John Carpenter & Kurt Russell's First Movie Together Is One You Likely Never Saw

If John Carpenter is known for one thing, it is his deep bench of horror classics, including "The Fog," "Christine," and, of course, "Halloween." His secondary — but no less important — claim to fame is his bromance with Kurt Russell. Between 1979 and 1996, Carpenter and Russell collaborated on five projects, the most well-known of which are "Escape From New York," "The Thing," "Big Trouble in Little China," and "Escape From L.A." However, what fans might not realize is that their first collaboration was for the 1979 made-for-TV biopic "Elvis."

Among Carpenter and Russell's action-forward cult classics, "Elvis" is certainly an outlier. Indeed, it's an outlier in Carpenter's entire filmography, nestled in between "Halloween" — which hit theaters while "Elvis" was still in production — and "The Fog." The way Carpenter tells it, his involvement was more or less incidental. "[Kurt Russell] was cast before I was the director," Carpenter recalled to The New Yorker. "He was sitting there as Elvis, and they couldn't find anybody who wanted to direct this thing because it looked like a disaster. And, well, I was too stupid, so I said, 'Yes.'"

For Russell, on the other hand, the project was kismet. Russell, who began his career as a child actor in the 1960s, acted alongside the King himself in his first film, 1963's "It Happened At The World's Fair." In the movie, Presley pays an 11-year-old Russell a quarter to kick him in the shins so he'll have an excuse to flirt with a nurse. "'He was really cool," Russell told GQ. "An incredibly nice guy." Starring in "Elvis" 14 years later helped jumpstart Russell's career.

Kurt Russell was a bankable Disney star in the 1960s and early 1970s. Once he reached adulthood, however, the roles stopped pouring in. When Elvis Presley died in 1977, the opportunity to play him in a biopic resuscitated Russell's career. "I said, 'If I'm going to do this, I'm going out in flames. I'm controlling this airplane,'" Russell said in the same GQ interview. "'I'm taking it down, or I'm going to break through the clouds my way.' And when I did that, that's when I had an epiphany moment, saying, 'Kurt, where have you been your whole life? Wake the f*** up. This is what you're supposed to do.'"

The performance earned Russell an Emmy nomination for outstanding lead actor in a limited series or special. The three-hour movie was also a surprise ratings hit. Despite John Carpenter's lukewarm feelings towards "Elvis," the project was instrumental in uniting him with Russell. When GQ asked Russell which of his films he is most proud of, he began with his three 1980s Carpenter collaborations.

"Elvis" was the unlikely seed that blossomed into one of film's most entertaining partnerships. Unlikelier still is that Presley has become one of modern cinema's most popular subjects. Austin Butler earned an Oscar nomination for his performance in Baz Luhrmann's ambitious 2022 film "Elvis," and Jacob Elordi is the latest actor to play the King in Sofia Coppola's "Priscilla."