The only four movies Kurt Russell couldn’t live without: “There’s no reason for anything else”
There would be countless worse people to be stuck on a deserted island with than Kurt Russell, who’d probably maintain his laid-back persona in Cast Away-esque isolation, but if you had the means to watch movies on that island, would you leave him in charge of the screening schedule?
You probably would, because he’s Kurt Russell, and he knows more about cinema than you do. It also helps that if he were forced to choose a quartet of pictures that would help him survive his ordeal, he opted for four movies that any self-respecting film fan would agree are both timeless and endlessly rewatchable.
He’s not an egocentric man, so none of them feature John Carpenter’s muse in the leading role, although you could do much worse than being trapped with an endlessly sandy arse crack and having Escape from New York, Tombstone, or Big Trouble in Little China to rely on to help you cope with digging it out on a daily basis.
On the other hand, the prospect of being marooned on an uninhabited outpost with nothing but 3000 Miles to Graceland, Captain Ron, or Paul WS Anderson’s Soldier for company is barely worth thinking about. Fortunately, he didn’t pat himself on the back, but he did make sure that if the worst-case scenario unfolded, his favourite movie of all time would be the first one packed.
“Going to an island, right?” he asked. “And you’ve got to take four, and you only get to take four?” Yes, Kurt, that’s how this hypothetical situation works. “My number one is easy,” he admitted. “The number one movie would be Casablanca, without question. For sure.”
That was to be expected, and Russell’s second pick hailed from a genre he’s more familiar with. The western might be responsible for one of his best films, but it did also cost him a leading role in Star Wars, so there aren’t any hard feelings toward the medium, since Sergio Leone’s seminal Once Upon a Time in the West made the cut.
Adhering to convention, since it seems to be a favourite among almost every legendary actor and director, he’d make sure that Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey was on the list. As for the fourth? It was a movie that he directly inspired, after being used as a sounding board by its chief creator.
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“I think Mary Poppins,” he concluded. “There’s no reason to take anything else if you’re only going to get four of them.” During the testing phase, Walt Disney asked his favoured young star if he’d recommend Julie Andrews’ feature-length debut to his friends. When he said no, the ‘Mouse House’ patriarch decided then and there that it needed some penguins. Not the most obvious train of thought, but an important one nonetheless.
If Russell was hosting movie night on his island, it’d be Casablanca, Once Upon a Time in the West, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Mary Poppins. His all-time favourite and three 1960s masterpieces, and as different as they are, it wouldn’t make for a bad quadruple bill at all.
