Original subtitles

Hi, I'm Quentin Tarantino and you're

watching the El Rey Network.

Here we go, for sight.

And, action.

Welcome, Señor.

I'm so excited to have you

here on the El Rey Network.

I was laughing all the way driving up

here just thinking

about what we were saying.

I'm actually kind of curious about what

questions you want to ask.

Well, I've been preparing

this interview for 22 years.

I'm sure that.

I've got footage of stuff I'm going to

show that I've kept for 22 years.

I've got a lot of things that I've

recorded while being with

you, being inspired by you.

So a lot of the stuff I want to talk

about is really just kind of process.

I mean, what the director's chair is

about is a director interviewing another

director about the craft.

Because we all approach it differently.

And it's very inspiring to people to hear

someone's process because it really

defines how they do what they do.

And even though I've known you so long,

there's still a lot of things I don't

know about just how you do it.

Let me interrupt one thing.

You remember that moment?

We're now sitting

here in my movie theater.

You're not in a screening room.

F that. Alright, now

it's a movie theater.

But do you remember when I

first started collecting prints?

I had an apartment

off of Crescent Heights.

Oh, absolutely.

And we put the

projector in the living room.

So we could throw it on the kitchen wall

because it was like the bigger throw.

And we'd be sitting there with just

duperteen covering the windows.

It was the only place

that got direct lights.

And naturally I turned that into a

screening room so I

could block all that out.

And we're sitting there watching a 16

millimeter print of something, I think

white lightning, I think.

And I turned to you and I go, "Hey,

Robert, isn't this the life?"

And it was just so fun.

You always love cinema.

You always love movies.

You got to string up your little 16

millimeter and we're

skipping work that day.

We're playing hooky.

Sometimes we had things to do.

We're supposed to be responsible.

And you would call me sometimes.

Your assistants would call me and say,

"We can't find Quentin

anywhere. Do you know where he is?"

And I go, "I don't know where he is."

I get a call from you.

I get a call from you and you go, "Hey,

man, I'm totally playing hooky today."

All right, you know what? How often is

this going to happen?

I'll go over and you'd have white

lightning up and you

just turn everything up.

Isn't this the life? We're here watching

our own movies on our own screening room.

And the screening room

wasn't a screening room.

That's the magic of cinema.

Just seeing the image flickering in your

home and seeing it the way you remember.

And that kind of love for cinema, we've

had so many conversations

over the year about movies.

I wish more people were privy to that.

So that's kind of what this is about.

I know they would just be inspired by it.

According to filmmaker and historian

Peter Bogdanovich, and he would know,

you are the single most influential

director of our generation.

And here's why.

Reservoir talks.

Five-man job, busted in and busted out of

a diamond, wholesalers.

I'm acting like a professional.

Pulp fiction.

I'ma just medieval on your ass.

Sit goddamn.

Everybody be cool. This is a robbery.

Jackie Brown.

How you doing, Miss Jackie?

Are you scared of me?

Kill Bill, Volume 1.

You and I have unfinished business.

Kill Bill, Volume 2.

Hello, kiddo.

Death proof.

In glorious bastards.

And hype!

We will be cruel to the Germans.

Through our cruelty,

they will know who we are.

Django and Jane.

What's your name?

Django.

D-J-A-N-G-O.

The D is silent.

And soon, the hateful eight.

What an amazing

ground-breaking filmography.

From someone who is essentially

self-taught and self-made.

And who single-handedly revolutionized

cinema at that time.

I wanted to kind of go

back in just the early days,

and how you started to become someone who

wanted to tell stories visually,

because you could have chosen many paths

telling stories and you chose visual.

Some boys are into monsters.

Some boys are into sports.

Some boys are into cars.

I was always into movies.

But I actually remember

my parents even saying,

"Oh, Quentin's going to grow

up and be a director someday."

Just because they just

knew how much I loved movies.

I didn't even think I knew

what a director was then.

And when you're younger,

and you know you see movies,

and you know that that's

what you want to be part of,

you probably want to be an actor, because

that's what you see.

That's the tangible thing.

I started like in an acting class,

but I realized I really wasn't like a lot

of the other students.

They were about acting.

They were about getting jobs.

They were about becoming movie stars.

I was really about cinema.

I was really about movies,

and about the history of movies,

and the future of movies.

My heroes had actually become directors.

Right.

They weren't actors.

I wanted to become an actor so I could

work with Sergio Leone,

or work with Martin Scorsese,

or learn Japanese and go to Japan and

work with Akira Kurosawa,

learn Italian, work with Mario Bava.

That's what I wanted to do.

Right.

I just kind of realized, you know,

I don't think this

acting thing is for me.

I don't think appearing

in movies isn't enough.

I want the movies to be my movie.

Right.

I want it to be mine.

Just being in it isn't enough.

I want to figure out what the movie is,

and I want to own the movie.

Once you actually start

thinking about directing,

if you look at something like Good and

the Bad and the Ugly,

or What's the Fine Time of the West?

Well, that's directed.

You can actually literally

see what the director does

and the way the characters

enter frame and exit frame

and the way the camera does its thing.

It's like almost like a directing school.

It doesn't mean you

have to direct like that,

but it shows you what directing is.

Right.

Shows you cinematically.

And was it also partly

watching movies and going,

"You know, I would

structure this differently.

I would tell a story differently,

and I'm never going to get a

script like that as an actor.

I would have to go create it."

I don't think I thought about structure

that much at that point in time.

I think it started off

with me thinking of shots.

Mm-hmm.

At the time, I never

even thought about writing.

But what I actually realized I had a

little bit of talent at it

was going to acting classes.

Because I didn't want to do just the

normal Samuel French plays and stuff.

I would go and see a movie,

and I'd see some neat scene.

I was always doing

bizarre scenes in acting class.

You know, I'd see Jackie Chan's Big Brawl

and like see a scene

and then like write it down.

You know, the Dilla de

la Rente's Flash Gordon.

Remember the scene of Flash Gordon where

it's like Flash Gordon

and Timothy Dalton are like sticking

their hands in the tree with a monster.

It's sort of like a comic book version of

Deer Hunter or something.

Yeah.

Must be my lucky day.

You do them as monologues

or you do them with somebody?

No, I do. I did it with another guy.

I got a refrigerator box and

cut a bunch of holes in it.

And I cast some guy to be Flash Gordon,

and I'm with the

Timothy Dalton character.

That's a great scene, but

it's not that long of a scene.

Would you add to the scene?

I would add to the scene because what

happened is I never had

like the script or anything.

Right.

But basically, I

always had a good memory.

So I would see a scene from a movie, and

I would just remember it.

And I would go home, and

I'd write it from memory.

And anything else I couldn't remember or

anything else good I came

up with in the meantime,

I'd add it into the scene

because it was just my scenes.

And then little by little by little, I

just started adding more and

more and more to the scenes.

And that was me learning how to write

dialogue or just me realizing that I

could write dialogue.

And I never really took it seriously

until a member of the class,

a guy named Ronnie Coleman,

I think, was, "Quentin, you're really

good. You're as good as Patty Chiesky."

What do you mean I'm as

good as Patty Chiesky?

Well, you know, we did that

scene in class from Marty.

And you just wrote it down, and you gave

me this handwritten scene from Marty.

And it included this entire

monologue about a fountain.

Well, I actually have the original Patty

Chiesky script, and there was no

monologue about fountain there.

That was completely added by you. You

added an entire monologue to it.

Wow.

And it was just as good

as the Patty Chiesky stuff.

That's great.

And, you know, somebody saying something

like that to you actually got me to start

taking it seriously,

that maybe I did have a talent for that.

That almost knighting by somebody to

somebody saying, "Early in your life, you

know, somebody tells

you anything like that.

You should listen because you don't

always know. We're going

to talk about this later."

Sometimes you don't know when you're

making something that's

going to be groundbreaking.

It doesn't look groundbreaking when

you're staring at it.

But how old were you at that time?

Like, 19, 20.

Wow. So this is, you know, 11 years

before a reservoir dock.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, this is way before. That's

awesome. Tell me about reservoir docks.

Yeah.

That was an idea I had that just

completely was based out of

something I thought I could do.

You know, with a few thousand dollars, I

could actually make this.

I could just get a bunch

of actors, we'd rehearse it.

And finally, after years of nobody

wanting it, the company,

Cinetel, bought True Romance.

And so I actually did

have like 30,000 coming.

