Who do you know right now that's dangerous?
I got a friend and he and I love to fuck shit up.
There is no one like Quentin.
There's Quentin.
He makes a different kind of movie.
You're gonna land the word nigger a hundred
and ten times on Christmas?
Quentin loves strong female characters.
Brilliant, hilarious, and disturbing.
From the mind of Quentin Tarantino,
he really is a powerhouse of creativity.
It's Quentin's World.
It's his baby.
He wrote it.
He's a lightning rod.
He's absolutely unique.
He's the voice of his generation.
It's the end of an era of Quentin
and the Weinstein Company.
He's not gonna fade out.
This is why he talks about making ten.
Quentin is a champion of the female.
And he's just the build,
but he gets the opportunity to do this.
And then there are the movies.
Now, that's what he says about himself,
about how he sees the world,
his very purpose of existence.
Quentin's sort of a natural born filmmaker.
It's his passion.
It's where he connects with the full range of
human feeling.
And I think that you really see the through line
of his fascinations as a human being running
all the way through what matters to him,
looking at race in America...
...looking at what is romance...
...commitment...
...honor...
...betrayal,
loyalty...
...and people having to
do the right thing.
It's for sure the end of an era. The Weinsteins
have been the distributor of every single film of
...his in the United States.
Eight movies, all of them,
very successful.
He surely is immortality.
A friend of mine, he turned me onto Quentin Tarantino,...
...who was
stuffing video boxes at Imperial Entertainment.
And we had this meeting and he seemed like kind of
an overzealous geek.
Pardon, pardon me.
But guess what?
He had the talent to back it up.
He would sleep on my couch.
I don't think he had a car at the time
and flat broke.
"I want to get in the movie business.
Do I think I can write?
I'm gonna give it a stab, 'cause all it takes is
a pen and paper."
I asked him about
writing on a computer.
He said, "You can't write on a computer."
I'm like, "Why not?"
He's like, "You can't write poetry on a computer.
He's like, "My pen is my antennae to God.
That's how I write.
It just- it just flows.
It's just a receiver."
He has a red pen and a black pen, felt tip,
and yellow legal pad, and dit-dit-dit-dit-dit-dit-dit.
That was it.
Five minutes later, he's got dialogue that would
take some people an entire lifetime to write.
I think Quentin basically writes novels
and then when he's directing, he's basically adapting
his own novel to the screen.
A lot of different things are gonna happen.
It's a roller coaster ride. Oh, yeah, baby.
You're gonna be horrified.
(groans)
You're gonna feel relief. Then say something.
Something.
You're gonna feel romance.
Quentin is above all a romantic.
First script, True Romance,
Clarence saving Alabama is the beginning of rescuing
the princess that really pays off in Django coming
back to rescue Broomhilda.
The first script of his I read was Natural Born Killers.
And when I read that I went,
whoa, this guy's amazing.
Then I read True Romance.
I went, what the?
What's going on.
What's wrong with Hollywood?
Where is everybody?
You'd take home a slog of twenty scripts a weekend
and you're looking for that thing that jumps off
the page where the characters are alive,
where the dialogue doesn't feel trite.
Every kid wants to give you a script
and you- you- you with the best intentions,
you go, God, I hope this is good.
And then by page two it's like turning like
(groans) oh, I can't turn the page.
This is really just terrible.
Not with Quentin.
No way.
Oh, they're brilliant screenplays.
Can you imagine having to sell those to pay your rent?
I mean, wow, you know.
(inhales) I read a lot.
(exhales) Especially about things
about history.
I find that shit fascinating.
Here's a fact.
I don't know whether you know or not.
Well...
Sicilians were spawned by niggers.
Uh, come again?
(laughs)
You look at the stuff that Quentin writes.
If it was on stage, he'd have the Pulitzer.
You know, because it's movies,
everyone said, "Oh, he was in a video store.
He stole."
Which of course launched a thousand people working
in video stores going,
"Oh, I'm gonna be the next Tarantino."
Well, literally, there's Quentin
and there's everyone else.
There's great stories, great characters.
Later on in the story...
Clearly in True Romance,
Clarence is a surrogate for Quentin.
You see his love of cinema present in his voice
as he expertly carries you through his films.
(overlapping) Oh! Ooh. You have three kung-fu moves.
In the original draft, his version of True Romance,
it was non-linear storytelling.
The audience is ahead of the characters
and on the edge of their seat
'cause they know something bad's coming.
And Tony Scott in his adaptation made it linear,
and Quentin loves True Romance,
but Clarence died in Quentin's version.
Sweetie! (sobs)
He had sold True Romance.
He was hoping to direct it.
Baby!
He wasn't gonna be able to.
He couldn't get anywhere with Natural Born Killers.
Um, he couldn't get that going to direct, also.
And he wrote Reservoir Dogs so that it would be
set in one contained place,
so that no matter what happened,
he was gonna direct this movie
with the twenty thousand dollars he had made on
Golden Girls residuals for being an Elvis impersonator.
(sings) I do love you with all my heart.
I read a script of
Reservoir Dogs and I just hoped that the writer
who said he was going to be the director
was really a director.
I introduced him to my friend Lawrence Bender,
and Lawrence got Reservoir Dogs all up and running.
And Lawrence said, "Give me a month.
I know somebody who knows Harvey Keitel."
And Harvey said yes.
I was pumping gas, man.
I was driving a tow truck and,
uh, I had done Thelma and Louise
and I had done some episodic TV.
And I got that thing and, you know,
I- I- I'd never read anything like it in my life.
These guys and they're named after colors.
Mr. Brown, Mr. White, Mr. Blonde, Mr. Blue,
Mr. Orange, and Mr. Pink.
Why am I Mr. Pink?
And I remember my agent, she was saying,
"Well, you know, they all kill each other at the end and,
(clicks tongue) you know,
there's no money and, uh, you know,
nobody's ever heard of this Quentin guy and...
You have no way of knowing
with a first time director whether they can direct or not.
You never know.
But Quentin, even then, prior to making any film,
knew every actor's resume.
This guy was in this.
I want this guy from this, and this Lawrence Tierney
was in Dillinger and I want him.
He just set about putting together the ensemble
and it came out exactly the way he wanted it.
I don't know why he had me stuck in his head to play
Mr. Blonde, 'cause I didn't want to play Mr. Blonde.
I didn't want to get shot by Tim Roth, you know.
I don't want to be killed by Tim Roth.
I was like, hey, man, "Who's Tim Roth?"
I went along and met with him
and- and Harvey Keitel.
And they wanted me to read and I wouldn't read for it.
I'm very bad at auditioning.
I got to memorize all of this?
There's over four fuckin' pages of this shit.
And they pushed, you know, they were pushing me.
And so, me and Quentin went and got some food
and then some beer, and then we went down to a pub near me
and we got more beer.
And we read every character in the script
I don't know how many times.
I'd let Harvey Keitel kill me,
but I don't, I'm not getting killed by Tim Roth.
I was on the floor in a disproportionate
amount of blood to what you can actually
contain in a human body.
At the end of the day, one day,
we- we- we hugged each other.
And, you know, we're both covered with blood,
but it's- it's syrup, basically.
It's- it's fake.
It's stage blood and so when it starts to dry
a little bit it gets extremely sticky.
And we were hugging each other, like,
you know, doing the big guy hug thing
and we- we couldn't get apart.
We were stuck together.
(laughs)
And the wardrobe people were convinced that
if we forcefully separated that it would tear
the clothes apart, and they didn't have
a lot of budget for wardrobe.
In fact, that was my suit.
He told us to come to work in a black suit with white shirts.
They gave us the ties.
That was about it.
And if you watch the movie,
Steve Buscemi has black jeans on.
Those aren't- aren't- aren't suit pants.
They're black jeans, man.
And my suit, the jacket or the pants,
don't go together.
They're from two different suits.
When I see the movie, that's all I remember is
my pants were too tight, man.
They were making me crazy.
And I didn't have black shoes.
He wanted everyone to have black shoes.
I didn't have any.
But I had black cowboy boots, see.
So that's how the razor ended up
being in the boot,
because what am I gonna do with this razor?
Where is it gonna come from.
You know that's how that happened.
In the script it said, "Mr. Blonde dances
maniacally around the manacled cop."
And every time we got to the part of the rehearsal
where that was about to happen,
I would say, "Quentin, I don't know what to do."
And he'd go, "No, no, no.
We'll- we'll- we'll shoot another day.
We'll shoot another day."
He didn't want to do, um, the dancing.
Didn't want to do it.
Iconic.
Right?
Yeah. I was like, "Fuck, man.
I'll do it," (laughs)
from the floor.
I asked him, I said, um, "What's the music
you're gonna play over this whole thing?"
And he said, uh, "Well..."
he said, "I really want, uh, Stealers Wheel.
I want to do "Stuck In The Middle."
And I said, "Why don't you play it for me."
And so they put it on a boom box.
That's actually how it's actually cued in the movie.
And so I slowly started to stand up and I sang while
I started to suddenly do my version of a maniacal dance.
(sings) Well, I don't know why I came here tonight I got...
Honestly, I don't know where it came from.
I honestly don't.
