Don't Just Shoot Me
On Monday, Brian and I wound our way toward Newhall, a small town near Santa Clarita. There, at the Oaktree Gun Club, we met people including several world champion shooters, including the 24-year-old world champion shotgun double-trap shooter and Olympic gold medalist; representatives from Glock and Smith & Wesson (the S&W guy had just returned from a hunting safari in Africa, using a .500 revolver as his primary hunting weapon); and a television producer currently putting together a season's worth of episodes on handgunning for the Outdoor Channel.
This was the National Sport Shooting Federation's media seminar, in which they invite entertainment folk (stuntmen mainly, but somehow Brian and I as well) to shoot guns all day and learn the right way to handle and treat and work with real guns - in the hopes that gun use on screen might become more accurate.
If you've ever tripped across a gun-folk message board, you might have seen how they rant about guns on film & TV. Bear with me, please; here's a few authentic excerpts:
" ... Whenever I take a new shooter to the range we start out with my lecture about forgetting everything they see on TV or the movies."
"... It is my fervent prayer that all criminals learn their shooting techniques from the movies ... I had the pleasure of witnessing four young men with Tech-9s at the rifle range yesterday. They too had learned the sideways gunhold taught by the Hollywood School of Violent Behavior ... It causes one to understand why so many innocent bystanders are killed during gang drive-by's [sic]. They hit everything except what they intend to hit."
"... when Sharon Stone picked up a Walther PPK (or /S, I forget) and shot nonstop, taking out 21 TV monitors at the end, I was just insulted. The movie was saying 'We don't have the time to find a gun that will actually shoot this many shots and you're all too stupid to notice anyway.' "
"... I'm sure you've seen enough sloppy gun handling to make your skin crawl. Why is it that the producer/director will spend so much money to make a film and make stupid mistakes that could be solved by sending a few crew members or actors to a basic NRA class for a few bucks? ... Answer: Nobody cares, at least as far as the movie-making/Hollywood crowd knows. When Mr. Director or Ms. Actress perform atrocious gun handling, do they receive bags of mail from their fans asking why? No, because nobody really notices, or cares ... I would bet if the nation's 80 million gun owners rallied and made a stink about this (through letters, e-mails, etc) things would change."
"... [Following a list of inaccuracies] Hollywood... go figure!"
"... On the Simpsons, they have shown someone pumping a round into a side-by-side shotgun more than a few times. Arrggghhh ... The episode where Homer bought a handgun was positively AWFUL."
"... There are many actors who are very good with firearms, very knowledgable [sic] people who are simply doing it the way the director wants it done ... [director John Milius] also reminded me of the MOST important factor in movies....THEY ARE FOR ENTERTAINMENT not for real life training films!"
"...I don't go to movies to see real life. If I did, all of them would be PG."
"... And it wasn't nickel, it was stainless steel. (Hollywood! Pffft!)"
And, finally:
"... I just don't care, anymore. I decided a long, long, time ago, that I would vote with my wallet, and decided not to participate in Hollyweird's latest, and greatest films. I just don't go and spend my money on them. Besides, if a person is reading what they should about firearms, and reloading like they should, and going to the range like they should-- who has time to go to the stupid movies? Hollyweird icons of the silver screen are not my heroes in life. Shoot on..."
Sorry, once I got looking for stuff, I got carried away. Aficionados of anything are of course going to point out errors that they find, and I'm sure I could find car buffs that say such-and-such car can't really accelerate that fast or that Volkswagens can't really find love or whatever, and as an aviation fan I can tell you that Airwolf's afterburners were pure hokum, but that's not the point. What, if anything, I think can be taken from this sort of criticism is that when some people notice errors in storytelling it turns them against the entire medium. That's pretty harsh.
A lot of people don't really get what movies are about. The people that want to edit out every "damn", for example. I respect your right to show your kids or to watch whatever you choose to watch, but please respect mine to make the movie I want to make. Similarly, if you don't want to go to movies because guns are treated inaccurately, maybe you're sort of missing the point of the movies. Maybe you're not the kind of person that really gets a lot out of movies. Obviously, if something so small and (in my mind) trivial is enough to break the camel's back.
Does this mean that, as storytellers, we should be sloppy with regard to accuracy whenever possible? No, of course not. Researching often makes for a better story, more rich with detail and including more of the spectrum of human existence than one's own imagination can provide.
Stephen King says in "On Writing" that when writing a book about, for example, a rural police investigation, he'll usually make everything up to serve the story best - then, in revision, go back and research the rural police department and sprinkle some tidbits of trivia back into the story. Chuck Palahniuk, author of "Fight Club" and other books, says that the myriad of factoids in his writing are invariably true - to build a foundation of truthfulness, so that the fiction feels that much more real.
