Hey, at least I tip.
I’m commenting on the idea which was raised that he’s distilling exploitation/schlock films down to their essence. I agree that that’s his intention. But I disagree that he’s ever succeeded or ever likely to do so. Not/hardly including any T&A is an obvious example of where he’s failed to do it, and subsequenly easy to point out, but overall I would have to say that every one of his films in this genre misses the mark and isn’t a particularly good example of it. They’re good “Tarantino” films. But they’re not very interesting as exploitation films, wire-fu films, schlock films, etc. He lacks the crudeness, wackiness, and funness to pull it off, short of physically copying just such a scene out of one of the original films.
If (zombie) MC Escher was asked to paint an impressionist piece, I’m sure he would produce good art, but you’d still do better to kick him in the ass and tell him to break out the geometry and a block of wood.
Anyways, I don’t want to derail the thread or turn it into a debate. This is my opinion and I don’t require anyone to agree with it.
I like the comments about being able to MacGuyver a great scene/movie out of forgotten tidbits and otherwise mundane (but useful) things like actors/scripts/songs. That’s a pretty good description of what makes Trantino so great.
And I don’t think there’s one ounce of “luck” involved in him finding the actors that are perfect for his roles. That’s also part of his genius.
And yes, Basterds did have more than just that one great scene, even if I didn’t like the movie as a whole.
In fact, all of his movies “taken as a whole” pretty much suck by any standard definition/summary, but when you take each scene and add them together you get way more than the sum of the parts. It’s magical.
Actually, that’s a fiction that Travolta’s people seem to have created. He had just finished the last of the “Look WHo’s” films and while he wasn’t an A-list actor, he could have easily transitioned into television again in he chose to or simply made “Nick Cage” style fare well into the next century. Also his share of the Saturday Night fever soundtrack and he percentages of his successful films grosses has always meant that John Travolta acts because he wants to, not because he needs to do so.
I’m a big movie fan and I don’t care for Tarantino’s work myself. While his films are stylistically good, they are also pothole riddled messes that really don’t hold up to repeated viewings. His dialogue is often wooden and false-sounding and his secondary characters are often simply ciphers rather than “real” people. His frequent use of the word “nigger” is growing tiring as well. It’s as if he thinks that he now has a “N-word pass” and that his work have somehow given him “street creed” in the Black community.
He doesn’t and it hasn’t.
Tarantino’s “genius”, in my opinion, is his ability to deflect serious scrutiny of his films and to be able to make the viewing public believe that his essentially grind house replica fare is somehow “high art.” Those to alone have allowed him to have a career as long as he has while only making a small number of movies int total.
Slight hijack, but wasn’t there a lawsuit around that scene because Tarantino didn’t give credit to the person who actually wrote it?
Nothing comes up on google.
The Butch arc was originally a rough draft by Roger Avary for a film called Pandemonium Reigns. He and Tarantino worked together on True Romance and started Pulp Fiction together. Avary then left to go work on a different project and sold his part to Tarantino. The credits do include a “based on a story by” for Avary. How much of Pandemonium Reigns made it into the final Pulp Fiction script has never quite been settled. I don’t think Avary would have been able to sue since he did sell it to Tarantino.
That’s exactly what I mean, though. How many people are A-List actors at 26, fall back down a shelf or two, and then are A-List actors again at 40 and stay that way for the next decade? It’s unusual enough that I can’t think of another example.
Not exactly similar, he fell a bit further down and stayed at the bottom for quite some time, but what about Mickey Rourke?
Travolta was considered a has-been before Pulp Fiction’s release, and that’s not revisionist history. The mention of his name elicited laughter. He was the guy who danced to cheesy 70s disco.
Tarantino’s film enabled him to do Nick Cage style fare (Face Off, anyone?) going forward.
I just happened to rewatch Kill Bill v.1 yesterday since it came on Netflix. I watched #1 years ago and didn’t bother with 2 because it didn’t do anything for me. Don’t know if I’ll get to it this time either.
I think I “get” what he’s trying to do, that his movies like KB are supposed to be fantasies that are “meta-movies” epitomizing their genre. But it feels like to me he’s trying too hard, or something. The problem with creating something deliberately artificial is, when do you know when to stop? How did Pollack know when the last paint splatter was enough, or how did Mondrian know when to stop subdividing his little rectangles? Tarantino is like a chef who throws every ingredient he has into the soup to try to make it the best thing ever.
