Tombstone, Arizona. June 30, 2018. It was hot. Damn hot! So hot, you could fry an egg on the sidewalk … if Allen Street had sidewalks. The main venue was a hard-packed, dirt and gravel street, closed to vehicles, compressed by years of foot, horse, and stagecoach traffic, and lined with ten-foot wooden boardwalks, with numerous period correct buildings dotting the façade. Every now and then one could see a closed and abandoned store, awaiting its next tenant. Tourism is the lifeblood of the town and this weekend’s activities was a welcome shot in the arm, so to speak. The skies were clear and so blue it hurt you just to look at them. It was a welcome respite from the previous two evenings when thunder boomed and lightning cracked, illuminating the town’s buildings as well as the surrounding mountains and desert.
Sponsored by the Tombstone Lions Club and the city of Tombstone, the weekend celebrated Freedom Days with former Florida congressman and radio/TV host, retired Lt. Col. Allen West. It also honored the legendary Buffalo Soldiers along with members of the cast and crew of the film Tombstone, who were celebrating the 25th anniversary of the film’s release. While West gave a Friday night lecture in historic Schieffelin Hall on the Second Amendment and the importance of the Buffalo Soldiers in American history, Tombstone cast and crew members, including Michael Biehn, Billy Zane, Dana Wheeler-Nicholson, Joanna Pacula, Frank Stallone, Catherine Hardwicke, Joseph Porro, Sandy Gibson and Peter Sherayko, enjoyed a dinner at the Longhorn restaurant, renewed old friendships and reminisced about their time on the set. Earlier that day, Sherayko and Stallone sat down with Tina Jennings at KGUN-9 in Tucson as she conducted an interview about the film. When asked why it was such a classic, Sherayko replied, “The script, the cast, and all the stuff in it. It’s the only movie that has all the righteous stuff in it—the right saddles, the right guns, the right kind of belts, the right costuming. All that stuff was [attention] to detail by Kevin Jarre, who was the writer and first director. And he insisted on doing it right. He used to tell me, ‘There’s three things they make wrong with Westerns: hats, guns, and saddles.’ He wanted to straighten it out. And if you look at every other Western, and you look at the stuff, you’d say, ‘Hey, it’s wrong.’” While Stallone and Sherayko were being interviewed, West, and Medal of Honor recipients Drew Dix, and Melvin Morris were given a guided tour of nearby Ft. Huachuca.1
The next day, the streets were packed; it was estimated between 7,000 and 9,000 tourists visited the town over the weekend. Naturally, most came to see the film celebrities, but the Buffalo Soldiers exhibit was also well-attended and presented a wonderful static display of their history in the lobby of Schieffelin Hall. As many of the film’s stars were scheduled for autograph-signing sessions, people were lined up outside the various venues at 8:00 a.m., well before the events began. Biehn, Zane, and Sherayko were inside Fly’s Photographic Studio at the O.K. Corral, Pacula and Wheeler-Nicholson were inside the Crystal Palace, and Stallone and Gibson were located next to the Bird Cage Theater. The lines were long and constant all weekend; Porro and Hardwicke took the opportunity to roam around town and see the various attractions. In fact, on Sunday, Hardwicke even made a five-hour visit to nearby Benson, and later suggested she wanted to return to film a documentary on the area.
After a few hours, all celebrities took a well-deserved break and joined the parade down Allen Street. The grand marshal’s spotlight was shared by Allen West, Dix, and Morris. Wheeler-Nicholson became a bit emotional when she gazed at a group of soldiers from Fort Huachuca. As she told Herald/Review columnist Dana Cole, “Seeing these soldiers here is extremely moving. Making movies is one thing, but these soldiers are the real deal. They are the true heroes.” Pacula seconded the thought: “This is my third time in Tombstone, and it’s phenomenal. The weather is perfect, the food is great, and the people here are fabulous. Where else do you see all these Buffalo Soldiers? This is so much fun.” After lunch, the actors returned to the various venues for more signing. Zane spoke for everyone when he said, “I’ve visited Tombstone before, and it’s great to be back for the 25th anniversary. The town shows a lot of love and civic pride, and it’s nice to see all the improvements the town has made through the years.” Stallone, an avid Western historian, said, “Taking a tour of Birdcage was my highlight; it just dripped with history. And walking back to my room at night with no traffic, just imagining what it was like in its heyday.” Several celebrities said they enjoyed the weekend so much, they would be more than happy to return the following year!2
While Tombstone was filled to the brim with visitors, neighboring Mescal, where the majority of the movie was actually filmed, saw its fair share of activity as well. Located about 45 minutes from Tucson, the site is the location for numerous films and Old Tucson Studios, which owns the site, graciously agreed to open the set to tourists over the weekend, allowing them to wander the streets where Kurt Russell, Val Kilmer, Powers Boothe, Dana Delany and many others once walked. To their great delight, over 500 guided tours were conducted on Saturday and Sunday.