And this is, you know, I'm a guy who had

only made 10,000 a year.

And so I decided I would go out and I was

going to make a movie with that money.

And I didn't really think anyone was ever

going to take a chance on me to actually

direct a real movie and

done in a real movie style.

I thought I would have to, you know, just

do it very gorilla style.

Then I showed it to Lawrence Bender and

he was like, this is really good.

And I actually think I could get some

real money, even if real money meant like

half a million dollars

or 400,000 or something.

I was like, no, no, I don't

believe that. I don't buy that.

It waited too long.

Everybody said, no,

it's never going to happen.

I don't know if I would even trust me. So

why should anybody else trust me?

And he said, well, you

know, give me a month with it.

You could wait like a

month to make your home movie.

And if we can't, then I'm like full steam

ahead and that's the way to go.

But if I get interest in a month, then

we'll actually try to do it for real.

And he got interested a month in the, you

know, literally a very few months time

from like the point that I wrote it to

the point that we were

shooting was maybe five or six months.

Wow, really fast.

And I was doing a real movie with a real

budget with real actors.

Harvey could tell for a real company that

was taking a chance on me for like one

point three million dollars.

I actually showed up on my first day and

there were trucks, you know, on the

street like, oh my God, that was almost a

bigger deal than seeing the camera or

anything was to see the trucks parked in

front of our location.

Frankly, I identified more with the PAs

than anybody else in the set because we

were all about the

same level of experience.

The only sets I'd ever been on where I

worked was I was a PA on the Dolph

Lundgren exercise home video.

Oh, yeah. So that was my only working job

where I actually was part of a crew.

But, you know, it's one thing to say,

hey, I want to make a movie.

Hey, I want to make a movie.

And then someone goes, OK, we're going to

take a chance on you.

Like, holy shit.

Yeah, I mean, but you didn't blink.

Yeah. Well, you know,

I blinked. All right.

I blinked.

You can't tell.

I mean, not during

the doing it. All right.

In your names, Mr. Brown, Mr. White, Mr.

Blonde, Mr. Blue, Mr. Orange, Mr. Bing.

Your first film right out

the gate had a big cast.

You were showing what what a force you

were in the directing world, being able

to take that group of guys,

direct them so brilliantly.

How did you do that?

Well, because I started off as an actor

and actually the only like training I'd

ever done has been as an actor.

I always knew that that would be one of

my strengths as far as like dealing with

actors and writing the characters and

dealing with them and getting the best

out of them and being

able to talk, actor talk.

I was all about my shot, but I wasn't all

about the lenses and the lighting and all

that stuff that maybe a lot of film

students at the time were.

What I could do is put a bunch of actors

in a room and get the best out of them

and actually kind of rehearse the scenes

and like get them to

the right kind of pitch.

You gotta remember this story is about

you and how you perceived the events that

went down. The only way to do that, my

brother, keep saying it.

We had a two week rehearsal and we had

chewed the rag on the material so much

and they were so ready to go.

It was it gave me confidence.

I knew I was the best

person to do this movie.

I knew this material better

than anybody else would know.

And these guys really respected me.

They wanted to make my movie.

It was the diving into the material that

just gave me confidence.

I was ready to do it.

I can't imagine a more

confident person than you.

So to hear you say that I think really

will give people, you know, some

consolation if they feel nervous about a

step they're going to take.

You should feel nervous.

You should feel some fear because that

means you're you're embarking on

something that is worth your time.

But if you're doing a

piece, that's the answer.

Get to know that piece.

Know that piece.

There was nobody better.

I chewed the rag on it so much.

There was nobody better

than me to tell this story.

Now, whatever happens after

that is what happens after that.

But I knew this story.

Everybody else in that set could know a

hell of a lot more

about filmmaking than I did.

And they all did.

But I knew this

material better than they did.

Hey, show time.

Grab your jacket.

Mark that stuff.

Be right down.

Everything was like kind of new and like,

you know, finishing your day, getting

your day done, going to new locations,

working with all these people, getting

everything that were, you know, being the

director of the crew.

You know, there is it's not just, you

know, one, you're an artist, but two,

you're you're also a general.

You're the leader.

You have to lead and you

have to lead by example.

So then you do all

that and then that's done.

And now it's editing.

It's a completely new experience.

And so you go through that

and then now it's the sound mix.

And that's this really huge experience.

But what I just kind of noticed is that,

you know, there was always like just like

a new mountain decline.

And my late editors not here anymore.

Sally Minkie.

She was we'd done all our films together

before she passed on,

including Reservoir Dogs.

Now she had done movies before too.

So once I was actually finished with the

edit of the movie, once I had locked the

picture and that was the

picture and everyone agreed.

And it was exactly what I wanted.

She kind of took a little bit more of the

lead because she knew about the sound

process more than I did, knew about the

lab work more than I did.

And I'm starting to get a little tired

now, but that's actually

when she would pick up.

All right. And she'd just take just a

little bit more of the lead

position and ram things through.

So when like the print would come back

and I didn't there was a problem with the

lab, I didn't like something or whatever.

I might be more and more inclined to just

be sad about it because

it didn't quite work out.

She was like, no, that work is

unacceptable. Send it back.

Right. Right. Professional.

Yeah. And then I'm sort of like, gosh,

she's been kind of mean to them.

I mean, you know, it's like, no, they can

do it better than that.

That's absolutely

positively unacceptable.

That's good.

Which favorite part of

the directing process?

I don't really have one favorite part.

Each part is my favorite

part at that given time.

And right when I'm kind of done with it

and sick and tired of

it, it's usually over.

And now I'm moving on to another part

that's really exciting.

So it's like it's not that I think

editing is so much more fun than shooting

or shooting is so much

more fun than writing.

Writing is a tremendous

amount of fun for me now.

I really have a great time.

But when I'm done with the script, I'm

sick of writing. I'm done it now.

Now I want to put the

material on its feet.

Now I want to make it better.

And now I want to put in the other voices

and the other people.

And now we're going to leave that

document in the dust and do something

even better than that.

But after shooting forever, I'm done with

it by the time I'm done.

And now editing just seems so great.

And now it's more of a solitary

experience again as

opposed to this carnival.

A little closer to writing again.

But it's between those three sections,

the writing and the

directing and editing.

By the time that's over, now for the

first time you're really

looking at it like a movie.

To this day, I can't read a novel and not

turn it into a movie to some degree.

He gave us enough confidence with this

idea by stringing us along

that we went forward with it.

Here we go. For a sec.

Here we go. For a sec.

And action.

I had a question about

just your unique storytelling.

When did you... What led you to

constructing that sort of back and forth

non-linear style that

you did in Reservoir Dogs?

That really kind of

took people by surprise.

Were the chapters and introducing the

characters... Where did

you get the idea from?

I'd read novels. And in a novel, you can

start in the middle of the story.

An analogy I would give

is Mo, Larry and Curly.

And they're doing something and it's just

moving in the forward momentum of what

they're doing that's taking

place in the here and now.

But now it comes to chapter three.

And chapter three is about Mo. And that

happened two years before.

You just accepted in a novel.

Yeah, and you read it in the novel and

you read kind of how Mo

got there a little bit.

Or explains more who Mo is.

And then you go back

to chapter four. Boom!

And now you're back into the same current

situation, the same thrust of stuff.

But now you know more

about Mo than you did before.

And then the next chapter comes and now

they're going to isolate Larry.

And maybe that only happened a day

before. But it sets up his situation.

And to this day, I can't read a novel and

not turn it into a movie

to some degree in my mind.

Anyway, I always thought if you did it

the way they did it in novels, it would

be even more cinematic.

I'm sorry.

Give me the hand.

It would be exciting. And if you pulled

it off, it would be fun.

Say it!

The cross-cutting would be neat.

Everybody starts shooting so I'm blasting

my way out of there.

And it's not just one thing.

Do movies the way novels tell stories

when they move around like that?

That would be inherently cinematic.

And to just put it all in chronological

order was inherently not

cinematic. It was drab.

Do you remember a time when you figured

that out, when you read a novel in

particular, and you said,

"How come the movies aren't like this and

I'm going to do this?"

It's not one novel that

got me thinking that way.

It was more just every time I read a

novel like that, I thought

I figured out how to do it.

And I knew that that's not what Paramount

would do if it had the opportunity.

Especially if you're talking about coming

off of the 80s, which I think was a very

oppressive time for cinema.

