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FILMMAKING TIPS FROM

QUENTIN TARANTINO

Emerging from a nitrate fire in 1963, Quentin Tarantino was fed only

exploitation films, spaghetti Westerns and actual spaghetti until he

was old enough to thirst for blood. He found his way into the film

industry as a PA on a Dolph Lundgren workout video, as a store clerk at

Video Archives and by getting encouragement to write a screenplay bythe very man who would make a name for himself producing

Tarantino’s films.

Peter Bogdanovich (and probably many others) think of him as the

most influential director of his generation, and he’s got the legendary

story to back it up — not to mention line-busting movies like Pulp

Fiction, Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained under his belt.

He’s also the kind of name that makes introductions like this useless.



So here’s a bit of free film school (for fans and filmmakers alike) from a

guy who really loves Hi Diddle Diddle and plans to keep 35mm alive as

long as he’s rich enough to do it.

Lie Until People Think You Worked With Godard

“What happens when you start out acting, you gotta have a resume,

and if you ain’t done nothin’, you can’t write ‘Nothing.’ People aren’t

gonna pay attention to that so you’ve gotta lie. Alright? I had better

luck at it than most because I knew a lot about movies and stuff. I was a

fan of Jean-Luc Godard, and he’d just had a movie come out. It wasfrom Cannon back in the 80s or something called King Lear . Woody

Allen is in it for a moment, and Molly Ringwald is in it, and I saw it.

And, it’s like, there’s no way in hell anyone’s gonna see this movie, so I

wrote down under ‘Motion Pictures’ on my resume, ‘King Lear – dir.

Jean-Luc Godard w/ Woody Allen, Molly Ringwald.’

I even did that with another movie, too, called Dawn of the Dead , you

know, the George Romero zombie movie. Well there was a motorcycle

guy in the motorcycle gang who kinda looked like me, so I just said it

was.”

Tarantino is quick to point out that he had the lies down, providing

anecdotes from the set and details from the movies. The King Lear lie

eventually seeped into his biography in press notes after Reservoir

Dogs, but since he found it funny (and never corrected the mistakes),the lie spread even further. He was eventually listed in Leonard

Maltin’s “Movies On TV” as being in the cast of Godard’s film.

Sadly, IMDB doesn’t list him in it.

Of course, there are a ton of people lying to get work in the movie

business, so if you’re going to do it, know what you’re talking about

and go with gusto. It might also help to know as much about movies as

Tarantino.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iN73dOLh-yo



Good Artists Borrow, But Great Artists?

“I steal from every movie ever made.”

This may be a key deconstructive criticism for his work, but it might

also be that he’s simply more honest than everyone else. If we can’t

help but pick bits of inspiration from everything, why not be direct?

Why not blend them all together to make something new that looks

familiar? Who says a director can’t be more like a DJ?

You Might Make Guitar PicksMake the Movie On the Page

When asked if Stealers Wheel’s “Stuck in the Middle With You” waswhat he originally wanted for the torture scene in Reservoir Dogs:

“It’s actually in the script. Which I can tell you I’ll never do again,

because the record companies read the script and they know that you

want that song. I actually got it — actually extremely cheap — but it was

like every other song wasn’t written in the script, so we actually got it

for a lot cheaper. They know you want it — it’s written in the script. See, I

wanted to make films, and the only thing I could get going was on the

page. So I put it all in the script. The big shots. The chase is broken

down shot for shot. It’s cut in the script. ‘POV through windshield. Mr.

Pink off screen.’ I was making the movie on the page, because it was

the only way I could make movies. And then, when I would show it to

someone I could say, ‘Look, this is what I’m going to do. I’m not going

to do this. Just this.’”That’s a cardinal sin in screenwriting classes, but if you’re planning on

directing (or if you don’t have to prove to anyone why you should be

the director), it sounds like solid advice.

Be Impersonally Personal

“My movies are painfully personal, but I’m never trying to let you know

how personal they are. It’s my job to make it be personal, and also to

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disguise that so only I or the people who know me know how personal

it is. Kill Bill is a very personal movie.

It’s not anyone’s business. It’s my job to invest in it and hide it inside of

genre. Maybe there are metaphors for things that are going on in my

life, or maybe it’s just straight up how it is. But it’s buried in genre, so

it’s not a ‘how I grew up to write the novel’ kind of piece. Whatever’s

going on with me at the time of writing is going to find its way into the

piece. If that doesn’t happen, then what the hell am I doing? So if I’m

writing Inglourious Basterds and I’m in love with a girl and we break

up, that’s going to find its way into the piece.That pain, the way my aspirations were dashed, that’s going to find its

way in there. So I’m not doing a James L. Brooks—I loved how personal

Spanglish was, but I thought that where Sofia Coppola got praised for

being personal, he got criticized for being personal in the exact same

aching way. But that doesn’t interest me, at least not now, to do my

little story about my little situation. The more I hide it, the more

revealing I can be.”

Think Outside the Casting ListWhat Have We Learned

Tarantino’s appeal is sort of hidden in plain sight. Yes, it’s easy to love

his twisted takes on genre and the beauty of his violent, idiosyncratic

characters. But he also represents the movie geek who ascended

beyond fandom to become a creator. He is the promise of every

cinephile who has even a shred of ambition to write a script or direct.He’s proof that being a huge nerd can pay off in a supreme way. Not

just that you can become a filmmaker, but that you can be heralded for

doing it exactly the way you want to do it.

His existence and dominance proves that it can be done!

Like Bigelow and others, he’s avoided the mainstream route while

finding mainstream success. That’s something afforded to him (as he’s

recognized) because his style was so thoroughly embraced by



audiences. He didn’t use Pulp Fiction as a springboard to taking on

blockbuster budgets within the studio system. Instead, he saw its

success as a continuation of the movies everyone wanted him to make

— so he happily kept making them.

With intense detail, aggressive focus and just a little bit of lying.

My third Tarantino film technique is the use of objects of violence as

main themes, meaning objects or things of violence in the films

almost have a character of their own. he incorporates a story and

characters around this object, and it brings it all together. If the objector thing wasnt in the film, it would not have a story at all.

For example in 'Death Proof', a car is always focused on. this car

contains the killer, but the killer is not the scary part. the car has a skull

on the front if it and there are shots of just the car. this is making the

audience frightened of the car and not the killer. The car is almost a

character on its own. another example is the samurai sword in 'Kill Bill

Vol. 2'. The story is about a woman seeking revenge on a man who

betrayed her. She goes about this revenge killing people with a

samurai sword. this sword is very important in telling the story, as

certain scenes would not make sense without the sword.

Quentin Tarantino used these things to create the story he is telling. Itgives the film a reason. without this samurai sword or car, the film has

nothing. The object, being a car or a sword, almost has a character on

its own because he makes it that way. His films rely on its visual

content and the great shots in his films contain this main object. The

audience can identify this object and if they see it in reality, they will

think of his film. This makes his films memorable to the audience. This

is very effective because it pulls in audiences who are into different



films. for example, people who like good old car chase films with

explosions and fast driving will want to see 'Death Proof' simply

because the car is on the cover and it looks cool. again in 'Kill Bill Vol.

2' the sword is on the cover and people who like sword fight films or

martial arts films will see this and be enticed into the look of the film

and the content. Tarantino is trying to portray the amount of violence

society deals with and the fact that people are scared. In the case of

'Death Proof' it may be the fact that technology (the car,) is the scary

part and not the characters. the huge increase in technology recently is

creating fear in society about how much technology could really harmus. Perhaps he is telling society that the amount of violence around us

in everyday life is bad, or maybe he is using violence for the sake of

violence and trying to grasp the attention of the gore/horror/action

fans. Ultimately it is up to the audience to take out of these violent

themes what they want, but these things are the main reasons for his

violent objects as themes.

My second technique is the use of homage in Tarantino's films. This

technique consists of sampling other films, usually classic films, and

putting certain elements of them into modern films so that the

audience can identify the similarities. He uses this technique because

of his own personal influences. Quentin Tarantino is a lover of film,

therefore has seen a lot of old classic films that he loves, so heencorporates themes, quotes, music etc from old classics that he likes

in his films to create a homage to the films he loves.

An example of this is the film 'Kill Bill Vol. 2'. his use of martial arts,

samurai sword fighting is a homage to old kung fu movies that

Tarantino grew up with. He uses this theme aswell as using old music

that can be identified with old asian films that contain kung fu fighting



and samurai sword fights. Another example is in the film 'Death

Proof'. the film is made to look like an old school grindhouse film,

which is a homage to grindhouse films of the 60s-70s where tarantino

was a teenager who liked to go watch them. Back when Grindhouse

cinemas were still around, the films were mostly exploitation films that

were not very popular and normally b grade. This meat that there were

usually no more than one reel of the film which would travel around

different grindhouse cinemas. the reel would get dirty and scratched

etc which would sometimes make the projection of it gritty and maybe

even cut out some scenes. Tarantino uses these effects in his film socreate a homage to the grindhouse cinemas.

He uses this technique because of the fact that older audiences who

are watching these films are triggering memories of films they loved

and saw as kids. His constant comparisons to old classic films of the

audiences childhood makes the older audience enjoy it more. because

Tarantino has become known for this technique, many people will go

see his films to experience the what they experienced as children

watching films of their day and age. this makes him very popular. the

audience can then see how film has changed over time and that older

films can be great classics, even without the effects and high tec

equipment used to make films today.

My first technique is Tarantino's use of comic fight scenes which seem

to be brutal and raw but also humourous. He puts some fight

sequences in that are obviously unrealistic but it fits with the story he

is telling. He does this because as a director, he likes to make the

audience laugh at things that shouldnt be funny. the audience is

laughing because of the unrealistic action they are watching and the

sound effects and/or music that are cheesy and fake. this gets the



viewer to think about why they are laughing at such violent brutality

when in a real life situation, they would not be laughing.

One example is from the movie 'Kill Bill Vol. 2'. there is a scene where

The Bride and Elle Driver are fighting in a caravan. the fight is bloody

and violent but has a satirical feel to it. when the audience is watching,

they are getting shocked by the violence, but at the same time they are

laughing. in this particular scene, he throws in some comedic lines to

balance the violence with the humour. Another example is in the film

'Death proof' when at the very end of the film, there is a huge carchase which ends in three girls beating up a man. the violence is very

brutal, yet the amount of it is so extensive, that the audience is seeing

it as humour.

For the people who like to read deep into films, this technique of

extreme violence with humour is used to get the audience thinking

about censorship and the level of violence viewers are considering to

be normal. we see on the news that there are bombs going off in

overseas countries, and we pass them off as normal and not taking as

much notice of it because we have become immune to high levels of

violence. Tarantino's film style asks an important question about the

level of violence in the world we live in and why we arent as affectedby it. He is showing us that society has gotten so used to seeing

violence in everyday life, that we are no longer shocked and horrified

by it. By putting large amounts of violence in his films, he is saying

that society needs extreme and sometimes unbelievable amounds of

violence, blood and gore to grab their attention.



Another interesting observation of the violent themes is the fact that

he uses women in the position of power. the violence is coming from

the women and not the men, which is typical in films. for example, in

Kill Bill Vol. 2, the main character is a women. she is strong,

independent and is inflicting violence onto other characters. another

example is in Death Proof at the end scene where three women are

beating up a man because he was trying to kill them. this is putting

females in the position of power. i think tarantino is trying to shake up

the typical film to make it the complete opposite. instead of a man in

power which is typical, it is a women. it may also be that he is trying totell the audience that women in society are becoming more and more

violent when it is typical for men. by showing women as the position

of power he is making the audience think about the posibility of

women dominating men, who have done t



William FriedkinAs the urban legend goes, the set of William

Friedkin’s The Exorcist was cursed — but there were several chilling real-life incidents that helped fuel the stories. The actress who lent her

voice for the demonic Pazuzu had a son who eventually committed a

murder-suicide. Actor Jack MacGowran, who played director Burke

Dennings, died shortly after filming. There were several fires, injuries,

accidents — and Friedkin supposedly even brought in a priest to bless

the set. The director, however, added to the madness with his unusual

and aggressive approach with his cast. Friedkin caused a stir when he

slapped Reverend William O’Malley in the face to evoke an emotional

reaction out of him for one scene. He also fired actual guns on set to

terrify his cast and contribute to the anxious vibe. It wasn’t all for

naught, as the final result produced one of the scariest movies ever to

be put to screen.

David Lynch While David Lynch’s gee-whiz charm makes him appear more normal

than his surreal and often disturbing films, his fixation with

Transcendental Meditation — which he has been practicing for over 30

years — eludes many. The director has called his meditation method his

creative wellspring. He even wrote Catching the Big Fish to share his

experience and provide insight into the way he creates his work,somewhat cryptically describing a process of “diving within.” Indeed,

there is a fish in the percolator.

Stanley Kubrick Legendary director Stanley Kubrick’s genius was in his precision. The

obsessive-compulsive filmmaker would go to great lengths to craft his

personal vision, meticulously controlling every shot from conception to

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000040/





completion. The 2008 documentary Stanley Kubrick’s Boxesdelves into

the director’s neurotic personal archive of 1,000 boxes containing

photographs (which he used as research to prepare for every creative

detail of his movies, right down to the hats for Clockwork Orange) and

other random filmic pieces. His reputation as a perfectionist is well

documented when it comes to The Shining — just ask Shelley Duvall

who reportedly worked through 127 takes for one of her scenes.

Scatman Crothers holds the Guinness Book of World Records title for

most takes. The scene where he explains to Danny what shining is was

shot 148 times.

