As a reminder that accidents with stage weapons are nothing new, I have two brief stories of mishaps from over a century ago. The first comes from The San Francisco Call, September 27, 1896:
A few weeks ago a tragic accident happened in London. The actors had to fight a duel on the mimic stage. They did not rehearse with swords, but on the night of the first performance the property-man gave them their weapons, which they used so realistically that the delighted audience wanted to give a recall. Rounds of applause came again and again, but the man who had fallen did not get up and bow before the footlights as dead actors are in the habit of doing. He was dead in real earnest, killed by a thrust of his comrade’s sword. When the horrible truth dawned upon his comrades the curtain was lowered and the audience dismissed from the play, which had ended in an unrehearsed tragedy. The next day the papers were full of lamentations over the sad event and blame was given to the management for the carelessness which had permitted sharp swords to be used without first testing them thoroughly at rehearsal.
No training, no rehearsal, weapons that should have been dulled… these are the exact same reasons accidents happen today. Â This isn’t new technology or unknown knowledge; we know, and have known for well over a hundred years how to prevent accidents from stage combat weapons, yet they still happen.
The second comes from The New York Times, September 12, 1907:
Maz Davis, 30 years old, of 434 West Thirty-eight Street, a property man for David Belasco, was injured on the right hand last night by the accidental discharge of a stage gun, the “wad” of which pierced his hand, while the powder burned both his hands and face. Just before a rehearsal of the “Girl of the Golden West,” he was examining a revolver when he accidentally pulled the trigger. He was taken to the Roosevelt Hospital.
Ouch. Remember, stage guns are still dangerous, even if they are only “blank-firing”, “powder” or “toy cap” guns.
The following two videos come courtesy of The Replica Prop Forum. The host, uh, Star Wars Chick, visits the armory at Independent Studio Services. ISS is one of the major prop rental and fabrication in the Los Angeles area, and they have an especially large collection of weapons, as you can see in the videos below. Larry Zanoff, one of the armorers in the weapons department at ISS, does a great job explaining the difference between real guns and movie guns, the kind of training an armorer needs, and what kind of safety procedures they implement on set.
In part two of the video, Star fires a number of the weapons in their warehouse. I think it is important to note that while movies use real guns altered to fire blank rounds, theatres typically use block-barreled guns which were never meant to fire real ammunition.
Dagger with single thumb ring, about 16 inches long, fifteenth century.
Dagger with double thumb ring, sixteenth century. The two rings were placed there to fix the dagger on a shaft, or at the end of a lance, to resist cavalry.
Dagger, anelace, or Verona dagger, fifteenth century.
Dagger, anelace, fifteenth century.
Dagger, fifteenth century.
Dagger of a German lansquenet, sixteenth century, about 14 inches long. Polished steel sheath.
Dagger of German lansquenet, sixteenth century.
Main gauche, Spanish, with the inscription “Viva Felipe V.,” which shows that this weapon was in use in the year 1701.
Stiletto (Spitzdolch), about 12 inches long, end of the sixteenth century. In Germany these weapons were also called Panzerbrecher, or cuirass-breaker.
Dagger, Swiss, sixteenth century. These daggers are often provided with small knives, which served to cut the thongs of the armour, to pierce holes, and for various purposes.
Dagger, German, sixteenth century.
Poniard, German, with wavy blade, very short and broad.
Poniard, German, sixteenth century. The guard has four quillons.
Main gauche, sixteenth century.
Main gauche, German, sixteenth century.
Main gauche, German, about 20 inches long, sixteenth century. Engraved handle.
Main gauche, German, with indented blade for breaking the enemy’s sword; thumb ring, and quillons curved in inverse directions; sixteenth century.
Main gauche, German, with indented blade for breaking swords, sixteenth century.
Large main gauche, German, with indented quillons, and grated guard as sword-breaker, seventeenth century. It measures about 25 by 10 inches.