Meanwhile, back in Tombstone, in addition to the celebrity signings, there was an abundance of other activities including the obligatory beer tent, hangings and shootouts, actor and performer Will Roberts, the Goose Flats gunfighters, the Tombstone Vigilantes, the Cochise County dance class, and more. A movie memorabilia auction in the city park generated over $3,200 for the local Lions Club and many of the film’s stars either autographed or donated items for sale, including scripts, posters, and the duster Sherayko wore as Texas Jack Vermillion. Did you know that Sherayko’s long hair in the film was actually a wig? Imagine what that would have gone for! Several Buckaroos including Jeff Dolan, Garrett Roberts, Bill Weddle, Jerry Tarantino and Reggie Byrum set up a tent in the city park where numerous Western items were displayed including an album of Reggie’s photos taken on the film’s set. Jerry and Judy Crandall also sold several of Jerry’s paintings, and True West magazine’s Bob Boze Bell provided the artwork that Steve Todd used to design a 25th anniversary poster. That evening, many of the film’s stars, including Zane and Hardwicke, sat out under the stars as Tombstone was shown on a large inflatable screen to the great delight of more than 125 patrons who were in attendance. “I can watch a film like an audience member,” explains Zane, “not just an actor who remembers what it was like on that day. I love the movies that I’m in, and I can love them like an audience. And I love this movie.” When asked to name his favorite part, he cried, “It was the gunfight at the end! Are you kidding? It was incredible. My speech, please. That was fun, but it was the thunderstorm, the lightning, the laudanum, [Dana] jonesing out on ‘H,’ Billy Bob getting slapped. That movie was just boss on every level in so many ways!”3
Those too tired to celebrity watch could view the Josephine Earp collection on display at the Tombstone Courthouse Historic Park. Donated by Eric Weider, former owner and publisher of Wild West magazine, the collection includes handwritten notes and a carbon copy of a proposed Earp biography by John H. Flood, Jr., along with letters to Wyatt from Josephine, telegrams, wills, documents and photos, and Flood’s rejection letters.
Saturday afternoon, their wrists sore from signing, and voices raspy from talking to their fans, the celebrities adjourned to Schieffelin Hall where a panel discussion was moderated by Julie-Ann Reams. The audience began to arrive almost two hours before the scheduled start time and the room was quickly filled to capacity. And it was well worth the wait as everyone was entertained by amusing anecdotes shared by all. After opening remarks from Gorden Anderson, and an introduction of each celebrity by Reams, Sherayko kicked off the discussion by explaining how Kevin Jarre, the film’s original director and writer, created the script. After a few stories, he began to discuss Jarre’s directorial abilities and how they affected the cast; Billy Zane quickly came to his friend’s defense: “I’d like to address something Peter mentioned about Kevin, perhaps an alternative view on specificity, and a more nostalgic approach to cinematic direction. Kevin’s meticulous, and what makes his script so wonderful, and his vision so acute, is not only his attention to detail as an author, but as a director, he directed like directors did in the 30s and 40s, who were taskmasters, and who were incredibly specific. In our modern age of directing, actors have a lot more freedom to play, a lot more sway and say, and get a little more precious when, God forbid, they’re told what to do. Certainly, [that] was not the case back in the day when some of the greatest films of … the pantheon of cinema were produced. And some of the films that clearly informed a great storyteller like Kevin Jarre. So, he entered the space, directing like he, I imagine, dreamt like he could. And was punished for it at every level from every front. And it was a shame.”4
In an earlier interview given to Michael Mercy at the Genre-con in Guelph (Ontario, Canada), Biehn admitted that George Cosmatos, Jarre’s replacement, didn’t really know what the film was all about: “The most important thing about any movie is the script. If you have a great story, and then you go out and cast great actors, you really don’t have to do very much more. Tombstone is a perfect example of a script that was so good, the actors just took it upon themselves to make a good movie out of it. George Cosmatos, who ended up directing it, was more of a sort of visual director. I don’t think he knew the beginning from the end of the story. I don’t think he had any idea which character was which, but he just wanted to make sure that the picture looked good.”5
