Tombstone (1993)

[truepenny]

mirrorthaw and I rented Tombstone this weekend.


Boy howdy, this movie is a mess. I gather, from the special features and the IMDb page, that this is because the original director/writer was fired, and his script then ruthlessly cut while Kurt Russell served as an ad hoc director until George P. Cosmatos came on board.

A camel is a horse designed by committee.

What's really sad about Tombstone is watching the making-of minidocumentary, and watching all these interviews with intelligent, articulate, knowledgeable actors who are excited and passionate about what they're doing . . . and knowing how little of their project made it to the screen. They can explain--Powers Boothe, Kurt Russell, Stephen Lang, Thomas Haden Church, Michael Biehn--who the major players in the gunfight at the O.K. Corral were, what their reputations were, why they were there, why they behaved the way they did, why the popular mythology is wrong. They know the history, and they're obviously excited about the prospect of bringing that history to the screen. Kurt Russell talks passionately about "demythologizing" Wyatt Earp. And everyone talks about getting the details right, from the wallpaper to Curly Bill Brocius's bright red shirt.

And in its details, the movie is beautiful. They've done their research; they've got the quirks of real history instead of the sepia-toned smoothness of Hollywood westerns. Where the whole thing falls apart is the story.

Kevin Jarre wanted to tell an epic, to follow all of the characters, not just Wyatt Earp. Which is a laudable though, as it turns out, impracticable goal. But it means that when great chunks had to be cut out, there wasn't a strong narrative arc left to hang the movie on. There's just Wyatt Earp having random encounters with his brothers, his wife, Johnny Behan, Curly Bill, Johnny Ringo, the Random Beautiful Actress (who is the most especially random thing in the movie), and then there's a gunfight, and then there's a murder, and then, and then, and then.

This is certainly how real history works, but the movie isn't telling real history. For all that Kurt Russell wants to believe they're demythologizing Wyatt Earp, they are doing no such thing. They're just making a different mythology.

It's a more nuanced mythology, but at its heart it is still rooted in the idea that Wyatt Earp was a hero and was doing the Right Thing, especially after Morgan's murder. The montage of Earp and Holliday and their followers galloping across the plains, murdering merrily as they go, is not at all dubious about Wyatt Earp. It is frankly worshipful. (In the interviews, Powers Boothe at least is very aware that the "Right Thing" was up for grabs and the Earps may have had no more claim to it than the Cow-Boys. History is written by the victors.) This movie in fact follows the venerable movie-Western arc of Retired Gunslinger Picks Up His Guns One Last Time For Justice And/Or Revenge (the two concepts being only sketchily and partially distinguished). And that's no more the historical truth than any previous Hollywood version.

I much prefer coffeeem's take on Wyatt Earp: a man who always does what he thinks is right. I also prefer her rendition of the women in the story. In Territory, Allie, Lou, and Mattie Earp are women doing the best they can trapped in an impossible situation that is not of their doing. Tombstone sees women as parasites (and, people, if you're going to edit out the history of the Earp women as Dodge City prostitutes, you need also to edit out the joke about where the Earps found their wives); except for Kate Elder, they are useless parasites to boot . . . unless they happen to be slender, vivacious, and oh did we mention independently wealthy Josephine Marcus, who cannot be a parasite (even though her avowed goal is to live on room service) because she is the happy ending. And it's true that Wyatt Earp and Josephine Marcus lived together from 1882 to Wyatt's death in 1929, but the ending of the movie is still a neat, tidy, tacked-on lie. Grave, gravelly voiced Robert Mitchum tells us that Wyatt's wife Mattie died of a drug overdose "soon" after leaving Tombstone. Mattie died, ruled a suicide, in 1888, six years after the Earps departed Tombstone and Wyatt took up with Miss Marcus. In fact, she lived a year longer than Doc Holliday.

And in direct contravention of their stated goals, the movie makers buy into and whole-heartedly sell one last piece of the myth: the idea that Wyatt Earp was at Doc Holliday's side when he died. (I was trying very hard not to follow the homoerotic subtext and not to give into Earp/Holliday slash, but the movie did not make it easy for me, and neither did the interviews with Russell and Kilmer talking about Wyatt and Doc's "strange relationship.")

It's a great pity that the idealistic goals of Tombstone got massacred by financial reality (as so often happens to idealistic goals), and also a pity that Val Kilmer's performance as Doc Holliday is swamped in the resulting kludged-together Frankenstein's monster of a historical Western.

Comments

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Yeah . . . yeah.

I love that movie for Kilmer as Doc Holliday, and regret it for pretty much everything else. (Being not well-enough versed in the Old West to spot where they're doing good things on the level of visual details.)

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

As great as Kilmer was in this, I regret that Powers Boothe's work as Brocius (OK, Michael Biehn being convincingly bughouse crazy as Johnny Ringo does catch the eye) gets so overlooked, as does Stephen Lang's take on the unsteady Ike Clanton*. You could see why Curly Bill led the Cow-Boys, even though Old Man Clanton started it all. But I love me some character actors.

You're right, the movie is a mess, and the women get short shrift**. But I still like it better than the dragging mass of sludge Kevin Kostner inflicted on the universe.

And Earp/Holliday slash? I think it very nearly*** writes itself.


*I had fun contrasting Ike with Lang's portrayal of General Pickett in Gettysburg, as a matter of fact.

**Kate Elder managed to campaign her way into the Arizona Pioneers' Home as one of the first women admitted, and spent the rest of her life making sure they ran the place right. It's a shame that no movie telling things from her point of view will ever be made.