The studio system was one of the more

repressive times to

come out since the 50s.

Things were just very standard.

Things had gotten very, very homogenous.

There wasn't a whole lot of creativity

going on as far as doing new things.

People like Paul Verhoeven or David Lynch

were really put in boxes as being weird.

Everyone had to be likeable.

There was never dark shades of things.

You read crime novels and characters

could do so much and be so twisted.

If they ever talked in the 80s about

doing those movies, they

always had a wimp-out ending.

They'd say, "Oh, you can't do a movie

about that. The characters are too

unlikable or it's too

mortally ambiguous."

That just was the death in the 80s.

So I'm kind of coming off of that.

I did finally have one thing that I

thought proved that I was right.

Fred Chalepsy did an adaptation of one of

the John LeCare novels, The Russia House,

with Sean Connery and Michelle Pfeiffer.

I never read the book, but you could tell

he kept the structure of the book, which

was really moving back and forth.

The story doesn't catch up with itself

until about midway through.

From that point on,

everything is everything.

Before that, it's really

hopping around back and forth.

It was exciting. It

was really, really fun.

I was like, "Oh, see? I

knew this would work."

Those moments are just so important,

especially when you're doing something

that's been done for

so long, like cinema.

When you just question something and you

go, "How come no one's ever done this?"

Or, "Why don't they do it that way?" I

felt that on Sin City.

I remember looking at the graphic novel,

reading it and going, "This is more

cinematic than a movie."

The way he's just putting a drawing while

this voiceover is going, and it's

action-packed, but his

voiceover is very calm.

Why does it have to be a facsimile of

this? Why can't it be this?

Just shoot that. Make it like that. That

will blow people away, because they're

used to just seeing a movie.

Visual storytelling, the way Frank was

doing it on the graphic novel, I just

wanted to see that move.

The way you were saying you read a novel,

and go, "Why don't they make a movie like

that?" That storytelling, it should work.

You shouldn't have to adapt it to a film.

It should just work,

because it's still storytelling.

I would think it would be

kinetic. It would be exciting.

The audience has to know it's in good

hands. It has to know that there's a

"there" or "there" somewhere.

But as long as there's some good hands,

it likes not knowing

and waiting to find out.

One of the hallmarks of your films from

the very beginning has just been your

musical choices and your style.

Were you always just a big music fan?

Well, I got really lucky, because I could

be stuck in a situation where I was doing

really low-budget movies.

I wouldn't be able to afford anything.

In the case of Reservoir Dogs, we had

like $13,000 set aside

for our entire music budget.

But I knew I needed

"Stuck in the Middle With You."

We had to get "Stuck in the Middle With

You" for that price.

At the time, the woman with the power of

the pen there, the person

that had the yes or no at EMI,

was this really lovely

lady named Pat Lucas.

And so Stacy Shear, who later became a

producer on Pulp Fiction, who was one of

the producers on Django Unchained,

she knew Pat Lucas, wrote her a big

blowjob letter about how talented I was,

and if you're inclined,

I think Quentin could be another Kubrick.

And so we just really

kind of romanced her.

We had to know before we shot the scene.

And so she had that much time to think

about it, and finally

she thought about it,

and she decided to give

us a song for $13,000.

Okay, what's your music budget?

Well, then that's what

I'm going to do it for.

So we spent our entire music budget on

"Stuck in the Middle With You."

[grunting]

If that was going to be the

only song in the film, so be it.

But then we got the idea of maybe if we

got a record deal, that record deal will

pay for the rest of the songs.

And we started getting a

little cocky about the idea.

And actually there was one guy kind of

stringing us along

who never came through,

yet he gave us enough confidence with

this idea by stringing us along that we

went forward with it.

I don't think we actually would have gone

forward with it if we didn't have

somebody kind of lying to us.

But then we were committed, and then we

actually made it happen.

Right. And then that became such a, you

know, Hallmark soundtrack

that you just continued to--

Well, I got to really show it off, you

know, my talent, be that as it may,

all right, of putting

music and scenes together.

[grunting]

When I'm seeing my movie for the eighth

time or the ninth time, or hell, even the

third time or fourth time,

I'm waiting for the music sequences,

because those are the fun parts.

Those are really the fun parts. That's

sort of the, like, you know, the surfing

part, where you're just gliding.

[music]

It really is an anthology. It's three

separate stories. No one

looks at it that way anymore.

The hero just killed that person, and who

is this guy? What's going on?

[music]

Here we go. For sake.

[music]

Here we go. For sake.

And action.

I remember when I went back to work on

Desperado at Columbia

Pictures on the Sony lot.

We ended up finding out we had offices

right next to each other.

Yeah, yeah.

You were writing Pulp

Fiction at that time.

[music]

You got a corpse in a car, minus a head

in a garage. Take me to it.

[music]

How did you come up with Pulp Fiction?

Because it fascinates me how you came up

with this structure.

You thought originally to do it as short

films that you could just shoot.

I thought about the idea, "Oh, you know,

why do I do this as, like, an anthology

with, like, different

directors and stuff?"

And I was friends with Tony Scott at the

time, and I was always a

huge admirer, as we both are.

He had done True Romance, so I proposed

to him and his partner

at the time, Bill Unger.

I go, "What if we do a thing we call Pulp

Fiction? I'll write one of the stories. I

can write another story. Tony could do

one, and I'll write a third one, and

we'll get another

director to do another one."

And they were like, "Wow,

that's great. Let's do that."

So I started working on one.

[music]

And I did have the basic idea that would

be Vincent Vega and

Marcellus Wallace's wife, that story.

And so I thought, "Well, you know, I

could write that, and then we can go out

and do that as a short film, and that would be kind of cool."

She did on 16mm. So I

did have that kind of idea.

And when I had had that idea of doing it

as a short film, I wanted to possibly do

it with Roger Avery, who was a good

friend of mine at the time.

And he was also working in one of the

video stores, and I really liked his

writing. We encouraged each other.

So Roger, why don't you come

up with a story of your own?

And he came up with, like, the Butch

Coolidge story, the Boxer story.

And he didn't have the Gold Watch speech.

He had a Gold Watch, but he didn't have

the speech or the reason.

Why the Gold Watch was so important.

Now, little man, I gave the watch to you.

[cheering]

I like the cliche aspect of it. I wanted

the storylines to be cliche, as the

Boxer's supposed to

throw the fight and doesn't.

The hood that's supposed to take out Mr.

Big's maul, or the

"look but don't touch."

You're just the beard. And

then, like, what happens?

Then I started kind of thinking about the

idea of them not being separate one-offs.

Making it so maybe some

characters can overlap.

And not in a gimmicky kind of way, but it

just all take place in the same world.

And a character who could be the lead of

one story could just be a small part in

the other, and vice versa.

And the more I started thinking about

really kind of tying them in together,

even though the three

stories would be separate,

the more I said, "No, it

really needs to have one hand."

So I had to call Tony, "Oh, yeah, I think

this is going to be my next movie."

And so then I went off

to Amsterdam to write it.

Get a load of this. All right. If you get

stopped by a cop in Amsterdam, it's

illegal for them to search you.

I mean, that's the right

that cop Samsung don't have.

Oh, man. Oh, God.

I love the evolution of an idea like that

because it ended up being such a

groundbreaking movie.

But to me, it wasn't really a whole lot

different than, like, say,

Mario Bob's Black Sabbath,

which is like, you know, three horror

stories. We did one of those four rooms.

There have been things like that before.

But never like three separate crime

stories. That was unique.

And the idea that, like, the three

separate stories could

end up telling one story.

Well, that had never really been done

before to that degree.

And it still is, I mean, it's actually

the best compliment because

it really is an anthology.

It's three separate stories. No one looks

at it that way anymore.

Or even then, they all looked at it as

one big unified piece.

But that's kind of hard to do. But it

actually is three separate stories.

It seems so new. I mean, it was new.

At the time, somebody, a friend of yours,

I don't remember, was a

producer friend or an actress.

Somebody asked you, OK, after they saw

him. So when John Travolta, so he's

really, he's still dead, though, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Remember the guy said he's just never seen.

Yeah, I know. It's like, yeah, he's dead,

right? And I go,

well, of course he's dead.

That wasn't a dream

sequence. Of course he's dead.

I mean, you know where you are, all

right? You're back in the

scene that you were at earlier.

Now you're just going further with it.

And it was a, wow.

It was a big leap to ask them to do. And

not everyone quite got it at the time,

but most people did.

