KURT RUSSELL REVS UP IN GRINDHOUSE

Kurt Russell stars in Quentin Tarrantino’s Death Proof, his contribution to the double feature with Robert Rodriguez which is homage to the violent and gruesome Grindhouse films of the 70s. Kurt is stuntman Mike who has a passion for crashing his specially rigged Dodge Charger into unsuspecting women just out on the town joy riding.

Kurt did most of his own stunt driving going over 100 mph at times. He talks about casualties that occurred while Rose McGowan was riding shotgun.

“Listen we did a car chase that took six weeks and actually the situation that Rose and I were in was she had to sit in a car that didn’t have a very good seat in it. And so when we were gonna do this thing coming out of the driveway we were in I said, ‘hey Rose hold on here because we’re gonna jump on it pretty good.’ She did one of those, ‘yeah, yeah, yeah don’t worry about it. I’ll be alright,’ and so when I jumped on it it was a little more than she figured on and so she kind of bounced off the walls a little bit but that was the idea.”

Even though Kurt played a stuntman director Quentin Tarrantino did enlist the professionals to help with safety.

“It was really a lot of fun but it was also something we had to be really careful with. We had Jeff Dashnaw coordinating things. We had great help from Buddy Joe Hooker and Tracey as well, Jeff’s wife. But Tracie Thoms went to school for three weeks to learn how to drive that car and she did a great job with it. So we all walked away in one piece and that’s always a good thing.”

Kurt once drove race cars on the circuit but gave it up to play professional baseball before acting caught on full time. Grindhouse opens Friday in theaters.