This last chapter of my visit to China and the KILL BILL set has been a long time coming, but that’s because it has been very difficult to wrap all of this up. Meanwhile, the New York Times has published their report from set, a nicely written way too short piece that gives you just a taste, but it did have two miniature photos, the first, from set. Unfortunately I have not yet received a photo to run with any of these stories, perhaps… some day.
Before I go into what I saw on the final day, I want to wrap up an assessment of what I think of how KILL BILL is progressing, what I think it’ll do when released and how it will eventually be accepted.
Quentin is completely realizing his vision for KILL BILL. Every quirk and whim he wants to pursue is being fulfilled. He wants a miniature of Tokyo built by the TOHO guys… done. He wants Michael Jai White doing a Kiwi accent… done. He wants more pumping gushing blood… done. Quentin wants more emotion, more subtlety, more nuance, more motivations, done done done. He wants a steadi-cam shot from the backside of a baseball – done. He wants to make a major motion picture starring David Carradine, Gordon Liu and Sonny Chiba in major parts… DONE. He wants japamation… done. Quentin Tarantino is definitely making his vision of KILL BILL.
So what does that mean?
Over two years ago, I had my first discussions with Quentin about KILL BILL. He was in Austin for QT QUATTRO – the fourth Tarantino Film Festival here in Austin. There was a group of us stragglers hanging around The Alamo Drafthouse watching reel after reel of Tim’s spectacular trailers, and as we were leaving, I began talking about Ang Lee’s rumored to be great CROUCHING TIGER HIDDEN DRAGON. Quentin was quite skeptical that the guy that made the ICE STORM was going to deliver an amazing Kung Fu flick, then began launching into a description of his upcoming Exploitation Grindhouse Kung Fu Spectacular. I have to admit that when he went into describing the fights and the style it’d be shot in, I was a bit confused. Of course we had all been drinking, and the analytical side of my brain was down in the inebriation sector of Geek Skull Control. However, I was excited by the sheer enthusiasm and energy that Quentin put into telling us about KILL BILL.
Flash to last year, the script is set down in front of me at QT 5 right before a gorgeous print of STAR TREK 2: THE WRATH OF KHAN unfurls on screen. I look at the enormous script and think… My God, Quentin has gone insane. Without cracking open a page of the document I could tell it was in excess of 200 pages – and this is that Exploitation Grindhouse Kung Fu Spectacular that he was raving about last year? Upon reading it, I finally understood what Quentin was trying to say the year before. Suddenly the films he’d been showing in the past 2 years had begun to make sense. The year before Quentin had shown a trio of Kung Fu films and was so moved by the reaction the audience had that he spilt that he hadn’t gotten a vibe like that from an audience since he had seen THE MATRIX. Quentin intimated that the MATRIX made him want to make the film he most wanted to see next. The film he dreamed of seeing made for the big screen. The script I was holding was that film.
Talking with Quentin about my thoughts after having read the script… Hearing about Yuen Woo Ping’s involvement, the casting of Sonny Chiba – long before Sonny Chiba knew he was cast I suspect. Him going into musical beats for key sequences (I’m keeping these secret, not because Quentin asked me to (he didn’t) I just think that it’d be best to just be HIT with it) and we started talking about theory of Exploitation films, and about putting real human beings within the cruelty of Exploitation Environments. When you look at Quentin’s SIGHT & SOUND top ten fave films – You begin to understand a bit.
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Leone)
Rio Bravo (Hawks)
Taxi Driver (Scorsese)
His Girl Friday (Hawks)
Rolling Thunder (Flynn)
They All Laughed (Bogdanovich)
The Great Escape (J. Sturges)
Carrie (De Palma)
Coffy (Hill)
Dazed and Confused (Linklater)
Five Fingers of Death (Chang)
Hi Diddle Diddle (Stone)
When you look at that list, you’ll notice a good deal of Exploitation films and A-movies that have some Exploitation nerves. Take in ROLLING THUNDER mix it with COFFY pour it into FIVE FINGERS OF DEATH add a pinch of the vicious retribution of CARRIE the scale of a THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY and the raw nerve of TAXI DRIVER and you have an idea of what Quentin is driving towards with KILL BILL. That’s just 6 films though… Quentin is drawing upon his love of hundreds, if not thousands, Exploitation films that he’s peppering KILL BILL with… But it isn’t all derivative. He’s specifically doing many things that he’s always wanted to see in those films, but that the filmmakers that made those films either didn’t think of, or didn’t have the technical or artistic finesse to pull off.
That’s not hype, that is what Quentin is attempting. Is he pulling it off?
Well, from what I saw in these seven days on set, I’d say, “Oh Yeah!”
However, what does pulling off KILL BILL the way Quentin wants to pull off KILL BILL actually mean in terms of the audience?
