Kurt Russell Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters | GQ

you don't look at them as

iconic

characters

, I mean, they refer to them like that, if they become, you're just going about your day, you're going about your day, having a good time and trying to try. make it work I really like the snake, he is an escape artist, he is really who he is and he is doomed to never be able to escape from the only thing he wants to escape from and that is himself. I'm not a complete pisin, call me a snake, he has this equal amount of psychosis and survival ability go together.

I like that about Snake or at least I felt that was true about him. We started out doing some things that ended up not being in the movie. It was a train station sequence that established the character. snake and he had a companion and they shot him and the snake actually ran to help him, they got caught, it was a redeeming quality, that's what we were showing there. John Garer decided correctly, so that snake had no redeeming qualities, so I only cared. about, you know, pleasing John and hopefully trying to capture something that you know would fit his vision.

We had done Elvis together and automatically had a quick language between us. John said, you know, go, you know, see what comes up. When I thought about that character, it was kind of futuristic. You know, the black and white was much more interesting than the green uniform, like the war had taken place in some kind of burnt winter zone, so everything was black and white, but then I got to Thinking About This and I thought it was, you know, a cobra with its tail coming down his tail because there was going to be a scene where he would be in the arena fighting.

I thought it was appropriate to give him the tattoo. right in front, he just took the tail and let it go south after we did a couple of shots of the first one in that train sequence, he came over, he came over, they whispered to him and he, this character is cool and he said Yes, because I hadn't done it. I didn't really know what it was going to sound like to look, feel and be, but the sound of the snake, you, Fresno Bob and I, you know what they did to Bob H, you want to see it spread all over that map.

Baby, where's the president? I mean, when LE van CLE was on he was playing the role of Hal and so, to me, I guess he just started that kind of full Van Cleave Clint and W Western World license. I always felt that the snake was just talking to himself, he never really talked to anyone, now you're going to kill me, snake, I'm too tired, maybe later it will be a video game series called Middle Gear Solid, there was rumored to be a character in the game inspired by snake p and question. doing the voiceover well is like look, you know I'm pretty lazy by nature, remember there have been many different occasions where people you know wanted to do something, I don't know, I'm a movie guy, you have to understand.

Understand it from my point of view, whether it's Elvis or Snake pisin or Jack Burton or RJ mccre that was that project that was what you get into that mindset that you think you want that world to happen just like I used to do interviews when Elvis came out and they said , come on, do some Elvis for us, you know, it's like no, it doesn't work that way, you don't just go in and out of Elvis, you go work on it, you refine it and then you do it and you get paid for it. I come from a different era, I wasn't interested in expanding financially from something that we had created or that I had created in terms of a character and I get business people for sure or we could do this with that we could do this with that or we could do this with that you know and then I look at it and that's not written by John that's not that it doesn't smell good John I'm not here to do this with why why not I'm going to do that we're going to do something new we're going to do something new let's go to create another

iconic

character instead of saying what can we bleed from this iconic character you know you don't look They see them as iconic

characters

, I mean they refer to them like that, if they become something that you're just doing in a day, you're in one day at a time, you have a good time and you try to make it work, anyone gets involved. with me all over camp, come on kid, burn me, John, in my head, he's been talking, sometimes we'd talk about what he'd do next or what I'd do next, whatever we could talk about what he I would do next, this project is called What I was trying to figure out who to cast for McCre's character, you know, every once in a while, hey, how about so-and-so, and he was like yeah, maybe not, ya Do you know my best friend, brother-in-law at the time, Larry?

Franco was producing it with John and finally one day, I think Larry told me first because it was like a clue, a warning. I think John wants to talk to you about playing that role, so I said no. I don't know if it's a monster movie or a horror movie, what is it? John said no, this is from the book, who goes there, he said yes, the thing was a movie from 20 years ago, 30 years ago, but I'm not doing that, he said no. I'm making a movie about paranoia. I know I'm human and if you were all of these things then you would just attack me right now, so some of you are still human.

