Tombstone (Part 2)

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Hello and welcome back to part two of what went wrong on tombstone.

So much more to go so much wronger and I can't wait.

Before we get into it though, we wanted to take a moment to say that you may be hearing some new ads that may be featuring our voices and that is because we are getting some sponsor support for the show.

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I'm very excited to see what's going to happen next.

So

I'm, as always, Lizzie Bassett, one of your hosts here with your other host, who is so deep, so deep in Tombstone, he can hardly find his way out.

And we're very excited for him to tell us the remainder of this absolutely wacky western.

Chris?

When we last saw our dogged heroes, Tombstone's writer and director, Kevin Jarr, had been relieved of his duties exactly four weeks into production, leaving the film rudderless.

Now, as we discussed last episode, producer Andy Vajna and his his company Synergy had reached out to die-hard director John McTiernan early in production to see if he would take over the film.

However, McTiernan had told them he'd need a two-week shutdown to make the transition work, and that would have cost the producers more money than they could bear to swallow.

Now, Lizzie, Michael Bean later wondered in a blog post why the studio had waited so long, meaning a full month, to remove Jar from the film if they were so disappointed by his dailies.

I actually think you brought this up in the first episode.

Yeah, four weeks is a long time.

Four weeks is a long time.

I think the answer was a combination of the fact that the first scenes filmed were piecemeal moments that took place outside of Tombstone.

They were connective tissue, not kind of the heart of the movie.

The producers perhaps hoped that those scenes could be saved if the stronger meteor sections to be shot later were of a higher quality.

It's also possible that producer Jim Jacks was actively fighting to keep Jar on the movie and the studio was very, very, very quickly looking for a replacement, but didn't want to shut things down prematurely for fear of losing momentum.

So it's possible that the studio was reaching out to John McTiernan a week into shooting, for all we know.

Now, I have to believe that Kurt Russell was aware that behind the scenes they were looking for a new director.

Not only was he the reason the movie had gotten financed and he had a personal relationship with Andy Vajna, but he he later said, 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.

I think Kurt Russell meant this literally.

He was trying to tell Kevin, they're looking for your replacement.

Obviously, that didn't make a lick of difference.

Jar was fired.

And Kurt Russell and Synergy needed a director who could literally start immediately on a project that took place in a genre that had been dead in Hollywood for almost 30 years.

Enter a most unusual solution, George P.

Cosmatos.

Please excuse the interruption, dear listener.

However, after we concluded the recording of this episode, I was informed that the correct pronunciation of the director of this film's name is not Cosmatos, of course, but Cosmatos or Cosmatos.

My sincere apologies to our more refined and European listeners, and a special thank you to author John Farkas, who is actually the individual who very graciously emailed me this correction.

As a reminder, one of my primary sources for this episode is Mr.

Farkas' book, The Making of Tombstone, Behind the Scenes of the Classic Modern Western.

So, an extra special plug for that book and Mr.

Farkas.

It is a highly enjoyable and very detailed behind-the-scenes look at the film.

It contains far more than we were able to get to in this podcast episode.

So, head to Amazon Amazon and click that buy button.

All right, back to the episode.

Born in Florence, Italy, to a Greek family in 1941, Yorgo George Pancosmatos was not known for subtlety.

He assisted director Otto Preminger on Exodus in 1960.

That's the Paul Newman film on the birth of Israel in 1948.

And by the 1970s, he was directing his own films under Italian producer Carlo Ponty.

Ponty, whose second wife was Sophia Lorraine, had worked with Fellini, Antonioni, and even David Lean on Dr.

Chivago, along with Kevin Jarr's adopted father, Maurice Jarr.

By the time Ponty and Cosmatos collaborated, though, Ponty was in the final stretch of his career.

The three films they made together, Massacre in Rome, starring a relatively late career Richard Burton, The Cassandra Crossing, starring Sophia Loren, which the New York Times called, quote, profoundly stupid, end quote.

And Escape to Athena, featuring Roger Moore, Telly Savalis, Sonny Bono, and Elliot Gould, it seemed, have two things in common.

They were financially unsuccessful and featured strong action sequences.

So, at that point, Cosmatos decided to make the hop across the Atlantic.

He made a little-scene Canadian horror film called Of Unknown Origin, starring Peter Weller, but of course, his American debut was the smash hit

Rambo First Blood Part 2, which in a strange twist of fate was based on a story written by Kevin Jarr, which we discussed in our first episode.

The movie, even though it received pretty dismal reviews, was an international box office sensation.

It grossed $300 million

against a sub-$30 million budget for producer Andy Vojna and his Carol Co.

Pictures.

Now, Cosmatos and Sylvester Stallone ran it back with 1986's Cobra,

which grossed $160 million against a $25 million budget, despite pretty awful reviews, and officially established Cosmatos as a major blockbuster action director and burnished his reputation as a, quote, shooter, someone who could come in and execute existing material with Panache, not unlike John Frankenheimer in our episode on The Island of Dr.

Moreau.

As Cosmatos put it, though, quote, my pictures appeal all around the world.

I do slick American pictures with a European sensitivity, end quote.

Rambo first blood.

That slick European sensitivity.

European sensitivity.

Cosmetos' career took a hit with 1989's Leviathan, a movie I adore.

Have you ever seen Leviathan?

No.

It's basically the thing meets the abyss.

Oh, great.

It's really, it's very silly, but it's very fun, and it features some amazing creature effects by way of Stan Winston.

The movie cratered critically and commercially, but Cosmatos was developing a film with Synergy when Tombstone was in production.

And as we mentioned, he had an existing relationship with Andy Vojna.

According to ghostwriter and associate producer John Fosano, quote, I was in the Synergy Productions office developing a script for Die Hard 3, and Cosmatos was developing a Washington mystery, The Shadow Conspiracy.

We were talking in the hallway when Andy Bajna opened the door to his office, saw us standing there, and said, you, you, come here.

You are going to direct Tombstone.

You are going to rewrite it.

Before we knew it, George and I were on Andy's private jet headed for the set.

Oh, God.

Here's how quick it is.

I believe that conversation took place on a Tuesday because Cosmetos later said of the transition, quote, I read the script on a Wednesday, June 9th, based on the timeline I've been able to piece together.

So this would be three weeks after production had started.

We made the deal on Thursday, and I was on a plane on Friday.

Saturday, I changed some locations, some of the sets, some of the costumes.

I changed some of the actors on Sunday, and on Monday, we had a production meeting.

By Tuesday, we were shooting.

So there was a kind of psychological turmoil on set.

End quote.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I'm not going to do a Greek Italian accent for this episode, but just imagine that with a cigar in his mouth, drinking his 40th cup of coffee, wearing a straw hat, black socks, and white tennis shoes.

That's George Cosmatos.

To be clear, that is who you want to come in and fix this movie, though.

You're 100% right, Lizzie.

But that doesn't mean it was going to be an easy transition.

Not only was the production under the same stringent schedule it had started with, Cosmatos and the producers quickly decided that Jar's footage,

basically the full month of it, was unusable.

Yeah.

There's one notable exception we'll get to later.

Further, since Cosmatos was a DGA director, the project flipped to Union, which brought the pay scales up.

So the budget swelled as a result of that as well.

In order to maintain continuity and not lose their completion bond, meaning the insurance on the film, they needed to shoot every scheduled day of the production.

So according to John Farkas, Kevin Jarr was released on a Friday, June 11th.

Cosmetos began filming on Tuesday, June 15th, leaving 27-year-old recently promoted first assistant director Adam Taylor to direct the production on Saturday, June 12th.

No one knows or has reported what he shot and if it was used in the movie.

Oh, God.

So basically, he had to stand up in front of the production and say, and he apparently wore a tie to do it.

He was like, I'm your director today, and hopefully we'll have somebody else on Monday.

And they did.

The production meeting that Cosmos Host referred to on Monday, June 14th is a meeting that I wish had been recorded.

