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Notes -
His character is the admiral of the titular battleship, under huge stress, and releases this stress by very slowly and carefully building a model ship in his rare time. Said model ship is a beautiful and very intricate historical galleon; it appears in pretty much every scene where the admiral is being introspective in his quarters.
Avoiding spoilers, a Bad Thing Happens to the admiral and he loses someone he cares about. Olmos is a rather improvisational actor and completely aces his character's reaction: he roars, takes the ship in his hands, lifts it up, and smashes it to smithereens on his table, the admiral wrecking years of his own work in grief.
The cameras cut, everyone high-fives... and then the director points out that the real-life prop for the model ship was on loan from a national museum. It's very old, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars... and Edward James Olmos has just smashed it to match-sized bits.
Thought you might find it amusing as a case of life imitating art.
Similarly, the scene in Hateful Eight where Kurt Russell smashes the guitar was supposed to be done with a different prop swapped in, because the guitar they were using was an antique on loan from the Martin guitar museum. Unfortunately, Kurt didn't get that memo, and smashed an irreplaceable historical guitar (despite his scene partner unsuccessfully trying to break character to get him to stop). And that is why Martin doesn't loan their antique guitars out to movie productions any more.
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