Simon Atherton – The Man Who’s Killed all Your Favourite Characters

[Corporal Hicks]

http://www.rushesmagazine.com/simon-atherton-the-man-whos-killed-all-your-favourite-characters/

"I've still got the original Braveheart sword, I made two, I kept one and Mel Gibson got one." An off the cuff comment, casually thrown into conversation by Simon Atherton, the chosen weapon maker for any action film you could think of. Used by the likes of Ridley Scott, Steven Spielberg and James Cameron, he has trained Brad Pitt and Tom Hanks to fire a pistol, made the gun for Sigourney Weaver in Aliens and been shouted at by Tom Cruise for moving his special pair of shoes. When thinking of Simon, you might picture a Russell Crowe look a like, forging swords in a stable, not a slim built ex-fisherman, with a voice as calming as a cup of chamomile tea.

However, Simon seems to take it all in his stride. Sat in his office, he's surrounded by a collection to make any film buff go weak at the knees. He coolly remarks; "I'm looking at the crossbow now, from Gladiator, there's a knife Geena Davis used [in Cutthroats Island] that flicks open, a couple of swords from Robin Hood." He has neatly settled these priceless pieces of artwork around his small office in the middle of the Buckinghamshire countryside, much like a squirrel gathering its prized acorns all in one safe place. For an outsider it's hard to comprehend how he refrains from leaping out of bed to look at them each morning. But it's the norm for Simon, and he has learnt over the last 30 years in the business to take it as it comes. "You just go from film to film. You don't know where you'll be in 6 months time," he says. Ungodly hours away from his family and demanding requests from directors take their toll, and when on a shoot he can find himself working 18-hour days. "I've just done three weeks on the new Mission: Impossible, during which I didn't really have a home. [Directors] are so intense, you get phone calls from [them] at one in the morning because they've had a brilliant idea, and they forget you have a life as well." However, he's adamant that most of the time he loves his work, especially when he receives exciting briefs through the post. "When we did Gladiator, Ridley Scott said he wanted a movie with an equivalent of a machine gun but for a gladiator, so we made the spinning crossbow. That was fun."

Making a weapon for a high-budget Hollywood movie used to require top-of-the-range equipment and materials. But again, just like an animal gathering bits and pieces for a nest, Simon finds himself where people like you or I may go on a Saturday morning searching for nuts and bolts. "On a few occasions when you're on location, and at the last minute someone says 'yeah I wanna sword but it's got to look different,' you start to hunt around shops to see if you can buy things to convert. It was a fun thing to you know, go around somewhere like B&Q or Homebase looking at what's there." Simon was set the challenge to make a gun for Sigourney Weaver's character Ripley in Aliens, and had the idea of using a strap used to steady camera movements. "I really enjoyed making the steadicam gun. We took a steadicam harness and attached a camera to it and we bolted a German machine gun onto it. And we crossed that over with a Kawasaki 750 because we went to a motorcycle shop and we were just looking for bits and pieces that would change its look." The firearms he uses are real-life working guns; he disassembles the bodies, removes the insides and then puts them back together. Simon and his team then have to train the actors and extras how to hold, use and fire the weapons. He must be at the shoot each time they are used. Health and safety is crucial on a film set, and when you have a cast of 1,000, like he did in Saving Private Ryan, it's important that every person knows what they are doing with the instrument placed in their hands. "You know if all of a sudden we arrived at 6 o' clock in the morning and we gave them a gun, and the extra went and shot somebody, you can imagine if they said 'well I've had no training.'" For Saving Private Ryan (1998), Simon kept all the weapons used in the film in warehouses after filming was complete. When there was no demand for them, selling the collection seemed the best option. But then came the call to make Band of Brothers, the 10 part television series, "we kinda cleaned it all up, and took it through to that, and then after that we were about to sell it all again and get rid of it, and then along came The Pacific. And then subsequently along came Fury. So whenever you think they're going to stop making Second World War films, it just amazes you how they keep going."

And just like war films keep going, Simon does too. But when will the time come for him to hang up his apron and cut his Homebase loyalty card in half? Sooner rather than later it seems. "I've been pondering lately if I'd like to go back and do an art foundation course down in Cornwall. I'd have to have a workshop, play and make things." Even though he seems set on living a simpler life in the near future, his ability to turn down a job seems rare. He has already signed up to working on The Huntsman and Assassin's Creed, to be released in 2016. A settled life is a dot on the horizon at the moment for Simon, he's not going anywhere for a while. With Steven Spielberg still in business and war stories still needing to be made, Simon will be there too, acting like the squirrel he is, gathering props for his office walls.