It sounds incredible.

As John Fosano said, quote, everyone in that room was angry.

They wanted to kill each other and their dream project was on the verge of falling apart.

Some wanted to know why I was needed.

Andy Vojna says, here's your new director and your new writer.

Everyone was arguing against us and it was huge.

End quote.

Now, it doesn't seem entirely true that everyone was upset about the change.

I've read that a lot of the cast and crew were actually very relieved that Kevin Jarr was asked to leave the project.

Well, I have to wonder if the resistance is to the writer.

Because it does seem like they knew they needed a new director, but they loved the script.

So if somebody new is coming in as a writer, that could ruffle some feathers.

Lizzie, how right you are.

Always am.

While many were relieved about the change at director, the anxiety seemed to be rooted around Vajna's assertion that the current script was too long.

It needed to be cut down.

Now, I'm sure a lot of these actors who took this movie for the writing and for the complexity of the characters and not the payday were very worried that their roles were going to get cut.

But Andy Vajna had a really, really important ally on this front, and that is, of course, lead actor Kurt Russell, who agreed that the script was too long.

As he later said, we needed to lose 20 pages.

That's a lot.

He would never lose it.

So once he was gone, there was only one way I'm going to get the trust of these actors, and that is to cut myself out of this goddamn movie and make some changes.

Make Wyatt an aura character.

End quote.

Lizzy, you mentioned how Wyatt Earp has no backstory in this movie.

Not a bit.

Kurt Russell decided he was just going to step off a train and you would have to accept him, and that his character would be filled out largely through the dialogue of Doc Holiday.

That's honestly fine.

That's basically what happens.

And as we've discussed previously, I don't necessarily need much or any exposition.

Just maybe a little bit.

A little bit.

How did they meet?

Who is this man?

Are those his brothers?

He does say brother one time.

Yeah, but like, is it that a friend?

Is it sure?

Whatever.

They all have blonde wives.

I guess they're all brothers.

This is corroborated by Powers Booth, who later said, quote, when George came in, the first thing the producers did was rip out 20 to 25 pages of the script.

And to Kurt's credit and Val's credit, they fought to put a lot of that stuff back in, even though a lot of it didn't have anything to do with their characters on the page.

End quote.

However, not everyone was thrilled with the changes.

As Sam Elliott later said, quote, initially the screenplay was one of the best I've ever read.

If I was given the screenplay as it is now, I'd pass on it.

They took 29 pages out of it, eliminated the connective tissue, took the character development out.

Yeah.

End quote, which you can feel in the final product.

Yes.

According to Michael Bean, He gave an account that differs from Kurt Russell's, although he did give the disclaimer, Kurt's word is gold, but here our memories differ.

He said the cuts had removed all of the context and dimensionality around the cowboys, the villains in the film.

As he and Jim Anderson later wrote in a blog post, in the actual history of Tombstone, these characters were far more rounded and complex than the movie depicts.

Curly Bill was a part-time tax collector who made the other cowboys pay up.

The Clantons and McLauries were residents of the community, and none had ever been convicted of a crime beyond public drunkenness.

As ranchers, they willingly trafficked in cattle rustled from Mexico to satisfy Tombstone's demand for beef.

But by the standards of that day, stealing from Mexico wasn't stealing at all.

There were no wanted posters with any of the Clantons or the McLauries' faces on them.

The same couldn't be said of Wyatt Earp at that point in time.

He had a longer criminal record than any of the men killed in the fabled gunfight.

End quote.

This is backed up by some of the casting itself.

Robert Burke received fifth billing for his role as Frank McClaury, which was ahead of Sam Elliott and Bill Paxton.

His character basically has no lines in the final film.

Michael Rookers McMasters is one of the most confusing characters in the film.

He's established, and then he shows up in the back half of the movie as having had a change of heart, but we get none of the connective tissue there.

Thomas Hayden Church and John Corbett are given little to do but die in the final cut.

It seems that based on one particular change, they were were trying to simplify this into a revenge movie, which is what had worked for Andy Vajna and Synergy Pictures in the past.

In order to make that work, they needed to make sure that we hated the bad guys as much as possible.

And there's one scene that was not in Jar's original script that I would argue is the most detrimental to the finished film.

And that's the wedding massacre that opens the movie.

So, Lizzie, broadly speaking, can you give our audience a rundown of what happens happens in the opening scene of the film?

Sure.

There is a very happy couple exiting a church.

All of a sudden, Curly Bill and his crew show up.

They basically say, either you swindled a cowboy or you killed a cowboy.

I can't remember exactly what.

But they just start indiscriminately murdering the wedding party goers as well as

the Mexican wedding party goers as well as eventually the bride and groom.

And the last person that they kill while they're sitting down to eat the wedding feast that was set out for all the people they just murdered is that they go ahead and they murder the priest as well, because why not?

This scene didn't exist in Jarscript.

The closest thing to it is a scene that was deleted, which involves the cowboys, which were meant to be led by Robert Mitchum's old man Clanton, a role that was eliminated for budgetary reasons, attacking a group of Mexican rurales that were the armed forces, not

a wedding party.

This was based on a real-life event called the Skeleton Canyon Ambush.

Though the scene still included a good deal of Jar's dialogue, including that quote from the book of Revelation, the tone of the wedding massacre scene was much, much darker.

Johnny Ringo murders a priest.

In this opening scene, something that never happened in real life.

This rankled Michael Bean a great deal.

And the scene also includes an implied rape of the bride.

Yes, before they kill her, it does.

In total, it sets up the cowboys as utterly irredeemable scum, in my opinion.

Stephen Lang even later said,

I hated the Mexican wedding massacre myself.

The skeleton canyon ambush was a matter of record and would have been a great opening scene, but it just wasn't going to happen.

End quote.

It also changes the film from history, which was basically a turf war, it was a land dispute, into a morality play.

Right.

Good versus evil.

Now, I just want to be clear.

It was reported that the original ambush at Skeleton Canyon scene was cut due to budget constraints, and that's entirely possible.

It would have involved an ambush on horseback, as opposed to the scene that we do get, which is the cowboys walking in on foot to a plaza outside of a church, a much more controlled location.

However, it seems like it at least served the dual purpose then of creating a situation in which the cowboys could be actively rooted against from the moment that they're introduced into the movie, which would immediately put us on Wyatt Earp's side when he steps off the train in the following scene.

Yes.

And we're back live during a flex alert.

Dialed in on the thermostat.

Oh, we're pre-cooling before 4 p.m., folks.

And that's the end of the third.

Time to set it back to 78 from 4 to 9 p.m.

Clutch move by the home team.

What's the game plan from here on out?

Laundry?

Not today.

Dishwasher?

Sidelined.

What a performance by Team California.

The power truly is ours.

During a flex alert, pre-cool, power down, and let's beat the heat together.

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All right.

So, Kurt Russell's rewriting the script or helping John Fosano rewrite the script.

Lizzie, if you had to guess what his North Star is as he's reworking the script, like what can I rework the movie around?

Is there a character or performance that even after four weeks, you would have to imagine

would be a driving force.

I would imagine it is Val Kilmer as Doc Holiday.

I'm your Huckleberry, or Kilmer, was russell's huckleberry to be more specific as kurt russell revealed in a later interview he'd apparently told kilmer you're going to have all the acting stuff to do in this movie and i'm going to make sure it gets done yeah kilmer himself told the same story more or less saying i watched kurt sacrifice his own role and energy to devote himself as a storyteller, even going so far as to drop shotless to help our replacement director, George Cosmatos, who came in with only two two days prep.

He and I worked so hard, I eventually moved in with him and slept on the sofa when Goldie wasn't in town, so we could use the extra 20 minutes writing or going over the schedule.

And I got all the best lines, and he knew it, and still laughed and joked every single day.

Aw.

And again, not that this was without merit.

Kilmer's method approach to his role had made a huge impression around the set.