Lars von Trier It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the guy who casually chats about

Nazis at film festivals would be an unusual filmmaker. The Danish

avant-garde director started the oft-talked about Dogme 95 collective

to bring purity to the craft and quell the excessive spectacle ofelaborative special effects and other gimmicks. Von Trier is a bit of a

taskmaster as well. He often asks his actors to stay in character for

hours at a time during continuous shoots — which was something that

exhausted the cast of Dogville (a movie that reinvented the word

“minimal”). The director’s obsessive streak was demonstrated during

the filming of Dancer in the Dark . The musical sequences for the filmwere shot simultaneously with over 100 digital cameras (Von Trier only

shoots digital). Films like The Idiots contained graphic, unsimulated

sex — which makes sense for someone who produces hardcore

pornographic films through his company Zentropa. All this makes his

fear of flying and crippling depression seem a lot less… interesting.


http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081505/trivia?tr=tr0792955

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1263704/



Kurosawa If you’ve ever sat through the nearly four hours of Akira Kurosawa’s

stunning epic Seven Samurai , then we probably don’t need to explainthat the Japanese director is highly revered. You can also guesstimate

that the Yojimboand Rashomon helmer probably had to be something

of a mad perfectionist to create such intricately compelling and

gorgeous works. The hard working and heavy drinking filmmaker has

been painted as a tyrant by the Japanese media — even nicknaming

him Kurosawa Tenn"

, which translates to “The Emperor Kurosawa” —and only those who worked closely with him would know for sure, but

some of his methods were certainly strange and almost seem cruel. In

Throne of Blood , Kurosawa used real archers (and arrows) — who fired at

actor Toshir" Mifune during his deadly scene. A small price to pay to

work with a master director?

Alfred Hitchcock Suspense maestro Alfred Hitchcock was known for being somewhat

aloof when it came to connecting with his screen stars. It has been said

— even by the director himself — that he treated his actors like cattle,

thinking of them as mere props for his masterpieces. ” … The chief

requisite for an actor is the ability to do nothing well, which is by no

means as easy as it sounds,” he oncetold French New Wave filmmaker

François Truffaut. “He should be willing to be utilized and wholly

integrated into the picture by the director and the camera. He must

allow the camera to determine the proper emphasis and the most

effective dramatic highlights.”

http://www.amazon.com/HITCHCOCK-TRUFFAUT-Definitive-Hitchcock-Truffaut/dp/B000PYR1U8/flavorpill0e-20





Cecil B. DeMille Would you sign a contract with a filmmaker to promise not to do

anything “unbiblical” for five years? Cecil B. DeMille’s cast of The King

of Kings did. His expectations of his crew were often strange —

particularly when it came to Victor Mature who greatly upset and

offended the director when he wouldn’t wrestle a real lion in Samson

and Delilah. DeMille’s adopted his trademark tall leather boots duringthe filming of his western, The Squaw Man, to protect himself from

desert creatures — but we suppose it’d be easy to see how his choice of

clothing amusingly matched his sometimes sadistic reputation.




Method Writing: Interview with Quentin Tarantino

The Academy Award-winning writer/director gives Creative

Screenwriting his most in-depth interview on Jackie Brown, his writing/

acting method, and not being afraid of words that wound

Originally published in the Jan/Feb 1998 issue of Creative

Screenwriting.

by Erik BauerQuentin Tarantino is a filmmaker who inhabits his characters, and

through them, the very stylized world of tough guys, shocking

violence, and captivating rhetoric he has brought to life. “I’ve been

living in Ordell for a year now,” the Oscar-winning writer told me over

lunch at Jerry’s Deli. Ordell Robbie, the current star of the hour is black,

cold-hearted, and the stylistic center of Tarantino’s new film Jackie

Brown. Ordell is a bad motherfucker and fits snugly into the universe

Tarantino’s powerful vision and writing have conjured.

Perhaps it’s Ordell’s influence, perhaps not. But Tarantino is cultivating

a new reputation. “I bitch slapped [Don Murphy] like three times, bam,

bam, bam.… a little bitch slap don’t hurt nobody, it just humiliates

them and that’s the object,” Tarantino recalled on the Keenan Ivory

Wayans Show . Combine such aggression with a new black beret-wearing look, and you have Quentin Tarantino, Hollywood’s bad boy

writer-director. In meeting with Tarantino I decided to set aside his

image making and focus my inquiry on his writing, the heart of his

power as a filmmaker.

More than any other writer of his generation, Tarantino has created a

distinct dark universe where he unfolds his stories. Although dogged

by questions of his borrowing from other films and filmmakers, there



is no denying that Tarantino has crafted a unique reality that audiences

want to spend time in. It is a testament to the strength of his vision

that it has prospered over four films: Reservoir Dogs, True Romance

(directed by Tony Scott), Pulp Fiction and From Dusk Till Dawn (directed

by Robert Rodriguez). Only in Natural Born Killers did the vision of

Oliver Stone, another strong writer-director, obscure that of Tarantino.

Jackie Brown fits Tarantino’s universe like a new glove over an old fist.

Described as “a comic crime caper loosely based on Elmore Leonard’snovel Rum Punch,” Jackie Brown is Tarantino’s first true adaptation. But

because Leonard’s writing has had such a strong impact on Tarantino,

and their writing styles are so similar, Jackie Brown doesn’t end up

being much of a stretch for Tarantino.

“Leonard opened my eyes to the dramatic possibilities of everyday

speech,” Tarantino told me. And there is no lack of that everyday

speech in Jackie Brown. Tarantino’s adaptation follows Leonard’s plot

line, dropping a few minor characters, improving several others (most

notably Ordell), and inserting only a handful of new scenes. But it is in

the dialogue of the script that Tarantino follows Leonard’s low-life

naturalism most closely. Only a few scenes get a taste of the stylized,

pop-culture prose Tarantino is known for. This may be a stretch for

Tarantino, but we miss his electrified dialogue and powerful voice.Tarantino is a man who holds his filmmaking craft very close to his

vest. Although he was reticent to show too many cards, our discussion

of Jackie Brown and his writing roots opened a few windows into his

world and his technique as a “method writer.”



ERIK BAUER: How exactly have Elmore Leonard’s books influenced

your writing style?

QUENTIN TARANTINO: Well, when I was a kid and I first started

reading his novels I got really caught up in his characters and the way

they talked. As I started reading more and more of his novels it kind of

gave me permission to go my way with characters talking around

things as opposed to talking about them. He showed me that

characters can go off on tangents and those tangents are just as valid

as anything else. Like the way real people talk. I think his biggest

influence on any of my things was True Romance. Actually, in TrueRomance I was trying to do my version of an Elmore Leonard novel in

script form. I didn’t rip it off, there’s nothing blatant about it, it’s just a

feeling you know, and a style I was inspired by more than anything you

could point your finger at.

BAUER: The strongest scene in True Romance is the confrontation

between Cliff [played by Dennis Hopper] and Coccotti [played by

Christopher Walken]. How did you approach crafting that scene?

TARANTINO: The way I write is really like putting one foot in front of

the other. I really let the characters do most of the work, they start

talking and they just lead the way. I had heard that whole speech

about the Sicilians a long time ago, from a black guy living in myhouse. One day I was talking with a friend who was Sicilian and I just

started telling that speech. And I thought, “Wow, that is a great scene, I

gotta remember that.” In True Romance the one thing I knew Cliff had

to do was insult the guy enough that he’d kill him, because if he got

tortured he’d end up telling him where Clarence was, and he didn’t

want to do that. I knew how the scene had to end, but I don’t write

dialogue in a strategic way. I didn’t really go about crafting the scene, I



just put them in the room together. I knew Cliff was going to end up

doing the Sicilian thing, but I didn’t know what Coccotti was going to

say. They just started talking and I jotted it down. I almost feel like a

fraud for taking credit for writing dialogue, because it’s the characters

that are doing it. To me it’s very connected to actors’ improv with me

playing all the characters. One of the reasons I like to write with pen

and paper is it helps that process, for me anyway.

BAUER: What’s the relationship between your acting and your writing? TARANTINO: I think they’re almost inseparably married. When I

describe things in my writing I never use writing adjectives. I don’t

know what a writing adjective is. I always use acting adjectives. To me

writing’s almost the same thing because you’re acting like a character

and that’s what acting is all about, the moment. You don’t want to be

result oriented, you don’t want to say, “Okay, this is what’s going to

happen.” No, you start with your character and anything can happen,

like life. You shouldn’t try to predestine where you’re gonna go and

what you’re gonna see. You can hit the nail on the head, but you want

the kind of freedom that allows for something you hadn’t even

imagined to happen. I’m very much a man of the moment. I can think

about an idea for a year, two years, even four years all right, but what

ever is going on with me the moment I write is gonna work it’s wayinto the piece.

BAUER: Can you think of an example where your perspective at a

certain moment really changed the way you approached something?

TARANTINO: Well anything that’s really personal I wouldn’t want to

talk about because that’s not what the scene’s about, it’s just



underneath it there. But like something more on the surface would be

Vince’s whole thing in Pulp Fiction about Amsterdam. I was in

Amsterdam for the very first time in my life when I was writing that

script and it was kind of blowing my mind. And it was blowing Vince’s

mind too, he’d just come back from there too. When I spent time in

Amsterdam I was just going there to be by myself, but it worked its

way in ’cause that is what I was going through and that was gold.

BAUER: Do you think the Hollywood environment is constraining to

writers as far as their perspective?

TARANTINO: Well, it’s your life and anybody’s life is valid, you know.But to really get to know people and discover humanity, which is what I

truly think writers and actors do, you’ve got to be interested in other

human beings, you have to be interested in humanity in general, and

you have to do some discovering of humanity and different people. In

real life there are no bad guys. Everybody just has their own

perspective. I do have sympathy for the devil. To keep pursuing that

you need to break out of your environment, whether that is Hollywood

or you’re a novelist living in Rhode Island. You gotta go have a

conversation with and get to know somebody that makes $10,000 a

year. You know, they have a different fucking perspective. So that’s the

only danger, you’ve gotta work at it, you gotta work at going out and

keeping your hand into other people’s lives and not just your own.

BAUER: What adaptations of Elmore Leonard’s books do you admire? TARANTINO: I liked Get Shorty a lot, I guess where he was funny and I

really liked 52 Pick-up. I think that’s the only other crime one that I’ve

really liked.

BAUER: Did other adaptations suggest anything for your own

approach?



TARANTINO: No, I’ve never really felt that anyone got [Leonard] in the

prime zone.

BAUER: What about Scott Frank’s adaptation of Get Shorty ?

TARANTINO: Well it’s funny because he came pretty damn close. I

actually read his script and thought he did a really good job with it. But

there was still something lost in the translation. I’ve always been kind

of a perfectionist about the idea of adapting a Leonard novel because I

just wanted to have the feeling of the novel, those long dialogue

scenes where a character is slowly revealed. To me, that’s the fun of

adapting it. I’m not dissing Frank at all. I think he did a great job withGet Shorty , but there’s another aspect of Leonard’s novels that I’m

interested in.

BAUER: You’ve voiced concern in the past that your own voice, your

own dialogue might someday become old hat, that people might grow

tired of it. Was that one of the reasons you decided to go with an

adaptation rather than an original script for your next film?

TARANTINO: Well, that wasn’t the reason but it does very conveniently

serve that purpose. It’s a nice way of kind of holding onto my dialogue,

of holding onto my gift and whatever I’ve got to offer. I don’t want

people to take me for granted. The things I have to offer I don’t want

wasted. When you watch something David Mamet’s written you know

you’ve listened to David Mamet dialogue. I want to try and avoid that if

I can. I want to try to avoid that as a writer and I want to try to avoid itas a filmmaker. I want people to see my new movie not my next movie.

Does that make sense?

BAUER: Definitely.

TARANTINO: There are a lot of directors out there where you can

almost number their films. That doesn’t make them bad films and

these guys are doing exactly what they want to do. I just want each

movie to have a life complete unto itself and still when you look at it



from a perspective you can see how it all fits. I don’t want to do a

Woody Allen or a John Sayles thing where one film blurs into the next.

Those guys are doing exactly what they want to do, and I’m not putting

them down. I just want to do something else.

BAUER: In Jackie Brown it almost seemed like you went to great

lengths to make the dialogue naturalistic. Some of it was taken from

Leonard and some not, but it really casts against the very stylized

excessive dialogue that you’re known for. Is that a step away, like youwere saying, from your voice as we know it?

TARANTINO: Yes. I don’t want to be known for writing… you’ve gotta

remember, I’ve done two movies before this, so wait till I’ve done six

movies to start pigeonholing me. I tend to do different types of things.

Dogs, Pulp Fiction, True Romance and my script for Natural Born Killers

take place in kind of my own universe. But that doesn’t make them

fantastical. Larry McMurtry writes with his own universe. J.D. Salinger

writes with his own universe and it’s a very real universe and I think

mine is too. But having said all that, this movie doesn’t take place in

my universe.

BAUER: It doesn’t?

TARANTINO: This is in Elmore Leonard’s universe and it was interesting

making a movie outside this little universe that I created. This wasDutch’s universe, and because of that, I wanted it to be ultra-realistic. I

used a different cinematographer to kind of get a different look. It still

looks great but just a little bit more down to earth, a little less like a

movie movie, a little bit more like a ’70s Straight Time. I actually like

building sets. In Jackie Brown I didn’t do that. Every single solitary

scene in the movie was shot on location. Some things were written for

specific locations in the south [of LA] that I went out and found.



BAUER: Does the Cockatoo Lounge really exist?

TARANTINO: Yeah. I found the place. I was looking for a black cocktail

lounge in Hawthorne, and I eventually found the Cockatoo Inn and it

was perfect.

BAUER: I think one of your great strengths as a writer is that you have

been able to define your own vision, your own universe, and set your

stories within that. In looking at the difference between that and where

you see Jackie Brown, what elements would you say define theTarantino universe of film?

TARANTINO: Well, that’s kind of a hard question to answer because a

whole lot of this stuff is subliminal. It just comes out. One of the ways

other writers have created their own universe is through overlapping

characters, which I think is very interesting.

BAUER: I understand what you’re saying about it being kind of

subliminal but you’re also a smart guy. I’m sure you get analytical

about some of it too, especially as far as where you take your universe.

