Oscar contender has central Pa. connection

Just to get it out of the way, Ron Luckenbill will not be attending the Oscars on Sunday evening.

In fact, at face value, there’s little to no reason that he should be.

Luckenbill makes guns, not movies, and while those two areas often overlap — think of almost any movie that Arnold Schwarzenegger made during the mid to late ’80s — it’s difficult to imagine The Governator behind the business end of a Bucks County-style Pennsylvania long rifle with a Jim Chambers Golden Age lock.

Let’s back up for a second.

Luckenbill is the proprietor of Recreating History, a shop in Emporium where he employs a lifetime of technical aptitude and a sharp command of history to produce nearly a dozen long rifles each year.

His work recently made its feature film debut in “The Revenant,” a drama starring Leonardo DiCaprio that is leading the pack this awards season.

On Sunday, the cast and creative team behind the film will gather at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood for the 2016 Academy Awards, where “The Revenant” has been nominated for 12 Oscars — including a best actor nod for DiCaprio.

Meanwhile, back in north-central Pennsylvania, Luckenbill is still just happy to have been included.

“I don’t get called every day by a movie company to build a gun like this,” Luckenbill said.

It’s such a rarity that when his wife first took the call from one of the movie’s producers, she was convinced it was an elaborate scam. Luckenbill agreed, but his children were more persistent.

They researched the name of the producer online and after confirming the project’s veracity, urged their father to get to work.

With any new client, Luckenbill usually begins the collaboration with a detailed discussion about the design of the gun, the look or feel that the buyer is trying to capture.

The watchword on this project was authenticity.

Based on the book of the same name by author Michael Punke, “The Revenant” tells the story of Hugh Glass (DiCaprio), a fur trader who is mauled by a grizzly bear and left for dead by the rest of his hunting party in the frozen hills of the Northern Plains. Fueled by revenge — or the power of positive thinking — he survives and begins a long and perilous journey back to camp.

To reveal any more would risk verging on spoiler territory, but consider that if Glass had chosen to settle his differences over tea and polite conversation, the producers probably would not have reached out to one of Pennsylvania’s foremost rifle makers.

In Punke’s book, Glass uses a Berks County-style rifle, a stockier model with minimal decoration.

Specifics, as it turns out, are absolutely fundamental to someone in Luckenbill’s line of work. He knows this because he seldom gets them.

“A lot of times people come in and say ‘I want a Pennsylvania long rifle,’ and that’s like saying ‘I want to buy a new car,’ ” Luckenbill said.

A minivan makes a much different statement than, say, a Mercedes convertible. It helps to know if the client is dropping the kids off at soccer practice or mismanaging a midlife crisis — even if they end up settling for what is already in the showroom.

Due to time constraints, the producers had settled on a Bucks County-style gun that Luckenbill already had in stock.

Easy.

Now all Luckenbill had to do was make an exact replica.

Props are damaged on film sets all of the time, especially on film sets that involve running, jumping and shooting — or some other combination therein.

Delays in filming are like helium to a ballooning budget. There’s a reason that the production team behind a Spider-Man movie has a closet full of red and blue suits on hold when it’s common knowledge that Peter Parker himself could probably afford two, max.

“The Revenant” team needed the replica gun on set in British Columbia in six weeks. Luckenbill had it ready in three.

That’s the Hollywood wait time. Here in central Pennsylvania, the line for a Luckenbill rifle stretches around the block — if it took you up to a year to cross the street.

It’s not that he’s making them any slower. Aside from a brief 28-year intermission to foster a family and a career as a Lehigh Valley state trooper, Luckenbill has been making guns all of his life.

He’s self-taught — prodigious skill hard-won through trial and error, the mistakes of the past improved upon in the present. Luckenbill is good with the past. He can rattle off names, dates and places with the well-rehearsed fluidity of a college sophomore who has just spent an entire evening cramming for an American history final.

His isn’t a miracle of short-term memory though. This stuff is lodged deep in his head, the bedrock upon which he has built his business.

Give him long enough and he’ll tell you that an American soldier named Timothy Murphy used a Pennsylvania long rifle to assassinate a British general at 250 yards during the Battle of Saratoga.

In other words, if there’s a lull in the conversation among the row of seats reserved at the Dolby Theatre for the cast and crew of “The Revenant,” they have only themselves to blame.

Luckenbill and the producers haven’t stayed in contact since he sent the finished rifles up to British Columbia. His, after all, was one of hundreds of other contributions made behind the scenes by art directors, prop masters and the guy who runs the teamsters.

He’s a gunsmith, not a filmmaker.

Word did eventually get back to Luckenbill that DiCaprio had fired off a couple of live rounds with his gun during a training exercise. He was pleased with the results — the rising endorsement of a potentially Academy Award winning actor.

“I’m happy to been involved in something like this,” Luckenbill said.

This story was originally published February 26, 2016 at 1:26 AM with the headline "Oscar contender has central Pa. connection."