Hasta La Gadget!

When it comes to the legend of Walt Disney’s final statement, Kurt Russell has the last word.

Disney Studios has always been a huge part of the actor’s career. He signed a 10-year contract with the studio early on and now Russell is starring as Star-Lord’s dad, Ego, in Disney and Marvel’s upcoming “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.” Still, his connection to the company goes well beyond business. 

As a kid, Russell had a close, personal relationship with Walt Disney. The industry pioneer thought so highly of the young actor that a legend surfaced claiming Disney’s last words were actually “Kurt Russell.”

In fact, it’s more than legend, according to Russell. It’s true. 

Disney died in 1966 when Russell was still a teen. The actor says he learned about Disney’s last words a couple of years later.

In a recent interview, Russell told HuffPost, “They pulled me into the office a couple years after he died, and this woman — who I don’t believe it was his secretary, but it might’ve been, I don’t know ― pointed to [something he wrote] and she said, ‘Do you know what that’s about?’ And I said, ‘No, I don’t.’[She said], ‘Because he wrote something after it. But then he went back up and he wrote your name. That was the last thing he wrote.’ And I said, ‘Oh gee. I don’t know what it’s connected to.’”

Was it because Disney considered Russell a friend? Was it for a movie role? Who knows?

Russell said he’s been asked about it for years, but he doesn’t know any more than that. “She was pointing out that that’s the last thing he wrote. That’s the only thing I know.”

The actor said Disney was very important in his life and he learned a “tremendous amount” from him. Russell’s stories are even more unbelievable than learning Disney’s last words.

“We did have a personal relationship. We played Ping-Pong at lunch sometimes. He’d come down to set. We’d go watch movies that the studio was making, and he’d come down and ask if I wanted to go see them. He’d took me around and introduced me to all the different departments at Disney, and at one point gave me a bunch of original photo cells that they make the backdrop drawings of the characters and stuff like that,” said Russell.

“There were many, many things that I connected with him [on],” he continued. “He reminded me a lot of my own grandfather. My grandfather was a creative and sort of inventive man, and they were not dissimilar in their demeanor, too.”

Apparently, Disney even liked to give Russell career advice. The actor’s family has a deep connection to professional baseball; his dad, Bing Russell, ended up owning a minor league baseball team — a “unique” minor league baseball team (which is the subject of the documentary “The Battered Bastards of Baseball”). Kurt played pro baseball himself for a while, too. Disney told him early on that he didn’t think it was for him.

“I was very comfortable around him, and I had a great time with him, great relationship, and it was very important. He said to me, ‘Baseball might not be something that you end up doing as a career.’ He said, ‘I think you might want to look at things in this business because I think your going to have a long career.’ So he did have a strong effect on me,” recalled Russell.

After an injury reportedly slowed his baseball dreams, Russell became an actor again, and Disney’s prediction of a long career came true. 

“Guardians of the Galaxy 2” is now set to be one of the biggest box-office successes of the actor’s career, and it’s coming on the heels of another one of the his movies, “Fate of the Furious,” which is soon passing $1 billion worldwide. 

Russell said, “It’s just serendipitous the fact that they’re coming out literally back-to-back, so that’s kind of [an] amazing event.”

Or perhaps it’s just a bit of Disney magic.

“Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2” hits theaters in May. 

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

AUSTIN, Texas ― When noisy conspiracy theorist Alex Jones went into his child-custody trial two weeks ago, his ex-wife’s attorneys promised to showcase his vitriolic talk-show comments for the jury as evidence of his lack of fitness as a father.

The spectacle of Jones ― a trusted source of news for President Donald Trump ― having to account for his history of fact-free, aggressive and often spiteful opinionating, attracted a flock of national reporters.

But as the jury began deliberations Thursday, the trial remained what it always was for the Jones family: a bruising custody battle stemming from an ugly divorce.

Travis County Judge Orlinda Naranjo said from the trial’s first day last week that she wouldn’t allow a focus on Jones’ politics or public statements. She refused to admit all but a few recordings that lawyers for Jones’ ex-wife Kelly had planned to play for the jury.

But closing arguments came and went, with Kelly Jones’ lawyers barely mentioning the right-wing star’s on-air comments. Instead, they repeatedly accused Jones of turning the couple’s three children against their mom. Further, they said he paid off therapists to take his side in the case.

“I don’t know whether to call it an ‘army’ or a ‘battalion,’” one of Kelly Jones’ lawyers, Robert Hoffman, said of the roughly 27 therapists involved in custody proceedings that followed the Jones divorce. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Lawyers for Alex Jones described the case against him as conspiratorial. Attorney Randall Wilhite pointed out that the dozens of therapists Hoffman accused of lying were appointed by the court. They concluded that his ex-wife struggled with emotional issues that affected her parenting and needed treatment in order to earn more time with the children.

“How is it possible that every single one of them has lined up against Ms. Jones?” Wilhite asked the jury. “They have all conspired to work against her? Is that possible? It’s not possible.”

Hoffman did take a moment Thursday to remind the jury of public comments Jones has made, calling him “someone who is racist, who is bigoted, who hates women.”

But he didn’t have nearly as much evidence to make those claims as he would’ve liked. The jury saw a video of an allegedly inebriated Alex Jones saying he’d go “piss” on a tree. But the jury was not permitted to consider other behavior Kelly Jones’ lawyers wanted to raise, like an appearance in which Alex Jones made light of Trump’s famous comments about sexual assault, or Jones’ offer of $5,000 to people who would photobomb national cable TV with shirts reading “Bill Clinton is a rapist!”

“Mr. Jones is like a cult leader,” Hoffman said, accusing Jones of recruiting his own children as “foot soldiers” for his InfoWars website. “We’ve seen in our lives the horrific damage that cult leaders can do to their followers.”

Early in the trial, Jones’ team tried to argue that Jones’ on-air persona was a fictional creation, irrelevant to the trial. They compared their client to comedian Jon Stewart or radio pundit Rush Limbaugh, describing Jones’ outrageous statements as political “satire” that he doesn’t take home with him to his kids.

“I don’t want to think about work when I go home,” Alex Jones said last week on the witness stand. 

Jones struggled through the entire trial to keep a straight demeanor. He rolled his eyes, smirked and shook his head as Hoffman delivered his closing argument to the jury.

Jones currently has primary custody of the children, and Kelly Jones is allowed some supervised visits.

The jury began deliberations Thursday afternoon to decide whether to reverse that arrangement by giving Kelly Jones sole custody, to give her primary custody, or to leave the situation unchanged.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

This post was done in partnership with The Wirecutter, a buyer’s guide to the best technology. When readers choose to buy The Wirecutter’s independently chosen editorial picks, they may earn affiliate commissions that support their work. Read their c…

Microsoft’s third quarter earnings are mostly rosy — except when it comes to sales of its Surface laptops. The company reports that Surface revenues fell 26 percent compared to last year, reaching $831 million down from $1.1 billion. It’s not hard t…

Jurassic World 2 appears to be pulling a Dawn from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. James Cromwell has shared details about his character in the upcoming film, and how he’s connected to the original Jurassic Park series. Apparently, he’s the most important person you never knew was there. (Because he wasn’t.)

Read more…