TARANTINO: To tell you the truth, I try not to get analytical in the

writing process. I really try not to do that. I try to just kind of keep the

flow from my brain to my hand as far as the pen is concerned and, asI’ve said, go with the moment and go with my guts. It’s different than

when you’re playing games or trying to be clever. To me, truth is the

big thing. Constantly you’re writing something and you get to a place

where your characters could go this way or that and I just can’t lie. The

characters have gotta be true to themselves. And that’s something I

don’t see in a lot of Hollywood movies. I see characters lying all the

time. They can’t do this because it would affect the movie this way or



that or this demographic might not like it. To me a character can’t do

anything good or bad, they can only do something that’s true or not.

Basically, my writing’s like a journey. I’ll know some of the stops ahead

of time, and I’ll make some of those stops and some of them I won’t.

Some will be a moot point by the time I get there. You know every

script will have four to six basic scenes that you’re going to do. It’s all

the scenes in the middle that you’ve got to—not struggle, it’s never a

struggle—but you’ve got to write through—that’s where your characters

really come from. That’s how you find them, that’s where they live. So

I’ve got basic directions of how to get to where I’m going, but now I’mstarting the journey. I can always refer to my directions if I get lost, but

barring that, let’s see what we see. I think that is how novelists write.

That’s how Elmore Leonard…

BAUER: Definitely more than screenwriters where it’s all structure,

structure, structure.

TARANTINO: I just don’t do that, you know by the first act this has to

happen, and so on. I hold no interest in that, I just see it in too many

movies. I’d like to see more art put into screenwriting. One of the

things about writing a novel is you can do it any way you want. It’s your

voice that’s important and I see absolutely no reason why a screenplay

can’t be the same. Now it makes it a hell of a lot easier when you’re the

writer and the director. But that’s not even necessary now, because

things are a little more open.BAUER: In what way?

TARANTINO: There are a lot of bad screenplays so if you write a good

screenplay people are going to respond to it. Now if you’re way at the

bottom and you’re just starting your career it might take a long time to

get to the people that’ll appreciate it. It’ll just get shot down by all the

readers and everything. But if you keep persevering, eventually you’ll

get past that reader and on to the people that are really bored to death



reading screenplays. These are the people that really appreciate

something new. That was the big thing I had against me starting off in

my career. I was writing shit differently, and different meant I was

doing it wrong in that whole reader mentality. Before David Mamet

was David Mamet, people probably thought he said fuck too much too.

But once they get to know you, once you get that Good Housekeeping

Seal of Approval, it’s a whole different story. But in the beginning

having a different voice is a real hindrance.

BAUER: Do you think that repetition of a phrase or word in dialogue

enhances its power for an audience or detracts from it?

TARANTINO: Well I do that a lot. I like it. I think that in my dialogue

there’s a bit of whatever you would call it, a music or poetry, and the

repetition of certain words helps give it a beat or a rhythm. It just

happens and I just go with it, looking for the rhythm of the scene.

BAUER: Some people have criticized your use of certain words such as

“nigger,” and you have always responded that no word should have

that much power in our culture. I’m not sure I buy that. I’ve got to be

frank. Aren’t you also using powerful words to electrify your dialogue,

to make it more interesting?

TARANTINO: You know, if you didn’t know me, I could see where you’d

come up with that. I mean, I am a writer, I deal in words. No, there is noword that should stay in word jail, every word is completely free. There

is no word that is worse than another word. It’s all language, it’s all

communication. And if I was doing what you’re saying, I’d be lying. I’d

be throwing in a word to get an effect. And well, you do that all the

time, you throw in a word to get a laugh, and you throw in this word to

get an effect too, that happens, but it’s all organic. It’s never a situation

where that’s not what they would say, but I’m going to have them say it



because it’s gonna be shocking. You used the example of “nigger.” In

Pulp Fiction, nigger is said a bunch of different times by a bunch of

different people and it’s meant differently each time. It’s all about the

context in which it’s used. George Carlin does a whole routine about

that, you know. When Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy do their stand-

up acts, and say nigger, you’re never offended because they’re niggers.

You know what they’re fucking talking about. You know the context in

which it’s coming from. The way Samuel Jackson says nigger in Pulp

Fiction is not the way Eric Stoltz says it, is not the way Ving Rhames says

it. They’re all coming from different places. That word meanssomething different depending on who’s saying it.

BAUER: Ordell uses “nigga” a lot in Jackie Brown. How is his use of the

word different than that of the characters in Pulp Fiction?

TARANTINO: Actually Ordell probably doesn’t use it any different from

Jules. Actually when Jules and Marcellus use it in Pulp Fiction they’re

comin’ from the same place, but having it mean different things.

Marcellus is very much like, “You my nigger now,” and that was Ving

Rhames who came up with that. But Ordell’s comin’ from the same

place, he’s a black guy who throws the word around a lot, it’s just part

of his dialect, the way he talks. And if you’re writing a black dialect,

there’s certain words that you need to make it musical. Nigger’s one ofthem. If you’re writing about that kind of a guy, motherfucker’s

another. Those are two of the key words that are appropriate for that

guy. Sam Jackson uses nigger all of the time in his speech, that’s just

who he is and where he comes from. That’s the way he talks, so that’s

the way Ordell talks. Now what do you have to say to that?!

BAUER: That’s a good question! I think you have a valid point if that’s

where you’re going with the character. Certainly the word nigger is



part of the universe you’ve created. It’s one of the things that stands

out about your writing.

TARANTINO: Also, I’m a white guy who’s not afraid of that word. You

know most white guys are deathly afraid of that word.

BAUER: You’re right.

TARANTINO: I just don’t feel the whole white guilt and pussy-footing

around race issues. I’m completely above all that. I’ve never worried

about what anyone might think of me ’cause I’ve always believed that

the true of heart recognize the true of heart. If I’m doing what I’m

doing and you’re comin from the same place, you’ll see it, no questionabout it. And if you’re comin with an ax to grind, with your own

baggage and your own hate, then you might react strongly to where

I’m comin from. Now what I just said there is that if you have a

problem with my stuff you’re a racist. I practically said that. Well, I truly

believe that.

BAUER: Other than it being more realistic, what other differences do

you see between your universe and that of Elmore Leonard?

TARANTINO: The two big things were to make it much less stylized and

don’t rush it, ’cause his novels are not rushed—they talk about things

and eventually it kind of creeps out, as they’re talking. But there’s no

rush, it’s the best part of his rhythm. Stephen King actually summed it

up pretty well when he said, “I went and saw Stick , and I love Elmore

Leonard’s novels and the plot’s all there, everything that happens inthe book pretty much happens in the movie, but what is gone is the

feeling that I get when I read an Elmore Leonard novel.” I wanted to

get that feeling in my own writing too, not just with his writing. So my

stuff and his stuff go together pretty seamlessly.

It was kind of funny because when I wrote Pulp Fiction I wrote that by

myself. The middle story I adapted from a script that Roger Avery

wrote, but you know it was me at page one and it was me at the end. It



wasn’t like we weren’t doing it together or anything. I adapted it

myself and I made all these changes I was gonna do.

My name alone is on the script for Jackie Brown, I’m the guy that did it.

But, I think more than Roger Avary, Elmore Leonard almost deserves

credit on the script. We never talked about anything but there was a

real collaboration… actually I was the one doing all the collaborating.

So much in fact, that I kept a lot of his dialogue exactly the way it was

and I wrote a lot of my own and now as time has gone on, I don’t reallyalmost remember what was mine and what was his. I don’t think his

stuff stands out or my stuff stands out—I think it works like a really

happy marriage.

I also tried to get away from that on Jackie Brown. I think in the

screenplay there is too damn much importance given to the page

count.

BAUER: It’s structural thing.

TARANTINO: I mean, when it came to Jackie Brown, it was like you

know what? I’m in a position now I can just say fuck the page count. I

know the movie’s gonna be about two-and-a-half hours long. All this

page count stuff is for the production manager. It has nothing to do

with me. So I’m not gonna dumb down my writing to keep the page

count down. I end up still kind of pulling back towards the very end ofthe process because it was getting pretty excessive. But you know it

used to be I would write all this description and everything and I

would be all happy with it and I would be battling page count by the

end, and it would just turn into Vincent and Jules walk into a room and

start talking. On this one I’m not gonna even fucking worry about it.

Also because now my scripts are getting published now, this is gonna

be the fucking document. I’m not writing novels, these screenplays are



my novels, so I’m gonna write it the best that I can. If the movie never

gets made, it’d almost be okay because I did it. It’s there on the page.

BAUER: You’ve optioned four of Leonard’s books? Why did you make

Rum Punch first?

TARANTINO: Again, it was extremely organic. I actually read Rum

Punch before it got published. It turns out Elmore Leonard’s agent is a

really really good friend of Lawrence Bender, my producing partner. So

they sent us the book and I loved it, but I didn’t want to do his books asbig budget movies, because they are actually very modest stories and

can’t bear a $50 million price tag. So we were getting ready to go into

Pulp Fiction, and were talking about a deal where we could option it for

very little money and shoot it for very little money. But his agent very

rightfully said, “Now guys if we’re gonna do this, and he’s gonna pass

up millions of dollars, you guys gotta commit to do this after Pulp

Fiction.” You can never really do that, all right, cause who knows who

I’m gonna be after I get done with a movie. I couldn’t really commit to

it 100 percent, so I let it go. And it so happened it became available

again with these other three novels.

I was going to give it to another director to do, so I read it again so I

could talk about it. In reading it again I remembered exactly what it

was I wanted to do when I read it a long time ago, it was like I saw themovie that I made in my head a long time ago, and let go of, that

movie came right back. It came right right back. That’s what I’m gonna

do. So that’s how that one became the one. You know if you love

something, set it free? Well I did, and it came back!

BAUER: In reading your interviews you shield it a little bit, but I think

you take a little pride in the way you presented Reservoir Dogs and



Pulp Fiction in non-linear formats. In Jackie Brown you moved to a

linear format. Why did you decide that? Was it just the material?

TARANTINO: Yeah, I’m proud of what I did in Reservoir Dogs and Pulp

Fiction. I’m not too proud of it, ’cause I think that everyone should be

able to do that, and it just seemed like the best way to present those

stories. I don’t have any one way to tell a story, all right. I don’t have

any rule book of how it’s supposed to be done, you know? But I’ve

always said that if a story would be more emotionally involving told,beginning, middle, and end, I’ll tell it that way. I won’t jigsaw it, just to

show what a clever boy I am. I don’t do anything in my script just to be

clever. That’s the first thing that goes, it has to…

BAUER: …be true to itself?

TARANTINO: Yeah, emotion will always win over coolness and

cleverness. It’s when a scene works emotionally and it’s cool and

clever, then it’s great. That’s what you want. In the case of Jackie Brown,

this story is told better this way. And the sequence where the money is

switched three times? That’s how I saw it when I read the book. It’s not

in the book that way, but that’s how I saw it.

BAUER: That’s interesting on the screen.

TARANTINO: Yeah, I love it. I was just watching the movie in my mind

as I was reading the book and thought, “That would be really cool.”Before Jackie Brown, the most interesting character I ever wrote was

Mia.

BAUER: Why is that?



Uma Thurman as Mia Wallace in Pulp Fiction

TARANTINO: Because I have no idea where she came from. I have no

idea whatsoever. She’s not from another movie, she’s not somebody I

know, she’s not a fantasy girl, she’s not really a part of me, she’s not a

side of me. I knew when I was writing that story, I knew nothing more

about Mia than Vincent did. All I knew were the rumors. I didn’t know

who she was at all, until they got to Jack Rabbit Slim’s and she opened

her mouth. Then all of a sudden this character emerged with her own

rhythm of speech. I don’t know where she came from and that’s why Ilove her.

BAUER: Has it been daunting to adapt the work of someone who you

have so much respect for? I know Elmore Leonard kind of cut you free

saying, “You’re the filmmaker, make your movie.”

TARANTINO: The only thing daunting about it, was when I was finished

with it and gave it to him to read. I wasn’t going to change it, but I

really wanted him to appreciate it and sign off on it. But during the

actual writing process I think you would have a hard time doing a good

job if you were thinking about stuff like that. I was dropping stuff left

and right. Stuff I had totally intended to use, I ended up not using. You

know I got this book, and I gotta find my movie inside of it. So I wrote a

ton of shit.

BAUER: Was your writing process different for an adaptation? TARANTINO: Actually it was different, but my process didn’t really

change that much. I’ve always equated the writing process with

editing, sort of like when I get through editing the movie, that’s like

my last draft of the screenplay.

BAUER: That’s how John Sayles sees it too.



TARANTINO: My editor Sally [Menke] was like my writing collaborator

on this; and adapting Jackie Brown was like this six-hour movie that I

had to cut it down to two-and-one-half hours. It was funny because I

took about a year to write it. The last five months, that’s pretty much all

I was doing, and I found it very beneficial to sit with the material that

long, especially for an adaptation, because, I just kept finding my

movie inside the material, more and more. I learned to lose more and

more, and I’d make those cuts in the script exactly the way you do

when you’re making cuts in the editing room. The stuff that I did in the

last two months of writing it, after writing for the whole year, was someof the best stuff in the whole script, because I had lived with the

material for so long. If you’re trying to drop ten pages from a

screenplay, it hurts like hell, but if you just put it away for a month and

then take it out, you can do it just like that!

BAUER: Right. Get some perspective on it. You always tend to write

long, I mean 500 pages for Pulp Fiction, and then cut back. Do you

think that’s a good process in bringing out the best in material?

TARANTINO: It works good for me, all right, but I don’t actually think

about anything like that, for most of the script. I start getting

responsible about length in the third act. You can do all kinds of shit at

the beginning of the movie that you don’t have the fuckin’ patience for

when it gets to the end. You want to see how it ends.

The single biggest addition I made to the book is the whole Beaumont

section. Of all the structural things in the movie, I think that is the best

thing I brought to it. It’s almost like a non-sequitur, it has nothing to do

with the Jackie thing, except it mirrors it completely. Right? You get to

understand Ordell’s situation and what’s going on with Jackie through

the Beaumont situation, cause you’ve just been through that. It’s like a

movie unto itself for the first twenty minutes. But it sets up everything



that you’re going to see and I really like the storytelling involved in

that. When Elmore Leonard read the screenplay, one of the comments

that he passed on to me was, “What’s with all the Beaumont stuff?” He

didn’t think it was important? But by spending twenty minutes with

Beaumont here, that’s a really neat shorthand I can do for the rest of

the flick. ’Cause you know Ordell’s modus operandi.