Wheeler-Nicholson then added, “I met [Kevin] through Lisa Zane, the incredibly beautiful, talented actress, who is Billy’s sister. She and Kevin were together and he wrote the part of Josephine for her to play. There are a few of us who came onto this movie because of our friendship with Kevin; he believed in us, he wanted us in the film. I would say, certainly myself, Paula Malcomson, Lisa, we were there because he wanted us there, and he fought the studio to get us there. Because they wanted fancier actors, for my part for sure, and he went to the mat about that.” As we all know by now, Billy’s sister Lisa was initially selected to play the part of Josephine. Billy was extremely gracious when he spoke of her defense of Jarre when Kevin was fired. “It was hard to turn up right at the time that Kevin was fighting,” clarified Zane. “Literally, I showed up and two days later he was not there. And then my sister, in solidarity, left the picture. By choice. And that was noble and career suicide at the same time. I was caught in a very … [it was] kind of uncommon. Not many people would have done that. She was braver than I. The girl had moxie. I probably would have, and should have done the same, I think. And, didn’t. But she was a little more invested.” In a letter to the author, Zane expanded upon those comment: “Kevin wrote HER, Lisa as Josie. That is her greatest contribution to the film. She was neither template nor muse. Josie spoke Lisa verbatim. Lisa guided Kevin to the shores of a siren’s cave, on an Amazon island where the classical female as hero Goddess took the shape of a modern woman in a new frontier, at the end of the 19th century, in a film made nearing the end of the 20th.6
“There hasn’t been a better, more independent, unapologetic, entirely feminine voice on screen before or since. And that credit is entirely due to Lisa Zane. And certainly Kevin Jarre for being smart enough to capture her attention, hold her interest, and wisely realize he was being invited to assimilate and integrate her into the fabric of his hero’s journey. Everything Josie says in the script. Those were Lisa’s utterances, her world view, posture, silhouette and stamp. I’ve heard them. Know them all too well. They helped shape my world view. It was among Lisa’s greatest offerings. Perhaps to have actually said them on screen as well would have gilded the lily. Been just too much to bear and distracted the message with the medium. Dana Delaney’s turn as Josie was confident and honest and fun loving but those lines, like all in that film, are simply bullet proof. It’s one thing to be immortalized in screen legend by another borrowing your moves. Like Slim Keith was to a kid named Lauren Bacall in To Have and Have Not, or what Director Guy Hamilton was to Sean Connery before a Scottish lad transformed into James Bond on the set of Dr. No, after his tutorial on the finer things found between judo chops and hard kisses. It’s quite another thing to be written, cast in typeface, bold as bronze and ageless as marble by the sheer might of Kevin’s structure, bookending Lisa’s virtual dictation, impervious to all forms of weather damage and hot air any studio executive or movie star could bluster. Lisa Zane, on the page as Josie, was not just the model, nor the sculpture in the stone, but the artist’s hand, chisel and inspiration that guided it.”7
Stallone also talked about how Jarre explained the character Stallone was to play. Kevin “was a very engaging, enthusiastic person, very bright guy,” explains Frank. “He goes, ‘Now, listen Frank. I want you to play a different character. You’re more of a Bowery mug. You’re not like a Western guy, you’re…’ ’Cause, no one is from the West. Everyone came from somewhere. It could have been from Chicago or Boston, kind of urban but still kind of a bully. A mug. He says, ‘That’s what I want you to do. I don’t want you to be Tex Ritter, I want you to be this guy.’ The day I got there [was] the day before he was fired. I said, ‘I can’t wait to see Kevin.’ Peter said, ‘He’s not here anymore.’ So, I felt really bad because, as with Billy, it’s because of him that it was, vis-à-vis Billy, I’m in the movie. And I really didn’t get a chance to work with him, I never got any closure, say hello, call him up, because after that happened, he was MIA for years.”8
Inevitably, whenever Biehn is in attendance, the question is always asked of him: What about the gun-spinning sequence? And the Tombstone panel discussion was no exception. Said Michael of Kevin, “Like most of us, he didn’t audition me. I went out to lunch with him, we both read the same book about some psycho killer. We just bonded. I had the Colt and what he would call the rig, and that was what was so great about Kevin’s script, the vernacular that he uses in that script. You don’t see that in other Westerns: ‘lawdog,’ ‘lunger,’ ‘I’ll be your huckleberry’ … all that stuff was said back then but you don’t hear that in other modern Westerns. They used to speak like that. Kevin was a great, great writer, and he was a very stubborn director. He wanted it done it his way and only his way, and he was surrounded by some very, very talented people, and he wouldn’t listen to anybody. He was going to have it done his way, and his way only. I got the gun and the rig, couldn’t call it a holster around him, about two months ahead of time. A guy who was a quick draw artist, his name was Thell Reed. And Thell taught me—the most coolest thing about that routine was