They're like a little moment of

confusion, but then they, oh, OK, I guess

we're just back where

we were at the beginning.

Yes, you are. I mean, one of the things

that was really exciting about watching

the movie, I was always

ahead of them in Pulp Fiction.

They're in the entire

running time for the most part.

If you stopped watching Pulp Fiction

after the first hour, you know, you

didn't even really see the movie.

Like, it takes an hour for it to really

get going, or for it to

really revealing itself.

There was this neat thing that happened

with audiences every time. And I watched

it with a lot of audiences.

The movie would start in that cafe with

Tim Roth and Amanda

Plummer, Pumpkin and Honey Bunny.

Then it would go into the John Travolta,

Sam Jackson Park, and the

John Travolta, Uma Thurman Park.

And then the boxer comes into it with

Bruce Willis, and then we go back in

time, and now it's Jules and Vincent

again, and all that goes on.

Little by little, you forget about

Pumpkin and Honey Bunny. And it's going

on, and I've been ahead

of you the entire time.

Then when you cut to the exterior of the

coffee shop, before you go in the coffee

shop, even though you never saw the

exterior in the opening scene, the

audience had caught up.

Wow, that's great.

And they knew, "Oh,

that's what he's gonna do!"

Wow.

Those two guys, the guy and the girl, the

British guy and girl from the beginning,

they're gonna be there.

Oh my God! And it was this kind of thing,

where it's like, "You son of a bitch! I

haven't understood how you're telling

this story from the very beginning, but

it's taken me this long, but now I get

it. Now I know, for the first time, I

know what you're gonna do."

I've heard you at a few times say, "If I

do my job right, I'll be able to play the

audience like a fiddle right here."

Because you really are

tuned in to what they were like.

I've always been pretty attuned. I've

always considered myself

a part of the audience.

So I don't second-guess it, as far as,

"Oh, I'm gonna smarten it up or dumb it

down or do anything to

get an unnatural response."

I know how I feel when I'm being jerked

around, and it's fun. And I do like

jerking them around a

little bit, and it's pretty easy.

What do you make all this?

Man, I don't even have an opinion.

Well, you gotta have an opinion! I mean,

do you think that God came down from

heaven and stopped him?

Audiences didn't even realize how attuned

they had got to the contrivances of

movies, because they were so used to it.

So you could use that against them. You

could leave the breadcrumbs that would

indicate that you were gonna go the way

all the other films had gone.

And then all of a sudden you make a quick

left turn, and they're

not prepared for that.

[screaming]

They didn't even know that they were

anticipating what was gonna

happen next, but they were.

And so then you use their own knowledge

against them. And that's exciting.

Now all of a sudden the storytelling is

infused with something.

Now you can't predict it.

I thought you were going to do it. I

never thought that guy would die. Or I

know that guy's a goner.

Oh no, he's not a goner. Oh my god. The

hero just killed that person.

And the innocent people are dying, and

the hero doesn't care, and they're just

cracking jokes and they're moving on.

Who is this guy? What's going on?

We all want to do something different.

When you're watching it with a regular

old audience for the first time, all of a

sudden you wanted to be guitar.

It doesn't sound like such a great

ambition when you've got a bunch of

people who want to be entertained.

Here we go. For a sec.

Here we go. For a sec. And action.

I like to talk about how some things that

look like a failure aren't always.

That's why I kind of like to keep a

journal about everything. Because

sometimes when things don't go your way

you look back and you go,

"Oh, thank god. Thank god."

Friday, May 14th, 1993, you had just

finished the script in the cast and you

were talking to Christopher Walken,

Harvey Katell, Michael Mattson, Tim Roth,

John Cusick, Matt

Dillon, Larry Fishburne.

TriStar had 30 days to greenlight your

script. You were getting everything

together. Elements,

budget, schedule, all that.

So we walk in with all the cards. If

TriStar takes a breath, we go somewhere

else. They took a breath.

And you went somewhere else.

And thank god. I remember at the time,

because we were both in the lot, it was a

big deal. It was like you

were going in to be a made man.

I was waiting for the phone call. You

were going to go in, turn the script.

What was the verdict? They said no. And

you were off the lot. You

were going somewhere else.

And I was left there by myself. I

remember thinking, "Wow, that really

sucks." But then it would not be the same

movie had you made it a TriStar.

Well, yeah. It wouldn't have been the

same movie because they just didn't have

the faith in it. They would

have thought it was weird.

What's funny is it was even weird to you.

I mean, even for you. And there was a

point, half of these dates because I

write everything down,

Sunday, May 1st, 1994.

We went to dinner. We talked movies. It

was about 2.30 in the morning. I'm about

to leave. And I asked you,

"Oh, how did Pope come out?"

Because I didn't get to see you get a

screening for a bunch of your director

friends. And I was in

Texas. So I wasn't there.

And you went, "Yeah, you know, I don't

know. I mean, it just, it still feels

like, it doesn't feel like a real movie."

And I said, "What do you mean?" And you

said, "Well, it still feels like a movie

Quentin would make. It doesn't feel like,

like, it still just doesn't feel like

I've made a real movie yet."

And, you know, maybe you try to be

supportive because I've seen how excited

you were from the beginning. And you

being a little down on it, it's just

like, "Oh, that's, you know, I was trying

to be a supportive friend going, "Oh,

that's okay. I mean, it should, should

be, you know, more like you."

But it did, didn't seem like, it didn't

seem like a real movie. It seemed like a

crazy Quentin movie.

It's what you called it. You were almost

disappointed that it was still felt like

it had too much of your hand in it, which

of course now you know that's the

blessing of what you do

and that's what it should be.

But at that early formative years of

yourself, that was essential that you

were at a place like Mirror Max.

But it's also interesting though, because

it's like, we all want to do something

different in like, you know, do our own

way. However, when you're watching it

with a regular old audience for the first

time, you don't really want it to be that

different. You kind of want them to

recognize it somewhat as a real movie

that, like, they might see.

You want people to be entertained at the

end of the day. You want to be. And all

of a sudden, you know, you wanted to be a

guitar doesn't sound like such a great

ambition. You got a bunch of people who

want to be entertained.

I just think it's so important for people

to hear that even you didn't know what it

was going to do because people don't,

something that's groundbreaking and

that's going to change cinema, you don't

recognize it. Nobody does.

I think the time that happened before

most famously was on Star Wars. George

Lucas got all his director friends to

look at it. It's DePaulman. Spielberg.

And they all were just like, oh, poor

George, he wasted his time with his

movie. What a fool's errand this was.

Spielberg recognized it for being

something that it could be. But I talked

to some of the directors because I wasn't

able to go to that screening that you had

for your director friends. And I was

curious. I called up a couple of the

people and say, well, how did it go?

And they said, yeah, I'm not sure. I

don't know. I don't know about this one.

They've never seen anything like it.

Never seen anything like it. It was like

that Star Wars. That was our Star Wars.

Pulp Fiction was like our Star Wars. Not

even we knew. But there was one person.

There was one. Who was the Spielberg in

the group? Oh, Catherine Bigelow.

Absolutely positively. She was its

biggest fan. She went nuts for Reservoir

Dogs at Telluride. And I'd always been a

fan of hers. Yeah. So you hooked me up

with her. Yeah. I was following around

Telluride the whole time.

That's what I talked to her about. Near

dark, near dark, near dark. All right.

For her to say that's awesome. She wanted

to put John Travolta in Strange Days

after seeing that movie. She screened it

for Jim Cameron. Apparently, like when

she did the screening, she goes, guys, you're in for treatment. And you don't even know what you're going to see. You don't even know what you're going to see. But I know what you're going to see.

And I can't wait to watch it with you

guys. Nobody else was saying that. After

my little director screening with my

friends, you know, there was even one of

them that was planning on, okay, I'm

going to have to have a hard talk with

Quentin. But I'll wait till he comes back from Con.

The palm door.

Goes to.

Pulp Fiction.

I was in the palm door. Literally, they

left a message. Well, I was actually

going to actually get a little tough with

you. I guess we can forget that. What the

hell do I know? What the hell did anybody

know at that time? It really changed

movies because I was still at Columbia.

I remember the executives when that movie

did what it did. They came and they went.

It was like when Easy Rider had come out

and suddenly the studios felt like

dinosaurs. They were like, we're trying

to make movies for youth. That's youth.

That's what people are meant to. And we

don't know how to do that.