The only major structural thing I did in Jackie Brown was I liked the

idea of telling the stories from the different perspectives of the

characters, without being real precious about it. I dropped that from

the movie, though. I took out the title cards. It worked well enough,but it was too precious. I wanted the film to have more of a rhythm at

the beginning. And it seems to play, one into the other, and everything

happens like in the script. The ball does get passed to Max, when it’s

Max’s turn; and the whole first part is Ordell’s, but it was too much like

Pulp Fiction, it was just a little too precious. I didn’t need to be so clever

and precious with the structure. I was like, “No, this is the story, this

will tell it.”

BAUER: Jackie Brown is a story that constantly unfolds. Not necessarily

in reversals, but new elements are added, and those reversals per se

are often brought about through Jackie’s dialogue. Was that

something that you liked?



Samuel L. Jackson and Pam Grier in Jackie Brown

TARANTINO: I think it kind of works well. It is always unfolding; it’s not

a movie about Jackie figuring out in the first ten minutes how to get a

half million dollars and doing it—no! It’s like little by little by little it

starts coming to her, as life and situations change and she’s being torn

in this direction and that direction. It slowly evolves; and then from

that point on, it’s straight ahead until she does it. It’s very novelistic in

that the first ninety minutes of the movie is just about characterization.Then, it’s all execution. The last half-hour is just them doing it, the

money switches and all that.

BAUER: There’s more exposition in the dialogue of Jackie Brown then

in your previous scripts.

TARANTINO: That’s for damn sure, yeah.

BAUER: Was that a part of the adaptation process? TARANTINO: Yeah, I mean, that’s all that happened in the book, she’s

talking to the people about that stuff. That’s part of Max’s whole

relationship with Jackie, kind of talking about their problems, with

him acting as a counsel, trying to help her out. In the second half it’s

her thinking out loud, she’s kind of talking to herself. Yeah, that’s the

first time I was dealing in exposition in a big way.

BAUER: That definitely struck me in reading it. TARANTINO: Did it come across as “Oh, here’s the exposition thing?”

BAUER: No, but there’s certainly a lot more of the plot being told

through the dialogue. That’s a departure from your earlier work.

TARANTINO: Yeah, yeah. But they’re planning something too, so it’s

organic to the piece.



BAUER: Were there any techniques or any ideas you had, to bring the

numerous “talking head” scenes in Jackie Brown to life? To keep the

interest of the audience?

TARANTINO: It was funny ’cause I thought about that when I was

writing the script. There were a whole lot of scenes with people talking

to each other, right? But I thought about it and said, “That’s what it is.

Don’t be afraid of what it is.” All right? And I made a pack with myself

that there are two different styles going on here—the first half is about

character and the second half is about action.

BAUER: Okay. TARANTINO: I’m not necessarily going to try to show off to the world

what a great filmmaker I am in the first half. ’Cause the way you service

that is you just get the best single performance you can from the actors

and you edit it the right way so that their best work is showing and

then you can have talk for ten fuckin’ minutes, twenty minutes or an

hour, it doesn’t fuckin’ matter. But in the second half we’re going to

crank it up.



Robert De Niro as Louis and Samuel L. Jackson as Ordell have a

lengthy dialogue in the beginning of Jackie Brown

BAUER: It almost ties back to what you were saying about the editing

really kicking in in the third act. There was a lot less flash there I mean,

just boom, boom, boom, boom, as opposed to the longer character

scenes up front.

TARANTINO: Yeah, definitely.

BAUER: What kind of music are you going to have in the film?

TARANTINO: What surf music was to Pulp this is all soul music, kind ofthe rhythm that this story takes place to.

BAUER: Did you write to that music? Is that something that enters into

your writing process?

TARANTINO: Oh yeah, yeah, it’s a major part of it, that’s kind of how I

write. I’ll write for a while and then I’ll find an appropriate song and in

a weird way the music will keep me in the mood. I find music to define

the mood of the movie, the rhythm the movie is going to play in.

BAUER: Besides writing an adaptation, what creative goals do you set

for yourself in writing Jackie Brown?

TARANTINO: I like the idea of following a female lead character as in

Jackie Brown. I like that a lot; I think I have an extremely unfair rap

from people who say, “Ahhh, but can he write women?” The only

fuckin’ reason they’re saying that is because I did Reservoir Dogs first. Ireally love the idea of following a black woman in her forties. It’s

funny, I do feel that Jackie Brown is mine, she’s the same character in

the book, but by making her black, it affects her ’cause her life

experiences are different, and her dialogue is different, but she’s the

same person basically.



BAUER: Was there any specific research you did for her character?

TARANTINO: No, I actually have known a few women in my life who

reminded me of Jackie and that’s who I used. I just wanted to find her

in myself. I joke about it, but I’m very much a method writer. I really

become the characters when I’m writing them. I’ll become one or two

of them more than others, I’m consistent that way. I become all of

them when I’m writing, but I’ll become one or two when I’m not

writing. The entire year I was Ordell. He’s who I identified the mostwith in the piece. I was Ordell when I was writing the script. I walked

around like him. I talked like him. I spent a whole year basically being

Ordell. I couldn’t shut him off and I didn’t want to. And in a weird way

Ordell is the rhythm of the movie.

BAUER: What do you mean by that?

TARANTINO: Like his character, the way he talks, the way he dresses—

everything about him is how this movie should play. He is the old

school of soul music. He’s the personification of that, and I completely

identify with that. If I wasn’t an artist, I would probably be exactly like

fuckin’ Ordell.

BAUER: That’s interesting, but it’s not his movie.

TARANTINO: It’s Jackie’s movie. It’s Jackie’s movie but what’s so neat

about Jackie’s character, is that she ain’t revealing at all. The storyrequires her to have a poker face. It requires that you don’t know

what’s going on in her head. One of the things I held on to in the

adaptation was that every time she got with Ordell, she would tell him

everything she knew about the cops. That would always surprise me,

no matter how many times she did it.

BAUER: It was always a new wrinkle.



TARANTINO: Yeah! It’s like, “I cannot believe she’s fuckin’ him so bad!”

I couldn’t believe she was fuckin’ the cops and I couldn’t believe she

was fuckin’ Ordell. But I was like, “God, I hope she isn’t fuckin’ Max.” I

think she’s playing straight with us, but I don’t know 100 percent. And

it’s a different thing, because Max is the audience. You see the movie

through Max’s eyes.

BAUER: He’s an outsider…

TARANTINO: Yeah, he’s an outsider and he’s also the conscience and

the heart of the piece and he’s definitely the major human link to the

film. It’s like Max is the audience, but Ordell is the rhythm, the soul ofthe movie in a weird way.

BAUER: When you’re developing a character, what do you do to get

into their mind? Do you do a kind of backstory on them? What do you

do to get a character down?

TARANTINO: That’s a very interesting question. Maybe I should

actually—I don’t. I do that as an actor though. That’s very interesting.

Maybe I should start doing that in my original stuff or even on this

stuff. No in the case of Jackie Brown by the time I started writing the

script I was pretty damn familiar with the material so I felt I knew these

people. I don’t know, because part of that process is discovering them

as I’m writing them. It’s different from acting. I won’t even think now

about acting in a role where I didn’t do a back story for a character. Sit

down with pen and paper and bring them up to this point. All right.But there’s a birthing process when you’re writing.

BAUER: Ordell is fascinating because he really seemed to change from

the book. He becomes a lot smarter in your script.

TARANTINO: Oh really?

BAUER: Definitely. How did he evolve?



TARANTINO: That’s pretty interesting because I had a lot of prior

knowledge of Ordell, Lewis, and Melanie because I read The Switch.

The Switch was the very first book I’d ever read, so even before Rum

Punch was published, I was like, “Oh shit! Ordell, Lewis, Melanie, Jesus

Christ!” I was like, “Oh my God!”

BAUER: Is that the whole thing about the kidnapping?

TARANTINO: Yeah, yeah. I knew these characters because I was doing a

little adaptation of The Switch in my mind when I was fifteen, when I

read it. So I knew the characters pretty well, but I really did kind of

become Ordell to one degree or another when I was writing JackieBrown. I didn’t choose that, it just happened, and I was walking around

as Ordell. There’s a lot of me in Ordell.

BAUER: Do you put a lot of thought into the way you juxtapose humor

and violence?

TARANTINO: No more thought than I put into anything else. I love it, I

think it’s like a Reese’s Cup, two great tastes that taste great together.

I’m not bending over backwards to try and do it, it just kind of

happens. And then when it happens, it’s like, “Whoa, that’s great. I got

something.”

BAUER: The final scene between Melanie and Louis was taken almost

verbatim from the book.

TARANTINO: Right.

BAUER: But you could have written that scene, your voices were so insync there.

TARANTINO: Yeah, I felt that. And it was so cool—because when I

actually talked to Elmore Leonard about something like that, like the

scene where Ordell kills Louis—he writes like I write. He didn’t know

Ordell was going to do it. He knew one of them was going to kill the

other one, but until it actually happened he didn’t know how it was

going to happen or who it was going to be.



BAUER: For that last scene between Melanie and Louis, Leonard had a

lot of time to set up Louis’ character that you just didn’t have. The

violence that came out of him seemed like an extension of his

character. In your script it comes more as a shock. That’s something

you’ve used before—violence as a shock.

TARANTINO: Right, sort of the way violence plays out in your life, all of

a sudden. Very rarely does violence build up in real life the way it does

in movies. No, it explodes in your face. That’s what’s so shocking about

it.

BAUER: What do you think that accomplishes dramatically? For anaudience, I mean using violence as shock.

TARANTINO: Well I think it gives the movie a dose of reality, especially

in the scene we’re talking about. That’s kind of how it would go down.

And it’s played like that. It’s not played in terms of good guys and bad

guys, it just kind of explodes out of nowhere.

BAUER: But as a dramatist, isn’t it important for all action, especially

major action to be set up, so people understand why it took place?

TARANTINO: I think it is set up, but Louis is only partially on the page—

all right? I remember talking to De Niro about the role and saying,

“Look, this is not like most of the characters that I write.” The reason

actors like to do my stuff is because they usually have a lot of coolthings to say and they feel cool saying them. But Louis is a different

fish, and I told him, “You know, Louis is a different character than the

ones I ordinarily write. He doesn’t say a lot. This is a character that truly

needs to be gotten across with body language.” I’m talking to one of

the greatest character actors in the world. That’s why I wanted him for

the part, because he does that, all right?



BAUER: Did you know who you wanted to cast for all the characters

when you were writing Jackie Brown?

TARANTINO: This is one where I completely did. I normally don’t. I’ll

have some people in mind, but this was one where I pretty much had

everybody. The one guy that was kind of open was Louis. I thought

about De Niro, but I wasn’t a 100 percent sure I could get him.

BAUER: Do you think that the audience has an attachment to Melanie

when she dies? Or is that important?

TARANTINO: No, I think the audience has a complete love-hate

relationship with Melanie. Audiences applaud when Louis shoots her,but they…

BAUER: That would partly be the nature of the scene, I mean she is

being so…

TARANTINO: Such a bitch, all right. It’s impossible that someone could

be asking for it, but she’s asking for it.

BAUER: And she’s kind of that way throughout most of the movie…

TARANTINO: Yeah, she’s a fuckin’ smart ass, treacherous and all these

things. But we also like her at the same time. She’s a totally fun

character. So I think it’s a love-hate relationship.

BAUER: You’ve said a number of times that you don’t want to be

known as “the gun guy.” But Jackie Brown and your future projects are

basically all crime stories.

TARANTINO: Well, the next one I do, I think as a director, will be aWestern.

BAUER: Really?

TARANTINO: Yeah, but there’s guns in Westerns too.

BAUER: A Western in the mode of The Good, The Bad, The Ugly or

Unforgiven?



TARANTINO: Actually it’s different, it’s a prison Western. It takes place

in a prison in Yuma, Yuma Territorial Prison. So it’s like a Western

Papillon.

BAUER: Will that be an adaptation or an original?

TARANTINO: It will be an original. But I know where you’re going with

this question. The thing is, I’ve only done three movies. I’ve got all the

time in the world to do different things.

BAUER: Haven’t you really done four movies? Wasn’t True Romance

your movie?

TARANTINO: Yes and no, the thing is, it’s Tony [Scott]’s movie. I nevervisited the set of True Romance, and I only visited Tony once, just once.

I made some suggestions and he didn’t take them.

BAUER: But isn’t that your voice on the screen?

TARANTINO: Yeah, it’s my voice, but it’s Tony’s movie. I would have

made a much different movie out of it. I actually think Tony made a

better movie out of it than I would have at the time. True Romance is a

case where it all worked out, it all completely worked out. If Oliver

[Stone] hadn’t done Natural Born Killers I would have gotten away scott

free in this business. I wouldn’t have any horror stories to talk about.

BAUER: What about Natural Born Killers?

TARANTINO: I wasn’t even involved in that one either. But I think I

fucked up. I would have preferred they had not made the movie. I

actually didn’t want anybody to make the movie, not just Oliver,anybody. But as a script it was pure. I did what I wanted to do.

BAUER: Why didn’t you want anyone to make Natural Born Killers, to

bring your story to life?



TARANTINO: After my passion had gone for it, when it’s expiration date

passed as far as my love for it and everything, it was almost beside the

point to make the movie. It was pure—you read my…

BAUER: Yeah I read your script.

TARANTINO: I fuckin’ directed that thing on the fuckin’ page man. It

was right there. And I did all that on paper. I think there’s nothing you

can’t do on paper. I’m making my movies first here on the page.

BAUER: And they hold up. Especially if you look at True Romance, I

mean you only made that movie on paper, but I would say that it’s

more your movie than Tony Scott’s. TARANTINO: Yeah, but his take on it was different. My movie would

have been harder.