(sings) And I'm wondering how I'll get down the stairs
I can't dance, which is obvious,
and- and then sort--I just went with it,
'cause I felt like it was working
and I didn't hear him say, "cut".
(sings) ...stuck in the middle with you.
I felt really respected.
And the fact that he let me do that,
I mean, I- I loved him for that.
Even the- the ear thing.
He said, "Okay, step in the frame with the ear."
So I walk in the frame and I have it in my hand,
which is a horrifying moment, you know.
Oh, my God.
And he's going, "Throw it.
Throw it.
Throw it."
And I didn't really want to throw it,
but I couldn't think of anything interesting to do.
And so I spoke in it.
Hey, what's going on?
(groans) You hear that?
(groans) (laughs) So then I threw it.
And I was thinking, God, if you were that guy,
if someone did that to you,
how horrible would that be?
It was a terrifying movie.
As an audience,
we had never seen anything like that really.
It felt so new and so exciting and explosive
and dynamic in just the dialogue.
Give me that fuckin' thing.
Now what the hell do you think you're doin'?
Give me my book back.
I'm sick of fuckin' hearing it.
Joe, I'll give it back to you when we leave.
What do you mean when we leave?
Give me it back now.
For the past fifteen minutes now,
you've been droning on about names, Toby.
Toby?
Once we started shooting Reservoir Dogs...
...and I remember just being
a couple days in,
and I pulled Harvey Keitel aside and I said,
"Harvey, I'm so excited."
And he said, "Well, why are you so excited?"
And I said, "Well, I never imagined
that what we would do on the film would better
the experience that I had of sitting alone
in my room reading the script."
I've got Madonna's big dick coming out of my left ear
and Toby the Jack, I don't know what,
comin' out of my right.
And Harvey Keitel said, "Of course,
it's better than that.
I'm here."
(laughs)
There's just so much good stuff in them.
No only visually, but, and not only
what the actors say, but what they do
and how they do it and how the plot unfolds.
I think the reason that every critic
and journalist went crazy for Reservoir Dogs
is rightfully so.
It was the debut of an extraordinary new voice.
And, you know, it was our nineties Auteur Indie cinema,
you know, the equivalent of the French New Wave,
breaking any rules that he wants.
It was thrilling.
(groans)
We were walking back to the trailers.
I remember Harvey, he says, "This is good, right?"
And- and, (chuckles) I went,
"Yes, really fuckin' good."
(chuckles) Who's a tough guy?
(wheezes) Who's a tough guy?
(wheezes) And he went, "Don't jinx it.
Don't jinx it.
Whatever you do, don't jinx it."
I said, "Okay."
But it was, the word was out on this- on this guy.
So when we went to France with...
..Reservoir Dogs,
it was, um, it was chosen as an official selection
of the film festival, which is a very prestigious
place to be, particularly for
a first time director.
So we showed our film in the Palais,
and in the three days prior to that,
Quentin and Lawrence and I are walking around Cannes
and walking down the Croisette and looking at
different movies and going to different screenings
and just... Hey.
...having a good old time.
And then we screen the film as a midnight special
screening in the Palais.
And the day after that,
when we would walk down the street as we were
goofy guys wandering around,
you'd start to hear people going, "Tarantino!
Tarantino!"
And thus the legend of Quentin began.
The Auteur was born somewhat as it should be
in Cannes.
The day after it screened, I got a call from Mario Kassar
who is head of Carolco and he said,
"All of our directors on our boat,
um, want to meet Quentin.
Like what is this movie you made and who is this guy?"
And I said, well, I'll bring him by.
So we showed up at the boat and Renny Harlin
and Oliver Stone and James Cameron
and Paul Verhoeven were all there
and they just wanted to meet Quentin.
And, suddenly, Quentin has,
not only a seat at the table,
but is kind of running the table and these guys are
so interested in Quentin.
And this is how it sort of all began.
Quentin came back
from Cannes after Reservoir Dogs.
Now that was a fascinating story,
'cause he was crashing on my couch, right?
So I was, I had to get, uh,
the "Hollywood Reporter", "Variety",
all of the- the magazines, "L.A. Weekly",
all the stuff that had articles on Reservoir Dogs.
Literally, you couldn't believe how much stuff.
I went, "Oh wait.
This is like a joke."
He went away to Cannes
just another independent filmmaker
and came back like a star.
Miramax was the company that stepped up to
take Reservoir Dogs.
Before that, you know, Quentin was pretty much
nobody wanted to give him a chance to do fuck all.
So that started the bond of Quentin
and the Weinstein Brothers.
"The whole mystical,
shamanistic thing that I thought directing was went 'poof'.
I realized I can do that." - QT
We were in a hotel room on the road
with Reservoir Dogs
and he's got his legal pads out.
And his thing, you know,
the way that he does his scripts.
He starts reading all these characters and stage direction.
I love you, Pumpkin.
And I love you, Honey Bunny.
And it's Pulp Fiction.
Everybody be cool. This is a robbery.
What?
Any of you fuckin' pricks move and I'll execute
every one of ya motherfuckers.
Quentin says, "This is my next thing.
This is what I'm gonna do."
There was an eagerness by many financiers
to make Quentin's next movie.
We had agreed,
uh, Harvey Weinstein agreed,
uh, to finance the film.
They never interfered with his material.
(chuckles) There's subject matter
and dialogue in Quentin's pictures that really nobody else
could get away with doing, especially a white guy.
Did you notice a sign on the front of
my house that said, "Dead Nigger Storage."
Jimmy, you know I ain't seen no shit.
Did you notice a sign on the front of my house
that said "Dead Nigger Storage?"
No.
I got the script and ...
...I kind of sat
there and stared at it.
When I was done I was like,
"Oh, there's no fuckin' way the script that's good."
I'm just readin' it like that because he told me
he wrote this part for me.
You know what they call a- a Quarter Pounder with Cheese,
uh, in Paris?
They don't call it a Quarter Pounder with Cheese?
No, man.
They got the metric system.
They wouldn't know what the fuck a Quarter Pounder is.
Then what do they call it?
They call it, uh, The Royale with Cheese.
Royale with Cheese.
That's right.
Second time it was just as amazing.
So it's like, (exhales air),
okay.
If Harvey Weinstein has the balls to make this movie,
this movie's gonna be awesome.
I know my friends are gonna love it.
He had built a real fan base
on home video by the time Pulp Fiction came out.
But I think he learned something, too.
Watching the film with enough audiences
when he went and toured film festivals,
he realized that he needed to give the audience
permission to laugh.
The dude's head gets blown off in the back of the car.
I mean people laugh at that shit and then they
catch themselves and go, "Oh, shit.
I can't laugh at that."
Oh!
What the fuck's happenin'?
Ah, man. Oh, shit, man.
Oh, man, I shot Marvin in the face.
Why the fuck'd you do that?
And it's cool, too, because it's not CGI blood.
He still likes to use squibs and blood packs and stuff,
so I mean I could be twenty-five feet across the room
and get blood splattered on me from shootin'
somebody on the other side of the room,
which was like awesome.
You're sending The Wolf?
Don't you feel better, motherfucker?
Shit yeah, Negro.
That's all you had to say.
Like you have to call
someone because you accidentally shot
someone's head off is amazing,
and then that it becomes, like,
he's so blasÃ© about cleaning bits of brain up.
Oh, man!
I will never forgive your ass for this shit.
Because he always intended it to be funny,
but people sort of felt a little bit uncomfortable.
Am I allowed to laugh?
Am I sick if I'm laughing?
You know, what's going on?
And with Pulp, intentionally,
he really let everybody in on the joke.
They look like a couple of dorks.
(laughs) (laughs) Ha-ha-ha.
They're your clothes, motherfucker.
I can look at it and say this is one of those
gangster characters.
(exhales sharply) This is how he's thinkin',
this is how he's talkin', and this is what his
cadence is.
And I will strike down upon thee with great
vengeance and furious anger those who attempt
to poison and destroy my brothers.
And because I spent so many years doing theater.
And you will know my name is the Lord
when I lay my vengeance upon thee.
(screams) I love a monologue.
I remember when I originally gave this script
to the Weinsteins, Harvey read it
and called me up and said, "You guys are crazy.
You just killed the main character
in the middle of the movie."
(screams) I said,
"Keep reading."
He said, "But you can't kill the main character in
the middle of the movie."
I said, "Keep reading."
He said, "Oh, my God.
He comes back, doesn't he?"
He goes, "Is it a happy ending?"
I said, "It's a happy ending.
And the beauty of Quentin is that when it's time to
shoot the film, though he wrote it and he conceived it
and he knows where it's going...
Hello?
...the actors are a huge part of that soup
that creates that character of the story.
(on intercom) Vincent?
Vincent?
I'm on the intercom.
And he wrote the part
that John Travolta played in that movie for Michael.
And Michael didn't do it.
I was already committed to Wyatt Earp.
And now here's Quentin wants me to do Pulp Fiction.
And they were both going at the same time.
You know look at Travolta in Pulp Fiction.
It's one of the most extraordinary performances
in a- in a film that's filled to the brim
with extraordinary performances.
(gasps) (screams) John had to be convinced.