As Michael Bean later said, People ask me what it's like to work with Val Kilmer.

I don't know.

Never met him, never shook his hand.

I know Doc Holiday, but I don't know Kilmer.

Kilmer actually later joked that, quote, in a wool suit, being Doc was easy to do.

That was my theory about why Doc killed so many people.

It's just like he wore wool in the summer in the Arizona territory, and that made him mad.

He was just too hot.

There's some pretty good Val Kilmer quotes about this film.

It made me appreciate his sense of humor.

So Kurt Russell rebuilt the movie around the Doc Holiday Wyatt Earp romance,

which caused the love stories in the film to suffer drastically.

Just cut them.

Just don't do them.

I think they needed it for some specific plot points, but I agree.

When Doc Holiday and Wyatt Earp take center stage,

there's not a lot for Josephine Marcus to do from a plot structure perspective.

No, there's nothing.

And also, unfortunately, it ends up making him look very cold to his Laudenham-addicted wife, who is just barely there.

And as far as the viewer can tell, hasn't done anything wrong other than having a drug addiction after being dragged around the country by Wyatt Earp.

So it doesn't do them any favors to reduce this.

Just get rid of them.

Just get rid of them.

To be fair, it does seem like he was that cold to her in real life.

She was abandoned, apparently expected a telegram from him that never came.

And I believe in 1888, killed herself by way of Laudenum alcohol poisoning.

She overdosed.

Okay, so White Earp was a bit of a piece of shit.

So I do think that that part of the story is actually very accurately done.

She just disappears from his life at a certain point.

Now, that is not to say that all of Kilmer's lines stayed in the film.

Originally, the movie was supposed to end with, according to Kilmer, a five-page monologue.

for Doc Holiday.

However, he could not figure out how to perform it, dying of tuberculosis.

Yeah, it's too many pages.

As he later said, quote, I can't talk for five five pages, end quote.

So they replaced it with the card game that ends the film.

However, many on set were upset by the shift in power.

Some called the production the Kurt and Val show.

Michael Bean even later wrote that he and Power's Booth had a word for it when things seemed too focused on Doc Holiday, valitis.

Things came to a bit of a head when Michael Bean saw the dailies of his I Want Your Blood scene, where he yells out, I want your blood, you know, at

Earp and Holiday.

Quote, they spent spent all morning lovingly setting up dialogue-free reaction shots of Doc perched on a chair on a porch when they shot my scene, I was out of focus.

End quote.

Listen, I get it.

Powers Booth and Michael Bean, you're both wonderful.

We love you both here at What Went Wrong.

You cannot look away from Val Kilmer as Doc Holiday in this movie.

I could have done with more, honestly.

Go ahead and put more in.

Which she says in plenty of interviews.

I think once he saw the movie,

he absolutely understood it.

The sense of mistrust also seems to have stemmed from the fact that according to Michael Bean, a natural division had set in with the cast where the actors that played the cowboys and those played the herps didn't really interact.

So if you remember, Michael Bean and Bill Paxton had actually acted in five films together at this point, but they apparently only shared one dinner on the set of Tombstone.

Instead, Bean spent all of his time with Powers Booth, who he'd driven from LA to Tucson with, and Stephen Lang, who became like a sounding board for his character ideas on Johnny Ringo.

Quick aside on Stephen Lang, apparently he spent a lot of the time on set playing his cello.

I didn't know he could play the cello.

And by his own admission, he was basically drunk the entire time on tequila to stay in character.

He looks like it.

Which was so bad for him that when he left set, he ended up in a hospital passing kidney stones because all of that tequila in 110-degree heat had basically wrecked his liver and kidneys.

So he does not recommend doing that.

Speaking of being drunk, Val Kilmer looks legitimately drunk in at least one scene in this.

I read in a number of places that he was drinking consistently out of his flask.

Specifically, I believe it's like a type of brandy that Doc Holiday was known for drinking.

He looks hammered.

There's one scene, it's great.

Like it's very good, but there's one scene where I was like, there's no way that man is not three sheets to the wind.

He was in character the entire movie.

Michael Bean once, I think, said at one point, the only time he knew he wasn't in character, he walked into a trailer and he was eating potato chips, like Pringles out of a tube.

And that's the one time he wasn't in character.

But yeah, there was some quotes about a PA who was responsible for refilling his flask.

Great that came up a number of times.

So Kurt Russell puts together a brain trust.

It's him, John Fosano, Val Kilmer, and producer Jim Jacks.

Each night, they get together in Russell's room.

They revise the script and they rework the schedule.

According to Kurt Russell, he worked every single night until he passed out 20 hours a day.

He said he slept four hours a day in order to get everything done that needed to be done for the film.

It didn't help that Cosmatos, who may have had a great eye, was exceedingly difficult for many of the production members to work with.

As a result, they were bleeding personnel.

So in 1993, Entertainment Weekly reported that 17 crew members, including two script supervisors and half the art department, had quit the movie or were quickly fired by Cosmatos.

Apparently, one of the script supervisors quit because Cosmatos would eat pistachios all the time and then he'd yell cut while the pistachios were in his mouth and he kept spitting food on her.

So she eventually just said, I'm out and left the production.

Fair.

Val Kilmer, for his part, said in his memoir that by the end of the production, over 100 cast members and crew members had left the film.

at some point, which he said must be some kind of record.

I should also mention at this point that Lisa Zane, Kevin Jarr's girlfriend, who was supposed to play big-nosed Kate Hironi, departed the production and was replaced by Joanna Pakula.

I couldn't figure out if she was fired or if she left in solidarity, but I'd have to imagine it must have been so heartbreaking for her to watch this movie that had been written by her significant other, and it seems like inspired in part by her, get not only taken away from him, but then handed over to someone like George Cosmatos, who had no appreciation for the script or the Western genre in general by his own admission.

Yeah.

So when Cosmos Host showed up, he saw the red-sashed cowboys and told them to get off his set.

There would be no red sashes in his film.

According to Michael Bean, the two only exchanged three words the entire time they worked together.

Cosmos Host said hello to him when they first met and then said, fuck off the last time they spoke.

Okay.

According to Catherine Hardwick, When she first met the director, he refused to shake her hand.

He said, you are the production designer who hired you.

Hardwick said, he did not want to work with a woman.

He told me I should have been a man.

End quote.

In the name of Twilight, how dare you?

Hardwick, though, did later make t-shirts featuring all of the absurd quotes Cosmatos was heard saying on set, dozens of them, including but not limited to, quote, would Stanley Kubrick have this in his movie?

End quote.

You can read a full accounting of that in John Farkas' book.

According to Hardwick, she made the shirts for everyone in her art department.

When Cosmatos noticed them, he came up to her and asked her to make him five more.

Did make me appreciate him a little bit.

Cosmetos was, by many accounts, particularly terrible to the women on set.

He reportedly referred to one of the extras as, quote, the girl with the big tits, end quote.

This point was corroborated by Michael Bean.

Apparently, the actress had the courage to approach Cosmatos and tell him her name and specifically ask not to be referred to in such a derogatory manner, which George refused.

After filming, she filed a sexual harassment lawsuit that was later settled.

Michael Bean said he later learned from Jim Jacks that the production was forced to pay fines of $40,000 by the Arizona Film Commission for Cosmatos' conduct on the film.

Wow.

Cosmatos knew little about horses.

At one point, he insisted that horses eat meat.

At which point, the crew began to laugh at him.

And the horse wrangler had to explain that the horses on this production were vegetarians.

And everywhere else.

Yeah.

We talked a lot about peeing on set.

Most recently, Faye Dunaway and, of course, The Rock rumored on Red One.

Storyboard artist Donna Klein claims that there was a rumor that Cosmatos was peeing not into buckets, but just in broad daylight.

Something that came to light when they were doing close-up coverage of Kurt Russell.

The boom operator called for quiet, saying, I hear a weird trickling sound.

