Sebastian Bezzel and Simon Schwarz
“Action scenes aren’t that easy”
“Guglhupfgeschwader”: Sebastian Bezzel as the village policeman Franz Eberhofer in an action scene.
© Constantin Film Distribution / Bernd Schuller
In “Guglhupfgeschwader” there is an action scene in spaghetti western style. Sebastian Bezzel and Simon Schwarz reveal exciting facts about the shoot.
In the new Eberhof crime thriller “Guglhupfgeschwader” (theatrical release: August 4), a really big action scene in spaghetti western style can be seen for the first time. For the two main actors, the Bavarian actor Sebastian Bezzel (51) and his Austrian colleague Simon Schwarz (51), a childhood dream that was quickly overtaken by reality.
“I used to dream of shooting an action film or a road movie. I now know that those are the two things that annoy me the most when shooting,” explains Bezzel in an interview with the news agency spot on news. “In ‘Guglhupfgeschwader’ there are both: On the one hand we have these long car rides together with Theresa [Stefanie Reinsperger, 34], Rudi’s girlfriend – that was a tiring, hot and very cramped shoot. And the action scenes, where you’re sprayed with dust and imaginary glass splinters made of silicon fly through the air, are incredibly exhausting, because you only shoot very small sequences.” You don’t really get to play with them.
Plenty of time for an action scene
“An action scene just takes an awful lot of time. And we don’t get more shooting days just because we have an action scene in the movie,” agrees Schwarz. In big Hollywood productions it can be quite different, Schwarz gives an example: “Director Quentin Tarantino [59] for the tavern fight in ‘Inglourious Basterds’ [2009] Rehearsed for three weeks, filmed for two weeks and because it wasn’t good enough, filmed again for two weeks.”
They wouldn’t have such a luxury, “we have to make it in our shooting time and save time elsewhere. That’s why it’s not so easy to do such action scenes”. But it was worth it, Bezzel proudly adds.
How dangerous was the shooting?
The shootout at the Eberhofer farm is really haywire. The writer Rita Falk (58) also revealed this at the presentation of the latest and eleventh Eberhofer book in June in Munich’s Circus Krone building. “They shot the pigsty to pieces – the furniture, the walls, the ceiling. I was horrified when I saw that. Franz Eberhofer’s sanctuary fell victim to the Guglhupf squadron – I can’t even remember writing that down ‘ she recounted her recent visit to the set, giving a little taste of what cinema audiences can expect.
“Nothing has really been destroyed,” Schwarz dismisses with a laugh in the interview. “It looks bad on film, but it really isn’t.” This also has safety reasons, says Bezzel. “You can’t shoot around in a yard.” It was all pre-prepared by the prop masters. And the pistols and rifles are only “dummies”.
“If you shoot a gun during filming in Germany, a bolt is welded into the front. This means that you can’t really shoot with this gun,” explains Schwarz. You shouldn’t even aim a blank at people, he continues. “We have security measures that are obviously much stricter than anywhere else – and that’s a good thing.”