But the moment that they met,
it was clear that it- it was their destiny to-
to work together.
Isn't it true that a part of John Travolta being in it,
it became John's comeback.
He was doing movies about talking babies and,
suddenly, he's, you know, Vincent Vega.
You know he had that wig on.
Nobody'd ever seen Travolta with a fuckin' gun.
And that was a huge, huge reason
why the movie worked.
John Travolta can move like almost nobody else.
The dance scene that Quentin gives him
is so incredible because Quentin gets what this guy can do
and lets him do it.
That was neat, man, that whole thing and,
uh, I- I wouldn't have come up with that,
you know.
The twist wouldn't haven't have been exactly the same.
He would have had to change the script that
they don't win the dance contest.
When you're on a set and working with Quentin,
he always seemed to me like he kept a very healthy
distance between himself and producer types.
And what Quentin wanted, Quentin got,
deservedly so.
Action!
We were a bit into production
and Harvey Weinstein came to visit.
I purposely wanted to take him to the Jack Rabbit Slim set
because we built it.
It's cool.
It's really filmy.
And Quentin isn't the "build sets" kind of guy.
He's the "find a real place and do it".
And as we walked in, I didn't tell Harvey what we
were shooting.
And I just remember looking at him and going,
"Welcome to Quentin World."
He just said, "What- what- what is this?
This is crazy."
You know with the race track and the dancers
and the trophies and the characters
imitating other characters.
You know Quentin just has in his head I want people
to sit in the back seat of a nineteen-fifty-seven Cadillac.
And, you know, they need to drink an Amos and Andy shake.
And he comes up with all this stuff in the same way
that he comes up with his own products.
Mm...
This is a tasty burger.
Vincent, have you ever had a Big Kahuna burger?
By the time Pulp Fiction came around,
he was doing his own product placement.
Give me a pack of Red Apples.
Filters?
Nah.
And that's when Red Apple came about.
That's when Kahuna burger came about.
That's when all of that stuff started to happen.
Red Apple tobacco is not a real thing.
That's a Quentin cigarette.
There's a great moment
in Hateful Eight where...
...Demian Bichir is standing
behind the bar.
And he's having a smoke of Red Apple tobacco.
And he's just standing there like this and he's going,
"Hmm.
This is pretty good."
(chuckles) Like this.
And we got all pissed off because he got to do
the Red Apple moment.
He got to have it himself.
Everybody from costumes down to every detail,
to props, to Red Apple tobacco,
to everything, there's nothing random
about anything in a Quentin movie.
Remember her cutting the ropes off
when she's in the coffin.
That's Mr. Blonde's razor.
It's brilliant, right?
That's cool.
There's a little nod when you're watching Reservoir Dogs.
If you every hear Mr. White,
somebody says, "How's Bama?"
By the way, how's Alabama?
Alabama?
I haven't seen Bama over a year and a half.
And you understand that Alabama left,
met Mr. White, learned about the- the bank heist
or jewelry thief business from him,
and they couldn't be together because she was
still in love with Clarence and she'd be in
love with Clarence for his whole life.
So all these characters live in Quentin's universe.
And Vic here, I mean he's only been nothing
but good luck for us and, that guys a fuckin' rabbit's foot.
Vic Vega, Vincent Vega, the Vega Brothers.
And, uh, how 'bout your fella here?
Vincent Vega.
With film it's not just characters
and it's not just action and it's not just cinema,
but it's celluloid, it's seeing it on the film,
and it's the soundtrack, but also,
amazingly, taking songs they know and reimagining.
(sings) Bow, bow, bow...
...you'll be a woman soon. (sings)...a woman...
And you just sit there and you just- you can't
believe that you're hearing the song in a new
and different way.
(sings) He's not your kind. (sings) He's not your kind.
And so much of those songs were background on the radio
when you were kids or when you were adults
driving around.
And Quentin takes them and he takes that background,
counterpoints it against something that
it doesn't make sense with.
Or he uses it to emphasize a scene.
What he makes are really rich,
densely textured mosaics.
Try to dissect it, you'd almost undoubtedly miss
so many of the pieces and the ways they interact
with each other and the way they make sense
with each other.
I remember being
on the set of From Dust Till Dawn while they were
shooting that, and I said, and by that time Pulp Fiction
just went through the roof.
I said, "Quentin, did you have any idea
how big this would be?
He goes, (inhales sharply) "Yeah, no."
(laughs)
The Palme d'Or goes to...
...Pulp Fiction.
What do you do after that masterpiece?
When you know you're damned.
There's, you know,
after Citizen Kane, Welles walks away
from Magnificent Ambersons.
Quentin's made Pulp Fiction.
He's made one of the great films of the last half century.
So what does he do next?
A genre film that in and of itself is really wonderful.
Plays with time, plays with character,
plays with your perceptions,
and he doesn't try and redo Pulp Fiction.
I know he has
this strong Blaxploitation influence in his life.
For God's sake.
People say he makes
revenge movies.
You know, those were sort of revenge movies,
all about gettin' the man or gettin' back at the man Sweet
or gettin' back at the person who did somethin' bad to you.
It's one of those things that makes his movies fun.
And those are the things
that influenced his young cinema experiences,
like mine.
He broke everything down.
He explained, like, "When I was a kid,
my mom dated black guys.
Black guys would try to get in good with my mom,
would take me to, uh, Blaxploitation films
to watch as a kid.
So that's what I grew up on.
So I'm writing what I saw, what's inside my DNA,
and then that's why my characters are
always very strong."
You helped her, didn't you?
When you're sort of bred
into naturally appreciating,
it's not like someone's taught you,
you should respect women, or black people are equal.
Like someone's not teaching you that lesson.
You just know it to be true.
This is how he views the world,
and he paints the world the way he sees it in his movies.
And so the power is this is his truth.
Jackie Brown is in many ways
an ode to the sort of Blaxploitation films
of the period.
And who are you gonna cast?
Pam Grier.
I'd heard about Foxy Brown
and Coffy and all the Pam Grier movie.
You know, of course,
Pam Grier's had a glorious career
even up before Quentin Tarantino.
He just, like, has made her that- that much cooler
in my opinion.
Pam Grier can kick ass,
you know what I mean?
It's not all Foxy Brown and it ain't all,
you know, Straight Outta Compton.
Jackie Brown, to me, that performance is
so amazing and beautiful.
But still like so strong
and so flawed and desperate,
and yet very sort of steely.
I mean he writes women like nobody's business.
In the last forty-five to fifty years,
women have not been given a fair shake in terms of,
uh, leading roles in, uh, movies where we can see
what makes the woman tick.
That's why you came here to kill me.
(chuckles) I ain't come over here to kill you.
Oh, no, that's fine.
It's okay.
Now I forgive you.
That's the thing with Quentin's dialogue.
A couple of men that would be like,
I mean, women don't really talk like that.
And I was like (laughs).
Aw, that's cute, (inhales) 'cause we really do.
Now if I have to do more than a year,
you'll pay another one hundred thousand dollars.
Women would come up to us and be like,
"Oh, my God.
How- Is he a woman on the inside?"
I'm like yeah, he's kind of,
he's a bit of woman on the inside.
He's a little bit black on the inside.
He's just got a whole bunch of stuff going on in him.
If you think that you know more
about a movie or an actor or- or anything to do
with cinema history, he will just sit there
and smile and listen to you, and then he will bury you
with how much stuff he knows.
Exactly the fact that Quentin didn't go to film school.
I guess his film school was video archives
and the endless movies that he could learn and read and,
uh, watch and, uh, and enjoy and turn other
people onto.
Get himself gone.
The films that he gets off on vary vastly.
Everybody's after Kowalski
He's passionate about Vanishing Point
and that genre.
And then Moeshe.
He just loves the TV show Moesha.
Moeshe.
I would have never guessed that.
And I- I think he's like that about all kinds of things.
I think he's like that with food,
like he loves amazingly high quality French dishes
and he- he will smash a Pink's hotdog,
you know, like I honestly, I think he's kind of like
that with women.
..break my heart
and make me sad.
Tell me what did I do wrong.
He's sort of like, if he's in love with you
and you're a big, black,
curvy, gorgeous lady, he's all about big,
black curves.
(sings) My baby love...
And if you're a waify,
skinny little white model type and he's in love with you,
he just thinks that's the hottest thing on the planet.
He's just like an appreciator.
He knows everybody.
And when he meets an actor from my era,
the era when he was growin' up,
he amazes them and amazed me by reminding me of this
and that and things and moments
and scenes that he remembers.
He also built a way of sharing his vision with people.
It wasn't storyboards.
It was references.
And so he'd say,
"The warehouse looks like this."
Or, "Look at this film for a reference for
what I'm kind of trying to do here."
When you're in rehearsal with him,...
...you're discussing those references,
specifically, and he gives you stuff to watch.
It's not something you come to
lightly with him.
It's not a rip-off
that's just crap.
And it's not even an homage.
It's that he's using the tools of cinema to make
more resonant and greater cinema.
Quentin uses filmic vocabulary.
If you look at great art,
that's what musicians do, composers do,
painters do, sculptors do.
