Quentin Tarantino | Feature | Charged

n a M e h T ...

t r a p A “I love affecting you while you are watching a movie.”

Tell us about Inglorious Bastards, your new World War II movie.

It’s my next big Mt. Everest movie. Kill Bill was the last Mt. Everest and Inglorious Bastards is the new one.

People quote lines from your movies all the time, especially Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs. Which piece of dialogue are you most proud of writing?

The one to beat is the Sicilian monologue in True Romance that Dennis Hopper and Christopher Walken played out. You know about the Sicilians and the Moors and the blacks? That’s the one to beat as far as my monologues are concerned.

Your films are very violent. Where does your passion for violence and torture come from?

It’s not so much that I have a passion for torture per say, I have a passion for visceral images and intense situations that affect an audience. So it’s not just images blazing over. You are engaged, you

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are experiencing their pleasure or their pain. And you are stuck in those kinds of situations. The effect that has on an audience watching a movie, that’s what I am about. I love affecting you while you are watching a movie.

In the case of the ear-cutting scene in Reservoir Dogs, I am trying to make you squirm. But it’s different though. I am also trying to make you dance. You are getting into Mr. Blonde doing his dance and playing the music and you are kind of feeling it. It makes you a co-conspirator. But it’s too late, you can’t take back that you were actually enjoying the dance two seconds earlier. So now you are complacent in the situation. And I think that’s a great emotion to feel as a viewer. I love being conflicted and to be made complicit with things that I don’t agree with or what I think is horrible during the course of a movie. I like looking through somebody’s eyes that I would never look through in the course of the movie and thinking about it.

I want to get the audience to laugh, laugh, laugh and then stop you laughing. Laugh, laugh laugh and

o has n ti n ara T n Quenti ? k c aling e a t H s ? f t o s a m l c hi cuse Icono Visionary? many things. Some ac this proves his d been calle ther films, others say is rivalled by o es ideas from and respect for movi lp Fiction quotes... knowledge ? We’re STILL using Pu s none. And u

“I don’t know if I will ever do a Vega Brothers movie. I don’t really have an idea.” then horrify you. Then get you laughing again. To get you laughing again after I have taken you to hell. That’s the talent. That’s the trick. That’s what makes it a fun time.

What is the most terrifying thing you have experienced in real life?

I have seen a lot of fights. But the most visually arresting thing that ever happened to me was when I was living in Korea Town in Los Angeles.

I was waiting for a bus at midnight on Western Ave and Santa Monica Boulevard. At that time, there was a bunch of black transvestite hookers roaming the streets. They were street walkers but men dressed up as women. I am waiting on the bus stop and one of the transvestite hookers was waiting near me at the bus stop. Then all of a sudden I see a van pull up on the corner and this kid hops out of the car with a baseball bat and she didn’t see him and I am watching him walk up behind her with the baseball bat. Now I am thinking I have to say something but I am actually so taken with the image and shocked by what’s going down that I am not almost saying something. Just as I am getting ready to say something she feels it.

And she turns around and the kid’s here with the baseball bat and getting ready to swing. The transvestite says, “Don’t do it. I’m vice! Don’t do it!

I’m vice. I’ll throw your ass in jail.” And the kid hit

him, but took the momentum out of it and hit her in the arm. And just as soon as he did that, the van doors opened up and three other vatos hop out on the street. I started running, the transvestite started running. And because I was running in front of the transvestite, she was following me. I turned left so he turned left. Eventually the vatos gave up.

You should write it into a script?

It has all the elements I try to put in my scripts.

It’s scary, it’s funny. That whole vice thing is the kind of thing that doesn’t happen in an action scene in a movie but happens in real life.

What is your favorite possession?

That’s an interesting question. Hmmm. That’s stopped me in my tracks. Let me think about it for a second. OK. Being a writer, my most valuable possessions would be all of my writing. If I had to think of something I have to save as the house is burning, I would take that. I have Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs and everything in long hand.

Typing is the last thing I do. Everything else is in long hand. When I start typing it up, that lets you know I’m getting towards being finished. So Kill Bill for 1.5 years was just in hand-written form.

All of your movies contain a reference to fictional Red Apple cigarettes. Why is that?

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tarantino: the man apart

I was listed under King Lear as one of the actors in that movie, which I thought was one of the greatest things in the world.

r a f s a t a be o t e n o e e r a “Th s e u g o nol o m y m s ian a l i c Si e h t is d e n r e c n ce.” n co a m o R e in Tru Are you a smoker?