Specifically, in terms of guns in the movies, a lot of simple errors can be corrected just by having someone on the set - someone that can tell the director that the actor should lock the slide when handing the pistol to someone else, or not to hug the wall when creeping around the corner, or to point the rifles at the ground, not in the back of the SWAT officer in front of you. Some things, like blowing up a spaceship with a .22 rifle, should be dealt with at the writing stage. But a little care here and there can go a long way.
This was the National Sport Shooting Federation's media seminar, in which they invite entertainment folk (stuntmen mainly, but somehow Brian and I as well) to shoot guns all day and learn the right way to handle and treat and work with real guns - in the hopes that gun use on screen might become more accurate.
If you've ever tripped across a gun-folk message board, you might have seen how they rant about guns on film & TV. Bear with me, please; here's a few authentic excerpts:
" ... Whenever I take a new shooter to the range we start out with my lecture about forgetting everything they see on TV or the movies."
"... It is my fervent prayer that all criminals learn their shooting techniques from the movies ... I had the pleasure of witnessing four young men with Tech-9s at the rifle range yesterday. They too had learned the sideways gunhold taught by the Hollywood School of Violent Behavior ... It causes one to understand why so many innocent bystanders are killed during gang drive-by's [sic]. They hit everything except what they intend to hit."
"... when Sharon Stone picked up a Walther PPK (or /S, I forget) and shot nonstop, taking out 21 TV monitors at the end, I was just insulted. The movie was saying 'We don't have the time to find a gun that will actually shoot this many shots and you're all too stupid to notice anyway.' "
"... I'm sure you've seen enough sloppy gun handling to make your skin crawl. Why is it that the producer/director will spend so much money to make a film and make stupid mistakes that could be solved by sending a few crew members or actors to a basic NRA class for a few bucks? ... Answer: Nobody cares, at least as far as the movie-making/Hollywood crowd knows. When Mr. Director or Ms. Actress perform atrocious gun handling, do they receive bags of mail from their fans asking why? No, because nobody really notices, or cares ... I would bet if the nation's 80 million gun owners rallied and made a stink about this (through letters, e-mails, etc) things would change."
"... [Following a list of inaccuracies] Hollywood... go figure!"
"... On the Simpsons, they have shown someone pumping a round into a side-by-side shotgun more than a few times. Arrggghhh ... The episode where Homer bought a handgun was positively AWFUL."
"... There are many actors who are very good with firearms, very knowledgable [sic] people who are simply doing it the way the director wants it done ... [director John Milius] also reminded me of the MOST important factor in movies....THEY ARE FOR ENTERTAINMENT not for real life training films!"
"...I don't go to movies to see real life. If I did, all of them would be PG."
"... And it wasn't nickel, it was stainless steel. (Hollywood! Pffft!)"
And, finally:
"... I just don't care, anymore. I decided a long, long, time ago, that I would vote with my wallet, and decided not to participate in Hollyweird's latest, and greatest films. I just don't go and spend my money on them. Besides, if a person is reading what they should about firearms, and reloading like they should, and going to the range like they should-- who has time to go to the stupid movies? Hollyweird icons of the silver screen are not my heroes in life. Shoot on..."
Sorry, once I got looking for stuff, I got carried away. Aficionados of anything are of course going to point out errors that they find, and I'm sure I could find car buffs that say such-and-such car can't really accelerate that fast or that Volkswagens can't really find love or whatever, and as an aviation fan I can tell you that Airwolf's afterburners were pure hokum, but that's not the point. What, if anything, I think can be taken from this sort of criticism is that when some people notice errors in storytelling it turns them against the entire medium. That's pretty harsh.
A lot of people don't really get what movies are about. The people that want to edit out every "damn", for example. I respect your right to show your kids or to watch whatever you choose to watch, but please respect mine to make the movie I want to make. Similarly, if you don't want to go to movies because guns are treated inaccurately, maybe you're sort of missing the point of the movies. Maybe you're not the kind of person that really gets a lot out of movies. Obviously, if something so small and (in my mind) trivial is enough to break the camel's back.
Does this mean that, as storytellers, we should be sloppy with regard to accuracy whenever possible? No, of course not. Researching often makes for a better story, more rich with detail and including more of the spectrum of human existence than one's own imagination can provide.
Stephen King says in "On Writing" that when writing a book about, for example, a rural police investigation, he'll usually make everything up to serve the story best - then, in revision, go back and research the rural police department and sprinkle some tidbits of trivia back into the story. Chuck Palahniuk, author of "Fight Club" and other books, says that the myriad of factoids in his writing are invariably true - to build a foundation of truthfulness, so that the fiction feels that much more real.
Specifically, in terms of guns in the movies, a lot of simple errors can be corrected just by having someone on the set - someone that can tell the director that the actor should lock the slide when handing the pistol to someone else, or not to hug the wall when creeping around the corner, or to point the rifles at the ground, not in the back of the SWAT officer in front of you. Some things, like blowing up a spaceship with a .22 rifle, should be dealt with at the writing stage. But a little care here and there can go a long way.
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