that you could actually take a Colt and spin it sideways, I always thought it was [a vertical spin.] And then I started playing around and I think I came up with [the fan movement]. That routine was shot towards the end of the movie, and if you see it in the movie, of course, there’s cuts, cuts to Bill Paxton, cuts to Val, cuts to everybody. It’s not like I did it all at once. That routine, I could do that routine about once out of every ten tries. I mean perfectly. It was a little bit like a gymnastics routine, ’cause it was tough. You might not even notice but when I pulled my Colt on Val and twisted, as it flips over, I’m cocking it at the same time. And there’s stuff like that throughout that sequence that made it what it was. Sometimes I could do it perfectly, but other times it’s like falling off the parallel bars. I mean the gun would fly out of my hands. I worked very, very hard on that, and Val worked very, very hard with that cup. I would continually see Val walking around the set practicing with that cup which was not really made to do what he did with it.”9
Dana agreed: “Val was doing that because the scene didn’t happen for a couple of weeks so there was a lead up to when you were going to shoot it. Val was doing that flipping thing the whole time. He’d be talking to you and doing the flipping.”10
Biehn also explained his relationship with Kilmer: “I don’t know Val Kilmer, I never met Val Kilmer, I’ve never said hello to him. He never said hello to me. We did go out together on my request and practice, figure out how we were going to do the final gun bout. He drove his car, I drove my car. We met. It sounds a little corny, looking back it probably is but … Bill Paxton was a real good friend of mine at the time and Bill and I didn’t really hang out that much on the set or anywhere. I was very into Johnny Ringo and very, very against the Earps and all talk and talk and talk about what really happened down there, what I believed happened. We worked out that and we were basically in character when we worked it out. At no point in the making of that movie did I ever say hello to him or did he say hello to me or join the conversation that he was in. When we went out to do that scene, we decided to do it close. Instead of like from far away like in every other gunfight you’ve ever seen. The reason that we did that was because they used to have gunfights like that, they draw and fucking shoot and miss, and he would shoot and miss, and shoot again. We decided to make it really intimate and came up with that thing where we’re walking around. We had that down to the point to where I knew after I got shot right there, that I was going to stagger forward when he was saying his lines, I was still going to get a gunshot off even thought I had a bullet in my brain.” When asked if this behavior was deliberate, Biehn replied, “When you’re young, you know you think, ‘Fuck ’em.’”11
Of course, no Tombstone panel discussion would be complete without comments from Val Kilmer but, sadly, he wasn’t available. However, Kilmer did explain his preparation for the role at the 2012 Ohio Wizard World Comic-con. “The first thing I did, I called the greatest dialect coach in the world. He used to do lots and lots of theater, and now he does lots of movies. He’s really a great guy named Tim Monich. I called him up, I need a southern aristocrat. He said, ‘I got it.’ I said, ‘Let me go on.’ He said, ‘No I got it.’ And he sent me a tape. [His dialect] was soooo slow [and] when you talk that slow, everything is funny. But [Doc] was a socialite from Georgia, and I started listening to this tape all the time. I’ve got a lot of relatives from the south and I talk to them about what they remembered. I had a lot of horses at the time, and a really good horse trainer, who was oddly a historian about riding. Because a military posture back then … there was a very specific way that they rode. [It was] really strange; they didn’t move with the horse so much. They were so rigid because that was the way they were taught to ride. So little tiny things like that that made him different than your average guy out West. And then a lot of things, the role, especially when it’s well written, it’s all in the writing. Very funny and mean.”12
Unfortunately for an unknowning audience, Joanna Pacula had been overcome with dehydration and heat exhaustion, and was unable to share any thoughts about her time on location. But later, she told the author, “I had auditioned for George for the movie, 20th Century–Fox, Leviathan. I didn’t get it; Amanda [Pays] got it. But George really liked me. He wanted me but the studio approved the other girl. Because of this, I think George remembered me and wanted me for Tombstone. I tell you, I had no idea what was going on. When I arrived, everybody was very nice. I went to a script meeting and I met everybody. I knew from other people that people were going, being fired, but I completely [had] no clue about what was going on. Everybody was very busy working so I basically waited for my part to be played. I was probably the least involved with the whole hoopla stuff.
