Kurt Russell Hates Commies

The man, the myth, the American.

Kurt Russell hates commies. I mean, he has to, right? The actor — and the man — defies definition, boxes, genres, tracts, political hokey-pokey, and celebrity culture. He works hard, plays hard, and loves life. He writes his own rules and dares anyone to bust his chops. He does life his way, on his terms, and doesn’t suffer fools or pretensions.

Russell embodies the American Man. The Anti-hero Hero. The anti-celebrity thrown in the pit of celebrityism. The understated guy in a sea of caterwauling virtue signalers. Genuine to the point of being plain if not for being, well, Kurt Russell.

Even when you’re watching him act there is an unmistakable honesty that peels off him and draws you in. It’s the naked sincerity that defines Kurt Russell’s American Man: what you see is what you get. No tricks. No “methods.” No fooling. No equal.

“Yeah, bitch, let’s go. Let’s play ball.” Russell on that feeling when a man hits his stride, and everyone blasts off, whether that’s on the ball field or in front of the camera. Magic. And when the world is jiving, and the machine you’re running is going at an effortlessly manic pace, look out, world. That’s Russell. That’s who we want to be in the hellscape of New York City as eye-patch-wearing, nail-embossed baseball bat-wielding Snake Plissken in Escape from New York. That’s who we want to stand with as his Wyatt Earp marches across the dusty road, shotgun aimed and ready. Never miss. Hell, it’s even who we want driving our boat in the ridiculous, immaturely hilarious Captain Ron (a personal favorite if only for selfish nostalgia. And it must be watched with my dad, who makes every nineteen nineties comedy exponentially funnier).

Kurt Russell exists outside anyone’s expectations. How else could a Disney star make his break with a fantastically surprising performance playing Elvis Presley in a made-for-television movie directed by horror legend John Carpenter? This kid who had the air sucked out of his life when a torn rotator cuff ended his professional baseball career. “He [the doctor] examined me and said, ‘Aren’t you an actor too?’ I said, ‘Yeah, yeah.’ And he said, ‘Well, you’re an actor all the time now.’ That was it. He just walked out of the room. I sat there for 10 minutes, not knowing what to do. A nurse had to come in and get me. I was just devastated.”

Russell as Snake Plissken in Escape From New York.

Coming up in the seventies and eighties, he wasn’t a celebrity in a town chock-o-block with them: Warren Beaty, Jack Nicholson, Robert DeNiro. Nope. Here’s a guy with a job to do, and he’s going to do it 100 percent all-in. No frills, no goosing the entertainment industrial ego complex, no massaging personalities — including his own. And we, the fans and the audience, keep rooting for him as if he needs it even though he absolutely does not. He’s a guy who looks just as at ease swinging a bat as a lunch pail or a lady off her feet (lucky lady!).

Who else talks about Jim Bouton’s knuckleball with as much endearing earnestness as drinking and goofing with Mel Gibson (a longtime friend going back to 1988’s Tequila Sunrise, whom he considers one of the funniest people he knows: “I understand Mel, because I come from the world of baseball where the sense of humor is absolutely slicing and barbaric…I can think of no more fun way of spending a month on an island than with Mel and endless boxes of beer and booze and just saying, ‘Let her rip, babe.’”). His Tombstone co-star Val Kilmer is another close friend. These are men are of a certain age and era and constitution where “We weren’t so precious.” I think the culture is finally circling back to that sensibility.

It's not just that he defies expectations or what the popular crowd in Tinsel Town favors; he leaves the impression that he’s contemptuous of them. He’s daring us to pin him down just to laugh and walk away with a confident swagger. Who else has six action figures created for his characters, none of which are superheroes or come from comic books? Only Russell, with his unshakeable demeanor, gives his unconcerned “Ifs, ands, and Peter Pans” answer when asked about auditioning and being passed over for Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, and Bull Durham’s Crash Davis.

Russell was approached to play the iconic role of Indiana Jones but turned it down. He doesn’t do sequel films. He doesn’t regret it. He says in a 2017 interview with Bill Simmons,

I have no regrets over not doing any of them. I have no regrets. My life is my life, you’re going to live your life. It’s gonna do what it’s gonna do. You’re gonna have whatever amount of control you have and you’re going to do things that are right and things that are wrong in terms of what was best for your career and all that. I just wanted a varied one.

