Liman is quoted from the oral history that Jason Priestley wanted Vaughn's part and could have raised a million and a half; Livingston is quoted that Vaughn was the last approved because they wanted a poster name. — Bill Simmons
Priestley, though loved on his TV show, could not have played the part; that would have been a disaster. — Bill Simmons
The hosts say distributors or money people wanted Depp to play Trent. — Bill Simmons
Favreau is said to have pushed hard to direct but, like the Good Will Hunting guys, knew starring was their break; he became co-producer and let Liman direct. — Bill Simmons
They may have butted heads, with Liman called famously difficult; Favreau's storyboard sketches in the oral history closely match the film, and Favreau has been diplomatic. — Sean Fennessey
Kurt Russell first, with the reminder that the question is the highest point of his career, not the favorite: one case is The Thing in 1982, after Escape from New York and with Silkwood, Swing Shift and Big Trouble in Little China coming; a no is cast because Escape from New York was only later a cult hit, raising whether apex is judged at the time or on reflection.
Reading about Tombstone makes it sound like Russell was able to finance the movie coming off Backdraft, a relatively big hit he starred in, likened to LeBron in the 2018 Finals; a controversial case is made for Tango and Cash, when after the well-liked Tequila Sunrise with Michelle Pfeiffer a hit with Stallone, an absolutely ridiculous movie only those two could pull off, left him looking like an A plus list star.
Tango and Cash was not a huge hit, costing $55 million and making $66 million, though $55 million in 1988 is like $160 million today, and it is not that good; the counter is that it opened up Backdraft and his ability to finance Tombstone; the actual answer may be that there was no apex at all, a range of rolling hills, which is what is cool about his career.
Russell was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for Silkwood, which is why his Apex Mountain is around The Thing in 1982 or 1983, when Escape from New York was becoming a cult movie. — Sean Fennessey
Whether Russell was ever Oscar-nominated is disputed, Miracle floated and rejected, until the Silkwood nomination is recalled; the host who forgot it concedes, a 180 the others tease.
Russell could have had a different career as a serious dramatic actor rather than leaning into the masculine hero; he and Harrison Ford are cut from the same cloth, smart throwbacks to Paul Newman charisma, but Ford got two franchises while Russell alternates three good films and three bad; he is also just a good-looking dude, at his most handsome here, a man who should be on a poster.
Val Kilmer: a no, with Top Gun imagined as his apex, since coming out of it people saw him neck and neck with the star, though another calls that the star's movie and goes Heat, where as De Niro's wingman in the biggest mid-90s movie he is the next wave; his pre-Batman run is traced through True Romance, Tombstone, The Real McCoy, Thunderheart and The Doors.
1987 right after Top Gun is floated, when Willow was hopefully going to be his Han Solo and did not work out; one host's personal apex for him is The Doors, where he was out of control, and a Doors rewatchable is wanted, though JFK would have to come first among the Oliver Stone movies.
Jason Priestley is a thousand-percent yes: 90210 was never bigger, he is in a movie with Kurt Russell and Val Kilmer and has a couple of heat-check scenes, the steepest mountain of all time, very high with a precipitous drop on either side; a caution that a later show (transcribed 'Natuna') was big for three and a half years does not change the view that this literally was his Apex Mountain and his first dabbling in movies.
Dana Delaney's apex has to be China Beach, which was probably already gone by this point, so she is not a yes; nobody else is proposed except George Cosmatos as ghost director, already covered, with the joke of a Ringer video secretly directed by someone else.
The late Bill Paxton: this is not a Mount Rushmore Paxton performance next to Aliens, Near Dark, One False Move, Weird Science, True Lies and Twister, though it may be his sweetest spot while figuring out how to be Bill Paxton; in Aliens Sigourney Weaver is the hero but Paxton and Biehn would in any other world have been the stars, and One False Move is incredible though arguably Billy Bob's movie too.
Twister was Hollywood's first concerted effort to make Paxton a major star, marketed with Helen Hunt and Philip Seymour Hoffman as people who were going to be stars rather than actual stars; the shift from needing a movie star to needing a tornado, meteor or alien invasion is traced to Speed, where Keanu was the guy and Sandra Bullock turned out to be one of the biggest stars of the next twenty years.
Paxton is one of the all-time great number two or three guys: here he sets picks and makes a couple of corner threes, telling Wyatt he is the one, spits a lot, works the scorer's-table handshakes at the start, and gets the 'hey' when Doc responds to Wyatt's description of his new wife with 'pure as the driven snow'.
The 135-minute runtime; the twelve-minute theater sequence; the picnic scene; Bill Paxton's slow-motion death scene; the unstructured violence of the final act; the fiercely independent portrayal of Dana Delaney's character
The 135-minute runtime: about twenty minutes would have been chopped, starting with the theater scene, which could have been 45 seconds; they do two plays that night, a reading from Henry V and Faustus.
A defense of the theater scene: it shows why Jason Priestley's character is loyal to men he probably should not befriend, the constitution of the town and who is in charge, and that Wyatt Earp is officially out of the game when the mayor introduces himself; twelve minutes is still probably unnecessary, but the Priestley point wins the objector over.
Priestley sitting beside Powers Booth is read as a stan, just a big fan; the movie opening with the cowboys executing a wedding party is liked as a way to set the tone for how bad somebody is, with the joke that it copies Three Amigos and that is why Kevin Jarrett (as transcribed) was fired.
Three stretches of intense, unstructured violence, especially the end where it is unclear what they are trying to accomplish and the heroes are just murdering people, are called the George Cosmatos effect, the film turning into Cobra or Rambo for five minutes; the opening sequence itself is fine and sets up a gnarly, bare-knuckled, masculine movie.
The theater was too long; the film is called weirdly woke about a woman's place in the old West, Dana Delaney playing a fiercely independent woman; another notes that Wyatt leaving Maddie for the actress is the real story and is also in Wyatt Earp, though doubt is cast on how independent she really was.
Their picnic scene sucked: nobody comes to Tombstone for picnics, and the late-80s, early-90s habit of establishing a romantic connection is unnecessary when we already get that they like each other.
Bill Paxton's slow-motion death scene is really bad and dated, one of several very long deaths that would be done differently in 2018.
Asked again later, the 135 minutes is still the answer: it is way too long.
