0
Big Trouble In Little China star Kurt Russell has spoken about shooting The Hateful Eight with Quentin Tarantino, which is due to hit cinema screens this Christmas and described it as much different to the original script which leaked online
Kurt, who also played Stuntman Mike in Tarantino’s GrindHouse film Death Proof, is excited about the upcoming release, also describing it as the most fun he’s had on a movie set.
Overboard actor Kurt stars in the Western ensemble piece as John “The Hangman” Ruth, a frontier bounty hunter escorting female prisoner Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) across wintry Wyoming to be hanged for her crimes.
Hateful Eight’s murderer’s row of thesps includes Samuel L. Jackson, Walton Goggins, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Bruce Dern, and Demian Bichir, who shot the 70mm pic with DP Robert Richardson last December in Colorado, using the same lenses used to film Ben-Hur.
Speaking about the shoot, Kurt called it: ‘the greatest experience I’ve ever had.’
He said: “It’s a great thing to make movies with John Carpenter, Bob Zemeckis, Ron Howard, Mike Nichols – I don’t want to leave anybody out but I’ll leave at least 10 of them out – but it’s always a great time.
“But when you’re working with Quentin, he’s a different thing. He just loves it so much that you chuckle. You really do laugh at how much fun he’s having, and you’re having. It’s hard work with him because nobody wants to let anybody down.
“All the actors kept passing the ball off—and when it’s passed to you you’d better not drop it, you’d better carry it across the line.”
The Hateful Eight reunites much of the cast Tarantino assembled last year to do a live-read after an early script leaked online, causing much rumpus from the Pulp Fiction creator. But something Kurt was blissfully unaware of.
He recalled: “Now, I’d heard from my daughter about some script that Quentin had that was leaked and he was mad and decided not to do it.
“But I didn’t know it was this. We had a rehearsal. Then they said, we rehearse again tomorrow and I thought, ‘Wow, whoever he wants to see this it must be important to him.’
“And then I learned halfway through the second day that we were going to do it in front of 1,200 people in a theater! I thought, Jesus Christ! I also found out that was the script that had evidently leaked. There’s always stuff going around and I’m the last to know.”
“Afterwards I asked Quentin, ‘Did you see what you wanted to see?’ He said, ‘Yeah—it gave me a lot of answers.’ Months later they call and say, Quentin wants to do the movie,” he said.
The resulting film is vastly different from what attendees saw during that live-read, although loyal actor was careful not to divulge what’s been changed.
He said: “There are quite a few changes, but I’m not going to tell you what changed. I’m not going to ruin it for you.
“But the changes are spectacular. I see now why he was mad about it being leaked, because he was in the process of working it. He wasn’t anywhere near done yet.
“He made significant changes in terms of what the first act is, and leading up to it. This is not different, but it’s fleshed out—it’s a matured version of it.
“He was just taking that thing out for a spin that night: The engine starts, it’s got pretty good traction coming out of the turn… but I want another 100 horsepower so we’ve got to put a brand new engine in it, I’m going to need a complete paint job, I’m going to take the bumpers off of it. Now he’s got his finished version of what he wanted to do.”