BAUER: In the past you’ve been real open about how you’ve

cannibalized your own work in building new scripts. Is that a way of

drawing stories into your own unique universe?

TARANTINO: Initially, when I first started doing stuff like that it was

just so I didn’t have to write that part of it, it was a way to save time

and pages. But it never quite works like a slam dunk anymore. By the

time I get through with it I’ve usually rewritten it so much to make it

work for whatever I’m doing that I might as well have written a new

scene. I haven’t done that in a while actually.

BAUER: I didn’t notice any borrowing in Jackie Brown.

TARANTINO: Oh yeah, not at all. I think it was more like I save mywriting and everything, and I never throw anything away. And I’ll just

take something and read it, and get excited about it again. “That’s

good, oh God, why did I stop doing that, that was really good.” So it’s

just an attempt to not let it go to waste. To find some way to fit it in.

BAUER: The only script of yours that I haven’t read is Open Road .

TARANTINO: Yeah, no one has read that. I never finished it. That was

like the first time I really wrote a script. Roger [Avary] had written a



script called Pandemonium Reigns that was forty pages long and really

funny. It’s like these two characters on the road and there’s this

hitchhiker and it’s a surreal, wild comedy. Then they get to this kind of

crazy, surreal town. Then he ended it in this way that I didn’t like at all.

Because I had never finished a script, I had just written scenes, I asked

him, “Could I take that? Like rewrite it, just do my own version of it?”

And he said, “Yeah, go for it.” I don’t think he was going to do anything

with it—I don’t think he liked his ending either. I started with getting

the guy on the road, I wrote forever setting up the thing—now that you

bring it up, I had forgotten, but there’s actually a really funny, likeviolent comedy scene in it that’s really good.

I get really annoyed with people saying that I ripped off the Mexican

stand-off stuff. Open Road was like way before I even knew who John

Woo was. It had a Mexican stand-off scene, True Romance has a

Mexican stand-off scene. I wrote that like in 1985 or 1986, way before I

had seen A Better Tomorrow or anything. Way, way before. That

Mexican stand-off scene is mine as much as it is his. That’s always been

in my shit. So I really set-up this big fuckin’ deal to finally get him on

the road. But I ultimately found out that I didn’t have a good ending

for it either, I saw no way to end it.

BAUER: To resolve it.

TARANTINO: Yeah. That’s the case with a lot of movies, the writersnever come up with a way to end it. You see a movie with a good

ending now and you go, “Jesus Christ! It’s a masterpiece.” Oddly

enough, you can fuck up a whole movie and if you end it good, people

will walk out of the movie thinking it was good. But having said all

that, it was like a tome, like 500 pages and I wasn’t even to the third

act yet. But it was a very important script for me because I had never

really gotten that far before. I always crapped out around page thirty or



so. I’d always come up with another idea, something better. And the

reason was I wasn’t writing. I was doing what every other screenwriter

seems to do: they want to write to a screenplay, they want to write a

cool movie, they don’t want to tell a story. To me that’s totally putting

the cart before the horse. It doesn’t work that way. You should have this

burning story to tell and you can’t wait to get your movie on the page.

That’s why I always dropped everything by page thirty, it starts to be

hard work about then.

BAUER: Did you incorporate any scenes from that into your later

scripts? TARANTINO: I never really did because The Open Road was just so

damn specific—well, I did you know, that’s a big lie, cause actually I did

do one thing, the character I was going to play—a guy named “F.

Scarland” was in my very first draft of Natural Born Killers that most

people never read. I later did a complete rewrite on Natural Born

Killersbut the first draft, F. Scarland was like the third lead in the piece.

I had waited an hour for the interview to start… but when Tarantino

finally sat down, he delivered—five hours of rapid paced conversation

on a variety of topics. In the conclusion of our discussion Tarantino told

me he’s not adverse to directing scripts written by other writers in the

future. He respects the writing of David Peoples (Unforgiven) and

Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption), but lesser writers neednot send him their scripts. And if you’d like him to executive produce

your film, forget it. “If I’m going to make a movie, it’s going to be my

movie. Otherwise, I’m going to do the things I enjoy outside of

filmmaking—acting and living.”





"screen" in their head and then decode it as the movie unfolds. This

ups the readers' emotional and psychological engagement, even if it's

subconscious, or maybe because it's subconscious.

Let's take a look at a concrete example. Here's how Quentin Tarantino

uses editing as a storytelling device in Pulp Fiction. The excerpt occurs

midway in the script.

Cinematic Example: Editing - Pacing and Expanding Time

In the drug overdose scene, midpoint in the movie, Vincent (John

Travolta) attempts to revive Mia (Uma Thurman) by stabbing Mia's

heart with a hypodermic needle filled with adrenalin. The scriptedscene fills us with tension. We hold our breath hoping that Mia is

going to make it.

The reason "we hold our breath" is because the script is written

"already edited." In this case it is edited to "milk the scene" and

thereby pump up suspense.

So how does Tarantino do this?

Tarantino does this through overlapping action. He includes cuts to the

needle, the red dot, and the faces of characters. These cuts lengthen

the time needed for the real-time-event of the stabbing to occur.

Although Vincent counts out three seconds on the dialogue track, it

takes # of a page for the moment to take place or 45 seconds of screen

time. That means that we are holding our breath 15 times longer than

Vincent's three-second countdown suggests.Through purposeful use of editing, the writer is guiding the reader's

emotional experience, and delivering a scene that can be imagined as

a movie.

Writing in Shots

Tarantino accomplishes this by writing in shots. He doesn't write in

descriptive paragraphs like novelists. Each of his sentences implies a

specific camera angle. "Implies" is the operative word here. Camera



angles and lenses are not called out, but understood from his

description.

The script's pacing mimics what we will later see on screen.

Paragraphing and sentence length suggest how long a shot will play

on the screen. For example, a single one-sentence paragraph implies

one shot. The implication is that it should play out longer on screen

than would say, multiple shots implied in a four-line paragraph. The

white space buys the single shot time. Adding an editorial aside like

"Mia is fading fast. Nothing can save her now" is like saying "hold on

the shot". It again gains the shot more screen time.Let's take a look at how this is done in the actual script. This excerpt is

taken from mid-scene.

The top line is from Tarantino's script, where no camera information is

given.

The parenthetical in the line below are my interpretation of the shot

that is implied.

Excerpt from Pulp Fiction

Vincent lifts the needle up above his head in a stabbing motion. He

looks down on Mia.

(LOOSE CLOSE-UP VINCENT) (VINCENT POV - MIA)

Mia is fading fast. Soon nothing will help her.

(HOLD ON MIA.)

Vincent's eyes narrow, ready to do this. (TIGHT CLOSE-UP - VINCENT)

VINCENT

Count to three.

Lance on his knees right beside Vincent, does not know what to expect.

(WIDE SHOT - LANCE AND VINCENT)

LANCE

One.



RED DOT on Mia's body.

(CLOSE ON RED DOT )

Needle poised ready to strike.

(CLOSE ON NEEDLE)

LANCE

Two.

Jody's face is alive in anticipation.

(CLOSE-UP JODY)

NEEDLE in the air, poised like a rattler ready to strike.

(CLOSE ON NEEDLE)LANCE (OS)

Three!

The needle leaves the frame, THRUSTING down hard.

(CLOSE ON NEEDLE)

Vincent brings the needle down hard, STABBING Mia in the chest.

(MEDIUM SHOT)

Mia's head is JOLTED from the impact.

(CLOSE ON MIA'S HEAD)

The syringe plunger is pushed down, PUMPING the adrenalin out

through the needle.

(CLOSE ON SYRINGE PUMPER)

Mia's eyes POP WIDE OPEN and lets out a HELLISH cry of the banshee.

(CLOSE-UP ON MIA'S EYES) She BOLTS UP in a sitting position, needle stuck in her chest--

SCREAMING

(WIDE SHOT - MIA)

Summary

In this brief page, Tarantino has implied 15 camera angles. Despite his

use of camera, the reader isn't taken out of the read because the script

never calls out specific camera positions or angles.



Had Tarantino described the camera angles with 15 descriptors like

CLOSE-UP ON MIA'S EYES, it would have been an unbearable read.

Tarantino was able to slow down real time by cutting away to objects

and multiple reaction shots of the characters. He used editing and the

inherent elasticity of the medium to help dramatize a pivotal moment

and up the suspense.

Pacing was further aided by how Tarantino suggested shot length

through paragraphing.

Directing the Director

Many new writers steer away from this kind of writing because theybelieve only writer-directors are allowed to do this. Somewhere they

have read that screenwriters should not direct-the-director. They

interpret this to mean that screenwriters should focus on scene

description and dialogue exclusively.

The best way to dismantle this myth is to compare the screenplays of

successful screenwriters with those of writer-directors. Take a look at

Melissa Mathison's ET and look at her use of camera angles and sound

effects. Study the scripts of Robert Towne, Shane Black, or Larry

Karaszewski & Scott Alexander.

What you will find is both sets of writers are well-practiced in writing

cinematically. Both use the full complement of visual and aural

messaging. They do so without calling attention to the technique.

While they write cinematically they do so purposefully. They don'tthrow in a 360 degree camera move just to have one, or describe

everyone's clothing and hair color, unless it's important. Everything

depends on the needs of the scene.

Writing cinematically is not the same as Directing-the-Director.

Directing-the-director is when you write: "JOE'S POV WINDOW- LOW

ANGLE," instead of "Joe looks up at the window." They mean the same

thing. The first unnecessarily draws attention to camera information



taking us completely out of the story. The second method implies it's a

POV shot and a low-angle, but it does not distract us with technical

jargon.

Similarly if a tracking shot is essential to a scene it's better to say "Joe

jogs alongside Susan" rather than "TRACKING SHOT - JOE AND SUSAN

JOGGING which is considered directing-the-director.

The Good Read

Writing cinematically requires understanding the language of film,

knowing how to use it creatively and how to translate it into script

form.Editing is just one of the many film techniques. Lighting, sound

effects, camera angles, camera position, transitions, space, framing and

so on are other tools available to the writer.

Studio readers don't want to read a novel that's been poured into Final

Draft. They expect to read a script that they can envision as movie.

Exploiting the tools of cinematic storytelling can't turn a bad story in

to a great script, but it can help translate a good story into a cinematicscreenplay. Worth a shot.



Quentin’s WorldThe road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom, Blake wrote,and for the last few decades no one in Hollywood has followed

that road more assiduously than Quentin Tarantino. His movies

are famous for their violence and bloodshed; their blaring

soundtracks; their offbeat, Pinteresque dialogue; their startling

performances from actors you had almost forgotten about; and

their encyclopedic range of references to other movies, especially

schlocky ones. He spent his formative years — the period when

everyone else was in film school — working as a clerk in a video

store, and it shows. His films are apt to allude to Godard in one

frame and a movie like “Candy Stripe Nurses” or “Dead Women in

Lingerie” in the next.“Pulp Fiction,” his breakout film, which was

released in 1994, when Mr. Tarantino was just 31, made him an

almost instant hero among younger audiences and younger

filmmakers, and subsequent films like “Kill Bill Vols. 1 and 2”

enhanced his reputation as someone who could break all the

rules, making movies that were simultaneously stylish, exciting

and knowingly cheesy, and somehow get away with it.Mr. Tarantino’s newest, “Django Unchained,” opens Tuesday and

has already picked up five Golden Globe nominations, including

one for best director. It stars Christoph Waltz (the Austrian actor

so memorable in“Inglourious Basterds”) as a German bounty

hunter posing as a dentist in antebellum America and Jamie Foxx

as a newly freed slave hoping to rescue his enslaved wife. It has

http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/427606/Inglourious-Basterds-Movie-/overview

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/g/golden_globes_awards/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier

http://unchainedmovie.com/

http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/131235/Pulp-Fiction-Movie-/overview



http://movies.nytimes.com/person/113658/Quentin-Tarantino?inline=nyt-per



all the Tarantino trademarks: a Mexican standoff, torrents of

blood, long sequences of mayhem, a spaghetti western score,

and a sly and surprising performance by Samuel L. Jackson, whohas become for Mr. Tarantino roughly what Max von Sydow was

for Ingmar Bergman. For good measure it also includes a

hundred or so uses of the most common racial slur, probably

more than in any film since “Richard Pryor: Live in Concert.”

This month Mr. Tarantino, 49, was in New York to attend a benefitat the Museum of Modern Art, which has chosen to include his

movies as part of its film collection. He was dressed for the

occasion like one of the characters in his first feature, “Reservoir

Dogs” — white shirt, dark suit, dark tie loosened at the neck — but

over lunch at Fiddlesticks, a West Village bar that is one of his

hangouts, his affect was much less cool. He was unable to contain

his enthusiasm for movies, his own and just about everyone

else’s. These are excerpts from that conversation. The language

had to be cleaned up a little, but not as much as you might

imagine.

http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/40984/Reservoir-Dogs-Movie-/overview



The Filmography

Q. In 20 years you’ve made just eight movies.A. I actually consider it seven. “Kill Bill” is one.

Q. A lot of directors would have made twice, three times that, and I’m

guessing that this is not because you can’t find work. This is by choice,

right?

A. Oh, it’s definitely by choice. The thing about it is in 20 years a whole

lot of directors could have made maybe double my movies. I don’t

think that many writer-directors could have made double myfilmography. I actually think my oeuvre or my filmography is the thing

that is the most important to me as far as my artistic statement, or

whatever. I’m all about my filmography, and if you’re all about your

filmography, then you’re also all about a grade-point average, and one

bad movie lessens three good ones.

I don’t want to be an old man directing. I think directors are likeboxers. They need to know when to hang up the gloves. They need to

know if I go any further now, even though I might like it, I’m going to

start taking too many hits. I do think it’s a young man’s game, and if I

survive 20 more years, look at that filmography, and pretty good so far,

I say.