Stiletto, German, called Panzerbrecher, or cuirass-breaker, about 12 inches long, sixteenth century.
Poniard, about 10 inches long, richly studded with precious stones. This weapon belonged to Sobieski, King of Poland.
Poniard, German, called Panzerbrecher. The numbers on the blade probably used for measuring the bore of cannons.
The illustrations and descriptions have been taken from An Illustrated History of Arms and Armour: From the Earliest Period to the Present Time, by Auguste Demmin, and translated by Charles Christopher Black. Published in 1894 by George Bell.
Perhaps you saw the headlines on October 10, 2011: SWAT Team Raids Set of Brat Pitt Movie. From the headline, one would assume that Brad Pitt was accosted by members of SWAT while filming World War Z. The story first appeared in X17, a gossip website:
Police seized 85 weapons (left) — all of which were still functioning with live ammunition. Most of the weapons were automatic, military-style assault rifles, including AK-47s and sniper rifles.
A police spokesperson called the arsenal “a disaster waiting to happen,” and said a deadly accident could easily have occurred on set.
Hungarian Counter Terrorism officers show weapons seized
You can view photographs at that that site as well. The story leaves a lot of questions, and it has some questionable phrasing, but let’s move on to the rest of the facts.
“We can confirm that weapons were confiscated at an airport,” Hajdu Janos and Zsolt Bodnar, the director and deputy director of Hungary’s Anti-Terrorism Unit, tell US.
The problem, a source says, is that the guns came with paperwork claiming they were non-functional — but they’re actually in working order.
“This morning a private plane brought guns wrapped in a parcel from a company to an individual [in Budapest],” Janos and Bodnar add. “Guns like these are highly illegal to transport even if they were to used as stage guns, which hopefully they weren’t.”
Finally, People Magazine jumps in the fray with their own reporting:
“The 85 weapons were seized in Budapest at a warehouse because they were not fully inoperable as they were supposed to be,” Hungarian authorities told PEOPLE.
You can watch a brief video at CBS as well, but it basically quotes these three articles.
Something about these articles made me skeptical. Part of which is how Brad Pitt, who has made one or two movies before, would allow fully-functioning guns on his set. As an aside,  where would the film’s props department even find 85 fully-functioning “automatic, military-style assault rifles”. Secondly, why are all these reports coming from what are essentially gossip columns?
Let’s look at the first headline: SWAT Team Raids set of Brad Pitt Movie. A SWAT team is a part of some American police forces. Other countries may have “SWAT-style” units, but to use the term in this context is misleading. János Hajdú is the head of the TerrorelhárÃtási Központ (or TEK, a Hungarian Counter-Terrorism Unit), and Bodnár Zsoltot is the deputy director. TEK is more comparable to the US Department of Homeland Security or the ATF rather than any SWAT.
The first sentence of the first article also states that the weapons were seized at a warehouse which was storing the weapons, which contradicts that they were seized “on the set”. Â So without even digging further, we can already say that the SWAT Team did not raid the set of Brad Pitt’s movie. The more accurate statement is that the Hungarian TEK confiscated weapons at a warehouse airport near Budapest which they claim were not fully inoperable and illegal to transport.
In the video, one of the guns is tagged with Zorg, Ltd., a British film and television armorer which has been around since 1997. Their credits include films like Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Black Hawk Down, V for Vendetta, Saving Private Ryan, Band of Brothers, and The Bourne Ultimatum, so presumably, they know how to safely transport and use blank-firing guns on location in foreign countries. We hear from the film crew in MTI, summed up and translated in this article by Reuters:
Weapons expert Bela Gajdos, who has worked on the filming of zombie movie “World War Z” to ensure the safe handling of the weapons used, told national news agency MTI that each firearm had been converted to restrict its use to blank ammunition.
Gajdos added that the weapons were completely harmless and had already been used on a shoot in London.
