What Kurt Russell Initially Detested About John Carpenter's The Thing
In its credits, John Carpenter's 1982 alien invasion film "The Thing" is based on John W. Campbell's 1938 novella "Who Goes There?," but owes far more of a creative debt to Christian Nyby's 1951 adaptation "The Thing from Another World." Carpenter loved Nyby's film, and even featured a clip of it in his 1978 horror film "Halloween." "The Thing" notoriously bombed on its initial release, a failure some chalk up to the presence of Steven Spielberg's ultra-sentimental "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" which opened only two weeks before. It seems that audiences wanted sweetness and wonderment in 1982, and likely felt the paranoia, death, violence, and gloppy ooze in Carpenter's film to be too much of a bleak throwback.
In the ensuing decades, genre fans rescued "The Thing," coming to appreciate its eerie, dreadful atmosphere, its harder-than-stone characters, and its amazing, amazing practical creature effects (provided by Rob Bottin). In 2024, "The Thing" is often hailed as one of the best monster movies ever made.
"The Thing" is set at a remote Arctic research station populated by grizzled, grumpy men who are barely weathering the isolation. In the lead is MacReady, played by Kurt Russel, one of Carpenter's most frequent collaborators. A dog, fleeing a nearby Norwegian outpost, runs to the American station after some Norwegians attempt to shoot it from a helicopter. Both the American characters and the audience gradually learn that the dog is a shape-shifting monster from space that absorbs its prey and hides out among humans. The Thing invades, but no one knows who is who.
In a video interview with GQ, Russell talked about MacReady, and he had no issues with his character's grizzled, tough qualities. He did, however, hate the sombrero.
MacReady's sombrero
MacReady, a helicopter pilot, leaves the Arctic station wearing a warm, fur-lines coat, a cotton hoodie, and sunglasses. He also, perhaps to keep his head warm, often dons a hat with a dangling leather strap. It's not a knit cap or a toque as one might expect, however. It's an oversized large-brimmed sombrero. Given the stoic nature of the character, audiences accept the large hat as a deliberate choice made by MacReady, someone who, after all, knows more about living in the Arctic than most of us in the audience. If Russell had had his druthers, however, he would have nixed the hat. He said:
"I went into wardrobe ... and when I was in there, I noticed, sitting over on this chair by itself, was this enormous sombrero. And finally, at some point, I said to the wardrobe person, 'What's the deal with the sombrero?' And they said, 'Oh, that's your hat.' I said, 'I'm not f***ing wearing that hat! It's insane! What are you talking about?! No!' And they said, 'Well, John's already been shooting some stuff with it.' I said, 'What!?' [...] I never loved the sombrero."
Sadly, the hat could not be changed, as John Carpenter had already been filming establishing shots with Russell's stand-in wearing it. It was established. Russell was stuck with the hat.
When asked if he still hated the hat, Russell wanted to make it very clear that he did not. Indeed, he felt that Carpenter had made an interesting creative choice about MacReady's character. The hat communicated a lot about who MacReady was, and Russell came to appreciate the efficiency in conveying those traits.
'MacReady's a drunk'
On trusting his director, Russell said:
"Sometimes, there's a lot of things that somebody else sees that you don't see. You have to be open for these things. That's a tough one because it's just you wearing this big-ass goofy thing on your head. But that's where John had no fear. Because he knew how he was going to shoot it. I started laughing at it and saying, 'Yeah, he's a drunk, he doesn't give a s***, so he's got that sombrero on.'"
Indeed, to establish MacReady, Carpenter shot a scene of Russell playing Chess Wizard on a computer while drinking J&B straight up. The Chess Wizard, incidentally, was voiced by Carpenter's then-wife, actress Adrienne Barbeau. Right when MacReady thought he was about to win, the Chess Wizard gets the drop on him and puts him in checkmate. His instant reaction is to open the computer's control panel and pour his J&B directly inside, causing it to short out. He calls the computer a "cheating b****." He's not the warmest, most understanding character. And if he really did give a crap about much, then he definitely wouldn't mind wearing a sombrero in the Arctic.
Fun trivia about "The Thing": it was released on the same day — June 25 — as Ridley Scott's oft-celebrated sci-fi film "Blade Runner." Both Scott's and Carpenter's films, however, were swallowed by the "E.T." hype. These days, all three films are held in high regard by sci-fi fans. Dark, paranoid thrillers about human duplicates infiltrating the population, it seems, merely weren't in vogue when compared to whimsical alien friends with healing powers.
There was a prequel-cum-remake of "The Thing," also called "The Thing," released in 2011. The less said about it the better.