Well, we were in Mainly we were in two places in Alaska, right across the street from St. British Columbia, so we're working on a glacier 26 miles up, pretty exciting, you could look down at 3000 feet and seeing a lot of trucks there he said so just going to work it was fun we were at Universal Studios on the refrigerated set they wanted snow of course on the set if you got above 28 or 29 degrees inside it started to melt and they didn't, we didn't want that we all lived in this basically from Monday to Saturday, it kind of reminded me of the backra set where we were in these fires, these fireworks, you know, but we got so used to the cold that when you came in you took your jackets. and those things and you with your t-shirt it was 28 degrees there and you said you're going in to warm up, you know it was a pretty cold environment.

I went into the cloakroom and you know, because of the other things I did, I did it myself, I came up with things and then I showed them to John, you like, you know, and when I was there I realized that sitting in this chair alone there was a huge hat and finally at some point I told the locker room person what does it have to do with a hat, they said, oh, that's your hat, I was like, wearing that hat, it's crazy, what are you talking about? , no, and they said, well, John's already been filming some stuff with him.

He said what he said, yeah, it's established, I said the hat is established with what you're flying, the helicopters, they already have some shots of helicopters, but I was like, oh come on, I need a character to really hang my hat on and I said, that's the Hat I never loved the sun I like it no no no I think it's perfect I think it's perfect there are many things sometimes that someone else sees that you don't see you have to be open to these things you know that one is a one hard because that's what you know, it's just that you carry this big ridiculous thing in your head, but you see, that's where John wasn't afraid because he knew how he was going to shoot and I started laughing at it and saying Yeah, he's a drunk, He doesn't care, so he has that Hat.

John was never entirely satisfied with the last scene. The main thing was that I didn't want to make two hours, take the audience on a ride for two hours and take them back to the starting point when you're making a movie, you don't know what you've got, you generally know what you've got, but you don't know exactly how this will all go and what will come out. Of course, John did it al

most

all the time because you understand that he's different than

most

guys. He makes music quite interestingly. The thing was that the first time he didn't do all the music and he had Annie Omar do it.

Many, many years later, if you watch the two films back to back, Quent Tarantino had someone do his music for the Hateful Eight from the beginning, but in the last scene that we talk about a lot, we get little different versions of what you think . of that, what do you think of that back and forth and finally we said John? I don't know, I know you don't want to go back to square one, but it is what it is, we don't even know if we're real we don't even know we don't know we don't know I don't think the audience can understand it I think that's what makes it everything is great is that you don't know what happens if this has already happened.

Is that you? How would you know? And it all led back to what I said. Go ahead, was the last line. I just said. Said. I think it's like, why don't we sit for a while and see what happens? they could find a way to kill each other at exactly the same time. I think maybe that's the next step. I don't remember who I was talking to the other day. He says he and his brother, when the time came, where were you? Boy, where were you? boy I like that, it's iconic that someone can hold on to that for all these years and that speaks to me in a hundred different ways, for me it was John and maybe his absolute peak as a director, that's a really good movie, oh my god Tombstone It's about a family, you know, a family of people who lived during a time when organized crime was forming in the United States and it happened to be out west and it happened to be this group of cowboys.

Coming from Illinois, coming from the East, kind of a Quaker world, that's why they look the way they look, plus the clothes they wore, the hats, especially Tombstone, in terms of westerns, it was really really exciting and different. A wonderful script written by Kevin Jar, who drew. Most of what he wrote in periodicals and magazines and stuff. I talked to him a lot about that. He had an excellent way of understanding how these people spoke and lived, something he had never seen before in a Western reading. Tombstone, the first page said. forget everything you've read or seen about western movies, it's false and then you know it went on to show you that these people in Tombstone were dressed like a ninja, they showed off their wealth upon arriving in a new town, they needed to know you were a man. of substance a good businessman a good entrepreneur someone they could depend on someone who was successful these were the things that I discovered in Tombstone that were the things that you wanted to learn about from the audience's point of view how they talked and why they talked In that way, one of my favorite things about Tombstone when I read it I was like, man, this is a really cool screen spot.