There's nothing else coming out even on

our schedule that's remotely like that,

except maybe Desperado.

Yeah, right.

Because I'd already shot you in it.

But that was it. There was no nothing. So

it was really turned the industry and you

know, audiences were exhilarated to go to

the cinema again and they weren't going

to see anything like

that till your next movie.

You were the first real rock star

director. You were like

hanging out one of the Beatles.

Here we go. For a sec.

Here we go. For a sec.

Sam Jackson, how did that relationship

start? And it's like one of the great

partnerships, you know, De Niro and

Scorsese, John Woo and Chai-Yun Fat. Ron

Perlman and Guillermo Dothra

asked him this question too.

What is it about those kind of

partnerships that are so unique to

filmmakers or what's important to their

process or what does it mean to a

filmmaker when they do that?

And these actors, no matter how great

they are, they always seem to be better

when they're with their

director kind of part. What is that?

Well, I mean, there's a few things with

Sam. I mean, we like a lot of the same

kind of movies. All right. So it's not

like he doesn't get it.

He comes from theater. So he comes from,

you know, the work ethic of like the play

is the thing. That's what

that's what we're doing here.

Come on, let's get in the character.

He knows his dialogue left, right and

center, upwards and downwards. But then

the thing, the thing that makes our

relationship is just nobody says my

dialogue the way Sam Jackson does.

And I will strike down upon thee with

great vengeance and furious anger those

who attempt to poison

and destroy my brothers.

And you will know my name is the Lord

when I lay my vengeance upon thee.

Sam gets it 100 percent. I mean, he's a

terrific artist. He's a terrific actor.

Now, Christophe says my dialogue as good

as Sam Jackson, but he doesn't say this

in the Sam Jackson way.

He's like completely sings it in a

completely other tune. But the way

Christophe and Sam Jackson do it, they

turn it into the poetry that it was

always supposed to be.

They get the music in it and they sing

it. They sing the dialogue. They don't

say it. They sing it. And it just takes

off. It just takes

off. It's just it's alive.

Most definitely.

What's she going to do then?

Well, that's what I've been sitting here

contemplating. First, I'm going to

deliver this case to Marcellus. Then

basically, I'm just

going to walk the earth.

What you mean, walk the earth, you know,

like Kane and Kung Fu?

Sam's not like my buddy. Sam feels more

like he's like my grumpy, cantankerous

uncle. He's a total smartass. Absolute

smartass. All right. Talk to the whole

movie. Makes fun of

people all through the movie.

We'll be doing a scene where they're

actually like, oh, honey, I'm sorry,

honey, could you get out of my eyeline?

You're in my eyeline.

Ever do theater? I don't know.

He's like that. He's

entertaining on the scene.

Yeah. And I'll be standing up and

there'll be something like, you know,

this kind of rigging, all right. A pipey

rigging right above us. And I'm standing

up talking. Now, Quentin, you're about to

crack your head open.

On that big pipe. Not that I wouldn't

enjoy watching that, but I'm just going

to let you know you would

crack your head open on that pipe.

One of the most exciting times for me are

things when we met in the festival

circuit because you made it seem in

particular so fun. Movie making seemed

just so fun. And what I was surprised,

we're having a blast. You

were having a blast too.

And it was infectious and people it was

intoxicating. And after that movie, I

doubled as your bodyguard. It was insane.

People would just follow you everywhere.

They would just go crazy.

You were the first real rock star

director. We're like hanging

out with one of the Beatles.

That was the explosion of

independent cinema in the 90s.

A lot of people are making

really interesting noise.

Alison Anderson is doing her thing. Rick

Linklater is doing his thing. David

Fincher now does seven. Then

you come out with Desperado.

It's cool, I say.

What actually kind of gives that rock

star thing a little credence is younger

people started actually looking possibly

to filmmaking the way they had looked at starting a band before.

Starting a band wasn't the way to express

yourself. Getting a camera and trying to

make a movie. That was the

easier way to express yourself.

You weren't expecting that when you made

it. And to you it was just like another

movie that Quentin would make. How do you follow that up?

This is the zeitgeist moment. This is a

phenomenon. I'm not going to get another

phenomenon the next movie out. I go, I

should tell them for a loop.

And we're back at the director's chair

with Quentin Tarantino, volume two.

You used your influence right away to

champion forgotten filmmakers in films.

You created a label

called Rolling Thunder.

What was the idea behind that?

Well, Rolling Thunder was the fact that I

was going on the film festival circuit.

So I was seeing all

these different movies.

And finally I said, "How are you going to

give me my own label with a little tiny

budget and just let me buy what I want to

buy. And we can release it."

It wasn't about money, it was just about

doing it. And so the first movie that I

chose was Wong Kar-Wai's Chunky Express.

It had been around for five years. Nobody

wanted it. It was already on video in the

Chinatown market. And then we made almost

every top ten list that year.

Which I'm thinking set up Wong Kar-Wai as

an art house darling from that point on.

But I was also picking up older movies,

trying to present them in a different

light. I was a big Jack Hill fan. So we

released Switchblade Sisters because I

saw how well it played with audiences.

And frankly, the idea I had for Rolling

Thunder as this film distribution label

has finally found its perfect home as an

entire cable channel.

Showing the movies you guys show.

As if you made that

network just for me and me alone.

Well that's one thing you've always been

fantastic about is

just curating the content.

Like that cool friend, like you are to

me, who says, "This is what you should

see because, and this is the reason, and

this is why you're watching it."

You'll be very pleased to know Gordon

Lude was our biggest

ratings day of all time.

Oh man! That was so cool you had Gordon

Lude when it was like, "Oh my gosh, like

four of them in a row

all Sunday. How awesome!"

Who would ever have thought you would

turn on the television and have a

professionally done Gordon Lude day? I

could program a

Gordon Lude day on my VCR.

But to see it HD and project it that way,

I mean these are the movies you usually

have to scrounge to find or you'd have to

know somebody like you to see them

stringing them up in 16 millimeter. And

now here it is. You can see it.

That is awesome.

When you had to follow up Pulp Fiction,

it overperforms. Was it harder to get the

next thing going? How did you get past

that? Because I get a lot of people who

come to me and they're like,

"I did a video that I put on YouTube and

it's got 50 million hits and now I don't

know how to follow that up."

And I tell them your stories. "Well,

Quentin did Pulp Fiction. He didn't know

that was coming. He just kept going."

And then you break through. You got to

put yourself in the mindset, "Where was I

when I made that video? I wasn't thinking about 50 million hits.

I was just doing what I do." And if

you're trying to think about 50 million

hits, well, you're just going to be doing

sequels. You're never going to be able to

get back into the headspace you were at

where you created that.

How did you get back to the headspace?

And was it just, I know you were

struggling with the fact that people are

expecting Pulp Fiction too. And if I

don't make Pulp Fiction too, they're

going to be disappointed.

Yeah, but they're never

going to like Pulp Fiction too.

Yeah, so they're going to like Pulp

Fiction too. So what do I

do? How did you get past that?

I actually, it was such a big success. I

have to go underneath. Let me do a more

mature film. Let me do a more

character-based film. Let me do a movie

that people would

expect from me when I was 45.

You had the chance to walk away with a

half a million

dollars, would you tell me?

I had had the rights to some Elmore

Leonard books, and one of them was Rum

Punch, which became Jackie Brown.

I've been a big Elmore Leonard fan, and I

saw where what I thought a lot of the

Elmore Leonard adaptations go wrong is

like, you know, it's his long dialogues.

It's his weird digressions.

And you try to just streamline that and

like get to the point when now you lose

all the flavor that his books had. I had

the situation that I could let them talk

and let them be kind

of shaggy dog stories.

My only like structural things that I did

that were different was changing Jackie,

who was white, to black.

I just thought, who can be a woman in her

like late 40s? You could tell she used to

be really beautiful, still is. And you

kind of feel she could handle anything.

Why? That sounds like Pam Grier to me.

Jackie Brown. If I have to tell you to

shut up one more time,

I'm going to shut you up.

Oh, yeah. Once I came up with the idea of

casting Pam Grier, then it's like, oh,

this is almost like a Pam Grier movie,

but like a real Pam Grier movie, like a

realistic Pam Grier movie where she

actually holds a job as opposed to

walking around with a sawed off shotgun

burning the ghetto down to the ground.

And the big de Palma esque thing I threw

into it was the whole money switch. It

wasn't how he wrote it, but

it was how I saw it in my head.

