Does anybody here like it? I was hoping it would be good since Quentin Tarantino wrote the story. I think the movie would have been a lot better had he directed it. Instead, it’s some cartoonish perverse bizarre attack on the media or something.
Does anyone know what the story was as conceived by Tarantino? Somehow I don’t see him doing loony rants against the media in his movies.
Now I know why it seems everybody hates Oliver Stone.
There were a few good things- the soundtrack was good and Juliette Lewis is incredibly hot.
From what I understand, it was one of the first things Tarantino ever wrote, very early in his career, and Stone changed almost everything (which is why Tarantino only got a “story” credit instead of “screenplay”). Tarantino seems to love the media, but Stone is just the type to rail against them in a well-intentioned darkly humorous way, so I imagine most of the sensationalistic nature of the movie was from Stone.
I heard there was bad blood between them after that, and I always assumed that the asshole Hollywood director from True Romance (another Tarantino script about two outlaw lovers, and a much better movie) was supposed to be Oliver Stone, since the guy had directed a war movie called “Coming Home In a Body Bag”–a take-off of Stone’s big war movie Platoon.
Sorry I don’t have cites for any of this, but I remember reading a lot of articles about Tarantino during that time. Back in high school when Pulp Fiction came out, the man was my idol. And as much as I loved Pulp Fiction, Natural Born Killers left me more confused than anything else.
I’m really starting to love Tarantino myself. It’s good to know that he may not have been happy about this movie.
I figured they probably changed a lot. The violence was handled in a way that is almost the opposite from the way Tarantino would.
It seems to me that a lot of the charges that were leveled at his movies like being amoral and glorifying violence could be fairly applied to this.
It took me three readings to comprehend this. I was replying to say “His name is Tony Scott, but he’s not an asshole and AFAIK there is no bad blood between him and Quentin.”
As the reply window came up I finally realized that you meant the character in the movie who was the asshole director. I doubt it was a rip on Oliver Stone, although it certainly could have been. I doubt it because of the timing. Natural Born Killers (1994) came out the year after True Romance (1993) did.
As far as being his first script, I doubt that as well. On the True Romance commentary track, Tony Scott mentioned that he read both True Romance and Reservoir Dogs (1992) at the same time and asked Quentin to let him direct both, but Quentin refused to give up 'Dogs. The way he said it implied that those were the only scripts Quentin had written up to that point.
I’m sorry about my previous post–I wrote it late at night after a tiring day, and I see how it could have easily been misinterpreted. I should’ve edited better. I definitely meant the asshole director CHARACTER from True Romance, and not the actual director of the movie Tony Scott, who seems to be a stand-up individual in real life. (He also directed The Last Boy Scout, one of my favorite action-buddy movies. )
Of course, it’s very possible that Tarantino wrote Natural Born Killers at some point while Reservoir Dogs and True Romance were in pre-production (before their releases in 1992 and '93), gotten jerked around by Oliver Stone, and then inserted a new character mocking Stone’s worse traits into the True Romance screenplay in time for Scott to film it. I’ve known a few people with low-level connections to Hollywood who have met Stone, and they’ve said that the True Romance character’s portrayal wasn’t far off from the real guy.
Let’s take a moment to give credit to Saul Rubinek for his hilarious deadpan portrayal of said movie director.
I have the novelization of NBK. I don’t know how many details may have been present in the Tarantino story, but I gotta say, I’d have liked to have seen a movie faithful to the novelization. Things actually made sense.
That said, I liked NBK. It was my favorite “dark/adult” movie of that year until Pulp Fiction came out. Btw, Forrest Gump was my favorite light/family movie that year.
“Coming Home in a Body Bag” (and the sequel, Body Bags 2) cracks me up every time. It reminds me of the titles of movies on Seinfeld like Prognosis Negative and Sack Lunch.
Robert Downey, Jr. is truly the most entertaining part of Natural Born Killers, as is Rodney Dangerfield as Mallory’s father. I’ll give Stone credit for that.
NBK is an awful film. It’s hyopcritical in that it celebrates violence while pretending to decry it. It takes an almost orgasmic joy in the suffering of the innocent. It’s also bombastic and poorly made and it stars Woody Harrelson and Juliet Lewis.
Tarantino has disowned any connection with this POS.
I was going to see Death Blow with the guys, but my GF made me go toThe Muted Heart with her. :mad:
Really? 'cause I gotta say, NBK is the last movie I’d want to see on Halucinogens (Not that I do that sort of thing any more). I just found it profoundly unpleasant, like listening to a serial killer justify his actions. If I was watching it under LSD or Shrooms, I’d probably have walked out.
I liked it. While its anti-media satire was rather over the top and childish it had solid acting, looked good and the love story wasn’t half bad. And the fact that its eeeevil and hypocritical only adds to my enjoyment of it.
I think Natural Born Killers is a flawed masterpiece. I have the original QT script (it’s available on Amazon for cheap if you want it), and it’s really a different movie. More Bonnie and Clyde than the slapstick version of Public Enemy it became in Stone’s hands. “Slapstick” being the key word there, because the movie is, at its heart, a comedy. It’s an extremely broad satire that is still very relevant.
Hollywood movies have done this from the beginning. The gangster movies of the 1930’s (like the aforementioned Public Enemy) did it, and so do the big action movies of today. Bad Boys II, for example, has a scene where Will Smith drives a Hummer through a shantytown, destroying literally dozens of homes along the way. That’s the kind of thing Stone was shoving in the viewer’s face.
Ah, the Hollywood spin machine was in its highest revs when this film came out.
They kept trying to tell us how daring, orginal and virtuoso this crapfest was. Tarantino, IIRC, demanded to havehis name removed from the screenwriting credit in protest.
I got sick to death of hearing how good a film I was supposed to think it was. It reminded me of the release of another appalling, over-the top shitfest from xeveral years earlier, “The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover”.
Then Pulp Fiction came out, and NBK and all the appreciation for it went away. Yay!
It was a wonderful 1990s retribution moment, right up there with when “The Crying Game” began with the original 1960s version of “When a Man Loves a Woman”, and suddenly Michael Bolton’s career took a big nosedive.
The criticism of the media is certainly relevant, but I agree that it’s hypocritical and way too over the top. I also think that the anti-cop stuff is ridiculous. Tommy Lee Jones’s performance was incredibly cartoonish.
I agree with that. I think they could possibly have pulled off almost sympathizing with everyone if they did it right though.
The criticism of the media is certainly relevant, but I agree that it’s hypocritical and way too over the top. I also think that the anti-cop stuff is ridiculous. Tommy Lee Jones’s performance was incredibly cartoonish.
I agree with that. I think they could possibly have pulled off almost sympathizing with everyone if they did it right though.
I really liked it, pretty much for the same reasons y’all DISliked it. Except that Native American dude in the middle. That came from nowhere and went nowhere.
Yeah, the movie was a cartoon. That’s what I liked about it. It was a live action Elmer Fudd vs. Daffy Duck fest. Come on… Rodney Dangerfield’s “abusive molesting father played as hilarious sitcom dad” bit was gold. The sheer over-the-toppedness of the jailbreak and prison riot.
Definitely not my favorite movie, but it was a good chuckle.
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