During the middle of the conversation everyone stopped and looked up and started clapping and that's what people used to do when there was a full moon, they would look up and see a beautiful full moon and they would just clap and that was their entertainment. The men of that time were completely different people than American men now and those American men came from Europe and places all over the world. world and here was a group of men who were figuring some things out and saying, "hey, together we can do this, we can run this show" and there's not much anyone can do about it, well, how the hell are you calm?

I'm moving forward now that it's being considered. one of the great westerns ever made, so I'm happy about that, people often say it's number one. I can't say that, but I like hearing that and more and more people are saying that now the impact of the movie, well, give that to a story and I don't want to say this in any way that belittles it, although there were certain people involved. Kevin Cner was not one of them. Kevin was a good guy, but there were other people involved in it that weren't there. good guys to me one time I said hey how about we do this and that maybe we could do some things together I said I could kill you and yours and you could kill me this guy said oh let's kill a lot of them? of people in werb and there were some people standing around me and it was a slap in the face and I thought, man, I'm going to attack you with all my force, full frontal nudity, come on, now you're going to find out Wyatt, those two movies came out quite close to each other.

Wyatt, her and Tombstone have great things about both, but one thing is undeniable: You called me another Western where you can remember most of the dialogue that people can remember from Tombstone, it's not even close. much more than any other western, that is undeniable. I didn't think you had it. I am your problem. If you ask me if it was great to work with Val Kilmer, who played Doc Holiday on Tombstone, the answer is absolutely in. Especially in those days, you know when you worked with people, sometimes you would meet them at the end of the show, you would get gifts or you would exchange them. , it is not mandatory, it is not something that you know you have to do or that they have to do.

So I asked my driver to see if he could get Val's holster, gun, hat and chair with her name on the back, take a photo and then in that photo I wanted to have this, it's the end of the program where it has been a battle and we have all overcome it very well and I give Val this gift and he looks at me and turns to his driver and tells him to give it to me because what he had gotten was valve. It was a plot in Boot Hill what Val had gotten me was an acre of land overlooking Boot Hill.

The Doctor's Vacation is all about death, but why it's about life, it's in that last scene, justWe looked at each other, well I guess that says it all. Thank you all for always being there, doctor. A lot of things have been written about Tombstone, which are such even books that I just look at them, people have no idea, even the people who are working on the show don't even know it and will never know it. Every movie, every show is difficult to make, it will generally be a reliable collaboration. it will be won or found or not like any other movie, it's a miracle that finding solutions to problems was a constant in Tombstone, the difficulties, uh, that we were able to discover solutions, you know, the only thing that matters is that it was done and that the impact that the original script promised yes, we have about 90% of that beautiful lady that your car waits you have been falling and I can't help it, but here I think I belong to a last category Quenton It's funny, I like his way and It's fun every time we work together.

I appreciate every time he wants me to work with him and it's completely unique. One of the reasons Quenton Tarantino got into making movies is because of John Carpenter. I mean, I know. from the horse's mouth John is more reserved in his humor and in his style Quenton is very, very outgoing but there are also a lot of similarities and what drives his mojo in making a film is not like a director looking for a vision, they have it. in their head and it's just a matter of them having the freedom to say I like that I like that I don't like that I don't like you know they are it's easy for them I remember something he said once It was really cool, him, Jennifer Jason Lee and I was giving him an award for costume design and he came up and said, you know, it's funny because I'm known for the style of my movies and the way they look.