***As Paarfi would put it, if I have the usage down correctly.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Yes. Boothe and Biehn and Jon Tenney and Sam Elliott ...

And it's not even that Kurt Russell is a bad Wyatt Earp; it's just that he's the center of the movie, and he's hollow.

Which, you know, if it were deliberate, would be fantastic.

Also, yes, the historical Kate Elder is full of awesome.

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

Hollow--you're right. That says it, and would have been a great thing to do on purpose.
Also, I agree that coffeeem has a point (or two or three)there, and I want to see her take on the rest of the story

history, Tombstone, Wyatt Earp.

[0ccam.livejournal.com]

I love the movie. But as history the timing is way off. The timing of the Kevin Costner Wyatt Earp isn't right either.

Go read the Wyatt Earp entry on wikipedia (unless you have a better source). It's very interesting.

Loved Kilmer as Doc. Turns out that I really like Dennis Quaid as Doc as well. Doc's just an interesting guy.

I dunno if I'd go so far as to say Wyatt did what he thought was right, I'd prefer to say that he follows his own code.

This past summer, on the way back from frostdancer's family reunion, we actually went to the town of Tombstone. There's a lovely artist's rendering of the Gunfight in the (former) county courthouse museum. The actual Gunfight was ~30 seconds. And Wyatt shot first.

In Tombstone, Kate's never called Big Nose Kate, is she? She is in Wyatt Earp. And she was in real life.

[oracne.livejournal.com]

I have never seen this movie. Should I bother?

I mean, I've seen "Living in Harmony" from The Prisoner, and Star Trek's "Spectre of the Gun." And those had to be a way bigger waste of time.

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

It's gorgeous, and the acting is good. truepenny is right about the busted, disjointed narrative (which gives you no cinsistent notion as to how much time elapses duting the story--was it two weeks, two months, two years...)

I catch is from time to time when it shows up on cable, just because it's so pretty to look at, and some of the acting is so outstanding.

[oracne.livejournal.com]

Pretty is good.

I've seen VELVET GOLDMINE more than once for that reason....

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

What the Cabinet said.

Also, Kilmer as Holliday is *just* right. And the Holliday/Ringo relationship, something wonderful.

[cofax7]

Val Kilmer is indeed fab as Doc Holliday.

... there's a lovely vid made within the last few years from this movie; I've seen it, which means it's probably on the Vividcon dvd sets. I'll see if I can scare up a link. It is, almost predictably, Earp/Holliday, IIRC.

[oracne.livejournal.com]

And is the slash in there on purpose?

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

That's a non-conjugal slash, to my mind, although you could make it hatesex if you wanted.

Because oh, they hate each other most gloriously.

And in detail.

[veejane.livejournal.com]

The best part of the movie is the decoration/costuming, which is that crazy frontier/boomtown mix of sumptuous and starveling. The plot is one Hero Moment after another, in cheerful blender format, and really the other thing the movie is good for is the Kevin Bacon game.

My favorite historical detail is the makeup on the faces of the men buried after the OK Corral shootout. They look hilarious!

...I would have made a terrible Victorian.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

...I would have made a terrible Victorian.

And a better recommendation as to a person's character I cannot imagine!

[oracne.livejournal.com]

...I would have made a terrible Victorian.

Hee!

The costumes sound AWESOME.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Well, I did enjoy it. And not only for Val Kilmer.

[oracne.livejournal.com]

Okay, that's the important part. Thanks!

[smills47.livejournal.com]

Victor Mature (yes, that guy) is still my favorite Doc Holliday. :)

[smills47.livejournal.com]

Oh! Yah, he would have. He could play just about any role, couldn't he?

[elisem.livejournal.com]

Ya know, we really should see if we can get Steve Brust to show us his Good Parts Version of Tombstone. It should be a one of those late-night Fourth Street things.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

(I wander in every so often. Hi!)

Mind you, the one thing I have to say about Tombstone is: spoken Latin! Not well, but they tried, and you know the characters are meant to be speaking it well, and eeee spoken Latin!

The rest of the movie is, eh, fun but majorly flawed.

But it's the only film scene I know of with an actual Latin conversation, unsubtitled, yet.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

There does come a point where you have to let historical accuracy fend for itself.

[marykaykare.livejournal.com]

I don't, as a rule, like Val Kilmer, but I think he may have been born for that role.

I'm your huckleberry.

MKK

Still love it ...

[(Anonymous)]

This is on my personal favorites list, if only for all Val Kilmer's great lines. Spelling Bee, anyone? (hee) (This is one of my husband's and my favorite movies to quote lines from.)

I also loved the Doc/Ringo duels, Latin and tin cup v. gunslinging.

I guess I'm just not critical enough; while I think it's funny how it only rains in 10 foot radii in Tombstone, I tend to find more good than bad. The only thing I REALLY didn't like was Dana Delany; don't like her and didn't like Josephine. Could also have used a little more Billy Zane. :)

[sienamystic.livejournal.com]

I just saw this (after watching 3:10 to Yuma and muttering, "need more Western. Where's the one that has Val Kilmer being awesome?") and dug around to find this review. I put up a link here - please tell me if you object and I'll take it down posthaste.

The explanation of the budget cuts makes things a lot clearer for me now - I was wondering why in heck things just sort of happened, one after the other, with no real progression from point A to point Z. I had put my money on a manic editor, but this makes just as much sense.

Val Kilmer was as awesome as I had heard he was.