The Meaning of Mac Ready: Kurt Russell as MacReady

Kurt Russell on MacReady: "...I think my character is pretty interesting because he's in the outpost group but not of it. He's not connected with any of the scientific research. He's just a helicopter pilot out to make a lot of money in a very short amount of time. He's a Vietnam vet, and he's isolated from the rest of the group. When the Thing causes conditions in the camp to break down, he has the leadership of the group thrust upon. He's as scared as the others, but the war has taught him how to act instinctively. The script pits an outsider against another outsider, the pilot against the alien."'

As much as I love Snake Plissken, when I finally saw The Thing and MacReady, I knew I found my ultimate realistic hero. It's Kurt's low-key performance in The Thing which continues to make a deep impact on me.

Many people just laughed Mac off as a drunken pilot who somehow outsmarts one big, nasty alien. Not so. MacReady fights instinctively. As a Vietnam vet who lived through that hell, this prepped him to think fast in the Hades he was experiencing in the Antarctic. He plays chess, a thinking man’s game. And Mac as the isolationist (holing away from the other men in his OWN shack) has plenty of time to think for himself. I believe that’s the reason why he wants to survive, he’s a proud individualist and lives by his own code. He’s a quick learner, a sharp opponent and a sore loser. We want him to protect us and we cheer when he does. Not too many people would sacrifice their lives to prevent Armageddon even if they don’t get along with society at large. I agree with Anne Billson’s reasoning as part of MacReady’s charm: "You have to like MacReady. He’s a good man to have around when something bad happens...You know MacReady with his brilliant sort of instincts on what’s happened." Hey if you don’t believe me, get a load of RJ’s page on the pilot for more proof.

Performance-wise, Mac is one of the most realistic, and sobering (ironic) anti-heroes ever to grace the silver screen. The attraction is multi-layered, but largely due to some of MacReady's actions mirroring my own. When I see his determination to survive, his resourcefulness in a pinch, the fact that he doesn't stress out during something major (but blows up at little things), and most importantly, that Mac holds the tenets of self-value, trust and loyalty very close; I see elements of me.

His appearance too, triggered something major. Since I was so drawn to the character's personality and traits, Mac-despite his alcoholism-is close to my idea of the definitive man. Flawed, but strong. Courageous, stubborn, and beneath the sullen exterior, a damn good person. Yeah, he's mucho handsome too-the icing on the cake.

For every character I've enjoyed in the last 15 years, they have some kind of connection to MacReady. Their appearance is the initial trigger, but then I see other things in their personalities and actions that make me really respond to them. This has been a very pleasant experience that really kicked into gear as of six years ago. Startlingly, I've come across MacReady's closest ancestor (save for lack of military experience) only recently, and it is said character (George Meaning) who shares this space with MacReady.

But enough about my love of MacReady, below are interviews conducted with Russell about the character and film. Interestingly, John Carpenter has a lot more to do with the realism of Russell's performance, it is John who guided Kurt through the more introverted take on the character.

Here's Kurt on John's guidance from Moviegoer's June 1982 issue.

"When you're playing off a gobo ( a black screen used in filming special effects) you don't know if you're overracting or underreacting. John said "You're way over. It's real simple: just keep bringing it down." John said: "Just think about what it is. Believe it." Which is a little easier said than done. John scolded me pretty good when we were rehearsing. I was pretty out to lunch on the whole deal, but I didn't realize it. I thought I was rolling along pretty well, and I was just working up my acceptance speech when John said: "Are you coming to the party here? You're not doing it right. You're not in the right frame of mind." But that was good, too; I've never done anything like this--as far as the horror aspect goes."

Here are snippets from a couple of Interviews Kurt did with Ed Naha for Twilight Zone and Starlog around the release of The Thing.

"Admittedly, Im not a big monster movie buff. It's not something I'm attracted to. But," he adds with a grin. "I always wanted to be in a monster movie. I always figured that, if I had to be in one, let me pick the movie that had the greatest monster of all times. I think our show has that monster. We're talking about some serious rubber here."

Russell lapses into a contented smile for a split second.

"You can view this movie on a couple of levels," Russell says. "On one level, you have almost documentary-style acting. It's blatantly realistic. There are no caricatures of the characters involved. Our roles are very straight. They're not bland, but they're real people. They're very normal. They have little idiosyncracies, instead of big, easy idnetifiable ones.