Like he didn't, none of my movies had gotten a nomination for costumes and he leaned over and said, but we own Halloween, you're not going to have more fun than on a Tarantino show that's a wild circus. We finished the show in two Austins. We have been working for three months. Four months. I don't know you. Next thing I know he wants to do like three weeks of this car stuff and he didn't want to do any CGI or anything so it's going to be old school, I drove cars my whole life as a kid, I won a World Championship in a race car, I can do whatever you want in the car for a month, maybe we were there and Zoe Bell is on the hood of the car at one point you know we're going 80 90 times an hour and you're on this little two-way highway. lanes, he shouts, so the camera car is here, I can't be behind the camera car, I have to I'll be here for the shot, so now I'm in the opposite lane, so you're closing all the entrances to, Let's say, a 3 four mile run.

One day I receive the KT well and good, bringing a hill, let's go and I said everything. off, yeah, everything's off, we're going down the road and I don't know what happened, I can't remember what happened, I saw something or felt something boom, just boy, I just hit the brakes and it came, the guy drives by. 50m an hour the other way, in the lane I was in, we just stopped sitting there for a second, got our car keys out, see you tomorrow, give me that guitar music, time's up, who, wow , John the Executioner, Ruth, there's a cool doll.

He quen had written something he wanted to do a reading, sure it's going to be a fun day, we'll do it, but the next thing I know it's like the whole day and it feels more like an essay than a full reading and okay, well, we'll do it again tomorrow. I have nothing to do for sure and now we're halfway through the second and then I start listening to Bo and I wait, what did you just say and I'm talking? I think it was Wal and Gogs and he yeah, we're going to do a reading in front of some people.

I said oh oh, he's fine, he probably wants to see someone. He wants someone to see this and say. You know, and then the next day we show up and it's at the, I think it's called Ace Theater or something and it's like 12,200 people, so it's the reading in front of this audience and he was like yeah, yeah, yeah, so he just I said, okay. so now this is a play so I said turn it all down about a third and he said about a third yeah I said I got it I said when I'm dead I said what I'll just lie down on the floor or something like that. he said, but that's where it started and then a couple of months later, I guess I didn't know, I thought it was something he wanted to do, maybe he wanted to do it as a play, then we were going to do the movie and then there's Well, and he wanted me to play the role, so I said, Okay, great, wouldn't it be easier to transport her if she was dead.

Well, no one said the job was supposed to be easy and why is it so important to you that it is hung correctly. Let's say that I. I don't like fooling an executioner, he also has to earn a living. I got bored with myself in a one-day take on death. Proof of death. I'm reading this soliloquy of some sort to this girl and I started to feel like doing like John Wayne. from a bad John Wayne and my book, that's no good, I thought it was just RNA, start, okay, cut it, shut up, I can't stand it, I said yes, that's the way I expected and he said, okay , great, now that's stay there and go.

I went back to bed and he wanted and I did everything like that, then he said now just take the first third and he said if we run out of film, he said throw some film in the camera, it's like that's what it is like working with him and this character, John Ruth, had some of that in the reading. I had done some of that and when it came time to do it, he said, "Okay, now leave that and do your thing, Lucky Devil." That's tremendously interesting bravado, but he was very, you know, the character was very tired, he was awake and nervous, he should have listened to himself even more than he did.

They both hated f- a, I think and, uh, Death Proof are going in 20 years I have a four-man team here Rick, if I need more than that, I have to approve it and you know, I have to take care of my boys, hey, I had the great pleasure of calling and said: I want you to read something. I went and read Once Upon a Time in Hollywood sitting there in his Hollywood lair. He loves the history of everything in Hollywood and I like that when I told him I don't know if there's anyone alive who can appreciate this as much as I do and he said I know that, as he wrote in this dedication of the book, it was drawn largely from some conversations we had about my relationship with my double and one in particular was a relationship that my father had with a double of her when Neil there were a lot of true things in there and those shows that I had done that my father had done and things that Quenton loves them. he's able to take things and turn them on our heads and then the night you know, we had a couple of drinks and the night continued, I think DiCaprio came that night and maybe Brad Pit and probably at 3: 00 in the morning everyone. okay good night I gotta go out he says oh yeah and I want you to play Randy I said Randy who is Randy said this St coordinator I said I didn't even see him okay I'll be there for Randy he is something else.