And according to Klein, that was Cosmatos who had called action over his shoulder while he was urinating.

Wow.

Now in case things weren't difficult enough the birdcage theater built in a studio space in old Tucson was not air-conditioned at all.

The interior temperature cleared 120 degrees.

Val Kilmer claims they put a thermometer in the room and it peaked at 134.

You can't be in there.

No.

To make matters worse, Charles Schneider, who was hired by Kevin Jarr to play the juggler on stage, if you you remember at the beginning of that sequence.

Yes, who they start shooting at.

Yeah, well, he arrived to set having practiced juggling with the wrong pins.

As he later said, quote, the morning I arrived on the set, I'm in my costume.

Everything's beautiful.

I look pretty cool.

The prop department approached me and handed me my juggling clubs.

They are much smaller, authentic 19th-century juggling pins, and worst of all, much heavier than I dreamed they would have been.

And one of them has an explosive charge in it.

End quote.

Schneider tried juggling the clubs and quickly realized he couldn't.

An assistant director offered some advice, just wing it.

At which point, Schneider had a panic attack.

Billy Zane helped calm him down, but he was then informed by a special effects assistant that since the shot would include his face, they couldn't put goggles on him to protect his eyes.

So they said, just make sure you get that pin at least two feet above your head, and then when we detonate it, close your eyes.

At which point, Schneider said, I can't do this, which is is when George Cosmatos finally stepped in and said,

what?

The juggler can't fucking juggle?

What the fuck?

Who fucking hired you?

Who cast you in this?

And Snyder said, Kevin Jarr?

Powers Booth apparently saved the day.

He stepped in and said, hey, it doesn't say in the scene that he actually gets off any of the juggling.

What if he just tosses one of them up and we shoot it immediately?

Which was deemed fine.

And the actor was very grateful to Power's boost.

Things weren't much cooler outside.

Official temperatures reached 114 degrees, and that's before considering the 18k lights they were shining to get the exposure right under the actor's Stetson hats.

That's horrible.

Electrical systems melted down, trailers started to flex and warp.

Horses lost severe amounts of weight, and even George Cosmatos passed out due to heat exhaustion at one point.

They had to remove the seats from a van, lay him down on the floor, and run the AC until he woke up.

But things were perhaps most explosive between Cosmatos and cinematographer William Fraker, who apparently tried to quit the film three times.

It was rumored that they gave him additional back-end participation to stay on.

Cosmetos would berate Fraker during dailies, and according to multiple sources, the two collided head-on in their respective golf carts when neither would cede the right of way for the other.

Wow.

Fraker later bragged, quote, George fell out of his cart.

I didn't, end quote.

Yeah.

Team Fraker.

Some say they actually came to blows after the crash, but that's unconfirmed.

First assistant director Adam Taylor lasted one week with George Cosmatos before he was fired and moved to second unit with Terry Leonard.

But this was a short-lived reprieve.

His replacement, Brian Cook, was fired less than a month after that after talking back to Cosmatos, at which point he apparently ran up a huge tab at the hotel bar on somebody else's credit card and was shipped back to LA by the production office, which may have found his drinking to be a liability.

Cosmetos reportedly wanted to unfire him the next day, but was told no.

And so Adam Taylor got promoted back to first unit and was back on with Cosmatos.

Oh my God.

I'm sure he was like, are you sure?

They apparently, at the end of the production, the Buckaroos gave him a plaque with a pressure valve mounted on it.

And the indicator on it was all the way in the red, just for how high-pressure a job he had the entire film.

Not to say that Cosmetos was the only one with a short fuse.

Kurt Russell, it seems, was feeling the effects of 20-hour workdays and multiple high-level responsibilities.

According to John Farkas' book, A special effects operator accidentally blew a hole in Kurt Russell's hat with a ground-level squib, which led to a, quote, dressing down of the operator by Russell that was described as quite unpleasant.

Another anecdote described a young boy approaching Russell for an autograph while he was on set.

I guess Russell more or less told him to get lost, at which point Sam Elliott more or less told Kurt Russell to get lost.

Apparently Sam Elliott was, according to multiple accounts, very protective of all of the performers on set, extras included.

Now, of course, Michael Bean also said that Kurt Russell did lose his temper from time to time, but he clarified that it was never without good reason.

And I would say that these are pretty minor incidents, especially given the time constraints that the production was under.

And of course, this also may have been because of how much shit was in Russell's hands.

Literally.

At one point, Russell was shooting the scene where Sheriff Ben and Earp are first discussing a place to stay.

He put his hand on the horse's butt next to him, and the horse took a shit in his hand.

While he was shooting the scene, apparently he didn't flinch.

He finished the take.

Billy Bob Thornton, quick note, did join the production production after Cosmatos coming in as a favor to the director.

He did not improvise all of his dialogue, as has been rumored online, although I did read that he improvised some of it.

Cosmetos did bring a certain Rambo-esque flair to the project.

For example, Lizzie, you noticed, I'm sure, the house on fire randomly behind them as they walked.

Absolutely.

No reason for that.

One man with a bucket who's just in the background trying to put it out.

Sam Elliott said we were all looking at it thinking, who the hell lit that fire?

But he admitted cinematically it was a brilliant decision apparently when cosmetos first saw the fire he said it was way too small and told them to make it big make it a rambo fire which everybody thought was very funny okay there were many including stephen lang that had a real affection for cosmetos some close to him privately expressed that his onset behavior was largely an act quite different from his persona in private This is not to excuse anything, but rather to provide some further context.

Cosmetos, according to the LA Times, spoke six languages, collected antiques and rare books, studied international affairs at University College in London, and graduated from London Film School.

Even Catherine Hardwick, who did not like him and was treated horribly, later said that bringing Cosmatos on was the best thing for the production.

Yeah.

There is also another reason why Cosmatos may have been particularly prickly on this project and why Kurt Russell may have blown a fuse or two more than usual.

And that was the unusual nature by which he had been selected to take up the reins as director.

Cinematographer Rick Waits, who worked with Cosmatos on Cobra, later said that Cosmatos would have made a great producer, but that he was a terrible director.

That may have been an unfair characterization.

However, even if one didn't think it was the case, there's little from his resume to suggest he was a proper fit for Tombstone.

He'd never directed a Western.

He wasn't interested in Westerns.

In fact, he'd really only worked in action and horror, not drama.

Well, it turns out that Cosmetos fit a very different and unique set of prerequisites that Kurt Russell and Synergy had come up with for whoever was going to take over the film.

Now, I kind of buried the lead here, but as it was later revealed, when John McTiernan turned down the directing job for Tombstone, Andy Vajna and Synergy approached none other than Kurt Russell to direct the film.

As Kurt Russell later said, they wanted me to take over the movie.

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.

Kurt Russell and Synergy needed a ghost director.

Oh.

Now, if you've never heard of this concept, there are plenty of movies out there where it's rumored that somebody besides the accredited director actually directed the movie.

Perhaps one of the most famous examples is the rumor that Steven Spielberg ghost directed Poltergeist, not Toby Hooper.

I was wondering, because it seems like maybe Kurt Russell directed a lot of this.

In this instance, Russell, who knew Sylvester Stallone from working with him on 1989's Tango and Cash, had heard a rumor that Stallone had actually ghost-directed Rambo First Blood Part 2, the movie that had broken Cosmatos out in America.

And Kurt Russell was looking for some of that same action.

As he later said, quote, I got him, meaning George Cosmatos, from Sly Stallone.

I called up Sly.

I said, I need a guy.

Sly Sly did the same thing with Rambo too with George.

And I said to George, while you're alive, George, I won't say a goddamn thing.

End quote.

I said to George, I'm going to give you a shot list every night.

That's what's going to be.

I'd go to George's room, give him the shot list for the next day.

That was the deal.

George, I don't want any arguments.

This is what it is.

This is what the job is.

Russell may not have been interested in the on-screen credit, but he was, in fact, directing many elements of this film.