'Cause he always, you know,
elevates everything and charges everything.
The detective was the genre that I started with.
Old cars, old clothes, old jokes, fast women,
they all lied to me.
The cynical, but human detective.
Robert Forster as Banyon.
One of the things Quentin does is incur
talent all the time.
I mean a lot of times people will
resurrect old actors and they have them do
what they always did.
What Quentin always does is he pushes them further.
He takes them to a new place.
He gives them a different career.
When my career was at the very bottom,
in walks Quentin.
He said, "I am adapting Rum Punch,
an Elmore Leonard novel, to a movie."
And I said to him, "I don't think they're gonna
let you hire me."
That period in my career, the distributors
didn't want me.
They wanted, you know, somebody with a bigger name.
And he said, and I will never forget him for it,
he said, "I hire anybody I want."
And that is the first moment when I said,
"Wow, Bob, this is a life-changer."
All right, before we start talking about stewardesses,
let's get Beaumont out of the way first.
Uh, you know, I think somebody already did.
I got a call from my agents.
They said that, uh, Vince Gilligan was
gonna call me.
I picked up the phone.
Vince said, "Uh, we've been saving a role
called "The Disappearer".
We've been calling it the Robert Forster role.
And it was, in fact,
a straight shooter.
It's gonna take me
some time to get your new situation fixed.
Until then, you're gonna be staying here.
I've got a place downstairs out of sight.
And, uh, this was a direct result,
of course, of Jackie Brown.
People kept sayin' well, it's not Pulp Fiction.
No, it's fuckin' Jackie Brown.
It's a different pace, it's a different story
and it's about different kinds of people.
Yeah, there are some criminals in there,
but it's really an adult movie about people
in a certain place in their life when it's time
for them to make a choice about how they want to live
the rest of their life.
It's a crossroads movie.
If you had the chance, unemployed now,
to walk away with a half million dollars
would you take it?
Despite whatever the minor violence is in it,
it's just a great story about these people trying
to figure out their lives.
When Jackie Brown came out of the prison
and had that long walk toward me
and it is accompanied by music...
(sings) Why do I keep my mind on you all the time?
And I don't even know you...
...you're watching this guy fall in love
with a woman.
I cannot tell you how emotive that was,
and for a director to do that.
They never do that.
Out of all those films, Jackie Brown is sort of like
the best one.
Yeah, for me, just because of the cinematic beauty
and gentleness of that particular story.
(sing) ...baby.
Hmm.
(sing) Gave you the love you never knew, girl.
Who is this?
The Delphonics. (sing) Didn't I do it baby...
It's nice.
Mm-hmm.
The main influences of Kill Bill
is all the best of Hong Kong cinema.
Quentin is in love
with the culture.
When he does martial arts stuff,
he's recreating the energy and he's participating as
somebody who is so thrilled watching this.
The last script Quentin gave me was Kill Bill...
And it was like almost
the size of a small phone book.
Remember those?
Story by Q and U,
meaning U as in Uma.
We've all just been calling her the bride on
account of the dress.
You can tell she was pregnant.
(spits)
That woman deserves her revenge and-
and we deserve to die.
I could see the faces of the cunts
who did this to me and the dicks responsible.
It read like a novel.
It was funny.
It had all this action in it,
you know, but it read in- in a way that you just
could not put it down.
He would tell me what to read.
I was like, wait.
Okay, I'm gonna read it so now I know
what action I'm gonna do.
And I'd start reading and I'd forget
to read for the stunts and I just would read
the whole thing again.
It happened four times.
That was when I first had my kind of like
professional moment of, "Holy shit.
I'm gonna be a part of something magic."
Quentin has it as Boomer is this part of The Bride
and ZoÃ« is this part of The Bride.
Whatever's in front of the camera is different parts
of the same whole.
We were doing the scene where she runs up
the banister.
And he came to me and he was like,
"So, what are you doing in the shot?"
And I was like, I'm running up the banister.
And he was like, "Yeah, but why?"
And I was like, trick question.
'Cause that's my job."
You know, and he was like, "No,
but why is The Bride running up the banister?"
and I was like, "Oh, to get to O-Ren."
And he was like, "And why is she trying to get to O-Ren?"
It sounds like such actor-speak,
but my running up the banister shifted,
because now I have an intention.
Now I have a reason outside of
just technically getting it right.
That was always super important to Quentin,
"'cause that bitch fucked up my life
and I want her to die."
The fact that he always has women in these strong
positions isn't something that he necessarily
highlights or billboards. (overlapping) (whistles)
To him, of course, it makes sense
these are women doing this, are fighting or are leaders.
He does it and, it's for him,
it's just natural.
It's such an interesting conversation to have these days,
girl power and a quality that sort of feels like
it's all kind of coming to a head.
The biggest feat is gonna be making it normal
that we are in lead positions as opposed to
it being the fight.
And that's where Quentin is just a priceless ally.
And I think he needs to sit in an interview and be like,
"Listen, women should have these roles
and women..."
Like he doesn't have to drive it because he's-
he's just presenting it as such.
Now if any of you sons of bitches (yells)
got anything else to say, now's the fuckin' time!
O-Ren Ishii is a survivor.
She is a woman who was probably never going to die
peacefully of old age.
She swore revenge.
It only made sense that in the end,
in her great honor, she was killed
with the Hattori Hanso sword.
Uma worked her ass off and was in training
for a long time before I was even on board.
She had a crazy schedule.
She was in just about every shot.
We were shooting in Beijing.
She had a newborn.
She was under intense amounts of physical pressure.
(grunts) (grunts)
Cut. Great.
Excellent.
Check (indistinct) (laughs)
Like, you know, she was in pain a lot of the time.
She was sort of like, she had blisters and cuts,
things like that.
It's just part of the- the deal.
It feels good to be tough.
It's strangely sort of liberating.
Yeah, I'm bleeding.
Keep rolling.
The girl fight between Uma and, uh,
Vivica Fox in Kill Bill is,
without a doubt, the greatest fight
any two women ever had in a movie.
It's crazy good.
Vivica and Uma just were so great in that scene.
When I'd sit there and watch,
I'd forget that I was there to do a job.
When the daughter comes in the door,
I'm just like God, it's beautiful.
The mother versus assassin just like
(clicks tongue) in one shot. Perfect.
Mommy, I'm home.
Hey, baby.
How was school?
It softened everything.
Just amazing.
And- and- and The Bride sells it,
too, because she knows, you know.
It's just genius.
It's absolute, irrevocable genius, man.
There's a viciousness and yet their femininity
never went away for a second.
It's all about presentation.
You walk through a shoji screen and then,
suddenly, there's this winter wonderland.
He really worked with the designers to create this
beautiful visual that also turned into a wonderful
sound backdrop for what we were doing.
There's the bamboo water fountain.
It almost acts as a metronome.
It was absolutely beautiful,
like when you are watching something from another time.
It's one of the perfect examples of movie magic
where the practicality of it was kind of difficult.
The snow we were using was sort of difficult to breathe.
So in between takes,
we had the protective masks on and, you know,
we were constantly having to cover our footprints.
And action!
Women work for him.
They are fiercely loyal 'cause he actually
is very protective of them.
He promotes them.
He works creatively with them.
And when you look at the female characters
in his films,
they're all quite remarkable.
Cut! Okay?
Yeah. Terrific!
You guys were great.
That was terrific.
Part of me still feels like I don't want to talk
about it because I don't want people to- to know.
(indistinct) It was the camera angle
that sold the fact that my head had been cut off
so I look like I had a little bit of a cone head in real life.
And then when you see it in the movie,
it's just like angels are singing.
There's something beautiful in understanding
that- that is done in camera.
That was completely practical
because you know Quentin doesn't,
is a fan of avoiding CGI when possible.
He adores Uma.
And nobody was more enthusiastic than Quentin.
I mean, he's still like a kid when he gets worked up.
Sometimes you do dumb things.
This is the thing with this business.
You make the best level of plans and you have great people.
And then sometimes there's human error.
Everyone was just having
fun making a movie.
And everybody was damn happy to be on a
set with Quentin Tarantino.
And everybody was damn happy to be represented
and distributed by Harvey Weinstein
and the Weinstein Company.
What was weird about Harvey is,
and this was true of his relationship with
competitors and with people,
was he- he was a bully and he enjoyed it.
He had this- this enormous power that,
I know he was conscious that he had it,
and I know that he would consciously use it,
but whether or not he realized he was using it
in such an obstructive way,
I don't know about that.
I'll tell you a funny thing that happened in Cannes.
I was at this little reception thing with Quentin.
Here comes Harvey and he comes around the corner
and he's sweating, like profusely sweating.
And he's got this really angry face, you know.
You see a Harvey Weinstein in that mood,
everybody literally froze.
And right before he had come in the room,
Quentin had introduced me to Harvey's wife
and his little daughter.
And the little daughter had a doll in her hand
and she had handed me the doll while we were talking.
And so I was holding the doll when Harvey came around
the corner and came into the room.
And he looked at me and he looked at Quentin
and he looked at his wife and child
and he sized up the situation
and he took the doll out of my hand
and handed it back to his little kid, to his daughter.
