Talk:Hemingway & Gellhorn

Guns

I was an extra playing a Republican soldier during the Spanish Civil War scenes in this film. We managed to take some behind the scenes photographs, which I will link to momentarily.

There were only two types of firing rifles used by us soldier extras - Mosin-Nagants (see the guy in the white shirt behind the first guy) and what i was told by the armorers were Mauser rifles, but don't appear to look like the "Spanish Mauser" listed on this website (note the interesting sloping rear sight) Edit 5/29: Turns out we did have some firing Spanish Mausers after all, so that makes 3 types of firing guns - see below.

Anytime the camera wasn't close enough or there was no live firing, we were given lightweight replica guns. Most of them (like, 90%) were these wood and metal non functioning reproduction guns that looked a lot like an M1903 Springfield. They were old and beat up replicas, many missing the front or back sights, or both. They seemed like ROTC training/parade rifles.

There were also 2 Lee-Enfield No.1 Mk.IIIs floating around, one was a non-functioning reproduction, the other was solid resin.

There were a handful of rubber guns. -See the guy on the left and the kneeling guy These were used primarily by soldiers on horseback, stunt people who had to "die" in a scene, but a couple were given to the general soldiers. These are especially conspicuous because the barrel extended slightly longer beyond the front sight than the rest of the guns, and also none of them had shoulder straps. --Variableorange 22:29, 28 May 2011 (CDT)

In your first photo, the guy shooting closest to camera looks like he's firing a Mauser Gewehr 1898. However on the last photo, the kneeling fellow to the right looks like he's carrying an 1893 Spanish Mauser, albeit the barrel is too long, but sometimes deactivated rifles have plugs welded onto the ends of the barrels. Actually the budget was too small for the war scenes so the first thing they cut was the armorer's budget. I know the propmaster didn't want live firing guns to save money, so she negotiated a deal with ISS to ship them hundreds of broken or deactivated rifles. The cost for the rentals was unbelievable. ISS cut this movie an incredible deal for 6 weeks of filming. Thanks for the Behind the Scenes stuff! :) Looking forward to more! hope you contribute more cool stuff to IMFDB. :) MoviePropMaster2008 23:45, 28 May 2011 (CDT)

Yes, the live firing guns besides the Nagants do indeed seem to be Gewehr 98s (odd, since these mainly saw action on the Nationalist side, and we were playing the Republicans/Loyalists). The kneeling fellow in the last photo (as well as the standing fellow on the left) is carrying a rubber rifle. See the one the guy on the left is holding - the bolt and the receiver (hope that's the proper terminology) is one solid mass, and the bolt's handle is quite flimsy. And you're absolutely right, they do indeed look like Spanish Mausers. As most of the the rubber guns looked like those, I'm concluding that the only Spanish Mausers we had on set were the rubber ones. All of them had that conspicuous extended barrel. The other thing that set them apart is they didn't have loops for a strap, so they were the only guns that couldn't be shouldered. (actually scratch that, we had I think one rubber Gewehr too, which had a strap.) Also, thank you for the cool background info! I wondered why there wasn't more variety to the weapons - there were no pistols, no SMGs, and no heavier weapons (at least not for us extras! But there was a tank!) And yes, I noticed a lot of the guns, even the functional ones, were missing sights, had splitting furniture, and other signs of wear.

Here's some more BTS stuff- A Nagant & Gewehr 98, another Nagant & Gewehr 98, a Nagant, another Nagant (i think) and Gewehr, another shot of the Rubber Spanish Mausers, and a clearer shot of one of the nonfiring replica 1903 Springfields --Variableorange 00:10, 29 May 2011 (CDT)

I managed to scrounge up some pictures of one last gun - a rubber version of the Gewehr (I've confirmed this was rubber from one of my buddies that was also on set), unlike the rubber Spanish Mausers, this one did have a strap. There was only one copy of this, and it is distinguished by its dark "wood" stock and chrome-painted "metal" parts. Here and here So, to recap, the only guns I was privy to were: firing Nagants, firing Gewehr 98s, non firing repro m1903 Springfield training rifles, 1 non firing repro SMLE mk3, 1 solid resin SMLE mk3, a handful of rubber Spanish Mausers (distinguished by the barrel extension), and lastly 1 rubber Gewehr. --Variableorange 14:19, 29 May 2011 (CDT)

One more gun! I originally thought this was yet another Gewehr with a missing rear sight, but it appears to be a firing Spanish Mauser Can anyone confirm? If so, this means there were at least one real Spanish Mausers used in the firing scenes as well, in addition to the Nagants and Gewehr 98s. --Variableorange 15:26, 29 May 2011 (CDT)

Nope, that's a real M1893 Spanish Mauser. Keep an eye out for any M1916 Short Spanish Mausers, since one of my contacts said that those were in the shipping contained bound for the set as well.  :) Well, the Spanish Mauser qualifies for that film. MoviePropMaster2008 18:09, 29 May 2011 (CDT)

"I was an extra playing a Republican soldier during the Spanish Civil War" <--Is it terrible that I laughed after reading that far from thinking "wow, that's a long time for a movie to be in production?" Evil Tim 04:27, 29 May 2011 (CDT)