On the sly, as he later put it, but nonetheless, many of the decisions were ultimately his.

The stress he was carrying was monumental.

Russell later called it the hardest work of his life, which may explain one of my favorite interactions described in researching this book.

Lizzie, this movie has a lot of guns.

Yes.

A lot of guns.

So, safety was a very big consideration on the film, especially given the fact that everyone was hyper-aware of the death of Brandon Lee on the Crow.

Yep.

Listen to our episode if you have not, and learn more about what went wrong on that set that led to the death of a beloved actor.

Now,

my favorite quote from Farkas' book regards the use of blanks.

Lizzie, could you briefly describe what a blank is for our audience?

Sure.

A blank is something

that creates the sound and visual effect of a gun going off, but does not actually force any kind of projectile out of the gun.

It does force air out of it, so you can't have it super close to someone's head.

Right.

It's a powder-loaded shell with no bullet at the end of the day, more or less.

Apparently, for safety purposes, it was agreed upon that the weapons would be loaded with, quote, quarter-load blanks.

So a full load was 28 grains of powder.

Quarter loads were five.

So that would mean that if something happened to get jammed in the barrel, which is what had happened on the crow,

the force with which it was pushed out of the barrel would be...

Wouldn't be enough to actually hurt someone or low enough to lower the likelihood that it would hurt someone.

Apparently, and this is hearsay, but it's just such a good quote.

I gotta put it in here.

After the safety meeting regarding blanks, Kurt Russell walked up to First AD Adam Taylor and said, Wyatt Earp

is so stupid.

Wyatt Earp only uses full loads.

Okay.

It was later agreed upon that half loads would be enough for Wyatt Earp.

And an on-screen accident made clear why.

One of the first scenes Cosmatos filmed was the death of Curly Bill.

As scripted, Earp's shotgun blast was literally supposed to rip the cowboy in two.

They actually were supposed to shoot it on land and they were going to do a whole gag where his body was going to be split in half.

The riverbed that they were going to film in flooded.

The scene ended up being on the water.

Concerned that the shotgun blast wasn't powerful enough on camera, the team decided to add additional gunpowder to the blanks to make a stronger effect.

According to Buckaroo Rick Terry, quote, so when Kurt marches out to fire the gun off, there was a cameraman who was holding the steady cam pretty close to him.

When he fired that shotgun off, the powder set that guy's clothes on fire, end quote.

Okay, maybe why you didn't need a full load.

Luckily, he was in a river, so he probably could have just dropped down very quickly.

There were apparently many more accidents on set, including a torn rotator cuff, twisted ankles, men are throwing themselves from horses, a squib was packed on the wrong shoulder and went off in an actor's face, spouts the flu, sick horses.

You can read all about them in Farkas' book.

But there are also many, many moments of magic in this film, often that could not have been achieved had things not played out the way they had, and had the actors not had the autonomy that they needed to take on these roles.

For example, Michael Bean and Val Kilmer choreographed their duel.

It was their idea to do it up close, unlike in a typical Western showdown.

They were also, according to Kurt Russell, the best shots in the cast, having trained extensively and both quite good at the quick draw.

The competitive spirit between the characters also seems to have spilled into real life, as Bean recounted later, he didn't have time to learn all the pronunciation of the Latin that he and Kilmer were using to taunt one of another during the gun twirling scene.

Not only did Kilmer know the pronunciation, he knew the translations as well.

Nice.

Jar should have trusted his actors.

They were more than competent and they truly believed in the material, pushing themselves to their best possible work.

Kilmer, who was at times decried for being difficult and aloof during this part of his career, was truly committed to his performance as Doc Holiday.

He was so nervous that the Silver Cup scene where he twirls the Silver Cup at Johnny Ringo would fall flat that he learned the entire routine with a.38 and a.45 caliber pistol, respectively.

So if the silver cup didn't work, he could do it with real guns at the same time.

Wow.

Michael Bean, of course, did learn to do the gun work for his bar scene opposite Holiday.

That's one of the most impressive pieces of performance in this movie.

It's great.

He and Thel Reed.

an exhibitionist and competition shooter, advisor and gun coach to actors and one of the film's armorers.

And yes, the father of Armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reid

of the now infamous Rust production choreographed the routine with Michael Bean and refined it over three months.

Bean reportedly practiced until the grips broke off the guns.

The footage is not sped up.

And Bean's hands were so sweaty that he was nervous he was going to drop the guns, which were real and very heavy, on Bill Paxton's head, who was sitting right beneath him.

He also had an unusual soundtrack.

Apparently, they would blast Warren Zivon's Werewolves of London on repeat to get the people in the saloon in the right mood for the scene.

I briefly want to mention, Lizzie, there is a section of Farkas' book in which it's claimed that not unlike on the set of Rust, there were live rounds discovered by an extra in some of the belts of the extras on the tombstone set.

This is not confirmed by any of the primary actors or producers on the film.

No one was harmed during the shoot.

It does stand to reason that, given the number of reenactors they were using who brought their own weapons, that it's entirely possible.

Again, it doesn't seem like anything went wrong.

I just wanted to mention it, given everything that's been happening in the news.

Of course, Kilmer's method approach to acting did lead to a few unusual moments.

According to one actor, Kilmer tackled him out of nowhere one night, wrestled him for a moment, and then stood up and dusted himself off.

When he demanded an explanation, Kilmer told him, I had to blow some steam off before I do the scene with the damn cup.

End quote.

Okay.

Kilmer was also apparently very upset with his performance of Nocturne, the piano piece.

He only had a month's, and he didn't know piano before, so he had to learn it very quickly.

That's insane.

Yeah.

You did great, Val.

As the shoot rounded the corner to wrap, the construction and set design team for another Western, Sam Raimi's The Quick and the Dead, which we will cover at some point, began to move in to transform the town once again.

Production wrapped on August 28th, 1993, after 15 weeks of filming with close-ups of Kurt Russell.

They had survived.

The 62-day schedule had gone on to 89,

but they'd only gone roughly $3 million over budget, according to the trades.

A remarkable achievement given the circumstances.

Unfortunately, there was little time to celebrate.

Lizzie, you mentioned a

summer 94 release date in part one, I believe, that caught your eye.

Yeah, interesting, as this movie came out in 1993.

Yes.

So, Kurt Russell was committed to Stargate, which would begin filming on September 13th, two weeks after the wrap of Tombstone.

So he could not be involved in post-production.

Not that it would have been any less stressful than jumping into another movie.

Disney, unsure of when Wyatt Earp was going to release, Wyatt Earp had started production in July, had originally pulled in the release date to February.

But there were rumblings that Costner was going to try to get his movie ready for February.

So Disney says, screw it.

We'll pull Tombstone in to December 25th, 1993.

Less than four months from rap, the movie was to be delivered to theaters.

Wow.

To make matters worse, Cosmatosa's first cut of the film was reportedly over three hours long.

Yeah.

Which is unsurprising given the script.

Yeah.

Disney wanted a two-hour movie in order to make that happen.

A lot of the connective material was cut.

And Lizzie, this is where the exposition all disappears.

The relationship between Curly Bill and Ringo was implied, not explained.

Ringo was actually made the primary antagonists, something that Bean was grateful to Powers Booth for allowing to happen.

The Cowboys continued to be stripped down.

Curly Bill actually initially attempted to convince Wyatt Earp that the death of Fred White was an accident.

That got cut.

Any sort of physical romance between Earp and Josephine Marcus was cut.

Producer Sean Daniel apparently pointed out, quote, if they don't make love, then many of the following scenes don't make any sense.

Kurt and Dana play the parts as if they had made love and it shows, end quote.

John Corbett's scenes were cut.

Backstory on Maddie's opium addiction was cut.

Breckenridge's Hunt for Fabian's Killers, that's Jason Priestley, was cut and more.

Composer Jerry Goldsmith was originally hired to provide the film's music.

