Why Kurt Russell almost quit one of his favourite movies: “I said I don’t want to do that”
Few actors have been in as many cult classics as Kurt Russell, a reputation he’s embraced by spending the last four decades adding more to what’s becoming a ludicrously long list of unsung, underseen, unheralded, or generally unappreciated gems.
His career is fascinating because he’s been around since the early 1960s, but he’s never been viewed as a perennial A-lister who lives in the highest reaches of the Hollywood hierarchy. He’s famous, sure, and has been for a very long time, but he’s never quite cracked the same bracket as the likes of Tom Cruise, Denzel Washington, Tom Hanks, or even Arnold Schwarzenegger, all guys in his age range.
That doesn’t mean he isn’t a star, though, with Russell evolving from Walt Disney’s protégé into the ruggedly handsome face of countless genre films before settling into his current groove as an endlessly cool, charismatic, and effervescent veteran who lights up the screen with their inimitable charisma.
He knows he’s more prone to appearing in a cult hit than a ‘Best Picture’ nominee, and he also knows which ones never got the flowers they deserved the first time around. One of his most cherished roles came when he squeezed himself into a preposterous costume to play Steve Stronghold in 2005’s Sky High, which might be one of the more unfairly overlooked titles in the ongoing superhero boom.
An irreverent high school-set comedy unfolding in a world where people with fantastical powers are the norm, Sky High was well-received and recouped its budget more than twice over at the box office, which still wasn’t enough to save the sequel that was tentatively announced before being cancelled.
As Russell revealed, though, he almost quit the production before a single frame had been shot when script revisions soured him on the idea that convinced him to sign on in the first place. “I got this rewrite that I hated,” he told Black Film. “I felt, because of the way it had been tweaked, it was nasty, it had a meanness to it that nobody else was seeing. I said, ‘I don’t want to do that.'”
Making alterations of his own, Russell scribbled some new additions to the Sky High screenplay and informed the director, Mike Mitchell, that it was basically his way or the highway. “I said, ‘I would like to do this,'” he explained. “And they said, ‘Yes, this is what we want to do. This is the road we want to go down’. I said, ‘OK, count me in, let’s go.'”
It was a short-lived disagreement, but it just goes to show that even when he’s hardly plumbing the emotional depths in playing a costumed crimefighter called The Commander, who looks awfully silly in his red, white, and blue costume, Russell will still put his foot down and let everyone know that he won’t play ball unless things are done the way he wants them.
It’s one of the many perks of being Kurt Russell, and with his script changes approved, he had a ball making the film.