No, I don’t smoke but I like the idea that my movies are taking place on my planet. And I don’t mention this brand or the next brand. But I like creating my own brands that take place on my planet. I’m not saying it’s an unrealistic planet. It could be realer than most movies. But it isn’t my world. So I like developing different fast food restaurants and cigarettes and beers and all that kind of stuff.

the time might have passed.

What are you scared of as a man?

I am scared of rats. That is my phobia. I never had any bad encounters with them. As a little kid in school I didn’t know the difference between a mouse and a rat and then I read a newspaper article on rats and it just freaked me out. Ever since then I have been freaked out by rats. It’s a completely irrational phobia.

So how did you actually come up with Red Apple cigarettes?

I don’t know to tell you the truth. I think it came up on the spur of the moment. Red Apple cigarettes are referred to in Reservoir Dogs, there is an advertisement with it in the Japanese airport in Kill Bill, you actually see the real pack in Pulp Fiction and there is a poster for it in Jackie Brown. And there is even one movie for it that I didn’t do it. It’s in Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion. There is a billboard for Red Apple cigarettes in it. My girlfriend of the time, Mira Sorvino, was in the movie and the production designer was one of the set decorators on Pulp Fiction. So he was like, “I still have all that art work, can we do a billboard with Red Apple?” I said, “Yeah, go for it, man!”

Do you still collect board games?

I haven’t kept up with the collection but I have a big collection of board games that have to do with movies and TV shows. I have The A-Team game. I have the Dawn of the Dead game. It’s a great game.

There is even a solitaire version that you can play by yourself. I taught Robert Rodriguez how to play.

He liked it so much he went on the internet, got one and plays it with his kids now.

Are you ever going to make a movie about the Vega brothers (Vince, Travolta’s character from Pulp Fiction, and Vic, Michael Madsen’s character from Reservoir Dogs)?

I don’t know if I will ever do it or not. I don’t really have an idea. As time goes on, I think they are getting maybe a little too old. I’ve actually figured out a way that if I come up with a good idea that I could actually deal with the fact that they are older.

But I don’t know if I am ever going to do it. I think

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Is it true that when you were trying to make it as a struggling actor, you falsely claimed you acted in Dawn of the Dead and King Lear?

Yeah, it was back when I was trying to be an actor but I didn’t have any credits. So I lied on my resume.

I also created a lot of movies that never existed and put them on there. I put Dawn of the Dead on there because there was a guy who kind of looked like me in one of the motor cycle gangs. And then I saw King Lear at the theater but realised that it was really bad and that nobody was going to see it. And even if they did see it, they would never get through it. So I put it on my acting bio. Little did I know that when I did Reservoir Dogs, my acting bio got re-circulated. So all of a sudden it got reported that I was in King Lear. And then a couple of years later, I was watching Leonard Maltin’s Movies on TV, and

How many films do you watch a week?

It depends on what mood or zone I am in. For instance, one of the things I am doing right now is writing a film review book on old school martial arts movies. So I am watching a couple of kung fu movies a day, making notes and deciding if this is one of the things I want to review or not. That is a fun excuse to dive into cinema.

What movies don’t you like?

I am not into what I call costume drama, the James Ivory kind of thing. I am more about people who break moulds as opposed to people who hold fast to rules that they never believed in the first place.

Is there anything you haven’t done that you would really want to do?

I like genre filmmaking. So I want to make my spaghetti western, a World War II movie and another kung fu movie. One of the only things that I really wanted to do that I couldn’t do was Casino Royale, the James Bond film. I wanted to do the first one. I am a little annoyed that the Bond producers never even called me up or gave me the respect to talk to me about it because I can tell you they would not be making Casino Royale if I hadn’t talked about it.

Who do you admire as a filmmaker?

There are a few. Right now the directors I admire are pretty much my peers. I admire Robert Rodriguez, Richard Linklater, Eli Roth is terrific. I admire Johnny To. Those are the guys that when I go to a film festival and they are showing films, I try to see those.

Will you stay with film or switch to digital?

Any of my real babies I will do on film. Part of the fun of doing Grind House with Robert was doing it on digital at his studio. He has it all set up. Francis Ford Coppola’s dream for Zoetrope [an independent studio] is Robert’s reality, with Troublemaker Studios. What’s great about digital is what on film would take a year or 1.5 years you can conceivably do in six months. There are all kinds of movies that I would like to make that would be good but I don’t want to give up a year of my life doing. But six months, yeah that’s not too bad, that’s cool.

What are your Top 5 movies of all time?

The Good the Bad and the Ugly, Real Bravo, Blowout, Five Fingers of Death, His Girl Friday.

“I admire Robert Rodriguez, Richard Linklater, Eli Roth and Johnny To.” sept 2009

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