Replies

About Russell essentially directing the film -- I didn't know that! But it makes sense. I've wondered WHY Tombstone has the intense attraction to so many people that it does. There are so many "wrong" things about it -- gratuitous violence, the stupid women's suffrage scene and other PC crap, Curly Bill, howling-high on opium and booze and shooting at the moon -- having an endless number of rounds in, presumably, two six-cylinder single-action pistols (either that or skills as a reloader of astounding speed), and in fact a "Curly Bill" (I watched it three times in a row at the big screen for Powers Booth's performance alone ... LOVED him!) totally unlike the historical person, a big, uncouth, mean bully, by all reports, not the refined, humorous and gentlemanly villain that Booth made so EXCELLENT...

... yet Tombstone, in big part because of Val Kilmer's performance, just hit bulls-eye in the minds of so many Americans of all stripes. I remember going to it for the third time in a low-rent Mexican neighborhood buck-a-show matinee about six weeks after original release. The theater was about two-thirds full, a weekend afternoon. All different ages and colors of people. About three rows behind us three American Mexican teenage pals were sitting together, and had clearly seen the movie before. When Wyatt cuffs ol' Johnny Tyler the bully dealer in the Oriental and Johnny hesitates, Wyatt asks: "You gonna do something or just stand there and bleed?" the three boys chimed in. It made the movie more fun.

There's almost a cult around Tombstone. I wonder, WHY? With all its flaws, why does it resonate so deeply with so many Americans?