Let's see the money switch happen from

beginning to end with each of them.

First, it's Jackie's. Then it's Lewis and

Melanie's. And then it's Max's.

By the time you see all three of them,

you put it all together.

And those are just your instincts as a

filmmaker's director.

It literally was just how I saw it. What

would be a cool way to do it. The first

time I read it and when I read it a

second time, it presented itself again.

I've got footage of you on a panel from

Toronto back in 1992 talking about that

you were a writer-director, but you

mainly think of yourself as a director

who writes himself stuff to direct.

I don't want to run any anger at this

one, so I'm writing too much of a

director who writes

stuff for himself to do.

Do you still think of yourself that way?

As proud as I am of my movies, I think

writing has become more and more and more

and more important to me.

That first real flash of excitement is

always when I'm writing something that

should go this way and then all of a

sudden inspiration happens

and it goes somewhere else.

And I'm party to it. And I didn't expect

it to happen. It just happens. Like, oh,

that's real talent. That's what happens.

That's what real writers do.

In the case of, say, Jackie Brown, and,

you know, I have to be careful how I say

this because I

absolutely love Jackie Brown.

It's one of my best movies. I think it's

really, really terrific. And

I have deep affection for it.

Having said that, I don't think I was

really put on earth to really

adapt other people's novels.

Now when you have so much material.

Yeah, I think I was like, you know, I was

here to face the blank

page and pull stuff out of me.

Find whatever story or genre I want to

deal with and do just my

own little version of it.

But I was there to, you know, start from

nothing. And then at the end have a

finished movie, starting with that pen

and that blank piece of paper.

That is my progress. That is my that is

my journey. That's my heart of darkness.

That's what I'm really here to do.

The material you have sitting around this

house when I walk around, the stuff you

choose to throw out,

most people would kill for.

Myself included. I find scraps of

handwritten paper that I would go, what

is this? Oh, it's an

idea that's half baked.

And you start reading it going like, I

just Xerox this. I could make a whole

series of films off these three pages.

Remember Three Amigos when you were

drinking the water and

the other guys are starving.

Oh, yeah, I don't need that. In the

desert like that and

the water is going in.

That's what it feels like. Seeing those

scenes tossed out. This is

more where that came from.

I have video of you from November 23rd,

1994 on the set of four rooms. You took

me into a little room. You can I read you

part of this new script

I'm writing called Kill Bill.

And I sat down, I turn on my video

camera, which by the way, that was like

eight years before I could kill Bill.

And you started reading me the opening

sequence of that movie. This is still

black. Yeah, they have a wall covered in

red blood and brains.

The camera pans off the wall to a young

man dressed in a tuxedo lying dead on the

floor, blown apart by a shotgun glass.

And a woman's voice. That's Tim, Arthur's

best friend. We move to a plump dead

young woman in a frilly pink dress,

wedding bouquet in her dead hand.

That's my best friend from work, Erica.

We move past a bloody dead little boy. I

don't know who that is. Some little kid

like us. I don't

remember him being there.

We move over and see a pretty young woman

wearing a white wedding gown, two bullet

holes in her body and one in her head.

We slowly zoom into her dead looking

face. I laid in a coma for five years.

While I woke, every

emotion in me was dead.

Every emotion that is except one. Desire.

The desire for revenge.

Then we dissolve, because we're going

into a dead looking face, we dissolve to

a matching closeup of the young woman,

interior car moving sunset.

The young woman's behind the wheel of a

big car, white wedding gown on.

Outrageous orange and red sunset process

shot playing in the back window.

She's talking into the camera.

Did you put a dress back on? Yeah. One

man did all this to me. I've killed 18

men in the last week.

Didn't feel a thing.

Those 18 dead bodies were just 18 steps.

Steps I climbed to get to him. And to him

is where I'm driving, because there's no

one left worth killing except him.

The him I'm talking about's name is Bill.

And when I get to where I'm going, about

20 minutes from now, I'm gonna kill Bill.

And then the music,

then the title song begins.

I was like Mickey and Rocky too, "What

are we waiting for? Let's go shoot it

right now. I'll help you.

Let's start shooting now."

We could have taken that and shot that.

It would have been fantastic. Now the

movie you did was even better, but that

was still May 4th, 1999.

It was 6.30 in the morning. So it was

4.30 your time. So you weren't up early,

you're up late. I was up all night

editing and the phone

rang and I knew it was you.

Because nobody else would call in the

middle of the night. I was about to call

it and you said, "I got something to read you. Could you listen?"

That's the most thrilling call you could

ever get. It's Quentin calling you up

saying, "Can I read you

something that I wrote?"

And you read me the opening of

"Inglorious Basterds" back

11, 12 years before you made it.

Is that part of your process to read

stuff out to people? I never knew how I

was supposed to react. Was I supposed to

get feedback? I just enjoyed it so much.

Do you do that a lot? Do you call a bunch

of people to hear it

out loud for yourself?

That's exactly it. Frankly, the only

feedback I wanted is, "That's great."

That's all I'm getting.

You're going to be laughing.

But the truth of the matter is, I'm doing

it for two reasons. I'm

excited by it, so I want to share it.

But the real reason I'm doing it is I

could walk around my house and pace

around and act it out

forever. It won't help me any.

But if I read it to you, I'm hearing it

through your ears. So then I hear the bad

notes. I hear where I'm losing you. I

hear where I got you. I hear the laughs.

But if I'm reading it to you, I don't

need your feedback because I'm you now.

And I'm hearing it through your ears.

In 2001, you read me "Kill Bill" again.

And you read me a new

opening, a new way of seeing it.

We not only see she is a bride, but she's

eight months pregnant.

Look at the morning.

Interior, wedding

chapel day, overhead shot.

We hear step, step, step,

till a man we haven't seen yet enters the

shot right next to the fallen bride.

He lowers down next to her on his

haunches, holding a white handkerchief

with the name "Bill"

stoned in the corner,

and begins tenderly wiping away the blood

from the young bride's face.

While still in her close-up, the bride

speaks for the first time in the picture.

She looks up at the man standing over her

and says, "Bill, it's your baby."

A beat after she says the word "baby," we

hear a bang, and the bride receives a

bullet on the side of her head.

Cut to black screen, before

film by Quentin Ternstein.

How does that go about when you pick up

the old version? Are you just at a

different place and

think of a new way to do it?

You don't seem to be precious about

anything like that. As good as it is, you

don't go, "Wow, it's so good."

You have the confidence to say, "I'm

going to completely start over."

No, by the time I was ready to do "Kill

Bill" again, well, now I had some

different concerns. Now I had other things I wanted to do.

I still liked the idea of Uma, still

liked the idea of her being an assassin,

still liked that whole

revenge story structure.

But now I had different fish to fry. I

think the first story was

more of a femmic heat-ish.

So now, when you came back, you

reimagined it. What

made it become this thing?

Yakuza was a samurai movie, it was anime,

it was a spaghetti-west.

You know, I think at the time you said,

"All these tools that I've seen, they're

kind of in my toolbox,

I can use any of them."

Anything that's visual language, whether

it's from a comic book or a movie, I

should feel free to use it.

That was my goal,

"Kill Bill as one unit."

Not "Kill Bill 1 and 2," but "Kill Bill

as the way I wrote it

and the way I shot it."

That's my vision to the utmost.

That is the full-on Quentin movie, the

full-on artistic experience of what I'm

trying to offer, like distilled to just

completely cinematic form.

That became the new reason to do it,

along with coming up with a killer

vehicle for Uma, where I could present

her as, "I'm the grind house Josephine

Sternberg, and she's my samurai

sword-wielding Marlene Dietrich."

We actually came up with the idea, more

or less, together, in a bar in Santa

Monica called the Daily

Pint, playing shuffleboard.

I come like, "Well, you're an assassin,

and you're fighting these guys, and

there's a killer list. Each one of these

guys represents almost a different genre

in cinema, so when you go there, it's the

Kung Fu movie, and the Black Fotation

movie, and this one's

maybe a Redneck movie."

It's strange being your friend sometimes,

because you get to know you just as the

person that you are, you love cinema,

you're a very loyal friend, you're just

the coolest guy on the Earth, it's almost

like knowing Clark Kent.

And then you go movie like that, and you

realize, "Oh, I forget, he's Superman

also." I forget he can do that too,

because you only make a movie every 2 or

3 years, and when you do it, and I turn

to you during the premiere, I say, "How

the fuck did you do this? I

have no idea how you did this."