“I really did not feel well but I should have said something when Michael Biehn said he does not know Val or doesn’t know who he … you remember that? I should have said something. I almost said something but I was getting like goose bumps and shivers from dehydration. So I just didn’t say something, but Val is not somebody who is unfriendly or anything. He just stayed in character, and his character is best if he not to interact with Michael. He wanted fresh reactions. So that’s why. It’s nothing personal whatsoever. He was always in character. If you can imagine, they wanted to look at each other and not know each other because they wanted that surprise, that authentic reaction. Everybody works differently, and you have to respect everyone’s way to get there. So, that’s how he works. There were script readings and stuff so they did interact a little with each other but they wanted to be real on screen. As good as you can get. Val is very, very smart. Very nice and friendly. We never had one problem, whatsoever, as characters. I like him very much to work with him. He’s very intelligent and that’s something that not every actor has. He was very much into character. We talked about our scenes. He was absolutely perfectly nice. He was shy.”
Joanna also mentioned that several of her scenes with Kilmer were cut out or truncated. The Holliday/Ed Bailey confrontation, for example: “I basically had to grab the money and leave. And we had two horses waiting outside: I’m so sorry it’s not in the movie because we did go on those horses and really rode through town. But it probably would have taken too much screen time to leave that. We were good. We both ride horses well, so it would have been fun for us as actors but screen time is screen time. They had to cut a lot of stuff. It would have edited great to the next scene but as actors, we always want more. Just a visual to end that scene with speed. Sort of primal, if I may say. There was one scene in the bar, when Val was leaving and I say, ‘It’s always Wyatt…’ We actually never finished completely that scene, so that’s why it probably never ended up in the film. There was not enough time to shoot this movie, there were so many good things going with everybody. It’s so hard to judge what you pick and what you do. It’s difficult. But we had some really incredible moments. The main relationship was between Kurt and Dana, so that was the romantic relationship. I guess they did not want to compete with other relationships that much. We were secondary, so … there were little moments. We were coming out of the theater, and we had a little exchange with Kurt going to the [Oriental]. Here and there. Like one line, little moments, they had to chop it. But you know what’s really weird? Billy Fraker said to me one night, ‘Wow, you guys have something really interesting going between you and Val in the movie.’ So, I think what he meant was that our relationship was a little bit more interesting, if I may say so.”13
After the panel discussion was concluded, Catherine Hardwicke gave a presentation on the creation of the movie set. Through photos and sketches, she described the process from ideation to construction while sharing numerous humorous stories about the film and George Cosmatos. “The elegance that Joseph [Porro] brought to this project [through his costumes], we wanted to bring that to this frontier town, too. One thing I thought to show the energy of Tombstone … we also didn’t have a lot of money. Remember what other movie was shooting at the same time? Wyatt Earp, and they had two or three times our budget, and we thought they were going to kick our ass. But, we kicked their ass. Wooo! We were like the underdog, but we don’t hear much about that movie anymore, do we? I thought, let’s keep the energy going, so as soon as [construction coordinator] Billy [Holmquist] got the framing up, [I said] don’t build it anymore. Let’s make it look like it’s a work in progress. So it looks like there’s always something going on. It’s always growing, growing, growing. So, some of these half-built buildings … I thought that was cool. Just the idea of all the cool banners, the fun stuff. The colors. We tried to find out what were the colors, the real paint of that time period. Another building at the end of this street—a church that’s not painted so it looks like a work in progress. Here’s Fly’s studio. Again, we didn’t finish painting it, he just put up his backdrops and started opening up the studio before [painting]. He didn’t have time. Maybe the paint didn’t come in.
