Even his most ardent supporters have a difficult time defending Quentin Tarantino's acting. He does not, contrary to widely held belief, suck, although his acting is very mannered and he reads onscreen as fairly difficult to direct (since he always seems to do variations on one particular type of motormouth). Still, he can be an entertaining presence (see Reservoir Dogs, Sleep With Me, Pulp Fiction, hosting Saturday Night Live) and when it was announced that he'd be co-starring with Marisa Tomei and Stephen Lang on Broadway, I thought, “Huh. Hope that works.”
This reaction was in stark contrast to the consensus, which was general apoplexy: “THIS IS THE WORST THING THAT COULD POSSIBLY HAPPEN TO THE THEATRE!!!!” I, as many of you know—some to your great exasperation—act in and write plays, and the great majority of my close friends are theatre artists (Ed. Note: the difference between “theatre” and “theater” is roughly equivalent to “film” and “movie”). Theatre people are very protective of the theatre, and the kind of rough-around-the-edges, experimental downtown indie types that I proudly call colleagues/friends/prospective bank robbery partners have a relationship with Broadway that can get a little complicated now and then. In 1998, when Quentin was cast in a revival of Wait Until Dark (which was made into an awesome Audrey Hepburn-in-peril movie back in the 60s), the most common reaction among the theatre people I was around at the time (not, I should clarify, my current awesome circle) was equal parts the above-capitalized disgust, nearly always capped off by the condescending dismissal “It's just stunt casting,” which segued into a three-hour ellipsis about anarcho-Marxist theatre theory.
Civilians were a little burnt out on Quentin at this point, too. The fucking guy had been all over every single kind of media for over four years, and for your average civilian type—working some job that sucks, going to the movies for entertainment rather than some kind of transcendental intellectually visceral shamanistic ritual, judging movies individually rather than in the context of a director's career or the history of cinema—that was a bit much. Another thing to keep in mind about civilians is that, not having the advantage of holistic theories of creativity that frankly aren't even that widespread among intellectual artist types, the reaction “Fuck is this guy doing on fuckin Broadway? He's not an actor, he's a writer/director” is natural. And, ironically, since it's the same conclusion at which one arrives after a painstaking dissection of Quentin's career with the full armament of theory, historical context, and the scientific method, I have to hand it to the civilians on this one.
Now, I didn't actually see Quentin in Wait Until Dark, so I don't know whether he was good or bad or what. I do, however, have the funny feeling that despite the New York Times' insistence that “reports of his inadequacy have not been exaggerated,” that reports of his inadequacy might have been exaggerated just a smidge. I am willing to entertain the possibility that he wasn't good, but the vehemence with which everyone started slamming him seemed to have less to do with his actual (potentially not-that-great) performance and more to do with media burnout and a collective lack of intellectual and aesthetic flexibility on the part of the critical community. Quentin told Peter Biskind, “The acting bug was very big on me at that time . . . I was really chomping at the bit because I wasn't acting in Jackie Brown.” So when offered the chance to act on Broadway, he jumped at the opportunity.
We must also bear in mind that Quentin was not acting on Broadway because he was doing some bullshit vanity production. Some producer cast him in the hopes his name recognition would put asses in seats. Quentin took the part for the thrill of being on Broadway and to scratch his acting itch, but was treated by critics as though he wantonly, of his own accord, blasphemed against the theeaaaatuhh and Western civilization in general. Biskind quotes an anonymous friend of Quentin's (an occasional red flag that Peter Biskind is pulling something out of his ass, but whatever) as saying “He was traumatized,” and the result was, Quentin took a step back and went off the media grid for a while.
For the next couple years, all one would hear from Quentin were reports that he was either smoking weed all the time, or working on a World War II script called Inglorious Bastards (Ed. Note: the deliberate and inscrutably brilliant misspelling came later). People were talking about him as though his ship had sailed, with Jackie Brown regarded as less than a success; Quentin himself was personally responsible for a lot of this bullshit, as for whatever reason he was publicly and privately ambivalent about Jackie Brown, since it didn't make twice the money Pulp Fiction did or win gajillions of Oscars or some such.