"I think that approach may have thrown a lot of people in the audience who are used to instant stereotyping. This is almost a documentary monster movie. You're plunked down in the middle of a crisis. The monster is there for you to look at right away. There's no guessing about what we're up against. You see it. Wow! Now what the hell are they going to do about it?

"The fascinating part of all this is that our monster isn't really evil. It's an alien. It's totally different from the humans. Heck, our monster isn't even a being. Almost all monsters in monster movies are indentifiable beings, they have a shape. If they alter their form it's to take you over, make you a part of their invading army. Our Thing doesn't want to invade Earth. It couldn't care less about that crap. It just wants to stay alive. It's stuck on a strange planet and it doesn't want to die.

"It doesn't take you over. It doesn't make you a zombie. It kills you. Then it imitates you. YOU are no longer. YOU are now THE THING. Yet YOU are exactly what you were...except, perhaps for your soul."

Russell flashes on a sudden idea. But then again, if the Thing can duplicate a human perfectly couldn't it also duplicate your soul. And if it does duplicate you perfectly...is it such a crime for it take over the world? Could it already have happened? Ahhhhh, what's the difference?"

The more Russell warms up to dissecting The Thing, the more it becomes apparent that despite his affection for the movie, he is frustrated with the outcome...

"The idea of Who Goes There? is really thought-provoking. Who are you? Are you who you appear to be? Paranoia is really the lynchpin to all of this...or should have been. As the Thing slowly takes over the men one by one, no one is sure about the each other's true identity....this movie takes that underlying feeling and lets it grow."

"The idea of getting to the point where paranoia is so rampant that you don't know anything for sure anymore just fascinates me. We're not talking about stir-crazy convicts or social misfits going bonkers. We're talking about intelligent individuals pushed to the breaking point, thrust into a situation where you can't even trust yourself becaues the events happening are too bizarre to grasp.

"Not even MacReady, who is sort of the hero, fully grasps the situation,"says Russell. "He knows something unreal is occurring and he reacts on a gut level. When he sees the phoney Norris split up into little pieces and fight back as a small army of little Things, he's get the idea that the little Things are a part of the whole. He never figures that out scientifically or intellectually. He sees something. He puts two and two together."

******

Despite the excitement generated by so ambitious a project as The Thing, the mood on the set is one of weariness tinged with claustrophobia. Since practically the entire studio is filled with small, cramped sets both actors and technicians alike have problems walking from point A to point B without bumping into someone or something en route.

As Carpenter chats with Richard Dysart, Donald Moffat and Thomas Waites at one end of the debris-strewn hallway, the movie's star, Kurt Russell squeezes past them and heads toward an abandoned chair in the corner. With shoulder-length hair and a full beard protruding from the hood of his parka, Russell looks more like rock hero Jim Morrison than a science fiction stalwart.

"Excuse my snow," he smirks, sliding out of his flake-laden jacket and slumping into the chair. Russell seems quite immune to the low-key atmosphere on the set, displaying the same sort of jaundiced humor he did as Snake Plissken, the outrageous anti-hero of Escape From New York

"I love this movie," he says earnestly. "It has a lot great elements in it. There's a strong horror angle, there's a lot of dry humor...and paranoia!" He nods in the direction of the mazelike set. "I mean, look at that place. It reeks of paranoia! Our Thing is a creature that is able to physically duplicate other organisms. That's how it survives. It blends in with the existing population and stalks its victims one by one by one."

Russell flashes a sly grin. By the time the men on the outpost realize there's an alien roaming around, some people are not who they appear to be-but we're all still housed together in the same building. For the rest of the movie, we're trying to figure out who is who. The Thing meanwhile, just keeps growing and growing. Relationships breakdown. Friendships dissolve. Paranoia runs rampant. These men are totally on their own. Stranded. Helpless." The grin becomes a smile. I like that."

Russell is admittedly mesmerized by what he considers the intricacies of the new Thing's plot line. He's not at all worried about having it compared with the 1951 version, either.

"I just saw the old Thing for the first time a couple of weeks ago," he shrugs. "This film has nothing to do with that. It's more in tune with book-almost identical, in fact, except that our characters are more developed and our Thing doesn't have telepathic powers like the book's creature.