“Mescal has been owned for a long time by Old Tucson. So when you say you’re going to make a movie in Tucson, you go to Old Tucson and look at that town but that town looked pretty different, though we did use parts of it. We used the train station, we used the inside of the Bird Cage Theater, and then they said we’ve got this other movie town that you could look at. We went and looked at it and it was falling down. It was crap. Literally, we had to tear some buildings down. We demo’d a lot of buildings because they had been used many years before, and the weather out there in Arizona, it’s so extreme with the rain and the wind. Stuff just falls down if you don’t take care of it. And we also had a pigeon building. It was like a pigeon infestation, I think one of [our] carpenters went in there, and then he had to go to the hospital. I remember somebody was breathing pigeon shit and the ambulance took him away.”14
Hardwicke also spoke about the curved bar seen in the Oriental Saloon/Campbell & Hatch Saloon and Billiard parlor that she thought was purchased, but Holmquist quickly corrected her. “We built that beautiful bar that Catherine found in research,” said Bill. “[It was a] Brunswick bar from the 1800s. At the end of the show, that bar was going to Aspen. One of the producers was building a big house or cabin [and he wanted it]. Everybody wanted that bar. So we broke it down, crated it and loaded it up on a semi and off it went. We all said we’ll never see the bar again. I kind of forgot about it, everybody always wondered what happened to it. I worked on Deadwood, the second season in LA. We were scouting there and I was looking around and I walk into this building in this Western town, and part of the bar was there staring back at me. The story is that the bar never made it to Aspen. It was all made out of birch, just a beautiful bar.” In a later interview with the author, he also expanded on Hardwicke’s construction comments: “When the movie Tombstone came in, we bulldozed buildings. The set was in really bad shape. We built the O.K. Corral, Fly’s studio, all new construction. All the structures you see in the background. The Oriental and Campbell & Hatch had to be completely rebuilt. We bulldozed the old building that was there because it was falling down, so we started over. Originally we had the Oriental and the Campbell & Hatch separated by a wall that divided the building. Cosmatos looked at the set and decided he wanted the wall out. We started over on the building. We removed sections of roof to crane in a 60-foot I-beam to carry the span of the open space. The Grand Hotel was falling down; the porch was coming off. We built all the [Earp] cottages, those weren’t there. There were three of them that we built. We put a façade in front of the barn [for the Bird Cage Theater]. There was just a lot of stuff that was completely gone that we had to come back and rebuild. The Crystal Palace was in really bad shape. They had stuff with porches on it; the roofs all leaked.
“I think we were out there for two and a half months building before shooting began. It wasn’t your typical Western where everything is rundown barn wood. I think we touched pretty much every part of that place. Especially, the hospital set. It was just a building on Main Street there. We were just going to straighten it up and paint the whole thing white. It was just a beautiful set, amazing. The drafting department [created the blueprints]. We’d get detailed prints, elevations, floor plans, molding details, everything’s to scale. Full-scale, half-scale. Sometimes models. We had to have carpenters on stand-by when filming began. Three or four guys whatever they need to move or changed.”
Holmquist also had his share of amusing stories from the set. “We built Hooker Ranch out of real adobe bricks and it was just a beautiful set at that location,” recalls Bill. “They brought cattle out to the ranch and they decided for some reason that the set decorators should build the corrals to keep the cattle in. It wasn’t in the shot. At four o’clock in the morning we got a call. They had put the 2 × 12s on the outside of the posts and the cows leaned up against the 2 × 12s and popped them right off. They spent the whole day trying to corral these escaped cows, they finally got them all back. Lesson learned, boards go on the inside of posts.”
