Kurt Russell names the hardest movie of his career: “It was just so painful”
Kurt Russell has been in many enduring movies, including established favourites like The Thing, Escape From New York, Stargate, and The Hateful Eight. However, one of his greatest films was also the hardest movie of his career for a variety of painful reasons. In fact, rumours swirled around the troubled production for years after the film’s release about why the original director was fired and who secretly played puppeteer with the replacement director to realise their vision on-screen. Then, one day in 2006, Russell finally decided to spill the beans.
In 1989, Russell received an interesting phone call from his old agent at the William Morris Agency. Even though the star had moved to CAA, the agent still thought he’d be interested in a script that was being set up at William Morris. However, he warned Russell, “There’s a lot of politics involved here.” It transpired that the script the agent was referring to was called Tombstone, and it was loosely based on the real-life exploits of Wyatt Earp and the Gunfight at the OK Corral. There was just one problem: Kevin Costner was already attached to star in the film, which would be its writer Kevin Jarre’s directorial debut.
However, Costner eventually decided he’d rather play Earp in his own biopic, to be written and directed by Lawrence Kasdan. This left the door open for Russell to enter the fray and secure $25million in funding from producer Andrew Vajna. Before the production could get going, though, it ran into its first roadblock: that man Costner again.
You see, the Dances With Wolves star didn’t like the idea of a competing Wyatt Earp film being made at the same time as his biopic, so he threw his weight around to make things awkward for Tombstone. In 2006, Russell randomly decided to unburden himself of years of secrets to True West magazine, and revealed, “Costner had shut down all avenues of release for the picture except for Disney, except for Buena Vista.” When asked how Costner was able to do that, Russell shrugged, “He was powerful enough at the time, which I always respected. I thought it was good hardball.”
When the film finally entered production under the Buena Vista banner, though, more choppy waters lay ahead. Jarre was unceremoniously fired only a month into the shoot, after his inexperience with such a large production caused him to fall wildly behind schedule. Russell admitted, “I was very disappointed with Kevin. I told Kevin he was going to get fired. I said, ‘It’s not working, and they’re going to come in here and can you.’ And they did.”
What happened next has always been the point of much fascination. Director George P Cosmatos was hired to replace Jarre, and the film became a beloved cult classic. End of story, right? Nope. Rumours have persisted that Cosmatos was little more than a hired hand on the film – a man who could point the camera in the right direction while the real puppet master gave him silent instructions. In fact, many conspiracy theorists pointed the finger at Russell, claiming he was the true mastermind who directed the film. Could this be true? According to Russell himself, it was.
“They wanted me to take over the movie,” Russell claimed, referring to the producers. “I said, ‘I’ll do it, but I don’t want to put my name on it. I don’t want to be the guy.'” So, under the cloak of night, Russell made a bargain with Cosmatos. He said, “I’m going to give you a shot list every night, and that’s what’s going to be,” adding that he told the veteran helmer, “I don’t want any arguments…This is what the job is.”
Thankfully, Cosmatos – best known for directing Sylvester Stallone in Rambo: First Blood Part II and Cobra – was only too happy to play along with Russell’s ruse. He and Russell simply agreed on one thing: the star wouldn’t reveal the truth until Cosmatos was in the ground, and thus his reputation couldn’t suffer for it. This is why Russell finally came clean in 2006 – because Cosmatos passed away on April 19th, 2005.
To his chagrin, though, Russell quickly discovered that starring in a movie while shadow directing it was punishing work. He confessed, “It was the hardest work of my life…It was just so painful. It was hard physically to do. I got four hours of sleep every night.”
In the end, after a genuinely misbegotten production, Tombstone miraculously turned out better than anyone could have expected. Even Russell thought it was “pretty damn good.” However, he does sometimes pine for what could have been, because when he read Jarre’s original script, he believed it had the potential to be “one of the greatest westerns ever, ever, ever made.”
