The one “undeniable” thing about ‘Tombstone’, according to Kurt Russell
In life, there are only a few certainties: death, taxes, and the undeniable fact that, if you’ve seen Kurt Russell‘s Tombstone, you love it.
Seriously, few movies in the last three or four decades have permeated the cultural consciousness in such a positive way. The 1993 classic starred Kurt Russell (a man science has already proven to be the most inherently likeable actor in Hollywood), and it somehow emerged from a troubled production as one of the best westerns ever made. Hell, in an era where the box office power of the genre had already started to diminish, Tombstone bucked the trend and became an honest-to-goodness hit.
What was it about Tombstone that audiences and critics loved so much, though? Well, the brilliant cast is hard to look past, with Val Kilmer’s sweaty, dangerous, and charming performance as Doc Holliday being the one that has lived longest in the memory. However, everyone in the movie is superb, from Russell and Bill Paxton, all the way to supporting players like Powers Boothe, Dana Delany, and Michael Biehn as the villainous Johnny Ringo. Special mention must also go to the great Sam Elliott, a man who seems less an actor than the living embodiment of the western genre in rugged, moustachioed human form.
In Russell’s opinion, though, the real secret sauce of Tombstone lies in its script. When he first read Kevin Jarre’s doorstep of a screenplay, he was so blown away that he called it “a western Godfather”. Unfortunately, that intricate epic had to be whittled down during its journey from page to screen, with Russell removing a lot of Earp’s scenes to streamline him into an “aura” character. The iconic Escape From New York star felt this was a necessary evil to let the script’s best element shine through in the movie.
“There’s one undeniable thing,” Russell told GQ magazine when asked what made Tombstone so special. “You name me another western where you can recall as much of the dialogue as people can recall from Tombstone. It’s not even close. Much more so than any other western. That’s undeniable.”
This was a big claim for Russell to make, but his huge, sweeping statement was 100% justified. The dialogue in Tombstone is so whipsmart, memorable, and quotable that, in this one respect, the film sits head and shoulders above nearly every other entry in the genre from cinema history. In fact, the internet is so universally praiseworthy of the words spoken in Tombstone that there are Top 10 lists excluding the film, purely so other movies can take the dialogue spotlight for a while.
Naturally, the biggest beneficiary of Tombstone’s dialogue was Kilmer, who utters a host of lines in the film that have entered the pop culture lexicon. There’s “I’m your huckleberry”, which the whimsically deadly Holliday says to Ringo right before he blows him away. It became so well-known that the late Kilmer used it as the title of his autobiography, and fans still love quoting it to this day.
Holliday also has brilliant lines about his obviously ailing health (“Not me. I’m in my prime.), his attitude toward calling it a day after drinking himself into oblivion for two days straight (“I’ve not yet begun to defile myself”), and even the occasional cast-iron tough guy threat (“Make no mistake. It’s not revenge he’s after. It’s a reckoning.”).
Not to be left out, several other characters also benefit from Jarre’s beautiful turn of phrase. Paxton’s Morgan Earp delivers a poignant soliloquy after being fatally shot (“Remember what I said about people seein’ a bright light before they die? It ain’t true. I can’t see a damn thing.”), while Billy Bob Thornton’s Johnny Tyler growls a superb taunt at Earp during a showdown (“You gonna do somethin’ or just stand there and bleed?”).
Then, there is Russell’s best line, barked at the one surviving member of a gang of outlaws he’s just gunned down. “All right, Clanton. You called down the thunder; well, now you’ve got it!” Poetry.
