“Tombstone” may now be considered one of the most beloved Westerns of the late twentieth century, but the film had an incredibly rocky path from the page to the big screen. “Tombstone” was intended to be the directorial debut of “Glory” screenwriter Kevin Jarre, but when he fell behind schedule a month into the shoot, producer Andrew Vajna fired him and brought in veteran helmer George P. Cosmatos (“Rambo: First Blood Part II” and “Leviathan”) to ostensibly drag the movie to the finish line.
We’ve since learned that, after Jarre’s departure, the driving creative force on “Tombstone” was star Kurt Russell. Cast as legendary lawman Wyatt Earp, Russell brought a semblance of order to the wayward production by streamlining the lengthy screenplay with producer Jim Jacks. His instincts proved plenty sharp. By foregrounding the unlikely friendship forged between Earp and the tuberculosis-stricken gambler/gunman Doc Holliday (Val Kilmer in one of his finest performances), Russell delivered a rollicking oater with a surfeit of character and heart. What could’ve been a disaster (or scrapped altogether) turned out to be a solid box office hit and a quotable dad-movie classic that’s still finding new fans 31 years after its theatrical release.
While Russell could determine to a degree how “Tombstone” came together in principal photography and post-production, one worry completely out of his control was its direct competition with another high-profile Earp epic. Lawrence Kasdan’s “Wyatt Earp,” starring a red-hot Kevin Costner, was shooting at the same time, and threatened to overwhelm the smaller-in-scope “Tombstone.” When Russell kept fretting over the other film’s existence, his “Tombstone” co-star Sam Elliott piped up and told him to quit stewing.
How Sam got Kurt to cowboy up
In a 2019 interview with Entertainment Weekly, Sam Elliott, who plays Wyatt’s older brother Virgil, recalled Russell being hyper-aware of “Wyatt Earp” shooting a state away from New Mexico in Arizona. “I remember sitting in the Holiday Inn one night,” said Elliott. “It was before we started, and Kurt was kind of angst-ridden about all of it because he was looking at a much bigger picture than I was, much bigger than all of us.”
Elliott quickly realized this was all wasted energy on Russell’s part, so he sternly recommended to his unofficial director to get over it. Per Elliott:
“I said, ‘What the f*** are you worried about, man?’ He said, ‘What do you mean?’ We had this kind of contentious relationship throughout, and I think it was really born in the relationship of the brothers, and we never got past that. I said, ‘They haven’t got this f***ing script and they haven’t got this f***ing cast.’ And that was the f***ing truth, you know? ‘Apart from that, sweat all you want.'”
Russell eventually started sweating the right stuff, and presided over a film loaded with some of the greatest character actors to ever step in front of a camera. Aside from Elliott and Kilmer, Russell was fortunate enough to have Bill Paxton, Michael Biehn, Powers Boothe, Dana Delany, Thomas Haden Church, and Charlton freakin’ Heston in his employ. You couldn’t round up a more rough-and-ready Western cast than that in 1993, and everyone gave it their all.
As for “Wyatt Earp,” Kasdan’s three-hour epic opened six months later to mixed reviews and limp ticket sales. The $63 million Western grossed a disappointing $56 million worldwide, ending Costner’s box office winning streak that started with “Dances with Wolves.”