"I'm not a horror or science fiction film connoisseur, so I don't know why the first Thing is considered a classic. I don't know if this movie will be classic or not. All I know is that, as far as horror movies go, this is a good one.

"The first movie? I mean, jeez, James Arness came out and he was a big carrot. They fried him. Great! But classic?"

Russell leans forward in his chair. "Everyone talked about the first movie being relevant to the political period, the McCarthy witch hunts. I saw the movie, and I'm not sure whether that's valid or not. It's subjective, I suppose. John's film isn't at all relevant to today's political climate, but it is relevant to the human condition. People today are experiencing a certain level of paranoia in their lives. It's being stoked by the headlines in the news. They're wondering whether the stranger on the street is going to be the one who'll rob them or kill them.

"John's movie takes that sense of paranoia and let's it run wild . Nobody trusts anybody else in our story. I think my character is pretty interesting because he's in the outpost group but not of it. He's not connected with any of the scientific research. He's just a helicopter pilot out to make a lot of money in a very short amount of time. He's a Vietnam vet, and he's isolated from the rest of the group. When the Thing causes conditions in the camp to break down, he has the leadership of the group thrust upon him. He's as scared as the others, but the war has taught him how to act instinctively. The script pits an outsider against another outsider, the pilot against the alien."

Russell becomes more animated as he tries to explain the film's theme. It's survival, man," he says, "plain and simple. Personally, I like our monster. It's not an evil monster. It doesn't possess you. It doesn't try to take over your mind and turn you into a slave or a zombie. The Thing is a creature, stranded on an alien world, just trying to stay alive.

"There's a direct correlation between the Thing's species and the human race. No matter what kind of overview you take on various Earth civilizations, one was common to them all: they all fought hard to survive. The Thing may be from outer space, and be pretty strange looking, but it's only trying to do the same thing: stay alive. When it takes a man over, it's incredibly grotesque to watch. It's horrible. But the way the humans behave in reaction to it is probably just as horrific to the Thing. Horror is in the eyes of the beholder. There is no good and no evil. It's just two species trying to survive. One has to eliminate the other to do so."

According to Russell, this primordial element will be reenforced by the movie's physical appearance.

"This is rugged. Period. There's no role for a woman in it. In Antarctica, women are rare. The first film worked a female love angle. We haven't. One of the strong points of John's movie is that it's primarily male: a dozen very solitary men just trying to maintain their sanity. From scene one nerves are frayed. The overall weather is harsh, the look is harsh...and the alien organism itself is pretty gross!"

Russell begins to chuckle when he tries to describe Rob Bottin's top-secret alien makeup designs for the film-a deft blend of cosmetic and mechanical savvy. Russell attempts to be as obscure as possible; there are Universal publicists hovering nearby, studio minions dedicated solely to the task of keeping Carpenter's secret alien "look" just that.

"Rob's stuff is amazing," says Russell. "This is my first horror movie, and this may sound weird, but it reminds me of the Disney films I did as a child. You're dealing with stuff that's out of control half the time. Some of Rob's stuff is very experimental. You have to be on your toes because you just don't know how the creature is going to react, physically, during a scene. You have to make the dialog fit its actions sometimes."

Before Russell has a chance to elaborate on the Thing's workings he is called back on the set and asked to run down a corridor half a dozen times.

" The set is pretty confining," he says between sprints. "Claustrophobic. It creates a feeling of tension, I guess, is helpful. The scenes we're doing now are pretty paranoid. You instinctively want to stay away from everybody, but as you can see, that's physically impossible. You find yourself feeling compressed on and off camera. It's tough sometimes." A buzzer and a mantra of "Quiet, quiet, quiet..." is chanted on the set. Immediately afterward, a new litany of "Roling, rolling, rolling" echoes across the studio.

Russell back in his snow encrusted parka, sprints down the hall. After reaching his mark, he extends his arms in the classic runner-across-the-finish-line pose. There's scattered applause from the crew...

******

Work(s) Cited:

August, K. and Billson Anne. Interview for Pharr Out #6, 1998

Kilday, Gregg, Kurt Russell & John Carpenter Interview, Moviegoer, June 1982

Naha, Ed. "SomeTHING wicked this way comes." Twilight Zone magazine, March 1982.

Naha Ed. Kurt Russell Interview, Starlog 63, 1982

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