And you just went, "Well, come on, you

know how I did it." It's like, "No, I

have no idea how you did it." I think

it's probably during the

House of Blue Leaves sequence.

That was me throwing my hat into the

action filmmaking ring in a big way.

I'm a big fan of action directors, and

the first time I do it, I don't want to

be a piker, I want to be as good as them.

I mean, you were so painstaking in how

you shot it. Even shot you shot it in

Hong Kong, you did it the way they would

do it. You were there a

long time to get it exactly.

I think you would even shoot in one

direction, get a shot, turn around, shoot

the next cut, then turn around.

That's the Hong Kong

way. The American way is...

Cover one direction, cover the other way. We're shooting in this room, we cut the

room in half, and we do everything on

this side first, and then we do

everything on that side.

That was kind of how we first started

doing some of the action, because that

was the only way I knew how

to do it, the American way.

That's not really their way, because you

have to hold so much stuff in your head.

You can't be organic.

And no one can ever keep all that stuff

in their head to make

all the editing work.

So what you do is like you're having a

big old Jackie Chan fight, where he's

taking on everybody in the tea house.

You break everything down to two, three,

or four fight movies.

The doubles, kind of just do it a bunch

of times for you. You kind of watch it

from every kind of different angles, and

then I make my choice.

I go, "Okay, so I'm thinking about, we

get a camera here, and maybe get one over

your shoulder here, and maybe one over

here, and then maybe another one."

And then I go to Bob Richardson, the

cameraman, and say, "So

what do you think, Bob?"

He goes, "Oh, I think that sounds good.

Maybe one over here. Okay, yeah, cool."

Then I go to Yuen Wuping, the fight

choreographer, "What do you think?"

"Oh, I like it, I like it, I like it. Oh,

my, my nerve. Oh, great."

Now, we wouldn't put them all right there

at the time. I was very specific about we

weren't going to use two cameras.

We would just do one camera. And so we

would just kind of move

them around, get all that.

But what you also do is, say you've done

four moves. That last move you did, that

fourth move, well, that becomes the first

move of the next three or four.

So you can always cut it. Then also,

because you're fighting in order,

anything that happens

to the costumes is fine.

Because it's happening on camera, and

it's right there. It

completely works in continuity.

And also, you can change your mind about

the fight. You know, you can be like,

"Oh, you know, we're on this class for

two months. I'm getting sick of this

place. All right, let's

go fight in that hallway."

You're not trying to predict anything

that's going to happen on the other side

of the room four days

from now or a week from now.

Everything is kind of working because

she's leaving a trail of death and

destruction behind her. But it's all

right there. We just keep adding to it.

Compose the score for you for a dollar.

I felt like my girlfriend had just broken

up with me, but my

girlfriend was the planet Earth.

Here we go. For a sec.

Here we go. For a sec.

And action.

Kill Bill 2. I got to work on your crew

for a bit. I composed the score for you

for a dollar. If you can ever work for

Quentin for a dollar,

take that opportunity.

It will be a wealth of experience.

You know, he doesn't like doing the score

thing. If I offer him the doing, he's

just going to say no. If I do it for a

dollar, he can't say no to that.

And it's like, use it if you want. If you

don't want it, throw it out. It'll be

great practice for me because I'll get

the best footage in the

world to make music to.

Bang, bang!

I knew the material that was going to be

much more emotional and needed music.

You're dead, Mommy. So die.

It was the only time I should really use

genuine original music where somebody was

actually scoring scenes for me.

But it was interesting to know. I was the

director to go work for another director

and sit and to see how much of the

process is so inside your head.

We sat in the room with people in the

music, spotting. We were thinking out loud, well, maybe we can do this.

You didn't really give a direct order,

but you could see you were

kind of still thinking of ideas.

And I was writing furiously everything

you said. No one else

was writing anything down.

After you left the room, you guys got to

write everything he says. He's not going

to remember that he

just was thinking out loud.

He's going to remember that he gave an

order because he actually came up with

the idea right then.

I know because I do that. I don't realize

how I'm not really

communicating order sometimes.

I kind of remember saying it in the room,

but it was a what if.

Three months later, when it's not there,

I'm going to say, where the

hell is this? I asked for it.

You didn't ask for it. You mentioned it

as a perhaps, but you're not going to

remember it as a perhaps.

So it was very much like, oh, my God, now

I can see why there's

so much miscommunication.

When I don't give direct orders enough,

two people don't write shit down. They

got to write shit down

when I'm saying that stuff.

Actually, Ubin said the same thing when

we were doing Kill Bill,

walking around with my first A.T.

It's like it's the other day where the

pizza and everything. Oh, yeah, maybe in

the fight, maybe they do

this and do that, you know.

She's like, hey, pizza face, put down the

pizza, grab a fucking pen. He's fucking

telling you what's going on.

Literally, you're telling him. You didn't

say do this, but you are. That was in

your remembrance of the day.

You were the it was a direct order. And I

still say that if I first

take things, it's the same guy.

A pizza face, grab a fucking pen. So what

can you tell me about Grindhouse?

Get proof was a really thrilling

experience. Ladies, that was fun.

I love having my little director of

photography membership

card. Yeah, that's really cool.

I don't think I could really do it on any

other movie that wouldn't have kind of

the Grindhouse label.

The photography wasn't bad, but it didn't

have to be good, per

se. You just had to do it.

I used the sun. I shot in the sun. I had

as many sun flares as possible.

Your composition is so fantastic, though.

How did you come up with your sense of

center-plunging things

and using your aspect ratio?

The way you frame is very... I remember

actually trying to do Quentin framing

when we did "Dustle Don."

There's a scene in the hotel room when...

Yeah, and shot through the door.

So there's frames inside of frames and

everything. And you came over and you

said, that's a really interesting shot.

I'm trying to shoot like you. I would

never have thought to ever shoot this

way, but I'm realizing this is probably

how Quentin would shoot it.

Because it's kind of written to be very

voyeuristic. And it's kind of the more

Quentin-esque sequences in the film.

Yeah, very much. How did you come up with

your own visual style? Being somebody who

wasn't a photographer.

Well, I wasn't a photographer. I loved

movies. Even a still photographer.

And I loved shots in movies. And I loved

the visual quality of the films.

But I've never seen your shots in any

other movies. Your shots

are very unique to you.

Well, I mean, I see the movie in my mind.

Before I'd make the

movie, I'd watch the movie.

I've got a genuine vision. I have a

vision for the film. And I'm doing that

vision. That's how I see it.

I don't even think that I do anything

that special. It's just

literally the way I see it.

Just how you see it, yeah.

But it made me appreciate a great artist

like Bob Vintressen a

lot more than I did before.

Alright, I appreciated him before.

Once you had to sit there

and think about like exposure.

Yeah, exactly. Or even like Bob doesn't

have equipment in the shot. You know,

like, "Hey, there's

equipment in the shot. Move it out."

Well, you're the still photographer.

Where do you suppose I put the light?

I go, "Just leave it

there. We'll erase it."

Bob, I can say, "Move that shit."

Right, right, right.

I think at the end of the day, the reason

I ended up shooting Grindhouse was

basically just to impress Bob.

Alright. So he would take me a little

more seriously on the next movie.

It's freaking impressive. I mean, the

action, the framing, it's you.

So I think that was what thrills me the

most when I see Death Proof is that shot

going with the legs.

A huge title.

Director of Photography, Quinn Tarantino.

I'm just like very proud of that. I

convinced you to do that.

I never would have had the guts to do

that without your faith in me.

And you're like, "You'll get through it.

You'll be a little nervous at the

beginning, but you'll get through it."

I love that.

I remember the audience we saw that with,

that first Friday night audience.

That's probably the best screening we've

ever been to because it was the

experience we always wanted.

That screening was amazing. It was the

Grammys Chinese

Theater filled up, sold out.

But one time that happened that weekend.

First show. They stood in line.

Everybody hooting and hollering.

We got a standing ovation for the freeze

frame at the end with the girls.

We had a good Friday actually, frankly,

to tell you the truth.

Not just in that theater. The whole

weekend was a good Friday.

And that was the extent of the audience.

They showed up and that was it.

But I don't want anyone to get me wrong.

I couldn't be prouder of Grindhouse. I

couldn't be prouder of both of our films.