Q. Pretty good and maybe getting better.

A. That’s the hope. I really think I have about 10 more years of being anartist with the vitality that I have right now, and at 10 years from now I

think you will still see a complete umbilical cord from “Reservoir Dogs”

to whatever that last movie that I end up doing is. But you can never

predict this kind of stuff. Maybe when I’m 66, if I come up with a story I

want to do, I’ll do it.



Q. You’ve had this long and very happy relationship with the producer

Harvey Weinstein. How is that even possible? Two strong-willed guys

like you?

A. Well, one of the big secrets of us being able to work together so

long is that Harvey really likes my movies. He’s a tough cookie, no

three, four ways about it, but I look forward to him being a tough

cookie. Most of the arguments back and forth that I hear between

Harvey and another filmmaker, I’m usually on Harvey’s side. Not all the

time.

Sometimes he gets hung up on something that no one else gives adamn, but he’s usually erring on the side of, like, “Let’s not bore the

audience.” Harvey’s pretty good about that. I think it’s pretty safe to say

that my career as you know it would not have been the same if it

wasn’t for my constant working with Harvey.

Q. Is it like kids, or can you pick a favorite among your movies?

A. I can’t pick a favorite, but I can break them down as far as spectacle,

emotion, comedy in that kind of way. I think “Jackie Brown” would be

my most emotional movie. I think “Kill Bill: Vol. 2” would probably be

my second most emotional movie, but it might be tied with “Django.” I

can’t tell right now. Time will tell.

Q. The only movie you can even argue wasn’t a hit was “Death Proof.”

A. I still love “Death Proof.” It is the lesser of my movies though, and I

don’t ever want to make anything lesser than that.Making “Django”

Q. Did you write “Django Unchained” with Christoph Waltz in mind?

A. I wanted to tell a story like this for a long time. I just didn’t know

how I was going to go about it. I even knew it was going to be called

“Django Unchained” for a long time. But Christoph’s character kind of

sprang up fully formed. When I had come up with an idea for this story

before, there wasn’t this German dentist walking around. But when I

http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/465818/Django-Unchained-Movie-/overview

http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/158843/Jackie-Brown-Movie-/overview



actually sat down to write the opening scene, the next thing I knew I

was writing Dr. King Schultz.

The fact that Christoph is one of the greatest actors to ever say my

dialogue goes a long way. Both Christoph and Sam Jackson have that

kind of effect on me. It’s actually hard not to write for them because

they sing my dialogue. They turn it into the music that it’s supposed to

be.

Q. So why is it called “Django Unchained”?

A. Because of the Sergio Corbucci movie “Django.” “Django

Unchained” works good for a guy who used to be a slave, and it’s also alittle bit of a throwback to the Hercules sequel, “Hercules Unchained.”

But that’s all I knew about it. In the case of this movie it was the first

scene that dictated the whole thing.

I was in Japan doing the press on “Inglourious Basterds.” Spaghetti

westerns have had a gigantic resurgence in Japan. You can get all the

soundtracks, so I loaded up. I was actually writing a piece on Corbucci

and describing his kind of western. At one point I thought, “In truth I

don’t really know if he was thinking all these things that I’m writing

about, but I know I’m thinking them, and I can do them.” So with that I

just sat down and the first scene just came out of me.

Q. You actually write film criticism?

A. Yeah. Not so much film reviews but film appreciations, and usually

on directors or genres. I’m hoping to compile a book.Q. You do love genre movies.

A. I think every movie is a genre movie. A John Cassavetes movie is a

John Cassavetes movie. Eric Rohmer movies are their own genre. But I

also like the idea of subgenre. “Reservoir Dogs” is a crime film, it’s a

gangster film, but more important it’s a heist film, even though you

don’t really see the heist.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyMhIgYr0T8

http://www.spaghetti-western.net/index.php/Django



I’ve always been influenced by the spaghetti western. I used to

describe “Pulp Fiction” as a rock ’n’ roll spaghetti western with the surf

music standing in for Ennio Morricone. I don’t know if “Django” is a

western proper. It’s a southern. I’m playing western stories in the

genre, but with a southern backdrop.

Q. Well, there aren’t a lot of southerns and there certainly aren’t a lot of

movies about slavery of this sort. Where besides Corbucci did you go

for inspiration?

A. There’s really nothing to look at. That was what made it so

fascinating. If I had done the movie about Dr. King Schultz stopping aprison wagon and freeing a white guy who’s on his way to spend his

life in Yuma prison, it would be the same basic story, but there would

be none of the same issues. That’s not what I wanted to do. I said,

“Wow, I can do a lot of the cool situations and things that I’ve thought

about, but it will be in this new, virgin-snow kind of genre.”

The closest to what I’m trying to do are those movies about the

renegade Indian who’s had enough and fights back against the white

oppressors. Particularly in the ’50s people started dealing with the

Indian-white conflict in westerns as a way to have a social conscience.

They couldn’t deal with the black situation in the ’50s in cinema, so

they did it de facto by dealing with Indians.

Q. One of the criticisms sometimes leveled at you is that Tarantino just

makes movies about what happens in the universe of the movies.They’re not about the real world. But your last two movies, “Inglourious

Basterds” and now “Django,” are about very real stuff, Nazism and

slavery. Is that a deliberate change on your part?

A. I don’t think it’s that big of a leap for the simple fact that I think my

movies are more about something more than people give them credit

for. You don’t have to deal with the subtext of what they’re about if you

don’t want to. But there is a lot of there there if you go digging.



Casting

Q. Like all your movies “Django” has some wonderful performances.

You always seem to get the best from actors.

A. I think it’s a three-way thing. I write good characters for actors to

play. I cast actors with integrity, as opposed to trying to just match

whoever’s hot with something going on. It’s like my character is more

important than any given actor, if that makes sense. Nothing is more

important than my characters. And then I do know how to direct actors,

how to modulate them, get the best out of them. And I understand my

material. I know how to help them navigate it, and when they deliversomething magnificent, I know enough to realize it’s good and stay

out of their way.

Q. It seems to me it’s also casting with imagination. You’ve

rediscovered so many people. John Travolta was pretty much history

when you put him in “Pulp Fiction.” Pam Grier and Samuel L. Jackson,

Robert Forster — these are people you found whom nobody else had

thought about.

A. I remember about a year and a half after “Jackie Brown,” a big

international producer said to me, “Quentin, now that it’s all said and

done, do you wish you had cast bigger stars in ‘Jackie Brown’?” —

basically referring to Pam Grier, Robert Forster. I go, “No, I thought they

were fantastic.”

“Yeah, but it could have done better.”Then I go: “What do you mean? Fifteen million dollars on a movie

starring Pam Grier and Robert Forster, that’s pretty good.”

He goes, “Yeah, but that’s all you.”

I go: “Great, lucky me. If I’m enough of a name that people will go see

my movie, then I don’t have to cast an actor who can open the film.”



The Films of Quentin Tarantino

The Films of Quentin Tarantino

Miramax/Photofest

Q. You also use the same actors over and over again the way

Bergman did. Why? Because you feel comfortable with these

people?

A. I do feel comfortable with the people, but also all my favorite

directors had some sort of stock company that they used againand again. These people understand your world, understand your

words, understand your working method. And your fans like

them, they like the familiar faces. I like it when L. Q. Jones pops

up in a Sam Peckinpah movie. I like that these people become

recognizable troops for your universe.

The Written Word Q. Speaking of “Jackie Brown,” it’s your one movie that’s based

on somebody else’s idea, Elmore Leonard’s novel “Rum Punch.”

Why was it that you did that? Leonard writes dialogue that’s a lot

like yours. Is that part of it?

A. There was even more to it than that, because Elmore Leonard

was a real mentor to me as far as writing is concerned. He helped

me find my voice — the way that he would set up these genre

stories you’ve seen a zillion times but then let real life complicate

them and [mess] up the scenarios from time to time but in a very

realistic way. That’s kind of what I was doing in my early writing.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0428618/bio



So his work gave me permission to explore that voice, a voice I

already kind of had. When I was younger I was thinking, “Oh

wow, when I become a director I can see every other movie I dobeing an Elmore Leonard novel.” Now I’ve become a director, and

I actually want to do my own things, but that one novel was kind

of a leftover from my thoughts and some of my inspirations of

the past.

Q. There’s this mythology that you’re an autodidact — that you

educated yourself in a video store and all you know about ismovies. Yet it seems to me that you must have been a

tremendous reader as well. You couldn’t have been just zonking

out on movies all those years.

A. Not that there’s anything wrong with that but no, I was reading

all the time. Most of my reading was genre fiction, a lot of

paperbacks, anything that had a good story. Open it up, read acouple pages, if it grabs you — boom — take it home. Cinema

literature, and then certain novelists that I fell in love with. J. D.

Salinger in particular was a big inspiration to me, and not all of

Larry McMurtry’s books but some of them. I really like that a lot of

Larry McMurtry’s books take place in this one universe and the

supporting character of one story could have his own novel eight

years later.

Q. That’s kind of true with your work. Mr. Blonde in “Reservoir

Dogs” could have worked for Bill in “Kill Bill.”

A. Yeah, I want it to be that way. I like everything to take place in

my own Quentin universe.



Q. I’m told that your scripts are really written. They’re more like

novels than screenplays.

A. Yeah, they are.Q. Since you’re the director, you don’t need to spell all this stuff

out for yourself, do you?

A. I have a writer’s journey going on and a filmmaker’s journey

going on, and obviously they’re symbiotic, but they also are

separate. When I write my scripts it’s not really about the movie

per se, it is about the page. It’s supposed to be literature. I writestuff that’s never going to make it in the movie and stuff that I

know wouldn’t even be right for the movie, but I’ll put it in the

screenplay. We’ll decide later do we shoot it, do we not shoot it,

whatever, but it’s important for the written work.

When I finish the script I want the script to be so good that I’m

tempted to stop, I’m tempted not to make the movie, because if I just stop right now, I’m the winner. Now I do make them, but I

want the screenplay to be that much of a document. I rarely look

at the script after that other than to just go over the dialogue.

Q. To go back to this education that you gave yourself, if I’m not

mistaken you’re not a high-school dropout, you’re a middle-

school dropout.

A. True that.

Q. Obviously it worked in many ways, but do you ever regret it?

Do you ever think maybe I should have gone to college? Or

would that have ruined you?



A. No. The fact that I would quit in middle school just shows how

little of the world that I knew. I thought the way it was in middle

school would be the way it was going to be forever. I didn’t evenrealize that college would be different from ninth grade. I just

thought it was more school.

Admittedly there’s some braggadocios bragging rights about

doing what I did, but I actually think it would have been a fun

experience to have gone to college. In a weird way my working atthe video store, a minimum-wage job with a bunch of other

people working a minimum wage job, all of us around the same

age, hanging out together — that’s kind of what you get when you

go to college, along with the education.

Soundtrack vs. Score

Q. Music in your movies is more than just background, it’s notincidental. In “Django” there’s spaghetti western music, and then

all of a sudden there’s rap and then there’s Richie Havens singing

“Freedom” from the Woodstock recording.

A. Let me just say this just for the record: You can’t really do a

spaghetti western anymore. Spaghetti westerns were a thing of

their time. But one of the big influences that spaghetti westerns

have had over me cinematically is how they used music and how

they bring it to the forefront.

There is a part of me that likes to go in from time to time for those

big operatic effects. It’s like we’re telling the story and setting

everything up, and then there’s the equivalent of what in a



musical would be a big dance number or a big musical sequence.

I think I did learn that from Italian movies.

Q. I have to say at first it was a little jarring to hear hip-hop in“Django.” You’re sitting there and think you’re in one kind of

musical universe, and then you break the frame.

A. I don’t think like that. If it’s score, it’s my decision. I can put

anything on it I want. If in “Inglorious Basterds” Shosanna turned

on the radio and David Bowie started coming out, that would be

weird and anachronistic. I’m not saying you can’t do it, I’m justsaying that you might have to figure that out. They turn on the

radio in a 1944 movie and the Bee Gees start playing, you could

say, “Hey, wait a minute.” But if it’s score, it’s score — It can be

anything. I just have to pull it off.

Q. Your mind must be almost as stuffed with music as it with

movies.A. It pretty much is actually. I’ve got a huge record collection, and

I have a record room off of my bedroom. It looks just like a used-

record store, with record posters and bins of records broken down

into genres. That’s a big part of my think tank.

When I’m getting ready to write a new movie, or thinking of the

story and starting to zero in on it, I’ll go in the record room and

start trying to find music for the movie — other soundtracks,

songs, whatever. When I do find a couple of pieces, that’s two or

three steps closer to actually being a movie. Now who knows if

those three songs will end up being in the finished movie? But it

gets me a little further along.



Characters

As Performers

Q. Talking about what history does and doesn’t allow — this newmovie of yours is the first one that’s not set in a time when there

are movies. And yet there’s still this theme of performance. King

Schultz has to remind Django that they’re putting on an act. This

idea of acting or performing comes up all the time in your work.

Your movies know that they’re movies, and they’re not trying to

pretend otherwise.A. It’s not exactly the same thing, what you’re talking about.

Some of my movies know they’re movies — in particular “Kill Bill”

and “Death Proof.”

Q. And “Inglourious Basterds” is saturated with movie awareness.

A. Yeah, but I don’t know that they’re walking around acting as if

they’re in a movie. A theme all my characters share is that they’reall good actors and use acting techniques. They’re always playing

a character to some degree or another. There’s something going

on with at least one of the characters that they have to put on a

persona. They have to hide who they are and pretend to be

something else.

Probably the one recurring line in all my movies is when at some

point somebody says to somebody else, “We gotta stay in

character.” In “Reservoir Dogs” it’s obvious that Tim Roth is the

one pretending to be somebody he’s not. You even get to see the

little acting class that he goes through.

Q. Why is this such an important theme for you?



A. I don’t know. That’s the kind of film writing I like to do about

other people. That’s really not for me to say about myself. I don’t

know why I keep doing that, but I guess I do.Q. Are there ideas stored up or will you have to fill the tank when

you finish doing all the “Django” publicity?