And Quentin goes, "Harvey, Harvey,
what are you doing?
He goes, Michael's gonna do The Hateful Eight.
Michael's gonna do The Hateful Eight with us."
And Harvey kind of- kind of stood there
and his eyes were shifting back and forth
and he was thinking on his feet.
Mm. Mm. Mm. (scoffs) And, all of a sudden, he went
and he took the doll from the little girl
and gave it back to me.
And I- I took it and I -- I- I didn't know what to say.
I mean it was like...
And he walked away right in that moment.
He gave me the damn the thing and then he walked away.
And I remember going, oh, my God.
And Quentin was laughing hysterically.
When Quentin finds something funny and he laughs,
he's got a great laugh.
And, of course, I gave the doll back to the girl.
It was very strange and I'll never forget it.
It was like, wow.
Where did that come from?
Holy shit.
You know a year later, you know,
the guy's being indicted.
Quentin loves genre.
He used to do his QT Fest in Austin.
There's a big rule that we have during this festival.
You don't laugh to show that you're superior
than the movie or how much cooler you are than the movie,
because I'm telling you nobody here is cooler
than this movie.
These movies are fuckin' cool.
For ten days he would show movies.
He would have double features every night,
some nights triple features,
and showed Asian films and genre films from all over.
Constantly people would talk movies with him,
which is what he loves.
And so I think there was a period of time
where Austin was a very safe haven for Quentin.
Quentin and Robert were hanging out a
lot together at that time.
I remember Quentin and Robert took me
and Edgar right out for Mexican food.
And they told us the
whole concept of Grindhouse.
Quentin's part of Grindhouse
is extraordinary.
I think it's so smart.
It's like lots of people have done
chase films and lots of people have
done revenge films.
And it is such a remarkable pro woman,
feminist, but also cinematic,
a visionary cinematic, exciting film.
He rang me and was like,
ZoÃ«, I've finished the script for Death Proof.
He had told me that it was gonna be about a stunt guy
whose car was death proof
and that he killed women with it.
Every troupe that you've seen where a woman is
brutalized is referred to
and then he flips it on its head.
Hey!
(screams) Now I want blood.
It's about redemption.
It's about power.
It's about feminism.
(grunts) Oh, you want... (grunts)
He makes roles for women that he wants to see.
I remember saying to him, "As long as you cast
someone in the movie that looks like me so I can work on it."
Nice.
Nice. Thank you.
Yep.
Like, it's on you, buddy.
Like if I'm terrible at this,
if I fuck it up, it's your fault.
(inhales) And he, at one point, was like,
"Look, this is my job.
This is what I do.
I make good casting choices."
And he said, "I know you and I know what I want
and I know I can get it."
So you just need to relax
and know your lines.
I remember...
..thinking this is like a,
yeah, it's a great night at the theater,
you know, in nineteen seventy.
I'd gone in and interviewed for those
kinds of movies, you know, so I knew,
I knew them.
I knew what he was doing.
I thought it was pretty great.
Do I frighten you?
I was what a stuntman would look like.
Big scar, that (indistinct).
He goes, "Yeah, let's do the eyes."
And you mean big, don't you? and he said,
"Oh, yeah."
The old school action hero and the stunt guy are
really important to him and I think this was an
exciting way for him to say thank you
to the stunt people of- of the industry.
Now.
That's that Quentin magic is- is getting as
much of it to be as real as possible.
(groan) (scream) We're doing ninety miles
an hour for a lot of that stuff down that road.
She's strapped to the hood of that car.
There's nothing you can do.
If he catches his tire on the edge of the road
and we go over, that's it for ZoÃ«.
It's not gonna be a broken arm.
He came up to me one time and he's like,
"ZoÃ«, come and look at this."
And I sat there and I was all excited to see it and
I was watching it and I was like,
"Oh, my God.
It looks amazing."
I was so over the moon.
He was like, "What's wrong with it?"
And I was like, "What?
What are you talking about?
There's nothing wrong with that.
That's fuckin' gold."
He was like, there's something wrong with it.
What is it?
And I was like, "I don't know, Quentin.
I think you're being a bit fussy."
You know, and he was like, "What don't we see in the
whole four minutes?"
And I was like, "What?
(gasps) My face."
And we never once saw my face because my job for
so long had been to know exactly
where the camera was so I'd avoid it.
I'd have an arm up.
I'd use my hair or my body or whatever,
'cause that was my job.
If you saw my face, the take was ruined.
And he was like,
"I love that you're that good at it,
but I need you to reverse it because the
whole point of this is that we can see it's you."
He loves to help actors get to a place
where they can completely bring it.
So how's Quentin different from other directors?
(laughs) I never, never fear
that my joy is gonna be cut off.
Wahoo!
(laughs) Hey, ladies, that was fun.
(laughs) Acting in Death Proof was a blast.
We had so much fun. I mean, it's a bar scene.
Quentin is a bartender.
And there was one scene where Quentin had
to do these Irish car bombs.
And Quentin's like, "It's got to be real or the foam
won't be correct."
And Quentin's like "I can't be there to see
how the take looks, so this is a long take.
You've- you've got to do this right,
but I'm drinking real Guinness and real Jager.
You guys can't fuck it up."
Right.
Okay, okay.
Everyone's ready.
Last shot of the night.
It's like six-thirty in the morning. Aah!
So we're like, boom, boom, boom, boom.
And Quentin's like, how'd it turn out, Jimmy.
And he's like, actually that was- that was great.
Quentin said, "Cool, cool.
We should get one for safety,
right?"
Boom, boom.
He drinks another shot, drinks another shot.
And I don't know how, but we started singing this
song from Blazing Saddles, where I was like,
(sings) din-din-din-in, din-din-din.
(sings) Throw out your hands,
Stick out your tush... (sings) Throw out your hands,
(speaks) And I just started doing it to Quentin.
And he just started laughing.
And he's like, "Ah, that was so fun.
He's like, "Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Let's- let's just do another one."
And we're like, yeah, but now it's like
seven fifteen in the morning.
And so Quentin's like,
"Action!" And he goes,
"pshew" and slams the glass down and shatters it
and cuts his hand and falls off the table laughing.
And he's like, "Ah-ha-ha-ha!
That was so funny.
Oh, my God!"
I think we did about twelve takes.
Finally at like, maybe it's eight-forty-five
in the morning, I was leaving and Quentin, like,
grabbed my arm. He's like,
"You're stayin' and you're having a drink with us, right?"
I said, "Yeah, yeah.
Let me be right back."
And I like ran away
back to the hotel to sleep. I don't know.
All I heard was someone may have been puking
in a dumpster at eleven o'clock the next morning.
when I saw Death Proof,
in that scene
where the girls are sitting in the car
driving and talking, nothing happens.
They don't say anything that's really relevant to anything.
It goes on and it goes on and I think it goes on for
forty-five minutes,
and they are still driving and talking.
And I was so smitten by that moment that it really
clicked that- that yeah, despite all the
extraordinary entertainment that these
movies deliver, there is an allure and a suction
that pulls you in.
There is always that, this- this strength in it.
(sings) Where the hell are my keys?
Here they are.
I think Quentin's influence on film is twofold.
One is that he's empowered
a lot of half-ass filmmakers to make some
very bad films because they don't know
how to watch his films.
They miss the poetry
and the elegance and the eloquence of his filmmaking.
And so they go and they- they had a lot of,
you know, bizarre violence and- and people
mistreating people and they miss his passionate humanism.
Inglourious Basterds, this is a film that teaches
filmmakers how to make movies because the opening
scene is literally Quentin saying to everybody,
"Oh, you think you know who I am,
and you think you know what I can do,
and you think you've seen a war movie before.
Well, I'm gonna mess with you
in a way you haven't even begun to think."
Papa!
That I'm in control.
Then you were in the palm of my hands
and you're on my trip.
The German general comes in.
You can't quite figure out why he's being so friendly.
And you don't know why are they so scared?
And then at a certain point,
Quentin takes you under the house.
And it's really a horrific moment.
You know, it's not Robert Wise with The Haunting
where he's freaking you out with camera angles.
It's not Toby Hooper's, uh,
Texas Chainsaw where
he's like shoving your face in it.
It's what's not happening.
A German soldier conducts a search of a house
suspected of hiding Jews.
Where does the hawk look?
He looks in the barn.
He looks in the attic.
He looks in the cellar.
He looks everywhere he would hide.
But there's so many places that wouldn't even have
occurred to a hawk to hide.
No, you're not turning a corner and suddenly having
a cat screech.
And you go, "Oh!"
It's not cutting.
It's all intellectual and it's all unbearable.
Point out to me the areas where they're hiding.
The dialogue is,
so to say,
the tiny tip of the iceberg.
It's a clue.
I thank you for your time.
We shan't be bothering your family any longer.
So Quentin, in his dialogue,
doesn't tell you how to say it,
but he gives you like a whole abundance
of elements of what to say.
...adieu.
You derive fun from trying to figure that out.
That's it.
(chuckles) And Quentin starts there and then he
goes and messes in doing almost every other way he
can in terms of what a war film does.
(pants) (speaks French)
I remember the
first rehearsal from Inglourious Basterds.
