[COPY] Movies That Settle: Tombstone

It’s funny what movies have an impact on you.

On my podcast, The League of Ordinary Gentlemen (or leaguepodcast, check your local podcast listings #alwaysbeplugging), we often like to cover movies, as I often do here on the ol’ Substack. usually, never the twains shall meet. I don’t really know why they don’t meet, but they just never have… until now!

Our latest episode, being edited as I type this, was on the Kurt Russell/Val Kilmer, buddy cop western Tombstone. While recording that episode, I recalled how much I enjoyed that movie, so I decided to dig through the archives and re-post the Substack I wrote about it back in September 2023. There are certainly differences between the two, but hopefully this serves as a good primer for the podcast episode, unless you happen to listen to that first and then find your way here. It’s fine either way, but you should take them both in. While you’re at it, I have a comic book and a Red Bubble storefront if you want to support my creative endeavors. Or just throw a few bucks my way on Buy me a Coffee. Go ahead. you would be the first, incidentally. Also, please subscribe by clicking this button. to quote Doc Holliday, “You’re a daisy if you do.”

Tombstone

First and foremost, if you haven’t seen the documentary Val, about Val Kilmer and how he goes about his life these days, do yourself the favor. It’s incredibly moving.

As someone who loves movies and nerdy things, I have been to many “Special Event Screenings” over the years. It seems since the proliferation of home theaters and the like, theaters and event-planners in general are looking for more ways to get people to come out and watch movies in the world, and pay gobs of money for them. So, they will pay one of the stars to come out and do a little Q & A about the making of the movie to get fans to come out. This used to only be done for premieres, but now it is most often done for really old movies that have developed a following. It could be a cult movie in some cases, but sometimes it’s just any old movie. I have personally moderated the Q & A for Mickey Dolenz appearing at a screening of The Monkees’ Head, seen Bruce Campbell appear before a screening of Evil Dead and George Takei appear alongside a screening of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.  Incidentally, Takei only appeared in a few minutes of the movie, and initially declined to even be in it. Nowadays, appearing at these screenings is probably his main source of income, so, that kind of tells you all you need to know about how this cottage industry works.

The point is, I always thought this was the kind of thing for people like me (i.e. nerdy people) who can’t get enough of whatever they are nerding out about and want to be in the presence of one of the movie’s stars. Along the way, though, someone figured out that it didn’t just have to be nerdy movies. They can do it with anything.

At one point in Val, a beleaguered Kilmer, who can barely move and can only speak through a voice box, appears at a screening of Tombstone in an Old West ghost town, to thunderous applause. The subsequent signing that he participated in was so well-attended that it almost killed him, as he signed hundreds of 8 X 10’s and posed for tons of pictures, and is seen vomiting in a trash can later. I guess what I’m saying is: I had no idea that this movie was that popular, but then, cowboys can be considered nerdy, too.

I am no cowboy, but I do love Tomestone. You might even say I am a nerd for it. So much so that my friends and I tried to write our own movie of what happened that day at the O.K. Corral (Because I guess two films that same year, this one and Kevin Costner’s Wyatt Earp, weren’t enough.) It was never completed, or went beyond a few pages of script, but that’s definitely fine (We were in high school. It wouldn’t have been good on any level.) I was such a nerd for Tomestone that the manager of the movie theater that I worked in at the time gave me the actual trailer reel. For you youngsters, back in the day, companies would send movie theaters the film reels of the trailers that they were supposed to show before all the movies, and it was the theater employee’s job to splice the trailers to the front of the movie. I think he was actually supposed to send it back when the theater was done with it, but he opted to give it to me, knowing my obsession. He also offered to fix all the soda machines to pour sarsaparilla, but he may have been just having a yuck there.

Still got it…

To break down Tombstone, Kurt Russell plays Wyatt Earp, with Kilmer playing Doc Holliday, his boozy, tuberculosis-ridden pal, and the two of them, plus Earp’s brothers, basically go on a crusade to clean up the town of Tombstone, AZ in the 1880’s, a town that had been overrun by Cowboys, a gang of thugs that were recognized as the first instance of organized crime in the US. At first, Wyatt, as a retired lawman, is content to let the Cowboys have their fun while he and his brothers make some money by having a stake in a local saloon. His brothers, Virgil, played by Sam Elliot, because you can’t have a Western without him, and Morgan, played by Bill Paxton, playing a great second banana as always, decide that they have seen enough and get deputized as town marshalls. Tension between the Earps and the Cowboys builds slowly over the first half of the film, until two sets of Cowboy brothers, the Clantons and McLaurys, put the Earps and Holliday on notice, leading to the famous gunfight at the O.K. Corral. While this famous gunfight has been the closing of other Westerns, here it is indeed the climax, but if you remember your high school English class, the climax isn’t the end, but the “point at which the highest level of interest and emotional response is achieved “ Basically, the Earps and Holliday kill three of the four Cowboys, and it’s not long after that the Cowboys come seeking revenge. Virgil Earp was maimed, losing the use of his arm, by Cowboys, and Morgan is shot and killed. While the rest of the Earps pack up and leave, a deputized Wyatt, along with Holliday and a few of their buddies, embark on what is apparently known in history as the Earp Vendetta Ride, which saw Wyatt and friends kill as many Cowboys as they could find as payback for what happened to Virgil and Morgan (Done via montage, but still pretty fun). The final confrontation actually ends with Holliday killing Cowboy honcho Johnny Ringo, played by Michael Beihn, in a classic Old West pistol duel. The drama was further heightened because Holliday was basically on his deathbed a few minutes earlier. A couple scenes later, old friends Wyatt and Doc share one final good-bye as Holliday does pass away quietly in a hospital, with the official cause of death being tuberculosis and hard living. Wyatt, meanwhile, ran off to find his “it” girl, and they apparently lived happily ever after.

