The Quick and the Dead (1995 film)

Writer Simon Moore finished his spec script for The Quick and the Dead in late 1992, writing it as a homage to the Spaghetti Westerns of Sergio Leone, particularly the Dollars Trilogy starring Clint Eastwood. The writer decided the lead character should be a female. "When you introduce women into that kind of world, something very interesting happens and you have an interesting dynamic straight away," Moore commented.[7] The names of the lead villain (Herod) and the town (Redemption) were intentional allusions to the Bible.[7] Moore considered directing his own script as an independent film and shooting The Quick and the Dead on a $3–4 million budget in either Spain or Italy.[7]

Sony Pictures Entertainment purchased Moore's script in May 1993 and approached Sharon Stone to star in the lead role in July 1993.[7] Because Stone also signed on as co-producer, she had approval over the choice of director. Sam Raimi was hired to direct because Stone was impressed with his work on Army of Darkness (1992). The actress told the producers that if Raimi did not direct the film, she would not star in it. Although she had mixed emotions on Raimi's previous work, she believed that the director still had yet to showcase his talents, feeling that The Quick and the Dead would be a perfect opportunity to "stretch the limits of his technical and creative ability."[8] Moore was also enthusiastic over Raimi's hiring, based on his previous work with the Evil Dead film series.[7]

When Sony began fast tracking development The Quick and the Dead, the studio commissioned a series of rewrites from Moore. The writer was eventually dismissed and replaced with John Sayles, who, according to Moore, took Sony's orders of "making more of an American Old West film."[3] Moore was rehired with filming to begin in three weeks because Sayles' script was approaching a 2.5 hour runtime. When rewriting the shooting script, Moore simply omitted Sayles' work without Sony noticing. A week before shooting, Sony considered the script good so that Moore described the rewrites "a completely fucking pointless exercise."[3]

Russell Crowe originally auditioned for a different role in the film before Sharon Stone asked that the actor try for the lead male role. "When I saw Romper Stomper (1992), I thought Russell was not only charismatic, attractive and talented but also fearless," Stone reasoned. "And I find fearlessness very attractive. I was convinced I wouldn't scare him."[9] Raimi found Crowe to be "bold and challenging. He reminds me of what we imagine the American cowboy to have been like."[9] On working with Raimi, Crowe later described the director as "sort of like the fourth Stooge."[7]

Director Sam Raimi

Sony Pictures was dubious over Stone's choice of Crowe because he was not a famous actor in the mid-1990s.[7] To cast Gene Hackman in the role of Herod, TriStar Pictures changed the shooting location from Durango, Mexico to Tucson, Arizona.[10] Sam Rockwell auditioned for The Kid, a role which ended up going to Leonardo DiCaprio.[11] Sony was also hesitant about DiCaprio's casting. As a result, Stone decided to pay DiCaprio's salary herself.[7]

Filming was originally set to begin in October 1993,[12] but was delayed because Crowe was busy on another film in Australia.[7] Principal photography for The Quick and the Dead lasted from November 21, 1993 to February 27, 1994.[12][13] Locations included Old Tucson Studios in Arizona[7] and Mescal, 40 miles southeast of Tucson.[3] Production was briefly halted at times over weather problems.[14] Thell Reed, who was hired as the gun coach and weapons master,[7] worked with the cast through over three months of training.[3] To age Cort's Colt 1851 Navy Revolver and the other guns used, Reed experimented with simple measures. "I took them out by my swimming pool and dipped them in chlorine water to let them rust," he explained. "They looked rusty and old, but were brand new guns."[14] Such detail, including the nickel plating and ivory handles on Ellen's Colt Peacemakers, was accurate to the time period.[14]

The town of Redemption was designed by Patrizia von Brandenstein, known for her work on Amadeus (1984) and The Untouchables (1987).[3] Raimi's first choice as the visual effects supervisor was William Mesa, his collaborator on Darkman (1991) and Army of Darkness (1993). Instead, Sony chose The Computer Film Company to create the VFX sequences.[7] Pick-up scenes took place through November - December 1994. This included an extended duel between Sharon Stone and Gene Hackman.[15]

Stone had a love scene removed from the final cut of The Quick and the Dead before the film's release in the United States.[16] The actress/co-producer thought the scene did not fit in with the picture's established reality.[3] It was restored for the home cinema releases of the film.