We all sat around and everybody had our scripts
and we had our lines.
Quentin's like close your scripts.
And he's like, who are you?
And I was like, "I'm Donny Donowitz."
And you had to go on and on and on
about your backstory.
And he's like, "Well, how did you feel
when he joined the Basterds?
What did you think about
Stiglitz coming into the Basterds?"
Everybody had to have their answers ready.
And there was one person who didn't.
You!
And...
...you weren't there the next day.
And that guy was an extra.
So I was really, really training for it.
And I knew the bat scene, that was the scene.
Like, this-It was like if I do nothing else in
my life, it is this scene.
You hear that?
Yes.
It's Sergeant Donny Donowitz.
You might know him better by his nickname,
The Bear Jew.
Quentin just gave me the most heroic...
The one they call "The Bear Jew"...
...is a Golem!
He's like you have Brad Pitt
and Hitler building you up.
He's like this is gonna be your moment.
And, you know, I was gonna come out of this tunnel.
Quentin was like, "I got the best tunnel.
You're gonna be tapping with a bat and
you're gonna come out."
Well, I got some weights and we set up a punching bag,
so that Brad was doing the whole scene
and I was in the back and I was like lifting weights
and doing pull-ups, like, I wanted to be ready like-
like an animal.
And Quentin was like, all right,
we're gettin' to you after lunch.
We're gettin' to you.
And then by the end, he's like,
we're gonna do you next, so be ready, ready.
And he was like, well, that's a wrap.
And I was like (grunt).
And I would, like, sit there at the end of day
and like (groan) like getting all made up and ready,
pumped up, ready to go,
and then it would be like the night at the gym and
in the morning the gym, and then ready for it.
And Quentin did that to me for about four or five days.
He finally, and he just like had me like a caged animal.
He was, of course, doing it on purpose.
And when I came out with that bat,
I was so, so ready.
And then I just started wailing on that dummy.
(grunts) I'm going completely crazy.
I mean I think I lost my voice
for a couple days after that.
I know that Quentin really wanted,
um, authentic, um, actors to be really German,
to be really French.
Um, he spent months and months and months in
Germany trying to find the right people,
especially for Christoph Waltz's character.
And I know that he had said himself,
that if he wouldn't have found Christoph,
he wouldn't have been able to make this film.
Quentin was very secretive about,
uh, Christoph's character.
Uh, even at the read-throughs we didn't
get to really see his performance.
In the theatre when Christoph comes in
and confronts Bridget,
we never rehearsed that scene,
so it was a complete surprise to me when
he started going crazy on the laugh and- and the way he
did that scene.
(laughs) And I think it kind of shows in my face.
Christoph just found this character.
He had a really specific idea of how he wanted to
play it and together with Quentin they just had this
great bond and it got bigger and bigger and bigger.
There is definitely an exuberance about the
medium that he spreads.
And there is no, no inoculation against this bug.
You get infected whether you want to or not.
(laughs) Well, I don't know whether you want to
or not, because that's part of the,
part of the infection that you do want to get infected.
It's like going to a whore house to
get infected with the syphilis.
I've never been killed on film,
so as the day approached, I was getting more and more
nervous about it.
I'm in my trailer and Quentin comes in and he goes,
"Well, I don't really trust Christoph to
kill you, so I'm gonna do it myself."
And he was like, "Well, look at this.
They cut off SS sleeves that fit me and I'm gonna
put them on and then I'm just gonna be on top of
you and I'm gonna be strangling you,
and it's gonna be great."
I was like, " Oh, oh.
Yeah, that's great.
Sure.
Fair enough.
Why not?"
And- and now I'm really panicking.
And so we know we do the stunt and like I'm finally
on the ground and I just have this to the end of
my life vision of Quentin, who by all means is three
times Christoph's size and his hands are three times
Christoph's hands on top of me,
you know, with put-on sleeves that are three
sizes too small for him strangling me.
And I was just like, well, at least if I die,
it's Quentin Tarantino who killed me today.
Ooh!
(gasps) I guess he really gets in there.
Quentin is very hands-on.
He sits next to camera.
Usually directors sit at video village,
sometimes in a different room.
You feel like he's involved,
he's there, he's kind of holding your hand a little bit.
At the end of the day, you feel like he sees everything.
He laughs when there's like a joke in the scene.
He's always like-- Sometimes you have to cut
because we can hear Quentin laughing.
It's- It's pretty great.
(laughs) Hi, Sally.
(laughs) Any time you get a take and he likes it,
he's like, "All right, another one to shout to Sally.
(laughs) Hi, Sally. (chuckles)
He called me right after he met Sally Menke
and he said, I've met this gal.
I think we're gonna work on all our movies together.
Look into the camera and tell my lonely editor
stuck in Los Angeles
that's in her room all by herself, hello.
Her name is Sally.
Hello, Sally.
And welcome to happy first day.
And happy first day!
Now all together, go.
Hello, Sally and happy first day!
Sally Menke, unfortunately,
is not with us anymore.
But she was Quentin's major contributing editor
for all of his movies for a while there.
She is my only true genuine collaborator
from beginning to end and that's the way it is.
They just knew each other so well,
it felt like kind of their unspoken language.
She was one of those women that could be like,
"You're being self-indulgent."
And he'd be like, "Fine!"
I think he could hear Sally's voice when he's shooting.
And so tonight I want to thank my co-writer,
Sally Menke.
She was his cheerleader
and his editor all rolled into one.
Hi, Sally.
Cut!
The Basterds will be waiting from you.
(to self/Sally) Fucking, fucky, fuck.
So, close.
Hello, Sally. So close.
The resonance of his cinema is to push you
with every tool at his disposal and he's a master
at most of those tools.
I remember that ending watching it and my parents,
my parents were crying.
It was just this incredible,
incredible moment.
I get to be the Jew that shot Hitler.
It's the greatest.
Everywhere I go, people recognize me for
The Bear Jew, every country.
It's incredible.
I think the people who think that
Inglourious Basterds goes off the rails when Hitler
dies misses that we all are watching the movie and
we all know we're watching a movie.
He didn't change history,
nor does he ever claim to do that.
But he's doing exactly the- the- the
quintessential task of what storytelling is all about.
What if?
I've never had the desire to be part of repeating my
country's history over and over and over,
so the set seemed really refreshing.
(laughs) And, uh, only Quentin Tarantino gets
away with stuff like that.
I mean, what a ballsy movie to make.
That guy makes a movie, that's a movie called
Inglourious Basterds where the bastards aren't really
in it that much, a war movie where there's almost
no war, and it's two-thirds in a foreign language.
It's just like, how do you do that?
How do you have the confidence and the balls
to do that coming off of what was the biggest
commercial failure of your career?
I'm alive.
(speaks German) He's like, I'm gonna do something
bold and brave and different.
Then he does it again with Django.
And everyone's still doubting him.
How can you do a slavery movie at Christmas?
And he said, watch this.
It's his biggest movie ever.
Everyone is standing
in the Quentin Tarantino line to work.
I don't care who they are.
I don't care how big your star shines
and what you do at the box office.
You are still Quentin Tarantino deprived
if you haven't gotten a chance to work with him.
(indistinct) . ..your black ass.
(laughs) I get a chance to meet Quentin Tarantino.
Hey, white boy.
I said, hey, white boy.
Shut up, black.
You ain't got nothing' to say I want to hear.
You make unknowns, celebrities, stars.
But you turn stars into legends.
I said, I know the dude needs to be able
to ride his horse.
I got my own horse at the crib.
It'll be cool.
And not only did he allow me to take on the character,
but I got a chance to ride my own
horse in the film.
My valet, Django.
These are our horses, Tony and Fritz.
We had Bruce there,
Bruce Dern, who's done every western that's
ever been made for television,
played every bad guy you could imagine.
Django, Django, you got sin,
Django.
The boy's got sin.
When you've watched this man for however many year, what,
thirty, forty, fifty years of his career,
and to step in.
And that's what you need, you know?
No political correctness.
No softening the blows.
I want you to burn a runaway "R" right here on
his cheek, and the girl, too.
(gasps) Getting into the role and working with Quentin,
Quentin was, especially in the beginning
because he didn't know me.
You know, he knew Samuel.
He knew Christoph.
And so he was like, "Listen.
You know, we really got to put the work in."
And so I would come in and I was doing my lines
really sort of Jim Brownish,
like, you know, like I was already the guy.
And I remember him going, "Uh,
let's take a break."
He takes me in the room.
He says, "Hey, listen.
Listen.
You- you- you got to be a slave."
I said, "What do you mean?" He said,
"You- you have to be a slave."
And I said, " I- I don't get it."
He says, "You're already too macho
and you're too in control."
The Louis bag and the Range Rover you're driving,
all of this, and so you have to come in and
strip that all the way, 'cause I don't want this
to be a mistake that if I hired someone who is like
yourself or some other person who's well known,
that you couldn't break away from your persona and
that's why I work with the people that I work with.
And so the next day, I left all that at the crib
and sunk into that- that type of person who was
strong on the inside, but afraid to allow it to come out
because you would be murdered.
Imagine if anyone here saw someone you love and you
can't say nothing 'cause they'll kill you both.
