenticity of gun handling in many of today's Hollywood shoot-'em-ups. Smith says he "burned out" on the over-the-top action films that arose with the Lethal Weapon series in the late '80s.
He recalls watching one recent Hollywood feature (forgettable enough that he's forgotten the title) and wincing at the preposterous gun play -- for instance, shooters never having to pause and reload.
"I was so disgusted I actually said 'Bull----!' out loud and walked out," says Smith.
Another pet peeve of Smith's are the obligatory close-ups of tense soldiers or police SWAT members with their eyes glaring and fingers poised on the trigger.
"Law enforcement and military personnel are trained again and again and again to never, ever put your finger on the trigger unless there is an imminent threat to life and limb," he says.
Smith says director John Woo kept things real during his Hong Kong heyday -- "He was very accurate when it came to weapons use. However, his recent spate of Hollywood film efforts [Face/Off, for example] leaves a lot to be desired."
Smith cites such directors as Andrew Davis (Die Hard), Michael Mann (Heat), John Frankenheimer (Ronin) and Ridley Scott (Black Hawk Down) as directors who can blend a good story with accurate and credible gun play.
As far as actors go, Smith says Americans, steeped in their own much-publicized gun culture, generally are "well schooled" in the practice of gun handling.
"But for Canadians it's the total flipside," he says. "They have little to no experience with guns."
To remedy this, Smith holds classes for actors and background performers, instructing them in weapons and tactics. A one-day basic course costs about $90. A two-day "intermediate" course, which includes training in blood and squib effects, costs $230.
In the course, as always, Smith stresses the difference between the real world and the film world. To underscore that distinction, Smith says he always begins his classes with a demonstration. He props up an apple, then fires a blank at it from about 10 feet away. The apple is now applesauce.
"They get the message real quick," he says.
As he handles the guns -- perhaps just a few notches this side of "fondling" -- Smith reveals his passion for things that go bang. But he also takes care not "to come across as a giggling gun nut."
Smith's vocabulary is well- armed with words like "respect" and "safety." And he reserves a kind of morbid awe for these lethal chunks of technology.
"It's amazing how much creative thought and energy goes into killing another human being," he says.
I suppose his act was as dumb as skating on thin ice. You fall through I guess that makes you a stuid ass
as well. Christ, glad my teacher's a tad more understanding.
