| Quentin
Tarantino
Death Proof
Quentin
Tarantino burst onto the movie scene with Reservoir Dogs in 1992,
a terse heist movie that changed the face of contemporary filmmaking,
fusing the slick drama of classic Hollywood with scintillating dialogue
and a smart sense of modern pop culture. His follow-up, the Palme D’Or
winning Pulp Fiction (1994), took the formula even further, adding
a post-modern French New Wave spin to a portmanteau of stories that made
mainstream stars of cult actors such as Christopher Walken and Harvey
Keitel while reintroducing the public to the under-estimated talents of
the likes of Bruce Willis and John Travolta. Since then, Tarantino has
kept a tight rein on his output, unveiling his uncharacteristically soulful
and mature character study Jackie Brown in 1997, starring Pam
Grier as a drug-smuggling air stewardess, and following it six years later
with the violent martial-arts-movie-meets-spaghetti-western-revenge-thriller
Kill Bill, released in two parts, with Uma Thurman as the mysterious
Bride, a wronged assassin fighting to wipe out the former colleagues who
tried to murder her on her wedding day. Death Proof is his fifth
film and takes its cue from the exploitation or ‘grindhouse’
movies that played in shabby, low-rent American cinemas during the 70s,
promising lurid thrills from sex and violence that, though advertised
on the poster out front, almost never quite materialised. Set in Austin,
Texas, home of long-time collaborator Robert Rodriguez, Death Proof
centres on a down-at-heel actor, Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell), who stalks
packs of pretty girls in his customised muscle car, with the express intention
of following them and smashing them to a bloody pulp…
When
did you realise that two groups of girls were going to be the focus
of Death Proof?
That was, like, the first impetus to do it. For the last three or four
years I've had a whole lot of different female friends – I have
different clusters of female posses that I hang with – and that's
kind of been the case for the last five years. I have male friends too,
but the dynamic of a bunch of girls that hang out together, and that
whole posse aspect, has been more my reality for the last few years.
I get to hear all the stuff they talk about and joke about, their camaraderie,
and most of the girls in this movie are based on one person, or a combination
of this person and that person. But I knew I wanted to follow these
girls. That's what I do – I'm a writer. I soak up this stuff and
I've gotta do something with it. Then, I started thinking about the
idea of doing something that, even though it's not a slasher film –
because it doesn't have a slasher film structure – seemingly has
a slasher film structure. So with that in mind, I was like, ‘Oh,
you know? That's the perfect format to have a bunch of girls together
and have them all hang out.’ Except they have a little better
dialogue! (Laughs) But it just presented itself, this chance to introduce
this group of girls. We're all hanging with them, and hanging with them…
till something happens. Had you been planning to make a more female-slanted
story before Death Proof? No. I’d wanted do a movie with
groups of female characters but it hadn't really found a home yet. Then
when Robert Rodriguez told me he was doing Planet Terror, a
zombie movie, it started me thinking... Y'know, I'm always going on
little genre kicks – all of a sudden I'll get on a spaghetti-western
kick and start watching them all the time – and I was just coming
off of a slasher-flick kick, I started revisiting all those again and
having a really good time. So when he brought that up, I thought, 'Oh
man, I can do a slasher film – that'd be great.' But then the
thing I like so much about slasher films are the things that make them
limiting. They're all the same, and that's actually part of their charm.