Out of this ambivalence came his next project, Kill Bill, written as a vehicle for Uma Thurman. Kill Bill is a massive movie: the script ran 220 pages, and Quentin shot just about every single one of them. Upon completion, the picture cost more than his previous three features combined, and was about four hours long. Harvey Weinstein, much as he loves Quentin, was like, “Uhh . . . listen, don't take this the wrong way, babe, but if you think I'm putting out a four-hour movie, think again motherfucker.” They arrived at the solution of putting the movie out in two parts; the first one dropped in fall 2003, the second in spring '04.
It's interesting how different both parts feel, even though they're from a script that reads the same from start to finish. This is an excellent opportunity to introduce one of Quentin's most unsung collaborators, editor Sally Menke (who, tragically, died while walking her dog in the middle of a recent brutal southern California heat wave; requiescat in pace), the person most likely responsible for the two volumes not only having an individual tone, but feeling like separately conceived pictures. With every picture Quentin's ever directed except Reservoir Dogs and Death Proof being in excess of two and a half hours long, the fact that all are infinitely engrossing and watchable is due in very large part to the brilliantly talented Sally Menke. Kill Bill may very well be the apex of her work with Quentin, as the feverish collection of random, disparate, occasionally dissonant influences is always reasonably lucid and legible.
The actual narrative of Kill Bill is very simple: assassin Uma Thurman was shot and left for dead by her old employer and several former colleagues on her wedding day; she does not, in fact, die, and makes it her remaining life's work to find and kill all involved. The four-hour running time is not given over to the unfolding of this narrative, though: there are many genres and cinematic traditions that need to each be paid homage, meticulously, at times with the original film stock and camera equipment, and that sort of thing takes time.
Kill Bill is not my favorite Quentin picture (I think of Vols. 1 & 2 as being one movie.) There are moments that are absolutely terrific—the O-Ren Ishii chapter, in Japan, with the anime backstory, samurai swords (wrought by Sonny fucking Chiba), barefoot Japanese girl power pop trio, Crazy 88, Gogo, and massive motherfucking sword fight is one of the coolest action sequences any human being will ever stage. The bit in Vol. 2 where Uma goes to learn kung fu from Gordon Liu is pretty fuckin great too (Gordon Liu looks like he's having a blast playing with his fake beard and making racist/misogynist wisecracks at Uma's expense). But there are a lot of moments I don't entirely get, that drag for me, and there's a bit too much of being told such and such a character is cool rather than being shown.
Also—and I realize a lot of people think I'm out of mind on this count—I think the part of Bill was miscast. Every good action picture needs a good villain, and every good revenge movie really needs a good villain. And Bill certainly has potential. But given the fact that we never see him full on in Vol. 1, when he walks into frame in Vol. 2 as David Carradine, I'm kinda like . . . really? This old hippie is the most feared assassin in the world? It goes down, in one not-so-humble critic's opinion, as Quentin's first-ever casting fuckup. He originally offered the part to Warren Beatty, who did his usual epic Warren Beatty dithering that's equal parts salary negotiation, passive-aggressive request for script rewrites, and reluctance to go to work for anything other than the perfect part, and Quentin eventually got fed up with Warren Beatty's shit simultaneously with Warren turning down the role, and as I understand it—I might have heard wrong—Quentin was in a tight spot and had to think of a replacement fast.
It isn't so much that David Carradine's bad in the role. There's a kind of lived-in leatheriness to David Carradine that makes him a compelling presence, but he's entirely too laid back to be the most dangerous man in the world, even one whose danger is masked by a soft-spoken nature. Also, after two fucking movies and four fucking hours of Uma Thurman navigating twelve different cinematic genres and every single trope in the history of action movies and killing hundreds of people, the fact that the climax is David Carradine giving a speech (lifted from Jules Feiffer, no less) about Superman and Uma doing him in with the Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique was a bit meh for my tastes. Sure, the significance of Gordon Liu thinking Uma was cool enough to be taught the secret technique is not lost on me. Sure, the ultimate resolution of Uma being reunited with her miraculously alive daughter is the real conclusion of the movie. It's not that I don't “get it.” I just don't like it.