He'd won an Oscar for his work on 1976's The Omen, listen to our episode.

However, he had to withdraw his name due to a scheduling conflict, and eventually the studio landed on Bruce Broughton on Goldsmith's recommendation, and he had less than a month to score the film.

Wow.

Cosmetos and his music editor had temped the film with the score from Kasden and Costner's Silverado, ironically,

which Broughton did not think worked at all.

So as he put it, quote, Silverado is very carefully crafted with good guys versus bad guys.

Tombstone is much darker.

Even the heroes are dark.

Wyatt Earp is a card dealer who two times his wife, an opium addict, and eventually runs off with an actress.

Correct.

His best friend is a tubercular gambler and deadly gunslinger, Doc Holiday, who is also a terrific alcoholic and morally depraved, but who also happens to have the best wit in the film.

The emotions are over the top, so is the music.

Everything is on a big scale and is very dark emotionally.

It's often melodramatic, but practically always entertaining.

To my mind, the music simply plays the scene.

End quote.

I think he gets the film better than anybody.

I was going to say, honestly, I wish I'd seen more of all of that coming through.

It feels like they were avoiding a lot of that in the final version.

Yeah.

But that is what's interesting about these characters.

Regardless, Cosmetos was apparently offended by Rotten's opinion and did not attend the final score mix.

A pre-screening was held on November 18th, 1993, for various media outlets.

who were relatively unimpressed with the film.

Entertainment Weekly reported that Kurt Russell was furious at the edit.

They later released a clarifying correction saying that it was only the music that he was dissatisfied with, which doesn't seem too likely.

No, music seems fine.

Tombstone opened wide on December 25th, 1993 to mixed reviews, though Kilmer's performance was nearly universally praised.

Despite a limited marketing campaign, Kurt Russell claims that Disney had no idea what to do with the movie.

Although, to be fair to Disney, a marketing source said that the film was done done through Synergy Productions.

And by the time it came to us, there were all these stories about the director being fired and bad feelings between him and the producers.

It took a while for us to know what kind of film we had.

That's fair.

And they're editing it so fast, too.

It would be really hard to even understand what it is.

Exactly.

Despite all of this, audiences genuinely liked the movie.

People were talking about Kilmer's performance.

President Bill Clinton had even said that he was a fan.

As a result, Tombstone opened to a modest $6.5 million over Christmas.

Good for third place behind Mrs.

Doubtfire and the Pelican Brief, but the movie had legs.

Trended up in its second weekend to $8.7 million

and then back to $6.4 for the third.

By the end of its run, it made $56 million domestically.

I could not get a firm number on its international gross, but even just domestic, it was close to break even on just its initial run, which is more than Kevin Costner's Wyatt Earp could say.

Yeah.

Released on June 24th, 1994, the 192-minute epic, which I watched.

That's so many minutes.

It feels, especially after you watch Tombstone, it feels so plotting.

It's not bad, and it's extremely beautiful the way that it's filmed, but good lord, does it feel slow?

Yeah.

And it's literally, it's covering Wyatt Earp's.

whole life.

Like you start with him as a boy in the cornfields.

No, thank you.

And Gene Hackman's telling him what it is to to be a man.

Audiences were unimpressed.

Critics, even less so.

Comparing it to the fun and fast-paced Tombstone, the movie was dead on arrival.

To make matters worse, Wyatt Earp had cost a whopping $63 million

over double Tombstone.

It ended its domestic run with a haul of only $25 million.

It certainly didn't help that in an amazing dick move, Disney released the Tombstone VHS on June 22nd.

Wow.

Two days before Wyatt Earp entered theaters.

I mean, good for them.

Kevin Costner really tried on this one and it did not go well for him.

The home video market loved Tombstone.

It was arguably more successful in VHS and then even more successful in DVD than it had been in theaters.

It apparently made Synergy 15 million in revenue in the second quarter of 1994 alone.

Wow.

So that's just the month of June.

Regardless, Costner's dominant run at the box office had ground to a halt.

A new trend had been born.

And if you'd like more on that, listen to our episode on Water World and stay posted for the Postman.

Kevin Costner, nursing one heck of a reputational shiner, couldn't help himself, himself, firing one last shot.

I expect people to make movies for the right reason.

If I was going to make a movie and I knew somebody else was already making it, I wouldn't do it.

Tombstone was basically rushed out to muddy the waters for us a bit.

You tried to stop every single actor and studio from working with them.

Sit down, Kevin Costner.

Also, what was his reason for making Horizon episode to come?

Probably.

We'll get to that when we cover Horizon.

Russell was a bit more charitable, offering that both films were needlessly rushed and harmed by the pointless sense of competition.

Was this an epic battle between Herculean forces, good and evil, right versus might?

No.

This was a scrappy gangfight over dead territory, not unlike the gunfight at the O.K.

Corral itself.

By the time the Earps and the Clantons had at it, the West was done.

It would be eulogized barely a decade later by historian Frederick Jackson Turner, who addressed the American Historical Association with a somber conclusion, The Frontier has gone, and with its going has closed the first period in American history.

Similarly, Costner and Russell were duking it out over a dead genre's dead cat bounce, not a genuine revival.

And however ruthless Costner's actions seem to have been, Russell was equally capable of doing what was needed to be done in order to keep his movie on track.

Like Earp himself, the men of this tale are complicated.

There are no clear heroes and no clear villains, and every quote in account must be taken with a hefty grain of salt.

Earp was a lawman, but he was also likely a pimp, a proprietor of a brothel, and a philanderer who left his wife for a former prostitute turned fabulous, who gambled their money away for the rest of their years.

Doc Holiday didn't kill Johnny Ringo.

He was found dead against a tree and suicide was the verdict at the time.

The circumstances of Jarr's dismissal are similarly mysterious.

Was it simply the doing of a nervous and unhappy executive?

Or did Kurt Russell, knowing, as Val Kilmer said, that they were in trouble from the jump, make the necessary moves behind the scenes to protect the project from the very man who birthed it?

Can't blame him if he did.

We don't know.

We can't know.

And that impossibility powers a narrative bigger than the film itself, I would argue, into something mystical and apocryphal.

Stuart N.

Lake claims at the end of his highly speculative book, Wyatt Earp Frontier Marshall, that the last thing Earp said to him was, The greatest consolation I have in growing old is the hope that after I'm gone, they'll grant me the peaceful obscurity I haven't been able to get in life, which is a bunch of bullshit.

Unlike in the film, Wyatt Earp did not live happily ever after, few ever do.

His marriage to Josie, or Sadie, as she was also known, was apparently quite rocky.

She had a bad habit of gambling what money they came into.

and Earp had to cut her off financially at various points, even after they came back from Alaska with $80,000 in mining proceeds, over $2 million in today's money.

She returned to old habits and gambled it away.

Earp was urged as early as 1900 to write a memoir, and he was extremely protective of his image.

According to Jeff Gwynn, he fumed about stories that painted him in a less than saintly light.

A 1919 series of stories by Frederick Bechdolt, informed by interviews with the residents of Tombstone, including Cochise County deputy Billy Breckinridge, played by Jason Priestley, called into questions the Earp's approach to the law.

Earp was rattled and decided to tell his own story, but for various reasons could not find a suitable biographer.

In 1927, journalist Walter Noble Burns published Tombstone, an Iliad of the Southwest, likely because Earp had no financial participation in the project, he called it a bunch of bullshit.

He died in 1929 from a bladder infection at 80 years old in poverty.

So, how would Earp have felt about the following 90 years of lionization that were to follow?

I'll quote Jeff Gwynn.

He would be pleased by the way everything turned out, except for the fact that he never made any money from it.

Kurt Russell would find himself on the losing end of another twin film battle a few years after with 1996's executive decision.

More on that when we cover it and Air Force One.

Not sure if you've seen those, Lizzie.

I've seen Air Force One, not executive decision.