It's a perfect genre for subtext. That's why you can do so much subtextual
film criticism on them, because they follow the same pattern. And to
fuck with the pattern too much is to fuck with the genre too much. I
was like, 'OK, that would then make this too self-reflexive.' It would
be too much of a reflex exercise to do that. So I thought, 'How can
I do it my way and get what I want out of it?' And also, breaking off
from the whole slasher film, I realised I'd never really done an exploitation
movie before. Even though we spent a lot of time shooting it, I wanted
to have that opportunity, as if I was doing this in 1977, on a 20-day
schedule... It started reminding me of the kind of movies I could imagine
I would have made back in the 70s, something like The Candy Snatchers
(1973), an exploitation movie that has all these weird elements. In
hindsight, most exploitation films were actually very personal; they
were made by directors who basically were given a checklist of things
to include – nudity, violence, car chases – but then left
alone by their producers. Yeah. Death Proof
is following a slasher-film structure but there are so many fucked-up
elements to this, and that's what makes these classic exploitation movies
so great. Like The Candy Snatchers – some people saw
it the week it came out, and maybe caught it in drive-ins or on the
lower halves of grindhouse double bills, but it's not like that movie
was talked about during the 80s, the way Night of the Living Dead
was. So people are finding it again now. Now, literally years and years
later. And there's something really there. It's like Macon County
Line (1974) – you don't know this movie from the very beginning,
it just keeps unfolding. And in the case of some of the ones I really
like, it keeps unfolding in a really fucked-up way. You're going, 'Oh
my God!' Now, there's something kinda cheesy about those movies too.
I'm not going for that cheesy factor myself, in terms of the making
of the movie, but one of the things I always loved about exploitation
movies is that, even in the midst of all this whatever, you all of a
sudden start caring about the characters. You care what happens to them
and you get caught up in it, even in this silly movie. And all of a
sudden it's not silly any more because you actually give a fuck about
what happens to these people, and I love that. Especially when you're
watching it with modern audiences. When I do my film festival in Austin,
I say, 'Look, there's some funny stuff in these movies but, please,
laugh because it's funny, not to show that you're superior to it and
show how cool you are – don't laugh at it, laugh with it. And
if you resist the temptation to just ridicule this shit and take it
at face value, you'll be surprised. All of a sudden you’ll get
into the movie. And yeah, maybe it'll do all those things you might
be chortling about if you were left to your own devices and I hadn't
told you not to do it, but all of sudden you give a fuck. Now when did
that happen? You have to remember, though, that when you watch these
movies with modern-day audiences, it's a whole different experience.
When I watched these films in the real grindhouse cinemas back in the
day, there was always this laugh here and that laugh there. There was
a lot of laughing going on! We were all into 'em. When something really
funny happened, we laughed, like when someone said something really
funny or somebody got blown away in a really cool way. But there wasn't
a lot of chortling going on. We took this shit very seriously. This
is what we wanted to see.
Are
there any particular examples of that?
The guy who did it really, really well in that regards – because
his films always danced around self-parody but never fell in –
was Jack Hill. In both Switchblade Sisters (1975) and Coffy
(1973), you're watching 'em, you're into them, but you have this weird
feeling. It's almost like a neat internal struggle. Because maybe you’ll
spend the first ten or 20 minutes laughing at the movie. Then all of
a sudden you're not really laughing at it any more, you're kind of caught
up in it and you're laughing with it. You actually realise that here's
a rhythm to the dialogue. Especially in the case of Switchblade
Sisters, where it's on-the-beat/off-the-beat dialogue – every
word doesn't work as a rhyme, it's in fact the wrong word, which becomes
its own weird rhythm. And by the time Maggie and Lace are trying to
kill each other it's actually really sad. These girls should be together
– it's fucked up! And you care about Coffy and her situation.
You want her to kill those guys! So you have that internal struggle:
'Is this a cheesy movie or not?' And then all of a sudden you think,
'No, it's not. It's actually really funny. But I'm taking it in, too.
Shit... when did I start to care?' There's that little Bermuda Triangle
line, where you cross over and start to invest in the characters. If
they die, you give a fuck.
Making
DEATH PROOF, did it feel like you were Jack Hill for a few months?
It was probably closer to Jack Starrett [director of 70s thrillers Race
With The Devil and Cleopatra Jones] on this movie, with
the car chase aspect and all. But the truth of the matter is, no, I
was me. I'm doing my version of a slasher film, which doesn't look like
any slasher film, or resemble any slasher film you've ever seen before.