At one point on set, I heard somebody say that Quentin once said that he’s making this film for the folks that understand why David Carradine, Gordon Liu and Sonny Chiba are in the film. That if you don’t get that, then he isn’t really making the film for you. You may like it, you may love it, but the movie was made for those folks that understand the film worlds of Carradine, Liu and Chiba.
You see, Quentin isn’t making KILL BILL for everyone. He’s making it for himself and for those like him that grew up on or came to love the universe of old school Kung Fu flicks, Exploitation films and that get jazzed at the very thought of REVENGE FILMS.
This is a fetish film. Specifically it is a fetish film that is being made for those folks that attend Quentin’s QT fests and that wish they were attending the QT fests. The folks that know the magic of the WALKING TALL trilogy and stand in awe of Buford Pusser and his badass stick of pain. The folks that cheer when Tommy Lee Jones says, “Let me get my gear,” to William Devane. For the folks that get a quiver when they hear “Chiga Chiga Chaaaaaaaaa” from SEVEN BLOWS OF THE DRAGON. This is the movie designed by a lover of Spaghetti Westerns… Not just the Leone stuff, but the ones with Lee Van Cleef, Franco Nero, Giuliano Gemma… the ones by Corbucci, Valerii or Petroni. This is a revenge film that remembers that unforgivable nature of revenge that was in Fernando Di Leo’s films like WIPEOUT!, THE ITALIAN CONNECTION or the wonderful MR SCARFACE. This is the fourth crime film in a row that Quentin is making, but possibly the most obscure of the bunch, because this is the one that aims for the smallest niche audience, but could possibly connect with the greater audience that has never seen anything even vaguely like this.
You don’t have to get the references above to have a connection with this movie. Hell, you don’t have to be familiar with a single reference in the above paragraph. This isn’t a test question or a seminar… but for hardcore exploitation film buffs, it could play like the final stick of dynamite on a birthday cake we’ve been eating since birth. Something that could just blow it all away.
For the rest of the audience… For the crowd that’ll attend the inevitable CANNES screening in May of 2003… I have no clue. From what I saw, this film will have a breathless creative streak visualized not just through the dialogue and structure… the two areas that Quentin is most often recognized as having a genius in. BUT… There is a visual audacity and spectacle that is completely unlike anything that Quentin has done before. A visual palette that was hinted at in Jack Rabbit’s Slims, but that we’ve never seen before. For example… his Toho Tokyo isn’t just a Toho Tokyo, it is a Tarantino Toho Tokyo. His advertisements, his super saturated skyline… His Kato Masked Motorcycle Bodyguards… And what will the self serious critics that pepper the seats of Cannes think of a scene like that?
I don’t know.
My experience at Cannes has been fairly limited at this point. A screening of SHADOW OF THE VAMPIRE one year… and a screening of AMELIE and THE MAN WHO WASN’T THERE last year. I found all three screenings to be fairly lifeless audiences. I was the only person heard laughing at the Coen screening, and I was aghast at the stiff upper lip treatment it had at that screening. The impression I got was an audience that wouldn’t let their hair down, that sat above films, rather than sit with the movie. Like musicians that refused to follow the director, and simply idly watched, unmoved or affected by all that played before them. YET… In all cases they wound up hailing the film. Like I said, I don’t really have a bead on them.
This isn’t a film that many would consider a ‘Cannes’ film. This isn’t the type of film you generally associate with that prestigious festival. This isn’t really a film that screams AWARDS. However, it could be that complete lack of anything else like it… That 180 degree shift from the norm, that will allow KILL BILL to play there. The unexpected. The disarming. The reconception of the exploitation film presented in a manner that no exploitation film has ever been presented.. that could let it soar.
Recently the New York Times wrote about KILL BILL as being the leading film that will signal a shift to the darker recesses of the R-rating. That, as things often do, KILL BILL will be the movie that could universally take us back to more adult themed darker fare. That this sort of violence could be accepted in cinema in wake of such horrendous violence in our world with the current situations being what they are… that we as a society will be open vessels to a Revenge Film amped up by a factor of 10.
Honestly… I think it is possible. When I watch Cartoon Network and watch SAMURAI JACK and his eternal quest to kill Aku… I smile, it is, essentially a children’s tale of THE BRIDE. Aku destroyed everything dear to Jack, hurled him into the future, where he had no loved ones and no connections. Driven only by a desire for revenge and death for Aku, he powers forward destroying all associations with Aku.
To a large degree, that’s KILL BILL – only with no entrails, no shades of grey, no nuance, all PG and not for ALL ADULTS.
