Apex Mountain on The Rewatchables
45:28 – 54:49… rest in peace. It's more fun in Latin, I think. Terrible conversation. Tonight's ringer holiday party, I shall be saying to Chris Ryan in vino veritas. Apex Mountain. Really interesting Kurt Russell discussion is about to happen right now. I think it's the thing. That's my favorite Kurt Russell. Cos he's, he's not yet at. It's not your favorite. It's what was the highest, best point of his career. Well, if you look at that time, the thing is 82. And then Big Trouble's after that? He's just done Escape from New York and he's got Silkwood and Swing Shift coming. And then Big Trouble in Little China comes …
The whole segment, as transcribed
Doc Holliday, let Apelia the Jew believe, not I. Johnny Ringo, youth is the teacher of fools. Doc Holliday, rest in peace. It's more fun in Latin, I think. Terrible conversation. Tonight's ringer holiday party, I shall be saying to Chris Ryan in vino veritas. Apex Mountain. Really interesting Kurt Russell discussion is about to happen right now. I think it's the thing. That's my favorite Kurt Russell. Cos he's, he's not yet at. It's not your favorite. It's what was the highest, best point of his career. Well, if you look at that time, the thing is 82. And then Big Trouble's after that? He's just done Escape from New York and he's got Silkwood and Swing Shift coming. And then Big Trouble in Little China comes after that. I mean, that's pretty good. I vote no because Escape from New York was a cult movie that only later became a really big thing. Right. But the thing was a hit. And now if we look back on his career, was it Apex Mountain at the time or upon reflection? If you didn't read about Toonstone, it makes it basically sound like Kurt Russell was able to finance this movie. Right. And that is coming off of Backdraft, which was a relatively big hit. And he was the star of. I don't feel like it was. This to me is more like a LeBron, the 2018 finals for Kurt Russell. Okay. Getting this financed. I'm going controversial, Tango and Cash. It's not that controversial considering who you are. It's the end of the 80s. He's established himself as an A-list star. He just did Tequila Sunrise, which did really well and was well-liked and had Michelle Pfeiffer in it. Goes, does a movie with Stallone. It's a hit. People like it. And it's an absolutely ridiculous movie that really him and Sly were the only two that would have pulled that off. And by the end of that movie, you're like, Kurt Russell's an A-plus-list star. It's not a huge hit. I don't feel like you felt that way the whole decade. For the record. Tango and Cash. What? It's kind of a disappointment. Tango and Cash cost $55 million to make and it made $66 million. And also $55 million in 1988 is like $160 million. You be careful, Sean. Okay. It's also not that good. No, but I'm talking about Kurt Russell's career. Yeah. By the time he made that movie, now that opens up Backdraft. That opens up his ability to finance Tombstone. Sure. I get it. I don't know. What's weird is, I think the actual answer is there was no Apex. It's kind of what's cool about his career. Yeah. He never had that one moment. A range of rolling hills. I don't think he ever got nominated for an Oscar. Kurt Russell? I don't think so. He was never in like, oh, maybe Miracle he got nominated. I think. He did not. You sure? I'm pretty positive. He was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for Silkwood, which is why it's his Apex Mountain around the thing. Because 82 or 83 is when he was at his best. Escape from New York. It's starting to become a cult movie. The Thing. Silkwood. He's in a movie. Wow, that was a 180 from you. You really backed off. No, Sean's right. I forgot he got nominated for an Oscar. That's fair. He also could have had a different career. It's interesting that he leaned into the masculine hero stuff. You know, he could have been like a very, like a serious theatrical dramatic actor. It really is, for him, him and Harrison Ford are cut from the same cloth. They have like a certain smarts to them, but they really are throwbacks to a kind of Paul Newman charisma. And it's interesting that Ford gets those two franchises. And it basically sets him up for the rest of his career. And Russell is always kind of three good ones, three bad ones. Three good ones, three bad ones. There's no easy way to say this. I'm just going to say it. He's just a good looking dude, man. You see him in Tombstone. It's like that guy's a guy who should be on a poster and be the leading man in a movie. And he's at his most handsome. Apex Mountain, Val Kilmer. I'm going to say no. I would imagine that Top Gun is his Apex Mountain. Because after that, he does. When does he do Top Secret right after that or right before that? I don't feel. Remember, like part of this is when you have the most career sway. Yeah. I think coming out of Top Gun, there were people who were like, this guy is probably neck and neck with Cruz, right? Nah, that was a Cruz movie. I'm going Heat. He's in Heat. He's De Niro's wingman. That's the biggest movie of like the mid-90s, basically, when it comes out. It's like Pacino versus De Niro, Michael Mann. And this is a fucking thing. And Val Kilmer is like right there. It's like, I'm the fucking next wave. I'm here. Well, what was he in before Batman? And then he gets Batman from