Guns in the movies: you gotta be kidding.

[Frandy]

Yo, Dirty Bob... You wrote:

Remember also that many Hollyweird actors have never fired a live round, unlike people like Jimmy Stewart and Ernest Borgnine, both of whom were WWII combat vets

Stewart was a bomber pilot. Oh, he might have popped a shot or two in training, but he was both a flight instructor and actual pilot in missions. I met him through his first cousin's son (my friend's father was also a WW II bomber pilot, but had been shot down twice and captured once!). Did you know that Stewart, then in the Air Force Reserves, flew one mission over Vietnam? I guess that's shootin' enough...

 

[Dirty Bob]

Frandy wrote:

Stewart was a bomber pilot. Oh, he might have popped a shot or two in training, but he was both a flight instructor and actual pilot in missions. I met him through his first cousin's son (my friend's father was also a WW II bomber pilot, but had been shot down twice and captured once!). Did you know that Stewart, then in the Air Force Reserves, flew one mission over Vietnam? I guess that's shootin' enough...

Good point!
The idea I was trying (poorly) to express was that Stewart, Borgnine, and others of their generation had experienced life-or-death situations. I suspect General Stewart probably had some pistol training but even more importantly, he was a survivor. The 8th Air Force lost a lot of people over Europe.

I wish I'd had a chance to meet him. I had the utmost respect for the man. I knew about his WWII experience, but I didn't know that he flew over Southeast Asia at all. Didn't he have a son who served in Vietnam?

There was an authenticity to everything he did. Compare that to some of the sloppiness that we see in Hollywood gunhandling today.

Regards,
Dirty Bob

 

[toivo]

In the new mini-series "Into the West," an Indian warrior on a moving horse holds a full-length muzzleloader one-handed with his arm extended and shoots his opponent out of the saddle. Hats off to the stunt man for even being able to HOLD the gun like that--unless it was some kind of plastic dummy gun.

 

[enfield303]

I saw the part you are talking about.
Are you kidding me? If somebody shot at me like that, i would fall off the horse in amazement that he actually thought he could hit me.

 

[armedcitizen]

True Lies

True Lies was willfully silly in the extreme, so I don't think you can really count "inaccuracies" against it.

True Lies gave us Jamie Lee Curtis dirty dancing to a John Hiatt song. In exchange for that, they could've used pop guns for all I care!

 

[hksw]

I'm not sure if it was her or if it was a stand-in/stunt double but in True Lies after her stairway shootout on their first encounter with the terrorists in that warehouse after their escape, she runs out of the warehouse and the camera angle is through the door she is to run through. She runs full speed without looking and tags her shoulder right into the door frame spinning her a little. Ow. Makes me cringe every time I see it.

 

[White Horseradish]

True Lies gave us Jamie Lee Curtis dirty dancing to a John Hiatt song. In exchange for that, they could've used pop guns for all I care!

Don't forget what she was wearing at the time and the fact that she clocked Ahnld with the phone. Everything else is gravy.

 

[IZinterrogator]

When it comes to True Lies, I think the horse was smarter than Arnold. Did he really think he could make that jump?

 

[Frandy]

Dirty Bob wrote: Didn't he have a son who served in Vietnam?

Yup. A son from his first marriage was a Marine and killed in Vietnam. Stewart's cousin's son (my colleger roommate) told me that that's the reason he wanted to fly the bombing mission over Vietnam. I don't know if that is true or not.

 

[ghost457]

i just thought of a couple more, how about Broken Arrow? a Beretta M93R on full auto with no muzzle climb or recoil?

and the Eraser, gotta love the Governator. hes going duelie-style with taht huge "rail gun" that has x-ray sights and locks itself onto peoples hearts......that movie is funny.........

 

[BluesBear]

I think Sam Peckenpah might be the person responsible for people flying backwards from gunshot wounds.

But it was the scene in Howard Hawks final movie, Rio Lobo where George Plimpton was hit by John Waynes shotgun blast. It seems the stagehand pulled the cable a bit too hard and Plimpton went flying backwards.
After that it was almost expected for a shotgun to lift a man off of his feet. It was only a matter of time until handguns also achieved that mystical power in movies.

Rio Lobo was a pretty good movie even if it was the third John Wayne/Howard Hawks western based on the same story in eleven years. Rio Bravo and El Dorado were the first two.