You said you loved my mother and that I made my River Lily, that she knew all the words to every song that was on the radio. I mean, look, when I saw ego The Living Planet, I was like, "Well, it's going to be hard to say no." I don't want to ruin that, uh, what was going to be a franchise. I had done things at Disney, where I had done, you know, like it was part one, part two, part three. They had done very well in the first one. I said no. I don't want to come here and put an end to this.

You know you want it to work. Larry, you drove your Porsche here tonight, right? Yeah, how would you like to trade that Porsche for a mint condition 1952 Mickey Manel Rookie? card I know you've always wanted one, this is real oh yeah, it's a deal, a deal, I thought, so Santa Claus is one of my favorite characters, he was so big in our house, presenting my father as a mystery, I infused that. Largely with Chris Columbus, who is an absolutely fabulous guy. I'm very, very proud of that Santa Claus. You know, I read some things about him.

You know, a nice pat on the back is Kurt Russell, the best Santa Claus ever seen on film and I thought so. he is you want to see Santa Claus that is the real Santa Claus there is nothing like that he is a real per he was a real person he was a saint he was a real man there is a certain amount of respect and fear that children automatically they have towards him is It's so fascinating that I was there in all my clothes and every once in a while some children would pass by and from a distance they would look at you and I like to get closer when they came closer, yes, they do that, it's like yes, when Santa Claus comes. around falls pres, your ass better be in bed asleep, so I felt like this is a great character to play a big, sweet, wonderful saint of a man who is a real person, he's not, he's not a, It's not a comic. character He has been around longer than anything else Why do you know more than the best physicists, geologists and zoologists on Earth?

Earth doesn't know any better, but I have a good idea what's going on. I didn't do enough about it when I had the chance. Think make up for that now or die trying, the show is about people now having to deal with the fact that there are these monsters, it's happening, it's happening and you go back to the story of Godzilla lore. Mothra King Kong, this is much more about dealing with people who are generationally connected and it was a casting idea that had never been before having two well-known actors, father and son, play the same person, they approached Wyatt and me a time we clicked on the casting idea and said okay, let's talk about it and then the hard part begins, the heavy lifting of what are you okay, what are we going to do with it, that's what you see, it's the mystery that unfolds of this guy who should be 93, 94, 95 years old, what happened. here and now we are now we're answering that question this is about the people you know living with the consequences living with what's next we thought yeah, you know, look, can we make this world a good adventure drama and can this?

The character will be a big part of that, so we chase Godzilla and then the more people die, we can't stop him. Stop it. Jesus Kate. I'm trying to help him because we play the same person, we never worked together, so I had a On the day off I was thinking about going hit golf balls or something, you know, I'll go see what Wyatt's doing, so I went down there and it was a fight sequence and suddenly I realized that yes, this is the execution, this is where the rubber bands get in the way this is what the audience is going to see and I need to see this I need to see what he's doing whatever it sets in motion I'm going to have to continue if you decide to start to start interpreting things like that okay, well, later in life maybe it won't be as much maybe it won't be as big but I'll have to do a little bit of that too and I found myself looking at this actor instead of my son and saying this guy's thing.

Good man, this guy is really good, he reminded me of what we had to constantly be aware of that this is not father, son, this is the same person and it wasn't until recently that someone said, you know, we've looked around. and that never. It's been done before for us, that was the fun we had with it, you know, it's very easy with Wy, it's fun and it's easy, thank you for watching this for as long as you did. I hope you check out Monarch. I think it's worth seeing on Apple. Also, oh guys, get out, get out, get out.