It has the structure of a slasher film, it has some of the same intentions
in it, but it's my weird, crazy version. It's about as much like slasher
films as Reservoir Dogs is like other heist films – but
it doesn't mean it doesn't belong in the genre. If you had a video store
and you were going to highlight heist films for a week, I'd expect Reservoir
Dogs to be on that shelf. Same way, if you're doing slasher films
or car-chase movies, I expect Death
Proof
to have its own place on the shelf, and it's up to the world to decide
how well it fits in.
In
terms of casting, did you get everyone you wanted?
I was over the moon when I got Kurt Russell – he was perfect for
me. But with the actresses, I didn’t really offer it to anybody
else. I wrote these characters that I felt really strongly about, and
then it was just a big audition process – finding the right people
to play ’em. Somebody asked Jordan Ladd, I think, ‘Oh, did
you get the part because you’re Cheryl Ladd’s daughter and
Alan Ladd’s granddaughter, and you were in Cabin Fever?’
And she was like, ‘NO! I won that part! I was THE BEST! And believe
me, if I wasn’t, somebody else would be standin’ here!’
The
role of Stuntman Mike was originally going to be played by Mickey Rourke.
Did you have to rewrite it for Kurt?
I didn't rewrite it at all. I've been known to do that. When it didn't
work out with Warren Beatty [in Kill Bill] I cast David Carradine,
and little by little I kept rewriting it. We had a big long training
period, so as I got to know him I kept making little tweaks here and
there... It was about a year later before I got round to shooting all
the Bill stuff, and it was different. But I haven't had that experience
every single time I wrote a part with someone in mind and they didn't
work out. My whole thing is not to go to the next guy – y'know,
the one that's almost like the guy – because it gives me an opportunity
to rethink my whole movie. Kurt Russell is perfect casting as Stuntman
Mike but there's nothing different about it. It's perfect casting, it's
just different from Mickey Rourke. Why is it perfect casting? There's
a wonderful aspect that Kurt has that is fantastic, and it mirrors Stuntman
Mike a lot. He's a working professional and he's been in this business
for a long time. He's done all this episodic television – he did
all those TV series, the High Chaparrals and the Harry
O's. And he's worked with fucking everybody. Literally. If you're
talking about William Smith or Cameron Mitchell, whoever. So he knows
the life that Stuntman Mike's had. He's even the same generational age
and he knows some of the jumping-off points. Cameron Mitchell would
have made a really good Stuntman Mike. So would William Smith, or Ralph
Meeker back in his day. Kurt knew all those guys, he worked with them
when he was a little kid. But also what's interesting is that he's known
Stuntman Mikes, and there's one guy in particular he's basing it on.
And it's nothing to do with wardrobe or tics. The stunt guys too, they've
all known guys like Stuntman Mike: he never really actually did a whole
lot, but just enough to have a career. To make Stuntman Mike real for
me, I worked out his entire career. I actually worked out more about
his background than I could ever show in the movie.
What
was it like directing yourself as Warren, the bar owner in the Austin
scenes?
Well, one of the thing that was actually kinda funny was that, in the
script, Warren is the kind of owner-operator, and so people’d
go, ‘Hey Warren, gimme a drink,’ and I’d pour a drink
and give it to them. But when I got down to shooting the movie, I was
like, ‘Hey, I gotta watch these scenes – I can’t be
in the back, making the drinks.’ We’d already cast this
guy Tim, who’s actually the real bartender in the bar we were
shooting in, to be in the background, but suddenly Tim’s part
started getting bigger and bigger and bigger… And what’s
funny about that is that it started mirroring what a real owner-operator
is like when he works a shift. Y’know, he starts off making a
couple of drinks, but at a certain point somebody else is doing all
his work for him while he’s busy drinking and flirting with the
girls. I figured that was kinda perfect for Warren.
Death
Proof
is your first film as director of photography. Why is that?
Robert made me do it. He said, ‘You’re ready. You’re
ready.’ He pushed me in that direction and then led the way. I
operated second camera on Planet Terror for a while, to get
up to speed on it, and he showed me a few things, but then I went at
it myself. He said to me, ‘You have such a distinct style. You’ve
already been DP-ing your movies, you’ve just got to learn a few
more things. And this would be a good place to start. It would make
it more grindhouse: if you make a few mistakes, all the better, and
you’re gonna learn a lot from it.’ And he was right.