(sings) Broomhilda, come on and get on my horse.
Broomhilda (beatboxing...) That was powerful.
Even in the rehearsal, I had to do certain things
in order to get the fear out of my character
when it came to Sam because he came in like this.
He howls to everything.
I can literally say he's
probably the best actor I've worked with.
You scaring me.
(gasps) Why is it I'm scarin' you?
Because you're scary.
Oh, fuck.
Oh, fuck, it's incredible.
I told Quentin Stephen was gonna
have his fans.
(chuckles) Stephen could read, write, count,
do all those things,
and he had a disguise.
He disguised himself as a feeble old man
and he wasn't.
And he realized that inside the confines of
Candyland, he was king.
Even when Calvin was home, he was king.
He's gonna stay in the big house?
Stephen, he's a slaver.
It's different.
In the big house?
The character is the characters.
And that's why I...
...think people love
his characters is that
they are honest, whether you like them,
whether you agree with them or disagree with them,
they are who they are.
The film has already sparked
controversy over its repeated use of the "N" word.
And now, Director, Spike Lee says he won't go to see it.
Spike, (chuckles) Spike Lee's,
you know and I respect Spike Lee,
you know, but Spike Lee's that guy.
You know, it's like Spike Lee is like the-
the old dude with the nice little house that has the grass.
Don't you get on my grass, you little motherfuckers.
That's my grass, every blade of it is.
Little motherfuckers.
You know.
You're not gonna get
Samuel Jackson to say
nigger, nigger, nigger if he feels he's demeaning anybody.
You know, I mean Samuel Jackson's gonna turn to
you and tell you where to go.
You take Twelve Years A Slave,
which is supposedly made by an "auteur",
so Steve McQueen's very different from Quentin.
So when you have a song that says nigger three
hundred times in it and nobody says shit.
(sings) Nigger run,
nigger flew, nigger tore his shirt in two Run,
run or the pattyroller will get you Run nigger
run Well you better get away
So, it's okay for him to use it because
he's artistically attacking the system or the way people
think and feel in a way.
Then Quentin's just doing it to just scrape the
blackboard with his nails.
You know, and that's not true.
There is no dishonesty in anything that he writes
or how people talk, feel, or speak.
There you go!
The consumer, especially black consumers,
they understand that it's a movie.
Sometimes we get a little overboard with our
sensitivity level with- with everything,
because nobody was really payin' attention to that.
They were comin' to see their favorite director
direct some of their favorite stars.
If it's Quentin, if it's Samuel,
if it's Leo, it's Christoph,
Carry Washington, and myself,
I- I just find it hard for us to fuck that up.
All three are champions.
Samson's a champion.
Them other two pretty good.
Calvin-- You know we live in a very politically
correct society now to where almost everything,
it almost chokes art a little bit.
That's just the way it was.
What's your name, boy?
His name is Django Freeman.
His characters are a part of him.
It's how he creates.
But they're living breathing characters to him.
There's a great story that his mom told me about when
he was a little boy and he was playing with his GI Joes
and he was using foul language.
And I think it was like, you know,
"Fuck you. Die."
And you know, like, whatever.
And she came around the corner and she was like,
Quentin, don't you use that language.
And he said, "It's not me, Mom.
It's just the guys.
That's how they talk."
I count two guns, Nigger.
You said in seventy-six years on this plantation,
you've seen all manner of shit done to niggers,
but I notice...
you didn't mention kneecapping.
Oh, God!
Motherfucker!
Leonardo DiCaprio had a problem saying the word nigger.
"Pal.
(inhales) Pal, it's just.
(exhales) It's tough for me to say this."
And, uh, I remember Samuel Jackson going,
Get over it, motherfucker.
This is just another Tuesday, motherfucker.
I don't give a fuck about these motherfuckers.
Look at- look at who I am, motherfucker.
Fuck! And it was like...
You know, and I said, "Yeah."
I said, "Leo, Leo, we're- we're not friends."
I said, "This is just another Thursday.
This is your property.
These aren't humans.
These are your property."
And when Leo came in the next day,
it was literally like, I was like, "What's up, Leo?
What's up fam?"
He didn't speak.
You won't mind me handling this nigger
anyway I see fit.
He's your nigger.
Mr. Stonesipher, let Marshall and the bitches
send D'Artagnan to nigger heaven.
Quentin allowed us to transport back to that
time and it was- it was really real. It was intent.
Leonardo had that gigantic sequence where he becomes
wise to what Schultz and Django are up to.
He brought his hand down and smashed the glass.
So now blood is running down his hand.
He's kind of getting white.
Leo never breaks.
He goes all the way through 'cause he knows
it's a great take.
Where were we?
Quentin's right there, right at the lens next to him,
not in some video village.
In fact there are no monitors
on a Quentin Tarantino movie. There is no video village.
And you can see it in the performances.
Broomhilda here is my property and I can choose
to do with my property whatever I so desire.
After Leonardo finished, you know,
his fellow actors, his peers,
and the crew, basically, gave him a standing ovation.
And I think that it was the first time
that Leo had really been in that atmosphere,
that brotherhood, and that spirit of fun.
After a hundred rolls of film,
they, all of sudden, I'm- now I'm in chains,
like, all of a sudden they start playing music.
(sings) Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba...
(speaks) I was like, what's going on?
What's all this?
They start bringing out tequila.
I say, what? Oh, shit!
This is great. I said, what the fuck?
I said, what kind of set is this?
He says, "My kinda set, motherfucker."
Quentin had called
everybody in and- and- and we were waiting
for- for everybody to come in and we chatted and...
And then Quentin came and said, "Okay.
I thought about this for a long time and this morning
at three o'clock I came to the conclusion,
now this is what's going to happen."
And then he acted out that whole scene,
this big battle inside.
And then Quentin said, "Well,
I thought about ending the movie here,
but then this happens."
And he threw himself on the floor.
And he jumped up and threw his gun.
You know, I- I think he had like fifteen and shot
and- and really acted out the whole scene.
Bob Richardson was sitting there,
you know, trying to control his- his blood pressure.
And the- and the- the- the stunt coordinator,
who is about seven feet tall and five feet wide
was leaning against the wall like that.
(chuckles) And the- and the special effects guy
started to cry.
That main hall was literally destroyed
and the blood was squirted up to the second story.
Blood up to the gallery of that,
literally everywhere.
Ow!
God!
The furniture, the interior,
everything thrashed to the size of toothpicks.
And you want to tell me that's a true story?
True is what happened on the set.
True is what happens on the screen.
But the violence? No.
The violence is opera.
Django...!
You (indistinct) son of a...
Django's not trying to cure slavery.
He just wants to take out the people that did him
bad and get with his girl.
This is a love story.
Django is the- is the super hero.
He's the guy who rides off into the sunset.
And you don't see a lot of black characters that do that.
You don't see in Hollywood when a black character's
in that type of setting of slavery does what he does,
kills the bad white folks, gets his girl,
and rides off into the sunset.
It's about eight people trapped
in a blizzard in a haberdashery
in the middle of nowhere.
It's a mixture of western, who-done-it,
revenge movie. It's all those things.
Want to make a deal?
Huh?
The deal still stands, Chris.
You ain't got nothing we can't forgive.
The Hateful Eight is kind of almost like a- a
bookend of Reservoir Dogs.
It'd just be more bullshit.
This man set us up.
He creates an initial scenario,
an initial group of people,
and he throws them together
often in one room.
And then he explores what might happen by putting
this group of people in the same room,
like Reservoir Dogs or The Hateful Eight.
It's a complete ensemble piece,
which is pretty incredible because you've got eight people
in there talking to each other about some very specific,
interesting, and sometimes very hateful things.
(spits) (grunts) What the- (groans) (groans)
He lets the characters be infused
by the actors that he chooses to portray them.
He played me a piece of music and then he said,
"I think it would be nice if Daisy played the guitar
and sang this song."
It really focused me
because I had to practice that fucking instrument
everyday whenever I was not on camera.
(sings) I'll kill you bastards one and all I'll
gun the floggers down It was ama-I had never played
guitar in my life.
(sings) And you'll be dead Behind me John
When I get to Mexico.
He wanted it to come from the inside.
And when you are singing a song to yourself,
you're immediately going inward.
Give me that guitar.
I think he has a way of getting into each
character and letting them breathe
and create their life.
(laughs) He gave me the script.
He goes, "Here. You're Joe Gage."
A bastards work is never done,
huh, John Ruth?
That's right, Joe Gage.
And I said, "Thanks for thinking of me."
And he goes, "Michael, you were there at the beginning,
and by God you're gonna be here now, you know."
I find him to be the same man,
but just with a lot more of a pack.
He's more of a package than he was, you know.
He pays attention.
He also became much more sophisticated as a filmmaker.
His mastery of blocking and his mastery of camera
movement and that choreography is really
pronounced and you can really see his growth.
Also, you are seeing his maturity as a human being.
He may look at the same things,
but through the lens of where he sits right now.
Who said it that, uh, Kurt Russell's character was
based on, yeah.
I think John Ruth was a lot nicer guy that
Harvey Weinstein.