The original motion picture soundtrack for The Quick and the Dead, was released by the Varèse Sarabande music label on February 14, 1995.[17] The score for the film was composed and conducted by Alan Silvestri and mixed by Dennis Sands. Kenneth Karman and Thomas Drescher edited the film's music.[18]

The Quick and the Dead: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Film score by Alan Silvestri
Released	February 14, 1995
Length	31:01
Label	Varèse Sarabande

The Quick and the Dead was released in the U.S. on February 10, 1995 in 2,158 theaters, earning $6,515,861 in its opening weekend. The film eventually grossed $18,636,537 in at the US box office[4] and was declared to be a box office bomb. Writer Simon Moore noted that the film performed modestly in Europe.[3]

The Quick and the Dead' faced competition at the box office from Billy Madison, The Brady Bunch Movie, Just Cause and Heavyweights.[19] Director Sam Raimi later blamed himself and his visual style for the film's failure. "I was very confused after I made that movie. For a number of years I thought, I'm like a dinosaur. I couldn't change with the material."[3] TriStar Pictures also showed The Quick and the Dead as an "out-of-competition" film at the May 1995 Cannes Film Festival.[20] Additionally, Stone was nominated for the Saturn Award for Best Actress, but lost to Angela Bassett in Strange Days.[21] A novelization written by Jack Curtis was published by HarperCollins in September 1995.[22] The Region 1 DVD release came in September 1998.[23]

The Quick and the Dead received mixed reviews from film critics. Based on 41 reviews, Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 56%, with an average rating of 5.9/10. The site's consensus states: "The Quick and the Dead isn't quite the draw that its intriguing premise and pedigree suggest, but fans of nontraditional Westerns should have some rootin' tootin' fun."[24] Metacritic calculated an average score of 49/100, based on 21 reviews.[25]

Janet Maslin of The New York Times praised Stone's performance and Raimi's directing. "Stone's presence nicely underscores the genre-bending tactics of Raimi, the cult filmmaker now doing his best to reinvent the B movie in a spirit of self-referential glee."[26] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times criticized the film for being overtly cliché, but praised Raimi's direction and Dante Spinotti's cinematography.[27] Critic and Raimi biographer Bill Warren wrote that the film "is a very conscious (though not self-conscious) attempt to recreate some of the themes, style and appeal of Sergio Leone's majestically operatic Spaghetti Westerns of the 1960s, especially the Man with No Name trilogy that starred Clint Eastwood. It's brisker, more romantic and somehow more American than Leone's movies."[8]

Jonathan Rosenbaum of the Chicago Reader observed that "Raimi tries to do a Sergio Leone, and though The Quick and the Dead is highly enjoyable in spots, it doesn't come across as very convincing, perhaps because nothing can turn Sharon Stone into Charles Bronson."[28] Peter Travers of Rolling Stone felt that "The Quick and the Dead plays like a crazed compilation of highlights from famous westerns. Raimi finds the right look but misses the heartbeat. You leave the film dazed instead of dazzled, as if an expert marksman had drawn his gun only to shoot himself in the foot."[29]

Although having a mixed critical reception upon release, The Quick and the Dead has received praise from both critics and fans alike, and has gained a cult following.

Scott Hallam of Dread Central praised Raimi's directing and versatility in multiple genres of film and the cast.[30]

Jay Royston of WhatCulture.com praised the film and considered it one of Raimi's finest movies by saying, "...I have to put it in the top 3 Raimi movies, maybe because it is so unlike other Raimi films yet combines all three of the best qualities of a director already mentioned; working with actors, innovating camera shots and telling a good story visually."[31]

Bill Gibron of PopMatters said, "This was the geek breaking point for many a certified Raimaniac. First off, it was a Western in the days when the genre was more or less struggling for life. In addition, it starred a yet to be hot Leonardo DiCaprio, a question mark named Russell Crowe, and the sexually inert Sharon Stone. About the only thing it had going for it was Raimi's manic direction, and even that seemed…showy. Still, in retrospect, this is a good film, undermined by forces outside itself."[32]