Curious and curiouser. Are Hungary’s prop weapons laws more strict than London’s, where even the police don’t carry guns? The article continues:
“We had a police permit to bring these guns into the country,” Gajdos told MTI, adding that the production had contracted arms experts to establish whether the guns complied with Hungarian laws.
But the guns were seized before experts could inspect them.
As I noted above, Zorg, Ltd. has a bit of experience in these matters. Is there something else going on?
According to the video, some weapons could be re-converted to use live ammunition by removing a single screw.
Hajdu said the firearms had not been properly disabled and could not be allowed into the country less than two weeks before a national holiday commemorating the 1956 uprising, MTI reported.
Before getting to the second sentence, I want to look at the first one first. Since most of my readers come from theatre, not film, you may be more familiar with theatrical blank-firing guns, which are guns specifically manufactured to only fire blank ammunition. Films typically use real guns which have been converted to fire blanks. Now, the rules and regulations are highly specific to your country and even your city, but typically, the conversion must be done by a licensed gunsmith, and you must still possess a license and keep the gun registered with local authorities as if it is a real gun.
The last sentence certainly appears something else is going on. TEK must have received a tip about a private plane dropping off crates of guns a mere two weeks from the anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, which led to the toppling of the Soviet-aligned government. By October 14, less than a week after the initial seizure, we learn that the Nemzeti Nyomozó Iroda (NNI), otherwise known as the Hungarian National Bureau of Investigation (or NBI; it’s their version of the FBI) is not going to be questioning Brad Pitt. Bartha László, an NNI spokesman, told reporters (but not tabloids):
“There is currently no data that would justify questioning Brad Pitt in relation to the seized weapons.”
This is after the NNI examined the weapons and ammunition, as well as all the supporting documentation. The filming was not delayed, but in fact began the very next day. Sorry for the links to Hungarian news sites; the English-speaking gossip columnists seemed to have lost interest in the story.
TEK itself was only formed in 2010 by prime minister Orbán Viktor for the purposes of preventing terrorist attacks, protecting the prime minister and president, and dealing with kidnapping and weapons crimes. It was to be separate from the centralized police force, which already had an anti-terrorism unit. Further, Hungary already had a Republican Guard Regiment for protecting high-level officials such as the prime minister and president, known as the Köztársasági Årezred. This overlapping of duties with already-existing entities, combined with the massive amount of funding it has received, has caused some to speculate that Orbán created the TEK (headed by Hajdú, Orbán’s private bodyguard while in exile) strictly for use as a private army:
There are signs that Orbán has over the years become quite paranoid–sometimes with good reason. For example, on the fateful afternoon of October 23, 2006, when he obviously had an inkling that the peaceful demonstration might turn violent, he had an armored car standing by in which to leave the scene in a great hurry.
In any case, an anti-terrorist unit was set up headed by Hajdú, who was named brigadier general. The unit received ten billion forints at a time when the police’s financial troubles were only too well known. There are stories that they didn’t have enough money for gasoline. On the other hand, not long ago TEK purchased some very expensive Mercedes SUVs.
The article continues with a good summing up of what TEK did in the World War Z incident:
Emphasis mine. On a final note, I should point out that yesterday was October 23rd, the anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution, which is what initially concerned Hajdú about the guns. It seems Orbán’s paranoia is not entirely unjustified, as tens of thousands rallied against the Hungarian government. The protesters were, of course, non-violent. Perhaps Hajdú was hoping the weapons seizure would provide pretext to crack down on the protesters. He probably would have too, if they didn’t turn out to be the props for someone as internationally well-known as Brad Pitt. It seems that in real life, just as on the stage, props tell the story.
The Walking Dead is a pretty cool zombie show on AMC, and it is starting its second season soon. In this video, John Sanders, the props master, brings us inside his prop trailer to show us around. He also does a show-and-tell of the various weapons they use, such as rubber knives and electric guns.
Making and finding props for theatre, film, and hobbies