If Kurt was supposed to be Harvey,
then that must have been Harvey's good side.
You ruin that letter of his,
that nigger's gonna stomp your ass to death.
And when he do, I'm gonna sit back on that wagon
wheel, watch, and laugh.
(exhales) Yeah, if you read them on the page it
was a little more accurate.
Kurt's the most charming person on the planet.
When that sun comes out, I'm taking this woman into
Red Rock to hang.
The association of Quentin and Harvey
over twenty-five years,
it was a pretty good brotherhood.
It was a pretty good combination of Hollywood
power and of talent.
In the past, with the Weinstein Company,
whatever he said was- was the word of God.
These guys, there was a toll,
you know?
He earned, he made enough money for everybody.
We shot on seventy,
because he knew that if we went to the
expense of shooting on seventy,
they were gonna project it in seventy.
And it was the exhibition, which was as important
as the image capture.
Quentin cares about cinema and caring about cinema
means literally caring about cinema,
caring about film, the romance of cinema,
how it looks and feels, and for him,
he doesn't feel that digital technology
approximates the impact that that flicker has on us.
He just bought a theater.
He owns the new Beverly Cinema.
I've been going there recently introducing pictures.
I love the new Beverly. I was there last week.
We watched a print of Seven,
which had silver in it.
It was incredible.
It was so beautiful.
I mean Quentin leaned over to me and he's like,
"Take a good look.
You're never gonna see a finisher movie look
this good again.
(chuckles) It's like sad, but true.
He wrote it in the script, glorious seventy
millimeter about six times during the
first twenty pages.
And my jaw dropped when I saw that.
I was like, "You're kidding me, right?
You're gonna actually do this?"
Once he found this big, gorgeous,
beautiful seventy millimeter format,
he realized that there was an intimacy.
He'd shot a hundred close ups of Sam Jackson,
but he never shot a close up of Sam Jackson
that looked like that.
And you literally could get even deeper underneath
the skin and into the hearts and minds of these
characters and hold these big wide frames
so that you were almost in theater.
Everybody had to be on at every given moment in
those rooms all the time.
I don't know really that Quentin would have felt
all that comfortable doing the seventy millimeter thing
if Bob Richardson wasn't his partner doing it with him.
Bob brings so much to the table both
technically and creatively.
Quentin's exuberance and his enthusiasm for films
and filmmaking is so unbelievably vast.
And that's the way he was making Reservoir Dogs
and that's the way he is making The Hateful Eight,
and that spirit is contagious.
Quentin values friendship.
Quentin values deep relationships.
Quentin values a rag tag sort of family that is
more committed to each other than even actual blood.
And I think that you see that on our set.
(chuckles) That was a great one.
We have the same people.
Our script supervisor has been with Quentin since
Reservoir Dogs.
Our sound mixer, I think, has been with us since Pulp.
The makeup crew, stunts, everybody feels like
they're coming home.
It's that Quentin thing where you're suddenly
working around family and to see so many familiar
faces and that loyalty that Quentin has to his people,
his crew, and his cast.
There's music playing.
There's conversation.
There's laughter.
Quentin's like, "No cell phones on set.
Let's go to work."
And if you were caught with a cell phone,
you'd be fired, no matter who you are.
We called him Checkpoint Charlie where you had to
turn in your cell phone and he put it in a Ziploc
bag with your name on it, and there were absolutely
no cell phones allowed on set.
And so we talk to each other,
we dance, we sing, we laugh.
We talk about what we just did and
how we can make it better the next time.
Just like an extraordinary experience just being on
set when it's that down take.
He laughs openly during takes.
He cheers.
I imagine that he cuts himself out.
Douche Bag take one.
Twenty-eight prick, take two.
Humiliation, take one, mark.
(indistinct) Premiere take one. (indistinct) Premiere.
(laughs) His sets have become the most unique
set experience you can have.
What Quentin would say all the time,
"All right, we got this and we could move on,
but we're gonna do one more."
We're gonna do one more.
Why?
Because we love making movies.
I said, "Man, I'm- I'm- I'm on that train."
He's a fan.
You know he loves movies.
He appreciates people.
He's a fan of fans.
He appreciates life.
His way of socializing is inviting people over to
watch a movie.
He gets us all together.
He screens a movie of some sort.
Hey, everybody, come on and sit down.
Let's watch this.
And he'd go get some popcorn and sit there and
watch it with you.
It's a collective experience.
He was showing it to us for the first time.
We're just this group of, you know,
people and actors that he had chosen to use in his movie.
After the screening was over,
I couldn't help but notice.
He wasn't just sweating, he was- he was drenched.
And yet, I've never met anyone who honestly
comes even remotely close to the confidence he has when it
comes to making his movie.
It's amazing to me that he would have any nerves on
the other end at all.
But is shows, you know, how much he cares.
He was big and he was everywhere.
And everybody feared him.
Quentin and Harvey
Weinstein are two different animals.
I get it.
I understand why a lot of these girls
didn't say anything.
Their life depended on it.
If my livelihood, the preservation of my children,
if that is dependent upon someone
else that has power, like a Harvey Weinstein,
it's really scary.
That's the underbelly of the industry that
nobody knows about and it's really dark
and it's really fucked up.
I've been told things from a few people
who haven't even shown up yet.
I'll say exactly what Quentin said.
He simply said, "Listen.
I knew about it for a long time.
And I should have said something, but I didn't."
The fear factor
should never have entered into any of it.
And that's what I think the average person doesn't
understand, the fear and the emotional shutdown
that you'd have to force yourself into.
Oh, my God.
I can't believe what just happened.
And who am I gonna say anything to?
And if I do say something, I'm finished.
I won't be in another movie and
I won't be able to fulfill my life.
That's a pretty hard thing.
Now you find out about these hundreds of
thousands of dollars that was paid out to these
different girls in situations with him.
But see the people
who are complicit with that,
who followed his orders,
they're just as blameable and corrupted as- as him.
And a lot of that ain't
on the cover of Time Magazine.
They're still hiding.
There's a lot of them out there who were
more than happy to follow the
orders and the ideals of,
uh, Harvey's opinion.
And the fact that your own body,
your own face, your physical being is what you
use as your instrument of work,
and if that gets persecuted and that gets
ruined and that gets destroyed,
and somebody like Harvey has the power to do that,
don't hire that person.
And the people who would take
a call from a Harvey Weinstein,
"Oh, that was Harvey."
(smacks lips) "Yeah, he says not to hire so and so."
Having now separated himself so instantaneously
from Harvey, that was the end of it.
It's the end of an era.
It's an era that certainly made a point
and was envied by an awful lot of people.
He has moved on.
He's making a new movie.
He's doing Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
And it ain't with the
Weinstein Company.
Quentin Tarantino is a rock star.
Quentin Tarantino can do a movie about any subject
matter that he wants to because Quentin Tarantino
stands out in front of the movie a little bit.
He's not gonna fade out.
This is why he talks about making ten.
He doesn't want to be that guy who people go,
"Oh, most of them was good,
but his stuff, you know as his stuff used to be,
but you know he's a bit too old for it now,
you know.
Bless him."
Doesn't want that.
I don't know, man.
I think he needs to live to a hundred and fifty or
two hundred years just so he can accomplish whatever
he wants to accomplish.
You know how his characters are related.
There's always a kind of a
family history that runs through.
I'm Doctor King Schultz.
This is my horse Fritz.
Full loads? Obviously.
Dandy Michaels, Joe Nash, and...
Crazy Craig Koons.
This here is Captain Koons.
He was in the POW camp with Daddy.
You know there's a family chain,
that there's a string that runs from the beginning
through to the end.
Hello, little man.
So I am in Hateful Eight,
the great- great grandfather of
Michael Fassbender's character
in Inglourious Basterds.
I'm watching Kill Bill, and there's Earl McGraw alive
as a character in it with his son, James Parks.
I said, "They got killed in From Dust Till Dawn One and Two."
He goes, "This happens before that."
I'm like, "Oh, God.
You- you like a gen-He's- he's- he reminds me of like
Norman Lear, you know,
how All In The Family begot The Jeffersons and
The Jeffersons begot the Good Times
and so on and so forth.
He was gonna make the Vega Brothers,
which would be me and John,
which would have been great,
right?
'Cause that would be believable,
right?
It would have to be a prequel because we're both dead,
which doesn't make sense,
but that's how it would be.
He's got his ten.
He'll do other stuff.
(stammers) And I know some of his plans and they're
fucking amazing.
You're writing your life story.
You bet I am.
Am I in it?
(chuckles) You just entered.
I mean, I wonder when he starts writing books
whether he will, some of these characters will
show up in his novels.
It's complete. It's a hundred percent.
And sacrificed relationship,
having children, all of that stuff to
pursue his dream.
He's a complete filmmaker and- and an artist in- in
the full on sense.
We're gonna miss it.
We're gonna miss the opportunity that he brings.
And it's true of all of us.
If your phone buzzes in your pocket
and you take it out of your pocket
and you look at it and it says
QT on it, you go please, please,
please, oh just please, please be one, please.
You know and (imitates phone on).
Hi. And he goes, "Hi.
Um, I've got something I want you to read."
And you're done.