Val Kilmer opens up about his experiences on the set of Tombstone (1993)

You're the one, Wyatt

I remember hearing something about Kurt Russell "saving" Tombstone years ago, but I never imagined this is what they meant.

I always assumed they meant his hard-headed insistence on playing Wyatt the way he did, as opposed to Costner's "broken man re-born" in "Wyatt Earp" that was released at about the same time.

I liked both roles, for different reasons, but Kilmer's Doc > Quaid's.

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So what happened? Kurt Russell pretty much stepped in and directed the film himself.

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Which is ironic since he wasn't even the original person cast for Wyatt.

Cosmatos was hired specifically to ghost direct to circumvent a Director's Guild rule known as the "Eastwood Rule" that prevented Russell from doing it himself.

The rule, resulting from Eastwood firing the director on Josey Wales and taking over, is set to prevent anyone on the set from pulling a power play to become director.

Other than Heston, Buck Taylor, and Harry Carry Jr., Russell had more film experience than the rest of the cast.

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So what happened? Kurt Russell pretty much stepped in and directed the film himself

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This is one of the worst kept secrets in Hollywood, but I'm glad Kilmer is now basically confirming it. And while the film isn't perfectly accurate (no historical drama is), it is actually not that bad in that department. It's one of the more accurate depictions of the OK Corral, based on what we know.

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Kurt Russell

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We forget that Russell has been in the business almost 60 years. And, some of you youngsters only know him as "the cool guy" in Carpenter films such as Escape from New York, The Thing, etc., and forward.

Kurt was Disney's big adolescent star of their live action 60s and 70s stuff, and before that was in children's television. His father was Bing Russell (Deputy Foster on Bonanza). Russell played AA ball and might have made a career of it before injuring his shoulder.

And, although he has no formal directing credits, he has almost 100 acting credits on IMDB. I suspect if you had to press an actor into directing, you could do worse than Kurt Russell.

This reminds me of the story of the first Iron Man film. They started filming before the script was completed. So, Downey and Bridges ended up writing (uncredited) much of their own dialogue. The Dude describes it as "a 200 million dollar student film."

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I had no idea that the film was plagued with production problems. The film's first director, Kevin Jarre, was fired because he was inexperienced and fell behind schedule. The second director they hired, a guy by the name of George P. Cosmatos, was also inexperienced and knew little about what he was doing.

So what happened? Kurt Russell pretty much stepped in and directed the film himself. Val Kilmer wrote that Russell would draw up shot lists for the director, and that he and Kilmer would sit in Russell's room tweaking and re-writing the script on a nightly basis.

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This is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, examples of laying down the tracks a few feet in front of a locomotive going full speed. That they pulled it off is impressive. That they pulled it off and got a very good movie out of it is amazing.

Kurt Russel is the last of the great old school movie stars. We won't see his like again in Hollywood.

In a true moment of "art imitates life", the real Wyatt Earp spent his later years as a consultant for Hollywood on western films. They sought his opinion on authenticity of gunfights, horse riding, cowboy mannerisms, etc.

Kurt should make another movie starring as Wyatt in that capacity.