I wanted to do things that other people maybe wouldn’t be interested in, but that I was interested in, and continue to do that. And it’s the only way I know how to stay interested in this field. And I’ve been fortunate in that I’ve been able to do that.

Are there things you wanna do that you don’t get? Of course, sure, absolutely, that’s the game.

What you see is what you get — no box, no bow, no hype, no angle. If you need a box, Russell could be found in the one labeled “American.” He might agree:

You have to understand some things about Snake Plissken I think that are very important.

First of all, he’s American. There’s a reason he’s in that ring with a baseball bat with nails in it, because I’m playing him. I’m pretty good with that bat in my hand.

He was an American. He’s not an international guy. He’s not James Bond, he’s the negative James Bond.

He’s American and that’s a very important thing.

I can’t resist including a favorite, red-blooded AMERICA! scene from 1986’s Big Trouble in Little China, a John Carpenter-directed film. (After the Elvis biopic, the pair worked together on four other films — the two Escape movies, 1982’s The Thing, and Big Trouble in Little China)

His great love affair doesn’t stray from the Kurt Russell formula. His longtime partner Goldie Hawn met making the 1984 film Swing Shift, a Rosie the Riveter romance set during World War II. Nursing a hangover after a night of heavy drinking with his dad (what a ripping start to a love story!), Russell meets Hawn for a business meeting about casting Swing Shift. In a manner of direct authenticity that would make your average HR careerist grab her re-education manual, Russell tells her point-blank, “Wow, you’ve got a great figure.” To which Hawn replies (here she conducts a master class on being a woman), “Thank you.” That’s it! The rest is 40+ years of love.

This is how it’s done, folks. Romance, American style.

Russell’s characters are, if anything, quintessentially American. From his start with Elvis to roughneck (and mini-golf entrepreneur) Dean Proffitt in Overboard, firefighter in Backdraft, Wyatt Earp, wisecracking supernatural Chinese mystic-busting trucker Jack Burton in Big Trouble in Little China to all-American legend and hockey icon Herb Brooks in Miracle — his role as hero and anti-hero protagonist knows no bounds because Russell exists outside them. Rattling cages, bustin’ skulls, aiming with purpose, saving the day, and walking away. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Or, as Jack Burton always says,

Just remember what ol' Jack Burton does when the earth quakes, and the poison arrows fall from the sky, and the pillars of Heaven shake. Yeah, Jack Burton just looks that big ol' storm right square in the eye and he says, "Give me your best shot, pal. I can take it."

The guy we need. The one who makes us cry, laugh, cheer, and holler. Kurt Russell, American.

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Now, I’d be remiss and probably excommunicated from the State of Hockey if I didn’t highlight 2004’s Miracle, the film about the 1980 USA hockey team culminating in the game against the Soviet Union at the Olympic Games in Lake Placid, New York. Russell was instrumental in the film’s authenticity and honest portrait of the team’s head coach, the late, great Herb Brooks. Russell’s son Wyatt was a professional hockey player, and the family, including his wife Goldie Hawn, moved to Toronto to foster his career. Russell met Brooks and connected through a mutual love and respect for competition, sports, and the intestinal fortitude necessary to perform at the highest level of one’s craft. Eerily, Russell, a licensed pilot, calculated that he was flying about five miles above Brooks when the coach died in a tragic car wreck at age 66 just before the film’s release.

Russell’s locker room speech as Brooks:

And if that doesn’t give you chills (you commie!), here is the 1980 broadcast of the final moments of that game with Al Michaels on the call:

Thanks, as always, but no less sincerely, for sharing your time with me. If you’re so inclined, I’d love to hear about your favorite Kurt Russell roles — or those films and actors who embody the American spirit. I’ve written extensively on John Wayne and Westerns, and there’s a John Ford post itching to be written one of these days… But I do appreciate all of you taking this journey with me. It’s always better with good company! Sincerely, Jenna