I understand the spraying blood geysers, painstakingly choreographed fight scenes and generally overwrought revenge plot are all meant to be over the top in KB. But so much is thrown in- now the lights are turned off so silhouettes are sword fighting against a blue screen! Now everything turns orange to show the bride’s need for revenge! Now everything is in black and white during a fight scene, then snaps back to full color when the bride blinks, for some reason! It’s exhausting.
I’m not saying he doesn’t have talent. That opening scene in Inglorious Basterds was a fantastic piece of tension-building. I just think if he dialed back all the clever movie tricks by 30 or 40% his movies would be better for it.
Laurence Fishburn?
What I think Tarantino does better than any director I’ve scene is create genuine tension and fear in his movies. He does this extremely well in Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and Death Proof. In each case, he raises the stakes so that you really care about the physical well-being of the characters. He should be studied and emulated for this, since I can’t think of anyone who comes even close.
That said, I’m not a big fan. What kills him is what someone mentioned above: his adolescent sensibility. Sorry, I can’t agree about the dialog. I think it’s actually a weak point of his movies. He has characters blab on and on about nonsense. For example, the girls in Death Proof just don’t talk like real women their age. I’ve never met a single woman who knows who Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich (not saying they don’t exist!), but the dialog struck me as the fantasy dialog of what a guy like Tarantino would consider cool chicks (not that I don’t sympathize). I always feel watching his movies that a sorta clever 15-year-old was the main writer.
Beyond that, the violence is extreme and sadistic. The Kill Bill movies reflect simply abysmal taste, stupid cliches, etc. I do love the fight between Uma and the Japanese girl, however!
I agree with many here that Jackie Brown is his best movie.
Is Tarantino a genius? I certainly think he has genius aspects to his movies and he has a unique talent for creating tension and fear. But his virtues are greatly compromised by his vices.
The only real add-on is the transition from black and white to color, which I think the studio insisted on because the scene was too bloody otherwise. The fighting silhouettes, flashback in orange with siren sound and such are direct references to the similar films, like much of the film itself.
To me, Kill Bill 1&2 suffer the most of his films from studio interference/greed, chiefly from the insistence that it be split into two films. He shot enough footage for two movies, but there wasn’t enough for two good ones.
You could say that Robert Downey Jr hit bottom about as hard as possible some time after his first Oscar nomination – but between a point in '08 before Iron Man and a point in '09 after Sherlock Holmes, he spectacularly earned himself a second Oscar nomination with Tropic Thunder and suddenly became the A-Lister of A-Listers.
Are you implying that Friends & Lovers was a lousy movie or something? 
I thought about Robert Downey Jr too. Although, in his case, did he really hit rock bottom professionally? Personally, yes, heroine will do that to you. But he was Charlie Chaplin in Chaplin in 1992, an important secondary character in 1994’s Natural Born Killers, in Richard III in 1995, Gingerbread Man in 1998, Bowfinger in 1999. I guess the 2000 to 2004 period was spent in minor movies and roles but he was hardly done with.
Mickey Rourke, though, yeah, he was “That guy who used be the good looking lead in movies to but not look at how much of a wretch he is”. I remember seeing a documentary on celebrities where he kissed a man to get media attention. And it didn’t work outside that documentary.
The reason he was cast in Sin City* is precisely because he was the perfect guy to play the messed up, tortured wretch that Marv was.
*A Robert Rodriguez movie, who must have learned some casting tricks from his friend Tarantino.
There’s really wasn’t much studio interfrence in Kill Bill, I’ve watched the complete cut. It’s almost the same exact movie, it just has a more violent scene when she fights the crazy 88 (which you can see on Youtube) it doesn’t have the recap at the beginning of film 2, and they don’t reveal the spoiler about the bride’s daughter until the very end of the film.
He also wanted to do a longer anime sequence, but it was cut for budget reasons and never filmed. the anime sequence would have shown Oren killing the samurai dude who murdered her family. The movie was split into 2 because it was too long, not due to studio greed.
People also forget that RDJ was in the cast of Ally McBeal back when that show was a hit and people remember who Callista Flockhart still was. He was earning a living, although nowhere near what he now commands. Downey Jr. is another Hollywood actor for whom his publicists have created a fictional “down period” which in reality didn’t exist.
Was it hard for him to get some roles?
Certainly.
But he was never “down and out” along the lines of:
Tom Sizemore
Rip Torn
Randy Quaid
Jan Michael Vincent
Ad infinitum
Isn’t editing the typical solution for a movie that’s too long?