It was the energy of that Glory script that introduced Jarre’s Tombstone remedy to the eye of actor Kevin Costner, who circled the venture till he found his previous Silverado pal, writer-director Lawrence Kasdan, additionally wished to make a Wyatt Earp image. So Costner dropped out of Tombstone whereas publicly asserting within the trades the film Wyatt Earp. Jarre claimed within the press that Costner’s maneuver was “an try and crush my image.” Costner’s expertise company CAA definitely tried to handicap Tombstone by refusing to let any of their purchasers learn the Tombstone screenplay.
However as a 1993 EW report famous, Tombstone nonetheless had a bonus: they had been able to shoot… if they might solely discover a solid. So the producers angled to do the movie comparatively fast and low-cost, letting Jarre direct and going as far as to sneak Kurt Russell, a CAA consumer but in addition an actor who misplaced out on the lead function of Bull Durham to Costner, a duplicate of the Tombstone script by way of a rival company’s liaison.
In a 2006 interview, Russell recalled, “Jarre and Costner had been going to do the film. Then Costner determined he appreciated the concept of doing not Tombstone however Wyatt Earp, with Kasdan writin’ it. And he gave the film to Kevin together with his finest needs. ‘Good luck.’ I bought the script from my previous [agency] Jarre was with, William Morris. And I believed it was an exceptional script, and I referred to as and stated I wished to do it, they usually stated [wait a minute]—as a result of Costner was at CAA… and there was the Kasdan venture and blah blah blah.”
Russell was undeterred. He even went as far as to go to Andrew G. Vajna’s Cinergi Photos to independently increase $25 million for the image. Disney/Hollywood Photos, in the meantime, would distribute… if they might get Tombstone out in theaters by Christmas Day of that yr, a full six months forward of Costner/Kasdan’s Wyatt Earp. To do that, Tombstone wanted to begin capturing barely seven months earlier than launch.
The one factor that everybody who labored on Tombstone praises is Jarre’s layered, witty, and morally advanced screenplay. What they’re additionally uniformly circumspect about is his temporary and bitter stint at making an attempt to direct it. The fundamental information of the scenario are plain and grim: Jarre directed Russell, Kilmer, Sam Elliot, and the remainder of the solid for a mere 4 weeks. After which period, Disney and Cinergi unceremoniously fired him. The specifics of why he was let go are trickier.
In line with PR-massaged statements (and the movie’s Wikipedia web page), Jarre was allegedly taken off the image as a result of he fell drastically delayed. In EW’s 1993 expose, producer James Jacks stated, “Kevin was capturing in an unconventional, old style John Ford type, with only a few close-ups. Andy Vajna and others lastly felt that when Kevin was completed, the film wouldn’t work.” Actor Sam Elliot, in the meantime, instructed the identical publication, “I knew from the third day Kevin couldn’t direct. He wasn’t getting the photographs he wanted.”