However, not all was happy during the actual production of the movie. Apparently, screenwriter Kevin Jarre was originally hired to direct, but four weeks into shooting, he was given the boot, and it probably had spurs attached to it. George Cosmatos, best known for directing Rambo: First Blood - Part II, was brought in to replace him, but George ended up getting a lot of help from Kurt Russell, who was already starring in the movie. Russell was also asked by producers to tighten up the script, and so he and Kilmer worked on making the Wyatt-Doc relationship the main focus of the story. Rumor has it that Russell didn’t want credit for all the roles that he played during production, but Kilmer has been quoted as saying in a 2017 blog post that, “Kurt is solely responsible for Tombstone's success, no question." So the fact that the movie was made at all, let alone that it made $73 million at the box office and was actually good, is a minor miracle. 

Before anyone accuses me of being a total fanboy for Tombstone, I should point out that there is some really cheesy dialogue in that rewritten script. In the very first scene, someone tells Powers Boothe’s Cowboy Curly Bill to “go to Hell,” to which he naturally replies, “You first,” just so we know that he’s a bad guy, as if the curly-q mustache wasn’t enough.. And as much fun as it is to watch Val Kilmer chew the scenery, there are some cringey moments in his performance, too. Even ones that I thought were really cool in 1993, now I just find silly, like when Thomas Haden Church accuses him of being so drunk that he’s seeing double, and Kilmer replies, “I have two guns. One for each of ya.” And pretty much all of Dana Delaney’s dialogue is just terrible (No offense to Delaney herself. She’s a peach.) But we should remember that this was 1993, and great dialogue was still pretty much reserved for Tarantino movies and Seinfeld. I’ll give most of it a pass, but it does sort of take you out of the movie when it happens.

Conversely, one of the really cool things that I notice now and took for granted back in the day is how Wyatt Earp is established as a seminal bad-ass right from the beginning. The first time we see him, there is a young man whipping a horse trying to get it to obey, and Wyatt grabs the man’s hand and whips him instead. As the movie goes on, we learn that Wyatt has retired from law enforcement and just wants to make some money and live a quiet life. One fact that is mentioned in the movie, but not necessarily driven home, is how much money the Earps are actually making while in Tombstone. While a lot of the extras, and most of the Cowboys, are generally dirty and dressed in what I would call “Old West Shabby,” the Earps and Doc Holliday are usually clean and well put together, even when Doc is drunk and half-dead. It is essentially a nod to the Westerns of old, so people could tell the good guys from the bad guys, but it also drives home the point that the Earps are doing pretty well, but there are other townsfolk who are not, so when Virgil Earp decides to become town marshall and do something about that, it means something. 

As a youth, I obviously loved Kilmer’s performance as Holliday (I might have even used the term “Oscar-worthy.”), but now I appreciate Kurt Russell as Wyatt Earp a little more (and knowing how much work he was putting in behind the scenes, I really appreciate it). Kilmer at times seems like a kid playing with toy guns in his backyard. Russell is actually pretty believable as Earp most of the time, even if his mustache isn’t. So many action heroes these days go looking for trouble, or they are a former special forces trooper with years of military training under their belt. Wyatt Earp was just a tough guy who didn’t have anything to prove to anybody and didn’t want any trouble, which actually made him seem tougher. So when you mess with his family, there’s Hell to pay.

The stark difference between the two characters of Earp and Holliday makes for an interesting dynamic, which is probably what Russell was going for in his script-doctoring. Holliday’s drunken debauchery contrasts with Earp’s stoicism, and yet the film establishes them as the best of friends who would die for each other, which is what drives Doc to substitute for Wyatt in the duel with Ringo (also, Doc probably wanted to be the one to kill that bastard.) This is also driven home just before the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, when Wyatt tells Doc that it isn’t his fight, and Doc responds, “That is a hell of a thing for you to say to me,” and stands by the Earp brothers. The perfect illustration of this friendship is my favorite moment from the whole movie. After the gunfight is over, Wyatt and Doc are unharmed, and walk away side-by-side, with the entire town giving them a wide berth, parting like the Red Sea for them.