A I don’t know the next movie I want to do. I started writing a

novel a little bit ago, a real novel, and I’ve got about three

chapters. This movie was really hard. It’s hard to make even a

mock epic like this. Even just staging all this slavery stuff had awear and tear on my soul and my psyche.

I remember reading a review that Pauline Kael wrote about some

director’s big epic, and she said: Now, look, it might seem unfair

to judge a talented man more harshly when he tries to do

something big than a less talented person who’s doing

something easier. But when you try big things, you take big risks,and if you’re trying to do something that is maybe above you and

you can’t quite pull off, then whereas before we only saw your

gifts, now we see your failings.



I’ve always been pushing that envelope. I want to risk hitting my head

on the ceiling of my talent. I want to really test it out and say: O.K.,

you’re not that good. You just reached the level here. I don’t ever want

to fail, but I want to risk failure every time out of the gate.

Ten Tarantino trademarks

Music - Tarantino has said that he doesn't believe in adding music to

hide slow cinematic moments; it should either enhance the action or

"take it to a whole new level."

Fake products - Tarantino hates blatant product placement in film, sohe counters by including discontinued or fictitious brand names.

Notice the "Fruit Brute" cereal in "Pulp Fiction" and the "Red Apple"

cigarettes in both "Pulp Fiction" and "Kill Bill Vol. 1 and 2."

Ode to the foot - The man definitely has a fetish. Note: foot close-ups

for Uma Thurman in "Kill Bill Vol. 1," Bridget Fonda in "Jackie Brown"

and Rosario Dawson in "Deathproof." Also, the discussion regarding

the serious consequences of giving another man's wife a foot massage

in "Pulp Fiction."

Dialogue - He often writes (or adapts) the screenplays for the movies

he directs. Early on he considered a career as a novelist, which explains

the razor-sharp, revolving dialogue that distinguishes him from his

peers.

Uma Thurman - Tarantino has been quoted as calling Thurman his"muse." On the set of "Pulp Fiction" they collaborated on the concept

of "Kill Bill," a movie he wrote specifically for her. In addition to Uma

Thurman, Tarantino definitely has a preferred list of actors. Often cast in

his movies: Samuel L. Jackson, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Bruce

Willis, Harvey Keitel, and Steve Buschemi.



Career resurrection - He did it for Pam Grier in "Jackie Brown," David

Carradine in "Kill Bill Vol. 2," John Travolta in "Pulp Fiction," and some

would argue Kurt Russell in "Deathproof."

The trunk of a car - It is rare to find a movie written and directed by

Tarantino without a camera shot paying attention to the contents of a

car's trunk.

Facetious humor - After the initial shock wore off, who didn't laugh

when John Travolta quietly exclaimed, "Aw man, I shot Marvin in the

face!" You're not supposed to, but you did.

Suitcase - The infamous suitcase in "Pulp Fiction" that contains thegolden glow of who-knows-what (some speculate it's the soul of

Marcellus Wallace), and the suitcase holding a million dollars cash as

well as a black mamba snake in "Kill Bill Vol. 2."

Himself - Tarantino often appears in his films playing a small role.



1. In Quentin Tarantino’s 2009 film, Inglorious Basterds, the Wilhelm

Scream (a stock sound effect originally recorded for the 1951

movieDistant Drums) is heard twice: the first half-second of the clip

about 90 minutes into the film and the remainder of the scream about

20 minutes later, when a soldier is shot and falls to his death in the

film-within-the-film, Nation’s Pride. The Wilhelm Scream is also heard

twice inReservoir Dogs (1992) — when Mr. Brown (Tarantino) is shot in

the car and when Mr. Pink (Steve Buscemi) pushes someone out of the

way while running down the sidewalk. The Wilhelm Scream is alsoused twice in Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003) during the battle at the House of

Blue Leaves.

2. Tarantino always has a reference to the Netherlands in his films. In

Reservoir Dogs, the opening tune, “Little Green Bag,” is performed by

the George Bakker Selection, a Dutch band. InPulp Fiction, Vincent

(John Travolta) and Jules (Samuel L. Jackson) discuss Amsterdam and

Vincent smokes from a Dutch tobacco shag, Drum. In Jackie Brown

(1997), Ordell (Samuel L. Jackson) mentions the Dutch actor Rutger

Hauer. In Kill Bill , The Bride (Uma Thurman)’s name is Beatrix, the

name of the Royal Dutch Queen.

3. The clocks in the pawn shop in Pulp Fiction are set to 4:20.4. In Inglorious Basterds, Sherlock Holmes is referred to at least two

times. The first reference is Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz)’s

smoking pipe, which is a Calabash Meerschaum, the exact same one

that Holmes used. The other is Landa’s line, “A damn good detective.

Finding people is my specialty.”

5. Sid Haig was considered for the role of Mr. Stonesipher in Django

Unchained , and the casting director, Victoria Thomas informed Haig’s



agent, “It’s a lock.” Tarantino personally scheduled, and later canceled

at the last minute, two auditions for Haig. Two months later, the role

instead went to David Steen. This prank is believed to be Tarantino’s

witty method of retribution for Haig turning down the role of

Marcellus Wallace in Pulp Fiction 17 years previously.

6. In the end credits to Pulp Fiction, the coffee shop manager is

credited as simply Coffee Shop. This is because when Tim Roth’s

character holds a gun to the manager’s head and says “Are you gonna

be a hero?”, the manager only says “No, I’m just a coffee shop–” before

Roth cuts him off and starts yelling again.7. Tarantino is known for never using real brands for products like

cereals and cigarettes, however, in Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004), the brand of

the bread used to make a sandwich during the “Emilio’s killing story”

scene, BIMBO, is a real and very popular brand of bread in Mexico.

8. During the end credits of Kill Bill: Vol 2, the names of actors playing

characters on The Bride’s “Death List Five” list are crossed off,

referencing the fact that their characters died onscreen. In order, as per

the “Death List Five”, it is Lucy Liu (O-Ren Ishii), Vivica A. Fox (Vernita

Green), and Michael Madsen (Budd). However, a question mark

appears over Daryl Hannah (Elle)’s name, since her condition is

unknown. Also, David Carradine (Bill), who supposedly dies onscreen,has his name appear before the aforementioned cast members, yet his

name is not crossed off.

9. The same white Honda Civic is used in Pulp Fiction by Butch, by

Jackie in Jackie Brown, and shows up in the parking lot of the My Oh

My Strip Club in Kill Bill: Vol. 2.

10. In Reservoir Dogs, Mr. Orange (Tim Roth) has a poster of The Silver

Surfer on his apartment wall. This is an homage to one of Tarantino’s



favorite films,Breathless (1983), a remake of the 1959 Jean-Luc Godard

film. In the remake, Richard Gere’s character reads The Silver Surfer

comics obsessively.

11. Tarantino claims that all his scripts exist in one of two universes,

the “Movie Movie” Universe or the “Realer Than Real World” Universe.

The “Movie Movie” Universe (such as Kill Bill ) are the kinds of films the

characters in his “Realer Than Real World” Universe (as in Pulp Fiction)

would go to see. They “Movie Movie” Universe films are purposely

unrealistic. Tarantino says that Death Proof takes place in the “Realer

Than Real World” Universe along with Reservoir Dogsand Pulp Fiction.12. The name of the fictional brand, Acuna Boys Tex-Mex Food, which

appears in numerous Tarantino films, is inspired by the name of the

gang from the 1977 revenge film Rolling Thunder (which lends its

name to Tarantino’s DVD distribution company, Rolling Thunder

Pictures). The Acuna Boys is the name of the gang that is run by

Esteban Vihaio in Kill Bill: Vol. 2.

13. In Jackie Brown, the music playing in the scene where Ordell

Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson) is talking to Jackie on the phone is “The

Lion and the Cucumber” from the Jess Franco sexploitation-horror film

Vampyros Lesbos.

14. Michael Fassbender’s performance in Inglorious Basterds is layeredwith irony because of his own personal history. Fassbender was born in

Germany to German and Irish parents and raised in Ireland. He now

resides in London speaking fluent German as his first language and

English as his second and is a master of English accents and dialects. In

Basterds, Fassbender plays an Englishman who goes undercover as a

German and can speak German fluently but cannot hide his accent.



15. “Okay ramblers, let’s get rambling” is said in both From Dusk Til

Dawn andReservoir Dogs.

16. In Inglorious Basterds, one of the Jewish names carved on The Bear

Jew (Eli Roth)’s bat is Anne Frank.

17. Madonna – who is the main subject of the opening dialogue in

Reservoir Dogs– liked the film a lot but refuted Tarantino’s

interpretation of her song, “Like a Virgin.” She gave him a copy of her

Erotica album, signed “To Quentin. It’s not about dick, it’s about love.

Madonna.”

18. In the closing credits to Jackie Brown, Tarantino gives specialthanks to “Bert D’Angelo’s Daughter.” In the late 70s, Paul Sorvino

starred in a TV detective show, Bert D’Angelo/Superstar . Thus, “Bert

D’Angelo’s Daughter” is Paul’s daughter and Tarantino’s girlfriend at

the time, Mira Sorvino.

19. In the first mall scene in Jackie Brown, Max Cherry is seen exiting a

movie theater while the music for the ending credits of a movie is

playing. This end-credit music is in fact the closing music to Jackie

Brown itself.

20. In Inglorious Basterds, during the final card game at the

LaLouisiane tavern, the card that Hellstrom (the Gestapo major) has to

identify is King Kong. King Kong was one of Adolf Hitler’s favorite

movies.

21. In Pulp Fiction, the shot of Marcellus (Ving Rhames) turning hishead to see Butch (Bruce Willis) in his car is taken directly from Psycho

(1960).

22. In Pulp Fiction, Vincent Vega (John Travolta) was originally

supposed to shoot Marvin twice, once accidentally in the throat and

again to put him out of his misery. Tarantino changed it to one bullet

killing Marvin because he thought it’d be funnier.



23. In Kill Bill , before the fight between O-Ren and The Bride (Uma

Thurman), O-Ren says, in Japanese, “I hope you saved your energy. If

you haven’t you might not last 5 minutes.” After she says this, it is

exactly 4 minutes and 59 seconds from when the music cues the start

of the fight to when the fatal blow is dealt, ending the fight.



'Quentin Tarantino and I

clicked’Editors are the quiet heroes of movies and I like it that way. We have a

very private relationship with our directors, most often conducted in

very dark rooms. I've been with Quentin Tarantino since his very first

movie and have edited every single thing he's done since then.

We don't work at the studios. Quentin insists on renting little private

houses in LA and converting them into edit suites for the duration. It's

very civilised and enabled me to work through both my pregnancies –

yes, my babies had Tarantino movies played to them in the womb, but

they seem to have come out OK.

I met Quentin when he was interviewing for an editor – a cheap one. I

got in touch and he sent me this script for a thing called Reservoir Dogs and I just thought it was amazing. It floored me. Scorsese was a hero of

mine, especially as he used a female editor in Thelma Schoonmaker,

and this script just had that tone. Later, when I found out Harvey Keitel

was attached – he was the first person Quentin had approached – I was

more determined to get this job than ever. I was hiking up in Canada

on a remote mountain in Banff when I saw a phone box and I stopped

to call LA and they confirmed I'd got the gig. I let out a yell that echoed

around the mountain.

Quentin is the same now as he was then. He's encyclopaedic,

passionate, electrifying. We just clicked creatively. Editing is all about

intuiting the tone of a scene and you have to chime with the director.

http://www.theguardian.com/film/quentintarantino



It's a rare, intense sort of a relationship and if it ain't broke, you

wouldn't want to fix it. We've built up such trust that now he gives me

the dailies and I put 'em together and there's little interference.

The thing with Tarantino is the mix-and-match. We do study other films

and other scenes but only to get the vibe we need for our scene – like

in Kill Bill when Uma [Thurman]'s facing off the 5.6.7.8's and we

looked at some Sergio Leone close-ups, to see how we wanted to cut

that scene. Our style is to mimic, not homage, but it's all about

recontextualising the film language to make it fresh within the new

genre. It's incredibly detailed. There's nothing laissez-faire aboutQuentin's approach, but I know his film voice, always have done.

Music is one of his obsessions, so I've cut a lot of great scenes to music.

He's very specific and will play music on set all day to get everyone in

the mood. I think he goes to sleep with his iPod on when we're

filming, because the music becomes the rhythm of his directing.

Oddly, I don't cut to music. I just make the scene work emotionally and

dramatically, and then Quentin will come in and lay the track over it

and we'll tweak it to the beats.

That scene with Uma Thurman and John Travolta dancing in Jack

Rabbit Slim's diner in Pulp Fiction was unusual in that it was filmed to

playback, to the actual Chuck Berry song. It was easy to cut in that

respect, and oh my God, it was glorious. We chatted about using thelong shot, the medium close-ups, and when to focus on the hands.

Most editing is painstaking but this was an exciting scene to edit

because it had momentum of its own and an obvious magic – it's

Travolta, dancing in front of me.

Watching Scorsese and Schoonmaker's work, I learned how to collapse

time in action but still push characters through a scene. It's a trick to

give the illusion it's all real; that's become crucial to us because the



Tarantino thing is to make the mundane feel very spicy. It's the illusion

that time is ticking away. It's all about tension, so you follow the

emotional arc of a character through a scene, even if, as in the opening

of Inglourious Basterds, they're just pouring a glass of milk or stuffing

their pipe. We're very proud of that scene – it might be the best thing

we've ever done.

• Sally Menke was talking to Jason Solomons. Inglourious Basterds is

out on DVD and Blu-ray on 7 December



Quentin Tarantino’s Telepathic

Writing Techniques“All the arts depend upon telepathy to some degree, but I believe that

writing offers the purest distillation.” – Stephen King

So you’ve beaten procrastination, strove for excellence rather than

perfectionand pushed through to do what screenwriter Brian

Koppelman says 99% of writers with an idea only ever dream of… You’ve finished your first draft.

Good job! Mission accomplished.

Time to sit back, relax, and share your masterpiece with the world,

right?

