After writing my previous post, I started thinking about Hollywood's role in the guitar industry.
Even before sound, the image of a movie star playing a guitar was so powerful it sold thousands of guitars, and was a big part of how the guitar became the most popular instrument all over the world.
The motion picture industry learned very early on that the movies were big influencers that could establish big markets for items the viewers saw. The movies could change the fashion industry on a dime and still can, and can make something that was a total sales misfire-dud into a multi-million dollar success.
The guitar industry was sure aware of that, and it went to great lengths to put their products into the hands of those who would be seen onscreen. Nick Lucas was so famous as a vaudeville performer guitarist that he got a movie contract in several silent movies. Folks bought tickets to see them just to see him playing, even when they couldn't hear the music. Folks wanted to see the guy who made the records they loved to listen to.
And Gibson was quick to show the public that Nick liked to play a Gibson. He was the first celebrity player to ever endorse a brand for publicity. That endorsement sold a lot or guitars and a lot of movie tickets.
But Hollywood always treated the guitar as nothing more than a stage prop from the beginning all the way into the mid-1970s. Elvis Presley was never allowed to use one of his favorite brands in a movie, even when he asked for one, and even when Gene Autry could play one of his own guitars prominently, as could other Western movie stars.
The singing cowboys were exempt, I guess, because the guitars they played were integral to their costumes and acting. But even Gene had to play a $3 prop guitar in a flick more than once. The right horse was probably more important than the right guitar.
Hollywood just didn't give a damn.
To the producers, any guitar was nothing but a prop, and a disposable prop if need be.
If a good guitar like a Gibson, a well-known brand, was used, the prop master would slap a piece of black masking tape over the brand name to make it anonymous.
If a player who came in as a known musician demanded to play his own guitar during the filming and the guitar was too shiny, a prop master would smear Vaseline all over the top to kill the shine and ignore the player's refusal entirely. Pulling off a strip of tape could be allowed, but only if it didn't mess with the film schedule.
But that indifference changed when "The Buddy Holly Story" biographical movie came out in 1978.
It was a serious motion picture that was a large investment and a major production. The movie was heavily advertised, well written, well cast, and was advertised to be very authentic in its place and time in history- the late 1940s to Holly's death in 1958.
It wasn't authentic with the guitars that were used.
Gary Busey was over 1 1/2 feet taller than Buddy, was blonde, muscular, and totally incapable of imitating Holly in the least bit. The Holly life story was just as in-authentic as Busey was, too; real-life Buddy was never as wholesome as he was presented, and there were many things that were smoothed over too much in the movie.
But Busey's performance was so earnest and heartfelt, he pulled it off. And the score won an Academy Award and got him nominated for Best Actor.
Movie goers knew lots or the real Buddy Holly story, but they forgave all the mistakes that were in it, except for one: Gary was given a new Strat to play in it, and the viewers all spotted it. There were very obvious differences between the Fenders Holly used and the 1978 guitars that were made.
The viewers caught those differences and raised hell about them, because most of the other stuff visuals- the fashions, the vehicles, and the locations were all pretty close to authentic.
Hollywood was stunned by the derision that Oscar-winner got for using the wrong guitar. It was mentioned as a negative in all the major reviews, and is still remembered as being a huge mistake today. That single guitar's lack of authenticity was the most controversial thing in the movie. (But it wasn't damaging to its ticket sales. The movie was a big hit.)
After that, to avoid controversy, all the major motion picture makers began making serious efforts to use an authentic guitar in a picture that was supposed to be authentic. Inauthenticity does costs them a lot of ticket sales now, and has, ever since 1978.
These days, the prop masters all have extensive connections to folks who can supply them with authentic props, including guitars. The times and audiences have changed; it's almost a sport now to watch a movie just to catch production mistakes in it.
These days, Martin Scorsese and Quenton Tartentino always demand as much authenticity in every detail of their productions as can be found or created.
Authenticity is now so valuable to genre motion pictures that it took the custom hat maker more time to make the cowboy hats used in Tombstone to get them exactly correct to old photos than it took to film the movie. It's now a major production cost, and it all started with a single guitar.
So if the Daisy Jones & The Six script called for Billy to smash his Martin to smithereens, it's quite possible a brand new D-28 was busted beyond all hope of repair. Or several of them.
If a $10 Million series investment will return $90 Million or more, the cost of some new Martins is a piddling triffle if its authentic.
But the thing is: that scene most likely demanded more than just one take to film, and required several rehearsals before filming began. The cost of a new Martin isn't a problem, but finding enough of them to use sure could be a problem, and a big one, if filming has to be stopped. Stopping while filming is pure financial hell in the movie biz.
I learned that 30 years ago.
I was hired on as a contractor once for a film that was made partly on a location that was close to my hometown. Part of my job included being on the set and ready to make any last-minute changes. I was given a performance contract I had to sign before I got the job. The up-front payment was generous, but if I didn't have everything finished on the delivery date or failed to show up on the set on the day and hour I was supposed to arrive, I would lose over half of the money offered in the contract.
This was back in 1981. I learned that once the cameras were loaded with film, the cost of production for that day's work was budgeted at $80,000. Whether the scene was used or not in the final cut. That few minutes of film is the most expensive part of making movies, and once the cameras roll, what's captured on the film can't ever be completely reproduced later.
And as it turned out, the final film that I worked on in my shop and on location- over 4 weeks of well-paid hard work- only included a fraction of the scene I worked on. It was cheaper to scrap almost all of it and re-film it in another location later, but a lot of my work was salvaged, moved, and re-used.
And my contract was paid in full.
I even got a substantial freebie bonus- the painting crew, all Warner Bros. employees, gave me a truckfull of very expensive Japan colors, the paint that's most widely used on locations, and enough other pro-grade brushes and supplies I didn't need to go buy any of it myself for almost 2 years afterward.
All that specialized stuff cost Warner more to transport back to Burbank than it cost to give to me.
Every can of that expensive paint has to be new, never opened, when it arrives on location. Once any of it is used, even a teaspoon, the gallon is left behind when the crew leaves. The materials are too cheap to slow or stop production, so they take no chances with material's performance. Every $400 gallon of Japan color has to be dependable once only, because one brush load may be all that's ever needed to make the scene work.
Those construction crews- all painters or wood butchers- were the fastest, the most accurate, and hardest-working bunch of builders I've ever seen.
They all worked like the furies from hell, never made a single error, never needed to be told anything, never had a good word to say about the actors, and they all drank the local bar dry after the end of day by 11:00 before they disappeared for the night.
Their intake was prodigious, but they never got wobbly and none of them had a short finger on either hand.
They probably couldn't build Rome in a day, but they could come damn close to it.
The next morning, they were all up and ready to go, on the dot, and were ready to kick my ass if I cost them 5 minutes of their time doing my work. Only the best of the best ever get to go out on location, but when they're there, they sure make a lot of money! (And they were actually great guys to hang around with when the day was done.)
These days, I'm sure the cost has to be at least 3 or 4 times higher than it was then. And all the budgets these days are cut much closer to the bone than they were in the 20th century. Authenticity is still a super-important element, though, even if it costs a ton of money.