Steven Seagal dies in the first five minutes.

It's great.

And it seems like he and Costner must have passed things up as they co-starred in 2001's 3,000 Miles to Graceland.

Yes.

Russell largely stayed away from the Western genre until 2015 when he returned with the criminally unseen Bone Tomahawk, a film I highly recommend, and Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight.

He looks back on Tombstone with pride as he later said, I didn't get a chance to edit the movie, which I thought was unfortunate because it could have been one of the greatest Westerns ever, ever, ever made.

And it's pretty damn good.

We had a great cast and a phenomenal script.

Val Kilmer, despite giving what many call a career-defining performance, was never in the Oscar conversation that year.

That's crazy.

Yeah, perhaps because Disney opted not to push for it, or maybe the film simply was released too late in the awards cycle with too little hype to justify a campaign.

Kilmer also, with the release of his memoir, I'm Your Huckleberry, which is a fun read, laid to rest a debate long held between some fans regarding the meaning of his most iconic phrase from the film.

As he put it, despite some fans' contention that in the 1800s the handles of caskets were called huckles, and thus the word hucklebearer was a term for pallbearer, I do not say I'm your hucklebearer.

I say I'm your huckleberry, connoting I'm your man.

You've met your match.

And that is the meaning of the phrase.

Okay.

Thomas Hayden Church, Stephen Lang, John Corbett, Billy Baum Thornton, and many more of the Tombstone supporting cast found their way to great roles in film and television, deserving of their talents.

Sam Elliott seems to have carried some dissatisfaction for the the film, later saying that he and Kurt Russell never really got along and he wasn't quite happy with his performance.

And of course, Bill Paxton would cross paths with Costner in a mini-series that seems to capture the spirit of what he'd been after with Dan Gordon back when they first decided to do Wyatt Earth together, which is 2012's Hatfields and McCoy's.

You can see Paxton and Costner go at it.

That's mini-series also featured Powers Booth.

And we could argue that Powers Booth himself achieved perhaps the highest level of Hollywood Western aura with his truly remarkable performance as Cy Tolliver in David Milch's Deadwood, which is maybe my favorite show.

He's great.

I love Towers Booth.

Michael Bean, this would largely be the last great role in his career.

I think he's an incredible actor, and he continued to show up with some great parts in 90s action films like The Rock.

George P.

Cosmatos directed only one more movie, 1997's The Shadow Conspiracy, which was a flop.

His wife passed away that same year.

It seems likely that taking over the troubled production of Tombstone proved to be the most financially prudent career move that Cosmatos ever made.

Not only was he paid a million dollars for his work on the film, he received a significant portion of the back end.

His son, director Panos Cosmatos of Mandy fame,

has said that his first feature, Beyond the Black Rainbow, was financed by way of DVD residuals from Tombstone.

Wow.

Fun fact, Panos and I share the same attorney.

Jim Jacks, Sean Daniel, and AlphaVille went on to to restart the Mummy franchise.

Listen to our episode.

And Synergy would go belly up by the end of the decade.

They did produce The Six Sense.

Listen to our episode.

John Fisano fought for a writing credit on the film.

He did 11 rewrites during production, but after WGA arbitration, he only received associate producer credit and Kevin Jarr retained his sole writing credit.

Kevin Jarr's career never recovered.

Based on what I've read, his script for The Devil's Own was largely reworked at the behest of Harrison Ford.

Jarr was hired to take a pass at 1999's The Mummy, as we discussed.

It wasn't used.

He did uncredited rewrites and polishes, but he never directed again.

He died on April 3rd, 2011, at his home in Santa Monica of heart failure.

The only scenes that Jar shot that appear in the final film are those with Charlton Heston.

As they couldn't reshoot them after he was released because Heston had already left the film.

As Alan Barra later said of Jarr, I see no sense in speculating what Jarr might have done if he had succeeded with Tombstone.

His life is what it is, and his work is what it is, and the work was pretty damn good.

In the early 2000s, George Cosmatos was brought in to oversee the color correction of a new transfer of the negative of the film.

He insisted that the colorist add more blue to the film, so much so that it appeared to take place underwater.

It was his last contribution to the film and one that was reversed by the colorist after he left the session.

He died on April 19, 2005 of lung cancer.

Editor and producer Tony Malinowski, who oversaw that coloring session for Disney, later realized upon reading Cosmatos' obituary that Cosmatos had suffered from cysts over his eyes, which may have caused him to lose the ability to see the color blue.

Kurt Russell, as he'd promised Cosmatos, waited until after his death to reveal the nature of their directing agreement.

Now, Lizzy, many illustical online exclaims that Kurt Russell was the real director of Tombstone, but I would argue that that question still remains unanswered.

Who really directed Tombstone?

Cosmetos certainly directed some of it.

He was the director on set.

He made innumerable decisions on what was and was not included in the final film, as he was the director who saw it through post-production.

Yeah, that's the thing.

Kurt Russell was clearly a directing force, providing shot lists and effectively overseeing the rewrites throughout production, directing himself.

probably offering some guidance to the other actors.

However, the other actors, it seems, largely directed themselves once Cosmetos arrived, finally given a level of autonomy that they'd been unable to secure under Jarr's overbearing style.

As Michael Bean said when asked if Kurt Russell directed the film, he didn't direct me.

But it was Kevin Jarr who had established the look and feel of the world, its authenticity, its spark.

It was Kevin Jarr who'd written the script, who'd brought all of these players together, who cast the film, who pushed for a vibrant color palette.

and a portrayal of the old west as it was seen in 1881 as the new west who'd chose in every detail down to the saddle and the gun and the way it would be worn on the hip.

It was also Jarr who worked with the actors long before they got to set.

One telling section of Kilmer's memoir describes a moment when he called Jarr up regarding a comma in one of his lines.

He asked if it wouldn't be more effective if he simply drew out the line.

Kevin told him, when you get more into the drawl, you'll find that the pause is right.

Kilmer later agreed.

So, who directed Tombstone?

I would argue that they all did.

did.

Remove any of the necessary functions each performed in the movie wouldn't exist.

In my opinion, given the limits of what we can possibly know of a film 30 years after its release, Kevin Jarr directed Tombstone, Kurt Russell directed Tombstone, George Cosmatos directed Tombstone.

There is one more unanswerable question, one that dances through many a message board and Reddit thread.

not just for Tombstone, but for so many films that we cover, which is, does a better version of this film exist?

Could it have existed?

I think yes.

What if Jarr had been allowed to shoot his John Ford version?

Well, as producer, Bob Mazorski later said, Andy Vojnat Synergy, I am almost certain, but have no documentary evidence, had final cut rights to the movie.

I think Andy would have gotten intimately involved in the editing had Kevin completed the film, and I would bet that his version would have been significantly different from the one Kevin had in mind.

This is hindsight on my part.

and conjecture, but I knew both men and I know that Andy would have won.

I would argue the better version of this film is potentially Kurt Russell staying on in post-production, because it seems like that's where a lot got cut.

Let's talk about that.

Could Kurt Russell have made something stronger had he been in the room?

Maybe, but it doesn't seem likely given the release schedule and runtime that Disney were mandating.

Could he have stood up to then?

Again, maybe,

but it doesn't seem likely.

As producer Jim Jacks, who was not included in the editorial process, later said, there was a a great movie to be cut from the footage, and everyone did their best in a shortened post-production period.

The result is a good movie, but it isn't the movie Kevin set out to make.

Russell let Leek in 2006 that he had a cassette of the unused footage in his garage, teasing a complete version of the film that has yet to see the light of day.

But is it true?

Was Jar's original script so fundamentally different from what it yielded?

What could be possibly made from the unused footage?

A few years ago, Michael Bean decided to answer that question for himself.

As a rule, he doesn't watch his own films, and he'd rarely go back to a script after it finished shooting.

But he dusted off the draft of Tombstone that he'd signed up to make back in 1993, and he wrote about this in an opinion piece in 2022.