He also remembered a story about Bill Paxton’s “death” scene: “I worked with Bill Paxton on some other movies before he became famous, so I already knew him. In fact, he actually was a set decorator before he became an actor. There is a scene in the film where he gets shot in the Billiard parlor. So, I’m in there with Bill and Cosmatos and I walk in because I have to put a piece of candy-glass in the window where the bullet comes through. When I walk in, Bill is talking to George about how he is going to die. He goes through this whole thing and I’m listening ’cause I’m waiting for Bill to explain it to George. ‘Ok, George, the bullet comes through the window, it hits me in the back. I’m going to fall on the pool table and lay here and then I’m going to look up at a spot on the ceiling and my eyes are going to stay open and I’m going to stare at this one spot in the ceiling. That’s the way I want to try and do this.’ George says ok, so now I get my opportunity to ask about this window. I thought that conversation was over so I go, ‘George, excuse me. I need to know what window the bullet’s going to come through so I can put a piece of candy glass in there so they can get this thing rigged up.’ Bill doesn’t realize that I’ve got George’s attention, and Bill goes into this whole acting thing where he acts like he gets shot, then falls on the pool table, laying there, looking up. He does the whole dramatic act. George is trying to figure out the window and I’m looking straight down at Bill; he’s staring up at the ceiling, I go, ‘Bill. Bill, he’s not watching.’ He goes, ‘What?’ ‘He didn’t see any of that.’ He looks up at me, ‘Are you kidding me? This shit and he didn’t see any of it?’ He gets up, he’s all pissed off, and walks out of the room. We laughed about it later.”15
Catherine also shared a funny anecdote about the “snow” in Old Tucson. In the film’s final scene, Kurt and Dana dance in the snow outside the “Denver Theater.” “Suddenly we found out we had to make a snow scene and it was like about 125 degrees. This was filmed at OTS and they said they weren’t going to pay for the snow. But I figured out even if they said they wouldn’t, they eventually would. [Bill] found an insulation contractor, and they sprayed that white insulation on the ground and then we had to make snow falling. I remember I was walking along and I thought somebody was using a heat gun because there was so much heat on my legs, but it was a reflection from all that bright light off the insulation. And, it was 120 degrees. At the end, we did it real fast with all the falling potato flakes and then suddenly, it had blown all over Old Tucson. The place was shut down for three days and we had to hire people from the side of the road to clean it all up. Oh, my goodness. It was a mess!”16
Porro had the crowd in stitches as he shared memories and answered questions from the audience. “This is really the first period film that I worked on,” admitted Porro. “By the way, George was absolutely insane. What he did when he came into me, he went down a line of us. He said, ‘You’re fired, you’re fired.’ He came to me. He said, ‘I like your stuff. You can stay.’ And then he went to the next person. I said this guy’s crazy. The only thing he said to me was, ‘By the way, all these costumes are mine.’” Porro then spoke to Catherine and said, “Do you know that he shopped your set? When we’re done with shooting, he said, ‘I want that, I want that.”’ Joseph then spoke about the lack of costume availability: “I go out, I’m starting my first Monday, I’m in Hollywood. I start hitting the costume houses. There’s nothing left. It’s all gone. There’s like two cowboy hats from the 1960s in Westerns. I went over to Warner Bros. I hit three other places, same scenario. I said, ‘Oh, there’s American. American has Western clothing.’ I go over to American and I see fabulous Western stuff. We’re working on a very small budget so I assuming we’re going to rent everything. Lester Bayless, who was John Wayne’s personal dresser, looked at me and said, ‘So, you see some stuff that you like?’ I said, ‘Yeah. We can do a big rental here.’ He says, ‘You’ll have to leave right now.’ I said, ‘Excuse me?’ He said, ‘When hell freezes over, you can rent my costumes. Please leave the building immediately.’ So I left in my car, only to find out that Kevin had hired him and he’d shown up in a meeting drunk. Kevin said, ‘I can’t go there. The guy’s an alcoholic.’ So he started interviewing…. [Bayless] owns this costume house and he’s just been fired from Tombstone. I had no idea. So I called up Kevin and the producers, I said, ‘Guys, we’re in a lot of trouble. I used to be a fashion designer. The only way I can figure this out is we’re going to treat it like a line of clothing. And I’ve got the research of the period. And we’re going to do 100 shirts, and make 40 suits…. For a lot of the fussy women’s stuff, I need to take a trip to London.’ Back then, designers didn’t fly to Europe to rent clothing. It was rather a novelty. I said, ‘For the background people, Victorian hats and all that, you need to send me to London.’ I went to London and did the rental. I built all of the men’s stuff with a tailor in Hollywood, the principals, downtown to factories to produce a lot of the other things. Maggie McFarland [is here]. She was the dressmaker. She made all of Dana [Delany]’s clothing. Thank god, she was my treasure that I found locally. I didn’t know these people, I came in, so this is who you’re going to. I’m glad it worked out. Dana was a joy; the ladies were beautiful. The men were a pain in the ass. ’Cause these guys, they all were doing their dream thing. They all had guns and they could play with them. They could ride horses, the guys were in this place. Sometimes they didn’t want to come to a fitting because they’d rather be horseback riding. It was a lot of struggle to get them to be disciplined.