Were
you daunted by attempting a car chase?
It was very exciting. My lawyer was on the set and he said, ‘You
were 100 per cent right.’ Because what he was referring to was
something I said a lot on Kill Bill: that the really good action
directors are the real cinematic directors. I’m not saying that’s
the only kind of cinema there can ever be, but when it comes to movie
magic and wizardry and, like, really knowing how to put film together,
those to me are the most cinematic guys. Whenever I deal myself into
this, whether with fights, which I’d never done before Kill
Bill, or car chases. That’s me dealing myself into that.
That’s me doing my stab at it. But I’m not doing it to be
‘OK’. I’m not doing it to be ‘pretty good’.
I wanted to make this one of the best, if not THE best, car chases ever.
That was a big anxiety. But we got to the end of it and I knew I had
my chase.
The crash scene is very explicit and also perversely
thrilling…
The whole idea of it is that you’ve got this total momentum going.
Point one is to get really realistic about what happens to people in
a crash – you kinda get ripped apart. So the thing is to set up
this sequence where the two cars are gonna hit each other. We know what’s
gonna go on. After being in the dark throughout the whole movie, now
we’re actually ahead of the characters. The girls are oblivious
until the second before it happens, but with the music I’ve got
playing… I’m making the audience complicit in this crash.
They want the crash to happen. It’s exciting, the girls are driving,
and the audience is waiting for it, and they’re waiting for it,
and… it’s like a come shot, when it happens. And the audience
has to admit that they wanted it to crash. If at the last second the
girls had braked and missed it, they would be pissed off. They’d
be totally mad. That’s the thing: to get them complicit, get them
wanting it and waiting for it. Then – BANG! – it happens,
it’s so much more horrible than you ever could have imagined.
But… too late! You wanted it to happen. You willed it into being.
You are complicit in it. Now take your medicine! And you should feel
a little ashamed, feel a little bad, but feel like you came. Now light
the cigarettes! We didn’t pull any punches at all.
Did
you use CG effects for that?
No. Again, that’s one of those things that I’ve done the
last couple of times, where I literally wrote shit and didn’t
have a clue how we were going to do it. But we figured it out. At first
I was, like, ‘I’m not really down with this CGI shit, but
this could be of use, that could be OK…’ – cos you
can’t do this with real people, you’d kill ’em. But
everyone knows how much I hate that stuff, so we just tried to figure
out how we could do it without using any CGI at all. And we did. We
pulled off some really gnarly shit, and it was all on the day, in camera.
Do you think we’ve lost something from film
now that we don’t have traditional B-movies and backlot studios
any more?
I actually think there’s a big loss. I understand why things change,
and I put the reason for them changing precisely on the price of a ticket.
It was different when everything cost $3, or $3.50, or at the most $5.
You could pay to see a cheap Jaws rip-off and pay the same
money to see A Star Is Born, no worries. But now you’re
talking about $10, $12, it doesn’t make sense. However, there
was something lost. Roger Corman always knew what was gonna happen in
that market, like, two years before it happened. So when all of a sudden
his movies weren’t playing theatrically any more and they were
just going straight to video – I was working in the video store
at that time – it was like, ‘Oh man, this is the end. If
he’s doing it now, then that’s just the way it’s gonna
be.’ And it made sense. Now, there were some good movies made
during that transitional period, a couple, but when you didn’t
have the chance for theatrical exposure, something was lost. Not that
these movies ever normally get very good reviews but there always was
that chance. There was the chance that Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles
Times, who would be reviewing it, could like it and you could get a
good review. There was the chance that Linda Gross, of the New York
Times, could like it, or maybe somebody at the Village Voice, and then
your work could be known, and maybe you could go on from there. But
when it goes straight to video, it’s like that chance doesn’t
exist any more. (Sighs) I guess the ambitions went down…
|
Death
Proof
interviews
Kurt Russell
Rosario Dawson
Zoe Bell
Death Proof
review
|