At the same time, I recognize Kill Bill as a massive, massive achievement in form. Quentin stands alone in his ability to synthesize and reproduce his influences, and Kill Bill shows a newly found, truly inspired ability to stage action. The way the images and music merge, always a big element of Quentin's pictures, reaches a new peak here; the truly awe-inspiring amount of weed Quentin and soundtrack supervisor Ruler Zig-Zag-Zig Allah (commonly known to y'all as the RZA) must have smoked while picking the needle drops was not in vain. Every Quentin soundtrack worth its salt needs to spawn at least one song that achieves or regains classic status solely through its use on a Quentin soundtrack— “Stuck in the Middle With You,” “Miserlou,” “Across 110th St.”—and Kill Bill's “Battle Without Honor or Humanity” (aka the DENNN DENNN DENNN song) fits the (kill?) bill nicely.
So yeah. In conclusion, not saying Kill Bill sucks, because that would be fucking stupid. It's just a little too frenetic or a little too slow for me, depending on whether it's Vol. 1 or 2 we're talking about. This is partly because I loved Jackie Brown so much that it felt—again, note the equivocation, I don't want to argue about this—like Quentin was taking a step back. Not so much because the dialogue isn't as good (the dialogue isn't as good), but because it's a step back from real problems in a real(ish) world. Nothing against Uma Thurman, but if a hundred people with swords jumped her, she kind of sort of would be fucking dead. Of course, when a hundred people with swords jumped the Black Mamba, she kicked the shit out of them, and impressively. It's just, on a personal level, Jackie Brown ripping off a half-million bucks from Samuel L. was more personally satisfying to me, because it was easier to relate to reality. Still, I do admire Quentin's willingness and ability to branch out and make a different kind of picture.
In spite of not loving Kill Bill (and despising Sin City with a disproportionate amount of vehemence; seriously, don't bring up Sin City to me unless you want to be cursed at and watch glass break), when Quentin and Robert Rodriguez announced that they were teaming up and doing a picture called Grindhouse, I said, “Gentlemen. Do proceed at your earliest convenience. This is relevant to my interests.” Because both Quentin and RR have a well-developed sense of fun, and in spite of their (mostly RR's) missteps neither are pretentious.
Grindhouse was a fun experience: Planet Terror, Rodriguez's zombie picture, was fun once (though I can live without seeing it again), and the fake trailers were fucking sweet. Quentin's featurette, Death Proof, is vintage Quentin: proudly beholden and dutifully respectful to the exploitation cinema of Quentin's youth, with a twist. Death Proof is a slasher movie where the slasher uses his car, thus making it a car chase picture, thus making it fucking awesome. Another nice twist on 70s-era exploitation pictures is that, while it features two different groups of girls being menaced by Kurt Russell, and while those different groups of girls are composed exclusively of whistle-worthy hotties, they get a chance to be reasonably well-rounded characters who get plenty more to say than just screaming.
The shortened, pared-to-the-bone version of Death Proof in the original Grindhouse is a tense, well-mounted action feature with really really fucking good car stunts (even featuring one meta-stunt; man I love Quentin sometimes). The extended version, given a separate DVD release, has a whole bunch of boring dialogue scenes with shitty, incongruous color correction, so definitely stick with the “original.” Both versions do kind of make one wish Quentin had done more with Kurt Russell; while the decision to have the girls turn the tables on and beat the shit out of him in the end is really cool, the establishment of him as this brutal terrifying killer is a little perfunctory. There's a certain amount of compensation Kurt Russell manages to accomplish simply by being Kurt Russell, one of the dick-swingingest fucking movie stars to ever masculinely breath air, but even that considerable asset only brings us to about 95% of what the character could have been. But again, this is Monday morning quarterbacking, and Death Proof is an extremely fun ride.
After the release of Grindhouse, Quentin announced that he would finally be making his now-legendary World War II movie. Quentin fanboys—myself, of course, included—geared themselves up for what would surely be the most awesome fucking movie in the history of fucking ever. Would we be disappointed? Or would it, in fact, rule? Tune in for the sixth and (thank fuck) FINAL installment in this examination of Quentin Tarantino's career (coming tomorrow)!
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