Quentin is making the Geek Savant film. The movie for lovers of film. Not the type that love just a type of film, but the ones that LOVE FILM in all its incantations. I think it has a larger cross-over potential than most think. There is a heavy duty female empowerment message here, that makes THELMA AND LOUISE look like misogynist fantasy material. The music for the film will reach just about everyone with a beat in their chest. And the violence? Well… It could alienate, but the violence is beyond belief. It isn’t real world violence. It is Exploitation Violence. Grindhouse Violence. Fulci Violence. And we haven’t seen its like on screen in quite some time. How much will get there will be up to the MPAA, and I’m sure they will be the toughest battle that Quentin has coming up. After Congress singling Quentin out as the bad child that ruined films by marketing violence to kids… ahembullshitahem… The MPAA might gun for this flick in particular.
However, there is a very strong subtext of not wanting to do the things that happen in this film, but being driven to them by the maker of the film. There is a DUCK AMUCK nature to KILL BILL that has The Bride in the Daffy Duck position with Quentin being the cruel Bugs Bunny that is just moving her forward, twisting and changing the path into harder and harder places to go and to conquer. There is nearly a theater of the absurd quality to what he’s doing here, but at the same time, I think the part that the MPAA will react most strongly to, will be the Texturing of the characters. Making The Bride a real human being trapped in this world will be the most offensive action. Had she been a robot that malfunctioned and had no emotions and was driven by unchanging programming to carry out the deaths and dismemberments of a hundred or more… I think they’d be ok with it. But The Bride is being played as a deeply human being on an inhuman quest… I think that is where they’ll object. Where the double-standard will come in. That it won’t be cartoon enough for them.
Of course this is speculation on my part. That’s what all of this is, this recap. This thesis on what I think of all that I’ve seen. I know that the film is being shot exactly the way I hoped it would be shot. I know many of my friends are going to love it and ask for many helpings of it. In fact, I don’t have a friend that won’t love this film with both arms, legs and an involuntary humping action. Simply because, my friends are pretty cool.
For many, this will be something they haven’t seen anything even close to looking like KILL BILL before. That is a formula for a strong reaction. Positive. Or Negative. Or Both. However, I feel that the audience that will find KILL BILL, though significantly smaller than the mainstream, will love and rewatch and support the film like very few films that audiences ever get to react to. For those that connect to KILL BILL, it will near fanaticism. And those that the movie doesn’t connect to, will shake their heads and declare all those people as being depraved lunatics that symbolize the impending doom of mankind. And if those people are right, then let it burn, because this is a movie that this Grindhouse lover is dying to see.
Is there a chance I won’t love this film?
I suppose. I was only there for 7 days of filming, and the film is scheduled to shoot for 111 days. Which means I was there for slightly more than 6% of the filming of the movie, but will likely end up being about 5%. How much can I really tell?
Well, every scene that I saw, that I had read in the script was performed, shot and realized better than I could possibly of imagined. To illustrate this, let me tell you of the last half day on the set of KILL BILL… The presentation of the Sword of Vengeance from Hattori Hanzo to The Bride… Here’s the scene as written in the script…
OVER BLACK
TITLE APPEARS:
"One week later"
Under black we hear Hattori Hanzo's voice in Japanese and
read the subtitles;
HANZO (V.O.; JAPANESE)
I'm done doing what I swore an oath
to God 28 years ago to never do
again. I've created, "something
that kills people." And in that
purpose I was a success.
FADE UP ON
CU HATTORI HANZO
HANZO (JAPANESE)
I've done this, because
philosophically I'm sympathetic to
your aim.
EX CU The HANZO SWORD
TRACKING EX CU of the Hanzo sword in its shiny, black wood
sheath. At the base of the sheath, by the handle, he's carved
the face of a lioness...
HANZO (V.O.; JAPANESE)
I can tell you with no ego, this is
my finest sword. If on your
journey, you should encounter God,
God will be cut.
CU HANZO.
HANZO (JAPANESE)
Revenge is never a straight line.
It's a forest. And like a forest
it's easy to lose your way...to get
lost...
to forget where you came in. To
serve as a compass, a combat
philosophy must be adopted that can
be found in the secret doctrine of
the Yagu Ninja. And now my yellow
haired warrior, repeat after me;
HANZO (V.O.; JAPANESE)
I'm done doing what I swore an oath
to God 28 years ago to never do
again. I've created, "something
that kills people." And in that
purpose I was a success.
HANZO (JAPANESE)
I've done this, because
philosophically I'm sympathetic to
your aim.
HANZO (V.O.; JAPANESE)
I can tell you with no ego, this is
my finest sword. If on your
journey, you should encounter God,
God will be cut.
HANZO (JAPANESE)
Revenge is never a straight line.
It's a forest. And like a forest
it's easy to lose your way...to get
lost...
to forget where you came in. To
serve as a compass, a combat
philosophy must be adopted that can
be found in the secret doctrine of
the Yagu Ninja. And now my yellow
haired warrior, repeat after me;
