Brilliant Script
The stars got attached to the project thanks to the script. “The dialogue was there,” Sam Elliott said. “Kevin Jarre wrote a brilliant script. I think across the board, every character there was well drawn. And he brought actors you normally wouldn’t associate with Westerns, like Val Kilmer. I think it’s the best thing that Val’s ever done.” Kilmer himself said he was sold after reading, “I’m your huckleberry.” He narrated the time he asked Jarre where this line came from: “He didn’t have a specific answer. But I loved it. It just seemed to be the odd, perfect statement for the scene—’You’ve met your match.’”
Handpicked
George Cosmatos
The cast bonded with Jarre who handpicked every person for the roles they got. However, they were not that enthusiastic about the person who replaced him. “He was a whole other animal,” Sam Elliott said about George Cosmatos. “I guess he was Italian. Treated everybody not too good. We had our moment right at the beginning… I always go to the set and stand around when I’m not working just to watch—I’d rather do that than sit around a hotel—and I remember George coming up to me with his dark glasses, looking up at me from the top of his glasses, sticking his nose right in my face. And he said, ‘Am I gonna have trouble with you?’”
George Cosmatos