Heat. Right before Batman is True Romance when he's Elvis. He's barely in that. Also, Kurt Russell famously also played Elvis. And then Tombstone before that. But before that, it's the real McCoy. And then before that is Thunderheart. And then the Doors. You could make the case that it's 1987 right after Top Gun. Because he's Willow. That's what I'm saying. Mad Mardigan? Mm-hmm. And that, speaking of Harrison Ford, was probably, hopefully, going to be his Han Solo. And it didn't work out. Yeah. I mean, for me, my personal apex with him is The Doors. Because I thought he was out of control in that movie. Dude, if you want to do a Doors rewatch, I fucking love The Doors. We have to do JFK before The Doors. There's no way we're doing The Doors as the Oliver Stone movie. There's like 11 movies in my life that I've seen twice in the theater. And The Doors is one? And The Doors is one of them. Yeah. I was like, I'm going back. That's a good quiz is what were the 11 movies? The Doors was one of them for me. I went and I'm like, I'm going back. Shawshank. It was so good. Rocky IV. You saw Rocky IV twice? No, man. I'm guessing yours. No. You saw Rocky IV once, but you saw The Doors twice? That's super weird. The Doors was great. Second one was on a date. Okay. Okay. I see two movies. Like, I see a movie twice, like six times a year. That's like incredibly common for me. I saw Phantom Thread twice in the movies. Hell yeah. Yeah. Priestley. You should make this argument yourself because no one knows the ins and outs of Priestley more than you do. Well, here's the answer. A thousand percent Apex Mountain for Priestley. Nana 2.0 is never bigger. And he's in a movie with Kurt Russell and Val Kilmer and has like a couple of heat check scenes. This is it. It's never been better for Priestley. Apex Mountain of all time. If you look at his career, because it's a very narrow period in which he is at a height and his height is very high, but it is precipitous in its drop on either side. Well, be careful. Nana 2.0 is a big show. Sure. For about three and a half years. No, but I do think this is a good example of Apex Mountain. This literally was his Apex Mountain. Yes. And it was probably like the first- It's like the specific point where it's like, this is my Apex. The first dabbling of maybe I'm going to go do movies now. Right? Yeah. He dabbled. All right. Dana Delaney, I feel like it's got to be when she was on China Beach, which I think was still, was gone at this point. That seems reasonable. I don't really have any other Apex Mountains other than George Cosmatos, ghost director. I think, I think, I think we covered him. I can't think of another person in here. Maybe that should be a ringer video where you're really directing a video, but we're pretending somebody else is doing it. Can we, can we talk a little bit about the late Bill Paxton? Sure. I don't think that this is a Mount Rushmore Paxton performance. It's not. Um, I think Aliens, Near Dark, One False Move. Weird Science. Weird Science, True Lies, Twister. These are all much better Bill Paxton performances. But at this time, is this like the sweetest spot for him when he's kind of figuring out how to be Bill Paxton? Yeah, because I think that the thing with Aliens that's interesting is that Sigourney Weaver is obviously the star and the hero of that movie. But Paxton and Bean are supposed to like, would in any other world be the stars of Aliens? Like they would make the guy soldiers the stars. So it's very interesting to see their trajectory after that. And Paxton, I think they tried to make him a star a couple of times. And it actually like when he is carried a movie, like One False Move is incredible. Although you can make the argument that that's also Billy Bob's movie. They split the time between them. I don't feel like until Twister was Hollywood's concerted effort to be like, Bill Paxton is a major star and he's on the cover of Entertainment Weekly and this is your buy on this. Because I remember when it was happening, part of the Twister marketing was Bill Paxton, Helen Hunt, and Philip Seymour Hoffman are going to be stars. And instead of going to get actual stars, we got these people because they're going to be stars. And that was like how they marketed it. He'd been around for a long time. Yeah, but he never kind of... Well, that was also coming out of the 80s where it was like, to make a movie, you have to have a movie star. And then they started realizing to make a movie, you have to have a tornado or a meteor or something like an alien invasion. The one that changed it was Speed. Yeah. When Keanu was the guy in Speed, they all kind of looked at each other and said, oh, okay. Yeah. How do we do that again? Lo and behold, they did discover one of the biggest movie stars of the next 20 years in Sandra Bullock in that movie. So that helped. Right. But she'd been around. Yeah. She'd been in a couple of things. But I do think that changed the mindset. I do love Paxton. I think he's one of the all-time great number two or three guys in a movie. Oh, he's incredible. All he's doing in this movie, he's setting picks. He made a couple of corner threes. Oh, he literally is just like, you're the one, Wyatt. That's just like, yeah. Yeah. Did some- He spits a lot in this movie. He had a good handshake line.
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