I'd like to end with a couple of excerpts.

My first thought after putting the screenplay down, after rereading it, was what just happened?

That wasn't what I remembered at all.

That subtlety and nuance, that balanced presentation of the characters I'd persuaded myself was the the bedrock of Kevin's screenplay, never existed.

Kevin went all in, showering the cowboys in villainy at every turn, while exalting Wyatt into an avenging angel frontier dirty hairy.

One significant discovery for me was how much fuller the women's roles had been.

I hadn't appreciated just how severely they'd been emptied out with the screenplay cuts.

Josie was an integral player in Tombstone history as well as in the screenplay.

She was first engaged to Sheriff Bianne before fixing her eyes on Wyatt, and the ensuing romantic triangle contributed to the tensions that resulted in the gunfight.

The movie that emerged after his departure is a boiled-down version of what was always in the screenplay, and not some compromised artistic vision.

The irony is in no way lost on me that for some months now, I've been advocating for a greater embrace of the truth about Tombstone, while at the same time remaining so oblivious to the truth about something I should have known all along.

Wouldn't be the first time.

Interesting.

You know, I don't mind the way that the Cowboys and Wyatt Earth are portrayed.

My really biggest complaint is the women.

I think that is the biggest downfall in this movie, not just because they're treated badly, but because it's not a good story.

Like, it doesn't make sense why they're there.

And I would just rather that they weren't there

in this case.

I agree.

I think Michael Bean would agree.

I think for a whole host of reasons that we've learned about, it was simply decided that they were expendable.

And I do think the movie suffers for it.

I think one of the strengths of Deadwood, for example, is the way in which it shows so many different perspectives, the women included, and how they're navigating a really difficult and interesting time in American history.

But I do think that this idea, aside from the female rules, that there is a nuanced epic that lies unrealized in Kurt Russell's garage.

That's probably not the case.

Maybe it's a little better.

I would totally agree.

I'm sure it is.

I'm sure if with a little more explanation and connecting scenes, it would be an easier to follow film.

But I don't think you'd get done with it and say it's night and day.

Sure.

Different.

Well, shall we move on to what went right?

Please, Lizzie, what went right?

in Tombstone.

Well, I have two things, Chris, and I'll keep them brief for you.

One is a piece of information that I confess I looked up prior to this recording that I am shocked that you did not bring up audience members to come after him.

And that is the mustaches across this movie.

They're incredible.

And my understanding is that they are all real with the exception of Sheriff Behan.

That is amazing.

And he was teased for not having had it.

As he should be.

They all apparently shaved their mustaches off together at the end of the shoot to have a competition for who was the most handsome without the mustache.

And it was determined that Kurt Russell won and Sam Elliott got second.

Sam Elliott without a mustache.

I don't know about that.

But yes, so one thing that went right: the facial hair, it's incredible.

It looks amazing.

It makes a difference.

I think that it's real.

And also, I can't believe that is Kurt Russell's real mustache.

It's the greatest mustache that's ever lived.

I believe he said it's a mustache wearing a man, and that is correct.

The other, what went right that I have to give is Val Kilmer.

I think that without his performance in this movie, it would be fine.

It would be fun.

I don't think it would be as memorable.

And I don't think it would be elevated to the status that it eventually was.

He's really good.

And I love Val Kilmer.

I think he's amazing in so many things.

But there is just,

there's like a softness and vulnerability to this performance that's really interesting, especially in the context of where they are that I think is really remarkable.

So

sweaty tuberculosis Val Kilmer is my other what went right.

I think those are great.

I'm going to give mine.

It's going to be a four-way tie

between cinematographer William Fraker.

I think the movie looks great.

It does look, especially the cinematography Adult in the Plains.

Production designer Catherine Hardwick.

Oh, I think the production design looks great.

Costume designer Joseph Poro.

I think the costumes look great.

They do.

And

stunt coordinator and second unit director Terry Leonard.

The stunts in this movie, especially on horseback, are outstanding.

And I'm sure he directed a large percentage of the shots that you see at the end of the film as well, because you can tell there's got to be a lot of second unit or action photography in this film.

They also did a great job of not making it obvious when there were stunt performers in there.

I had a hard time telling whether or not it was Kurt Russell riding during a lot of it.

We didn't talk about this, but apparently he was, if not the most experienced, one of the most experienced riders of all the actors coming into the film.

He's clearly doing some of it, but there's some stuff there's no way he was doing, but you really couldn't tell.

It was shot really, really well.

Really, really well.

Just a really remarkable amount of talent below the line on this film, which again speaks to the tragedy, the Shakespearean tragedy of...

Kevin Jarr not being able to collaborate at the end of the day with these people.

And I think the important thing to learn from this, or that I felt like I was reinforced researching this movie, is that the director's job is not to be able to do everybody's job better than them.

It's to enable everybody around them to do their best work possible.

And listen to your team.

And listen to your team.

All right, that concludes our two-part coverage of Tombstone.

Guys, there's so much more out there on this movie.

I did not have time to get to all of it.

The director's commentary with George Cosmatos is a bit of a trip.

There's some great making of stuff out there.

And of course, there are dozens and dozens and dozens of books about Wyatt Earp.

The one I read, The Last Gunfight by Jeff Gwynn, I really enjoyed.

But it's time for us to say thank you to you, dear listeners.

Thank you for supporting this podcast.

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Just like this, David.

Cue the music.

Let's start with you, Ramon Villanueva Jr.

Partner, you're as dependable as a trusty steed.

Brittany Morris, your spirit shines brighter than a prairie sunrise.

Darren and Dale Conklin, you two are like a couple of seasoned trail bosses.

Jake Killen, you're quicker on the draw than a lightning bolt.

Kang, you ride tall in the saddle, friend.

Andrew McFagel Bagel, your name's as unique as a desert rose.

Wow.

Matthew Jacobson, you are steadier than a rock in a landslide.

Grace Potter, your kindness is as boundless as the open range.

Ellen Singleton, ma'am, your dedication is as strong as a stallion's stride.

Jewish Reese Samant, your support is worth more than a nugget of gold from the richest mine.

Scott Gerwin, you're a straight shooter if there ever was one.

Sadie, just Sadie, you've got an air of mystery like a ghost town at dusk.

Brian Donahue, you are tougher than bootleather and twice as reliable.

Okay.

Adrian Pang Coria, your commitment is sharper than a brand new spur.

Chris Leal, you're a true maverick on this here frontier.

Kathleen Olson, your generosity warms us better than a campfire under the stars.

Leah Bowman, you're as refreshing as a cool drink from a canteen on a hot day.

Steve Winterbauer, you're as solid as the Rocky Mountains.

Don Scheibel, you're as reliable as the sunrise in the east.

George, you got a simple name, but you're a mighty fine individual.

Rosemary Southord, your guidance is like the North Star to a lost traveler.

Tom Kristen, you're as steadfast as a cowboy's word.

Soman Chainani, you're as intriguing as a legend told round the campfire.

And last but surely not least, Michael McGrath, you are a true friend on this long and winding trail we want to thank each and every one of you for riding along with us may your trails be dusty and your coffee pots always full wow and i'd like to apologize for that accent but we do thank all of you for supporting this podcast of course we need to tell you what we are covering next next week we are covering the incredible 90s teen film clueless If you guys are re-watching for the podcast, might I recommend picking up a copy of the Criterion Blu-ray version?

The transfer of the film looks and sounds great, and we always encourage to pick up physical media when you can, because you never know when a streamer could take it down.

You guys, really, really, truly, keep this train rolling.

We appreciate it.

We are so looking forward to continuing to make this podcast for everybody that has supported us.

Thank you so much.

We'll see you next time.

Go to patreon.com/slash what went wrong podcast to support what went wrong and check out our website at whatwentwrongpod.com.

What Went Wrong is a sad boom podcast presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer.

Editing music by David Bowman.

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