I recently posted an item about the release of the movie Grindhouse, a double bill directed by Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino. My pal Dan Dorman then followed with two lengthy comments, which has now prompted me to respond with this lengthy post. Mind you, neither of us has seen Grindhouse, but from what I can tell, seeing that movie won’t invalidate our remarks.
Dan raised a number of issues, generally taking Tarantino to task. The two of us have had this discussion before, so this is familiar ground. Let me break this down into segments.
Rodriguez v. Tarantino
Unlike Dan, my impression of the Grindhouse reviews was that Tarantino’s section Death Proof was better reviewed than Rodriguez’s Planet of Terror. In any case, I consider Rodriguez to be a talented genre director, but nothing more. In contrast, Tarantino is always unique. Rodriguez is clearly a more disciplined director, but he seems less acrobatic creatively.
For example, Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003) is an action movie, The Faculty (1998) is horror, but they’re pretty straight-forward, not genre-bending. In contrast, Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs (1992) ripped off City on Fire (1987), as well as other films. He commits such homage/plagiary all the time; for example, see this article or this page with two videos. What his critics seems to miss is that the results of Tarantino’s theft is nothing like the original work. He seems incapable of just making a straight genre film. For exmaple, Reservoir Dogs is a heist movie in which you don’t even see the heist and the whole thing is shown out of order. Tarantino is a guy who loves Jack Hill and Jean-Luc Godard.
(Of course, I’ve just finished writing this paragraph and noticed that Phil Nugent has essentially said the same damn thing. This is why I cut back on my blog reading once I started writing one.)
Shall we pay tribute to trash?
Both Rodriguez and Tarantino adore cult flicks, B-movies and grindhouse films. I think one of Tarantino’s shortcomings is that he has a real love affair with such fare. If you look at a list of Top 10 films from him, you’ll note that most of it is decent films, but also with Rolling Thunder, Coffy and Five Fingers of Death. Reading Danny Peary‘s three-volume Cult Movies series years ago convinced me that many of these movies are cult films for a reason: they’re deeply flawed. Mimicking their defects is a little disconcerting.
Tarantino as recycler
As I’ve already mentioned Tarantino borrows from other films. Dan charges him with “using the same characters but changing the names.” In the book Killer Instinct, Natural Born Killer producer Jane Hamsher said that Tarantino had a massive script in his early days, which he scavenged from for all of his early films. His creativity seems to come from how he puts things together, not in original creativity.
The problem with Kill Bill
In his comments, Dan comes down pretty hard on Kill Bill Vols. 1 & 2. I actually like those movies a lot, but I understand Dan’s criticism. The way I articulated his view is that Tarantino seemed to have struggled with the approach of making a high-minded treatise on honor and revenge (sort of like Point Blank) or a chop socky tribute to the Shaw Brothers movies. I do like enough parts of the pair of films (or the one long version that will surely come out on DVD some day), but I do admit that it is uneven. Dan says, “Kill Bill to me was like anybody’s film.” I completely disagree. People have been ripping off Hong Kong films over the last few years, but nobody’s rip-off was like KB.
I have to agree with Dan that Tarantino’s movies are usually a fascinating mess. I’m glad he keeps making movies. My favorite film of his is the one that I consider the most mature: Jackie Brown. Tarantino seems a little embarrassed by it, since it wasn’t as successful as Pulp Fiction. Now that Grindhouse is doing so poorly, maybe he can stop worrying about financial success and just work on making a great movie.
Tags: Grindhouse, Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino
4 Responses
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Dan Dorman Says:
You honor me yet again with your posts, sir. Thank you but please do not mistake my incoherent ramblings as finite criticism.
Looking back I have never really been able to pinpoint the exact reason for my dislike (or rather distaste) of Kill Bill. I can honestly say that part of it has to do with David Carradine — but not in the way that you might think. He was PERFECT in the role (probably the only perfect thing in the whole film). Truth be told, I had a screenplay idea many years ago when Carradine was wallowing away in ‘Kung Fu the Legend Continues land’ and my idea was totally to resurrect his career from the dead. Incidentally, my idea was nothing like Kill Bill nor was it martial arts/kung fu/chop sockey related. So there’s part of it. I guess I was just a little jealous that Quentin got to him first.
The other thing is, I guess I was just expecting more. Maybe it is a good movie and maybe no one could have done it like Tarantino but when I say “anybody’s film” I think I am mostly commenting on how hollow it left me. I didn’t even find it joyful as purely an entertainment. I guess it just wasn’t what I was expecting: a Quentin Tarantino meets Shaw Brothers meets Hitori Hanzo meets Lady Snowblood meets Game of Death meets whatever else you feel like throwing in there to be. I guess I’m tired of having to pick apart the good stuff from his movies.
Sure I could go out on a ledge and say that parts of it were like a Leone western and parts of it looked like 70′s drive-in schlock and that Klingon proverb quote at the beginning was perfect (and the music in Tarantino’s films is always splendid) but fuck it if the whole thing didn’t seem arrogant and sophomoric to me. Maybe Tarantino is a snob after all. Eh, whateva. Still, gotta resect the man’s fetish — chicks kickin’ ass. I’m still waiting for him to stop fartin’ around and make a full-on female martial arts film starring Cynthia Rothrock.
Uma also makes me want to throw up in my mouth. Don’t know what it is about her. That cutesy fucking shallow dialogue he gave her throughout half the fucking movie didn’t help either. At least I could stomach it in Pulp Fiction (remember back when Uma played the blind girl in Jennifer 8 and she seemed like a decent actress?) At least Michael Parks is getting work ’cause of this guy. And David Carradine has pretty much been forgotten again already (except for his steady stream of commercial work post KB) so he should be due in five years or so for another revival.
Maybe I would have liked Kill Bill more if he revived Chuck Norris’ career instead.
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Dan Dorman Says:
Just for the record — I have no serious film projects in mind presently for Chuck Norris but if that one-note-scene-stealin’-ex-video-store-clerk-wanna-be-new-waver puts Norris in his next film, I’m suing.
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Dan Dorman Says:
Tarantino, take notes:
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The Pop View Says:
James Wolcott expressed his displeasure:
On the subject of Tarantino, I concur with Will Self, who wrote in Junk Mail, “Mr. Tarantino is essentially a pasticheur and an artistic fraud,” to which I would add “and a pimp for geek sadism.” Indeed, he has in danger of becoming the Charles Graner of cinema, presiding over the festivities with a big thumbs up and a jack-o’-lantern grin.