Ah, yes, the famous gunfight. If you are a budding filmmaker (or even an established one) and were planning to base an action scene on something that really happened but still make it interesting for modern audiences, you could do a lot worse than watch this scene for pointers and inspiration. To me, it toes the line between fact and fiction just enough to make it work both ways. For example, it is true that Wyatt was not touched, while Doc was grazed by a bullet on the hip, but that is barely visible here and certainly does not break the momentum of the scene at all. Remember, the actual gunfight was about 30 seconds long, so one can’t waste time on petty details like one of our heroes getting shot. The truth is, the hip graze may have taken away my favorite moment of the whole movie (mentioned above), so I’m pretty glad they only just touched on it. 

There are several other cool moments in the gunfight, of course. In the early stages, one of the bad guy McLaury brothers is hiding behind his horse and shooting over it at Holliday. History tells us that Doc shot him in the chest with his shotgun, but it doesn’t say exactly how, so the Tombstone version is that Doc shot one shell straight up in the air, causing the horse to buck from the sound, thus exposing McLaury, giving Doc the opening he needed to blow him away with his other shell. In the following shot, where we see McLaury fall, we also see Doc holding his hip for a second, so I'm assuming that is where he took the graze, but a lot is happening, so only over multiple viewings would anyone notice or care.  

In my second favorite moment of the whole movie, Wyatt and Doc are now the only two standing on the Earp side, and Doc whips out his two guns and trains them on Billy Clanton, the same person who was the recipient of the cringy “Two Gun” comment earlier (So I guess even cringy lines can have meaning), and he and Wyatt essentially empty their guns into him in an amazingly-edited sequence of Doc shoots-Wyatt shoots-Doc shoots a lot-Wyatt shoots until Billy is cut down. His brother, Ike, tries to avenge him by stealing Sheriff Behan’s gun and blasting away at the Earps and Holliday, but after failing that, he takes the opportunity to get out of there while he still can, as history tells us he did. Doc, meanwhile, trains one of his guns on the surviving McLaury, only to find that it is empty. McLaury thinks he has him dead to rights, I guess forgetting that Doc had another gun. This is another point where the film plays with history a little, because it is believed that the real Holliday killed McLaury, but in order to give Morgan Earp a little bit of a story arc, he and Doc shoot simultaneously and Morgan’s bullet gets him in the head. So now Morgan has to live with the fact that he murdered someone. Even though it’s only for a few scenes, it’s still good character stuff.

As I mentioned above, Morgan is murdered and Virgil maimed as payback for the three cowboys killed in the Gunfight, prompting Wyatt and his comrades to then go on their famous Vendetta Ride, but as Doc points out, “It’s not revenge he’s after. It’s a reckoning.” Again, the movie doesn’t belabor this too much, but it’s a good point because Wyatt isn’t only getting revenge for his brothers, but he is getting revenge for all those who the Cowboys have hurt while he turned a blind eye. In reality, it’s a little fuzzy morally who was right and who was wrong in the Gunfight (The Earps and Doc went down there basically looking for a rumble), but now Wyatt is not only looking for payback or to bring criminals to justice, but redemption. In the film, Wyatt Earp is the good guy, through and through.

Like I said, however, the Gunfight is not the finale, and every movie needs a finale. The big finale is Doc, subbing in for Wyatt, out-dueling Johnny Ringo in their face-off and killing him. It is a great moment for so many reasons. First, it is established that Ringo was a skilled pistoleer, one that Wyatt could not beat in a shoot-out. Second, Doc and Ringo had two previous face-offs during the movie, but nothing had been settled, and using the “Rule of Threes,” this had to be the blow-off. And finally, it is the ultimate show of friendship that Doc would crawl out of bed to take Wyatt’s place in this duel, one that he could have lost, but that’s how deep the bond is. It’s basically Old West Bro Code.

However, it most likely never happened. History records that Johnny Ringo was found dead slumped up against a tree, with a gunshot wound to the head, like in the movie, but most believe that it was self-inflicted. It is another example of the filmmakers taking history and making it work for them. Ringo killing himself would have made for a pretty boring ending, and they weren’t making a documentary, so they decided to have someone else inflict that gunshot wound. Because we live in a time of reality TV and docu-dramas about crazy zoo owners, I think we tend to forget that sometimes, fiction is better.

Looking back, despite the bad dialogue and historical inaccuracies, Tombstone is a much better film than I even thought back in 1993, and I really liked it back then. It’s a rare movie that I liked as a teenager and still like as a grumpy old man, but not just for nostalgia. Yes, it is the Hollywood version of what happened between the Earps and the Cowboys, but it’s a really well done Hollywood version, and that is maybe even rarer.

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