Yeah, if only creativity was that straightforward…

Unfortunately, unless you’re blessed with incredible luck andsuperhuman literary genius, you’re going to have to do a rewrite.

Why? Because as proud as you may be of your work, let’s be real: it’s

most likely still a bit “shit” [Hemingway’s preferred adjective for first

drafts].

http://comfortpit.com/top-101-writing-tips-hollywood-screenwriter-brian-koppelman/

http://comfortpit.com/an-excellent-guide-to-overcoming-perfectionism/

http://comfortpit.com/how-to-stop-procrastinating-and-turn-pro/



A tiny selection of Marcel Proust’s rewrites for In Search of Lost Time

When John Irving said, “Maybe as much as two-thirds of my life as a

writer is rewriting.” He wasn’t kidding.The journey between the first and final draft is often longer, harder and

peppered with more pitfalls than most would-be writers would have

you believe.

Critiquing Your Creative Work Without Bias“Put down everything that comes into your head and then you’re a

writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff’s worth,without pity, and destroy most of it.” – Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette

In order to rewrite, we need to take off our subjective artist’s hat and

replace it with our objective critic’s hat. We need to learn to see our

work with a fresh pair of eyes.

Do you ever see other people’s work and know exactly how you could

have made it better?



The key to successful rewriting is the feel this way about your own.

Easier said than done. It’s much harder to rewrite your own work than

someone else’s.

For artists, this problem of looking objectively at your work has been

always been a problem. Leonardo da Vinci was no exception:

“We know very well that errors are better recognised in the works of

others than in our own; and that often, while reproving little faults in

others, you may ignore great ones in yourself.”

But even if you try to be unbiased, that’s very often not enough.

The old saying, ‘familiarity breeds contempt’ isn’t necessarily true.Studieshave shown that people in relationships rate the attractiveness

of their partnerslower when their photos are horizontally flipped, but

rate themselvesmore attractive when their own photos are flipped.

People like their own mirrored image more because its familiar.

Familiarity creates blind spots.

Da Vinci, it may not surprise you, popularised the use of mirrors in art

for getting rid of such bias:

“I say — that when you paint you should have a flat mirror and often

look at for work as reflected in it, when you will see it reversed, and it

will appear to you like some other painter’s work, so you will be better

able to judge of it’s faults than in any other way.”

The technique of flipping an image so you can look at it with fresh eyes

doesn’t just work with paintings. Film director James Cameronperiodically flops [reverses] his movies during the editing process to

stop his eyes from predicting the movement of the action.

This is a great way for artists and filmmakers to gain objectivity over

their first draft, but what about writers?

While we may not be able to mirror our writing to see it anew, we can

do the next best thing…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yosfPU3dWgc

http://comfortpit.com/drawing-exercises-leonardo-da-vinci/



We can mirror the neurology of people reading it for the first time by

harnessing the power of what neuroscientists call:



Mirror Neurons“[The discovery of mirror neurons are one of the] single most

important unpublicised stories of the decade.” — V. S. Ramachandran,PhD

Emotions are contagious.

When we spend time around stressful, angry people, we get stressed.

When we see someone get hurt badly, we ‘feel’ their pain. When

someone does something embarrassing, we too cringe with

embarrassment.

This neural WiFi that causes us to absorb and reflect the emotions of

other people is mediated by a recently discovered mechanism in the

brain called mirror neurons.

Bestselling author Daniel Goleman explains the discovery of these

neurons in his book Social Intelligence:

“Neuroscientists stumbled on this neural WiFi by accident in 1992.

They were mapping the sensorimotor area of monkeys’ brains by usingelectrodes so laser-thin they could be impacted in single brain cells,

and seeing which cell lit up during a specific movement. The neurons

in this are proving to be remarkably precise; for instance, some

neurons lit up only when the monkey was grasping something in its

hand, others only when it was tearing it apart.

But the truly unexpected discovery came one hot afternoon when a

research assistant came back from a break eating and ice-cream cone.

The scientists were astonished to see a sensorimotor cell activate as

one monkey watched the assistant lift the cone to his lips. They were

dumbfounded to find that a distinct set of neurons seemed to activate

when the monkey merely observed another monkey — or one of the

experimenters — making a given movement.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0099464926?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creativeASIN=0099464926&linkCode=xm2&tag=comfortpitcom-21

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_neuron



Since that first sighting of mirror neurons in monkeys, the same

systems have been discovered in the human brain. In a remarkable

study where a laster-thin electrode monitored a single neuron in an

awake person, the neuron fired both when the person anticipated pain

— a pinprick — and when merely seeing someone else receive a

pinprick — a neural snapshot of primal empathy in action.”

The implications of mirror neurons involvement in creativity are very

exciting.

To me, this research is evidence that great art cannot be faked — it must

be born from true passion.Actors who don’t genuinely feel what they’re portraying on screen will

never convince us, no matter how many courses they attend. Speakers

who don’t feel first the emotions they want to elicit from their

audience will never appear charismatic. And if your work doesn’t

tantalise your mirror neurons, don’t expect it to trigger anyone else’s.

I’ll write future posts about the various ways mirror neurons can help

us with our creative process, but for now, let’s stick to rewriting.

How Tarantino Uses Mirror Neurons In His

Writing ProcessAs an aficionado of the creative processes of other artists, I’m always on

the lookout for fresh ideas. When Quentin Tarantino won the Best

Screenplay Golden Globe for Django Unchained in 2013, I paidparticular attention to his acceptance speech. I’m glad I did:

“The other thing that I have to thank is my group of friends as I’m

writing the script that I read scenes to as I go on. They’re the ones man.

They’re the ones as I’m writing I’ll read a scene this time, I’ll read a

scene that time, I’ll kind of piece it together. You guys don’t realise

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4579681.stm



how important you are to my process. I don’t want input; I don’t want

you to tell me if I’m doing anything wrong. Heavens forbid. But, I write

a scene and I think I’ve heard it as much as I can, but then when I read

it to you – I don’t give it to you to read, I read it – but when I read it to

you, I hear it through your ears [my highlight]. And it lets me know

I’m on the right track. And you’ll never know how much

encouragement you give me during that. So thank you very much.”

Tarantino, just by being in proximity with someone who’s hearing his

scene for the first time is able to connect with their mirror neurons and

experience his own writing for the first time… again.Goleman explains:

“This triggering of parallel circuitry in two brains lets us instantly

achieve a shared sense of what counts in a given moment. This creates

an immediacy, a sense of sharing the moment. Neuroscientists call

that mutually reverberating state “empathic resonance,” a brain-to-

brain linkage that forms a two-person circuitry…”

You’ve all experienced the phenomenon Tarantino is describing, even

if you’ve never read your work aloud to a friend. For example, have you

ever watched a film you’ve absolutely loved, and wanted to watch it

again with someone who hadn’t seen it?

We enjoy doing this because it allows us to watch the film again

through their fresh eyes and re-experience the twists and turns without

expectation.The telepathic writing technique is not as groundbreaking as it sounds,

but that’s why having the science to back it up is so important. It allows

us to take more seriously what we’d otherwise consider common

sense.



How To Write With The Telepathic Technique You don’t ask someone to read it in their head because you won’t know

exactly which parts work and which don’t. And you don’t ask them toread it out loud because you don’t want them to be more focused on

reading it well than experiencing the content.

You read it out loud to them. Don’t ask them for feedback. People are

notoriously bad at explaining why they feel the way they do. And

asking the wrong person for feedback, could kill your confidence.

You want to know what you think about your work as a first-time

reader, not someone else.



THE SCREENPLAYS OF QUENTIN TARATINOby Charles Deemer

Since 1990, Quentin Tarantino has become one of thehottest writers and directors in Hollywood, a sprint onto

center stage that culminated in the fall of 1994 with Pulp

Fiction, one of the most talked-about and controversial

films of the year.

On the surface, there is nothing unusual about Tarantino's

rise to fame in the star-driven atmosphere of Hollywood - after all,

the system demands that SOME writer or other be this season's

fair-haired genius. What makes Tarantino's fame and fortune

intriguing is the nature of his screenwriting: to read a script by

Quentin Tarantino is to be exposed to the artful breaking of the major

textbook and seminar "golden rules" of the craft.

Already the term "Tarantino script" has entered the parlance

of producers. More than one screenwriter on the Internet's

Screenwriter's List has reported news from a "prodco" that

"Tarantino-type scripts" were being sought - an extraordinary feat of

influence, considering how much of the "common wisdom" of

screenwriting Tarantino disregards in his screenplays.

In this article, I will look carefully at four scripts by

Quentin Tarantino - Reservoir Dogs (1990), True Romance (1991),

Natural Born Killers (1991), and Pulp Fiction (1993). My focus

will be on his writing technique and, in particular, I will offer an

answer to the question, "What is a Quentin Tarantino screenplay?" I



also will look at how the answer to this question has changed and

been

refined over time, at how Tarantino has developed as a writer.



Reservoir Dogs

This story of a botched jewelry store heist is anextraordinary debut for a writer and filmmaker. Not only does

Tarantino define what will become his special territory - the

male-centered criminal world - but the techniques and influences that

Tarantino explores and refines in his later screenplays are mostly

evident here, including the writer's challenge to the accepted model

of the well-crafted screenplay. Drawing on influences from the

theater (playwriting) more than from the paradigm of the Hollywood

film that has risen from countless screenplay books, college courses

and weekend seminars, in Reservoir Dogs Tarantino weaves a story that

is as refreshingly unusual as film as it would have been ordinary (in

its structure) on the live stage.

In this screenplay, Tarantino depends on two dramatic writingtechniques common to theater but rare - and even warned against - in

screenwriting: the extended monologue and the long, leisurely-paced

scene (in Taratino's hands, these two techniques usually depend on

one

another). He also is more inventive with chronology than traditional

screenwriting wisdom would advise, although plays frequently take

such

liberties with plot, and as a playwright often does, he tells his

story through an ensemble cast rather than through a clear individual

hero.

The story outline of Reservoir Dogs is quite ordinary, and a

breakdown of the film into its major chronological sequences would



look something like this:

1. A big boss, Joe Cabot, with the assistance of his son, nice

guy Eddie, puts together a gang of strangers to rob a jewelry

store.

2. A policeman, after undergoing extensive training to be an

underground cop, manages to become a part of Cabot's gang.

3. Cabot and his new gang have various meetings to plan the job but remain anonymous to one another, giving themselves the

names of colors. The job is staked out.

4. With the cops warned by the undercover agent, the robbery

attempt ends in a shootout. Some in the gang are killed;

others are wounded and get away.

5. After the robbery, Mr. White and Mr. Orange, the

underground cop (who is wounded), convene at a warehouse,

meeting Mr. Pink there. There is a feeling that someone set

them up. Bickering between White and Pink culminates in a

fight.

6. Mr. Blonde arrives at the warehouse, bringing a cop ahostage.

7. Nice guy Eddie arrives at the warehouse, learning that Mr.

Pink has stashed a bag of jewels. When Eddie, White and Pink

leave to get the stash, Blonde tortures the cop. But Mr. Orange, the

undercover cop who is wounded, recovers enough to shoot Blonde.

The hostage-cop knows Orange is an undercover colleague.





(pp69-70; 2G (pp70-3); 4A (pp74-5); 3A (pp75-83); 2G

(pp83-5); 3B (pp85-7); 4A (pp87-9); 8A (pp90-5);

9A (pp95-9); 10A (pp99-100).

The story, then, is told in a non-chronological fashion that on first

analysis appears to be almost random. The sequence of story elements

goes this way:

3-4-5-4-5-6-1-7-2-4-3-2-3-4-8-9-10.

The first thing we notice is that the longer-than-3-minute

scene is the rule rather than the exception here, a breaking with

conventional wisdom that becomes a common parameter in a

Tarantino

script. How does the writer get away with this? In two ways: first,

by giving long scenes great rhetorical interest in their own right

(playwrights often use "rhetoric-as-action" in this way, screenwriters

seldom do); and second, by placing these scenes within a structure in

which shock transitions set them in dramatic relief, giving an element

of foreboding or recovery to "talky" scenes that set up or follow

scenes of considerable action and violence. Indeed, when the

rhetorical energy gets high in a Tarantino script, either something

terrible is about to happen - or something just has, from which weneed recovery.

Let's look at some examples of these techniques at work.

The main techniques of "the Tarantino method" of screenwriting

are already well-honed in Reservoir Dogs: a plot that fluctuates

between scenes of shock/action and leisure/rhetoric; male bantering



(often about subjects relating to pop culture) that goes against the

grain of the real story and sets up or relieves shock transitions; and

the extended monologue, in which rhetoric (story-telling) itself

becomes a kind of action, as well as contributing to character

development and often to scene tension.

In his next film, True Romance, Tarantino fine-tunes many of

these skills and expands their comic possibilities in a story more

simply told than Reservoir Dogs.

Pulp Fiction

On the title page of this screenplay is the description,

"Three stories . . . about one story." A table of contents follows:

1. Prologue

2. Vincent Vega & Marcellus Wallace's Wife

3. The Gold Watch

4. Jules, Vincent, Jimmie & the Wolf

5. Epilogue

The three stories are numbers 2, 3 and 4 above - but the

prologue and epilogue constitute an essential frame action to

Tarantino's meaning and become a fourth story in their own right,even

though only the named stories are introduced with the formality of

on-screen titles (a device used in Reservoir Dogs and, in a variation,

in Natural Born Killers as well).

What Tarantino accomplishes in Pulp Fiction is almost literary

in nature: a collection of short stories, if you will, that - like



Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio - depicts a common world with

common characters, letting each story stand alone (with its own

beginning, middle and end) but also reflect off the others, so that

the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts, especially since

Tarantino delivers the stories in their best dramatic order for his

meaning (which also means, out of chronological sequence).

Pulp Fiction opens with a frame action, in the same setting

and Prologue-Epilogue storyline with which it will end. Two low-level

liquor store robbers, described as Young Man and Young Woman, arein a

diner, where they decide to change their focus to robbing restaurants

- like the very one they are in. The conclusion leads directly to a

shock transition:

Documents

tarantino.pdf