“I think I’m going to go there with Val. There’s a point with actors when you know to be quiet, but he is a character. He is really a character. There was a lot of political tension on this set with the transformation between the directors. Val Kilmer is the first male actor … I could not control him, on any level. I would show him the sketches, he would like the sketches. Then we made the product. We made all his ties, all his shirts, all his coats. He would take them, he would put them on, but he couldn’t decide which one to wear. He took hours, and I had to fit 12 other people today. My fittings are 20 minutes long, they’re fast. And Kurt was like, ‘Yeah, yeah, OK,’ and they were out. Val would preen in front of the mirror and finally I got to the point where I said I need one costume with him. You have to come into his trailer that day, you have to show him what he’s worn in other scenes in a photograph. And lay out 30 ties, and lay out shirts. Let him surprise me. I said, ‘It’s all Doc Holliday clothes so you can pick which one. You just can’t repeat to show time has passed.’ And that’s what we did. It was the weirdest thing I ever did in my career. So every day I had to wait to see what he had on. It was all designed by me, it was just because he could not make up his mind. He would spend sometimes 45 minutes with the ties, going back and forth. I can’t deal with that stuff. Everyone else was pretty wonderful, though.”
One story he told was particularly funny. Kurt Russell is a pilot and it seems earlier in shooting, he deliberately flew a plane extremely low over the set and ruined a shot. He banked, turned back and with a big shitty grin, did it again as he flipped the bird to everyone. Joseph was standing next to Goldie Hawn as Kurt flew over, and all she could do was to shrug her shoulders as if to say, “What are you gonna do?”17
The next day, the celebrities started, once again, to sign autographs. At mid-morning, a 100-person Clanton/McLaury memorial walk began on Allen Street, not only replicating the historic funeral procession but also honoring all those who worked in the movie, now deceased. At 1:30 p.m., the highlight of the day’s activities was held—a costume contest judged by Catherine Hardwicke, Joseph Porro and Rene Clothier. With almost 100 contestants, multiple rounds of elimination were necessary but eventually, first and second place winners were announced in five categories.
By 4:00 p.m., for all intents and purposes, the weekend’s activities were over. Both celebrities and visitors alike began to filter out of town, heading back from whence they came. But their memories lingered on, and according to the Tombstone News, several merchants reported making more money during this weekend than they did on an average Helldorado weekend. According to mayor Dusty Escapule, “The event was a success because of everyone working together for the betterment of Tombstone. When we work as a team, everyone benefits.”
Particular acknowledgment for the event needs to go to executive producer/local businessowner Gordon Anderson, Lions Club president Bruce Neilson, Jon Donahue, Larry Zeug, Chris Swinney, Old Tucson’s Mary Davis, and Julie-Ann Ream, who all ensured the event would happen. Anderson was later named Lions Club “2018 Lion of the Year,” and the Film Resource Committee of the Arizona Film Commission named Anderson the film research coordinator for the city of Tombstone. Neilson said that the Lions Club raised a record $10,281 … “money that will go a long, long way to assist children and adults with vision and hearing needs.” Sixty-seven Tombstone residents and merchants also graciously volunteered their time and resources, including a generous donation by the O.K. Corral. If I have inadvertently omitted anyone, it wasn’t intentional. In addition to the aforementioned individuals, a list of Tombstone cast and crew members also in town that weekend, included but not limited to: Mark Balda, Bill Holmquist, Elly McFadden, Maggie McFarland, Lee McKechnie, David Peck, Eddie Perez, Valarie Saunders, Dickie Stanley, John Sundstrom, Mark Tovsen, and Bob Vincent.