But it was like the first

one I'd had that was a flop.

It didn't shake me as far

as my feelings for the movie.

It did shake me to think that I might

never have a hit again.

Because actually when you have a big

flop, you almost can't ever

imagine having a hit again.

They'll never show up again.

Right, right. They got burned once.

They're not going to come back.

Frankly, we were also a little cocky.

We had gotten used to going off into

uncharted territory with you as Sin City

and me with Kiel Bill and hacking our way

through and people following us.

And we kind of thought

they would follow us anywhere.

And no, they won't follow you everywhere.

We needed to give them a little bit more

of a reason, a little bit

more of an understanding.

All good. But I felt like my girlfriend

had just broken up with me.

But my girlfriend was the planet Earth.

What's your measure of success? Because

when you have an idea,

like for me, that could

have easily been Sin City.

When I made Sin City, I thought, okay, no

one's going to get this.

It's going to go in the theater. It's

black and white. It's an anthology.

It's all voice over. No one's going to

get it. They'll get it on video.

But that's fine. I just

wanted to make it so badly.

I was surprised,

actually. People caught on.

I thought they would just

think it just looked weird.

But I have to say, I get a big, giant

kick out of the fact

that, okay, we do Grindhouse.

The movie comes out.

It doesn't do so well.

And you wouldn't hear of

it, man. You move right.

Okay. You know, like, I'm

doubling down. I'm tripling down.

I'm quadrupling down.

Machete. Machete kills.

El Rey, motherfuckers. El Rey.

I can't get away from

it faster than I am.

Okay, well, you know, that Inglourious

Basterds, I couldn't find an end to it.

I'm finding an end to it.

People thought I was

going through writer's block.

I was going through the opposite. I

couldn't stop writing.

Here we go. For sake.

Here we go. For sake.

And action.

Inglourious Basterds. Tell me about that.

After Jackie Brown, I put

Kill Bill off to the side.

And I started writing Inglourious

Basterds, and that became this

never-ending process,

because people thought I was going

through writer's block.

I was going through the opposite. I

couldn't stop writing.

I'd have a hundred-page

script and no end in sight.

So I was trying to keep

taming it, and I couldn't.

Great material, you know,

like that opening scene.

I wrote that. That was the

first thing I ever wrote.

[cheering]

My idea at the time, because it was just

so big and so unwieldy,

was to do it as a miniseries.

And that really was what

I was planning on doing.

You've written a lot from that.

Yeah, I've written a lot. I mean, that's

a hell of a lot of writing, though,

I'd have to be doing from

like a six-hour miniseries.

And I'm writing, like the

day before the day, almost.

I'm getting ready to

start that hard work.

And Luc Besson was in town,

and we went out to dinner,

and I'm telling him

about my big miniseries,

and glorious bastards

that I'm going to do.

And the producer guy is just like, "Oh,

yeah, look, that sounds awesome."

That's the way to do it,

Quentin. That's the way to do it.

And Luc's like, "Yeah, I

don't know. I don't know."

He's French.

But why? What's the matter?

I don't know. I mean, you know...

You are one of the few filmmakers left

out there that makes me

want to leave my house

and go to a cinema and sit in the cinema

and watch it on the screen.

Anybody else like to watch the DVD, I can

sit on TV. It'd be fine. I'm good.

But you know, you make me want to leave

the house and go see cinema.

And now you tell me I'm going to have to

wait four years, five years

before I can do that again?

I'm sorry. I'm not so excited.

Oh, funny.

And you know, every once in a while,

somebody tells you something.

Somebody says something to

you that you can never unhear.

And once he said that,

I couldn't unhear it.

And I kept thinking about it, and I kept

thinking about it, and I

kept thinking about it.

This is my time to do movies.

Let me try one more

time to make it a movie.

Don't just throw up my hands and say, "I

give up," and make this

incredibly sprawling epic.

Let me try one more

time. And that was the movie.

And it was so fast. I mean, you did that

very quickly, considering how usually

your movies go, even the fast ones.

Well, there was kind of was, again, I was

coming off of a flop.

I wanted to, you know,

I had to prove myself.

There's a silver lining to everything.

There really is.

Oh, and it made me want to tame myself. I

wasn't quite so effing sure about myself.

I had to really make this into a movie.

I mean, I just think you were still so

bold, considering that you came off of

Grindhouse to go in.

And what you did was, it's a bold film. I

mean, you went full on.

I wouldn't be surprised 20 years from

now, Inglourious Basterds is probably

like the one they talk about the most.

I think this just

might be my masterpiece.

Django and Chained.

I had the idea of doing a movie where a

slave becomes a bounty

hunter for a long, long time.

And I even had the name Django and

Chained for a long, long, long time.

And it happened kind of

completely all on its own.

I was doing the press on Inglourious

Basterds. I've been going around the

world banging the drum on that.

And one of the last areas we opened up

theatrically, commercially, was Japan.

Spaghetti Westerns are still really

popular in Japan. They

call them macaroni westerns.

They have almost all the

soundtracks available on DVD.

And I find out that there's this one

soundtrack store that you specialize in

nothing but soundtracks.

Like kind of a store.

And so go there on my day

off, buy a buttload of stuff.

You know, it's like

Christmas in July. So happy.

Get a little record player. Go back to my

hotel room and it's my day off.

I'm just listening to the soundtracks.

I'm just playing all

these great composers.

Morricone, Riz Ortani, Louise Boccolab.

And then the first scene, literally

what's in the movie, the

first scene of Django comes to me.

He's on the chain gang, a slave walking

in unison. It's cold, breath.

And then Schulz, just showing up in the

distance with his lantern and then the

whole scene happens.

Who's that stumbling around in the dark?

I'm Dr. King Schulz.

This is my horse Fritz.

And the next thing I know, I'm writing

it. And I don't even have my

notebook or my crap with me.

I'm just like using the hotel stationery.

And in just this fevered thing, I write

out that first scene.

I just get the characters talking to each

other. They do the whole thing. Boom.

What's your name?

Django.

Then you're exactly

the one I'm looking for.

I felt like it was similar to the

Inglourious Bastards here. Now I've got

to do it. This is a

great way to open a movie.

When did it start that you would use

scores from other movies?

Here we go. For a sec.

Here we go. For a sec.

And action.

So for music, when did it start that you

would use scores from other movies?

It all started on Jackie Brown.

[music]

Harvey Weinstein was like, there's not

enough music in it. I think you really

need to put a score. I

think you need to hire a score.

It's too late, Harvey. We've just gone

too far. I'm not going to hire some guy

that could write a

score in the next four days.

That's not how I'm going to do a movie.

You know, the first time

I worked with a composer.

He goes, well, isn't there some old movie

that you like that you could just use the

score that already exists?

I guess I could do that. That's not such

a dumb idea. Can I do that?

Well, yeah, I guess if I license it, I

can do anything I want.

Well, that's a whole different

proposition because that's now I'm not

waiting for some guy to

show up and, you know, and...

Hope you like it.

...deliver me the soul of my

movie and I better like it.

That's just like me using the other

songs. I'm just

choosing. Well, so happens.

I had Roy Ayers soundtrack

to Coffee. I had that record.

And, you know, it was a nice symbiotic

relationship with the

whole Pam Grier connection.

So I just used the Coffee score all

throughout the movie. Just if he didn't

write it, I didn't use it.

And it worked out really good. You know,

when you know the music beforehand,

you're going to use...

It's not an afterthought.

You're like orchestrating.

Yeah, you can orchestrate the shots and

the cutting so they

really go hand in hand.

I remember I was using Street Life in

that song Street Life when Jackie Brown

comes into the thing.

Well, I know I'm using Street Life so I

could actually set the shots up so I

know, okay, when the symbols do this,

this is going to happen.

And then she walks out of frame and we're

going to pick her up

as the drums do this.

Well, you know, on the day, this piece of

music you're using, you can

get even more clever with it.

Yeah, because you almost

like pre-scoring the movie.

Frank, I thought, well, I don't see any

reason to change. I

like doing it this way.

When I heard your use of

Sam Fier and the Pan Flute.

Jerry Goldsmith's Under Fire. It's never

been used better, even in Under Fire.

That's the way you used it

in Django. It's fantastic.

I've been waiting for years. That's

always been one of my

actually favorite soundtracks.

That's one of my favorite Jerry Goldsmith

soundtracks and that's

saying a hell of a lot.

And I refuse to shorten it too.

Yeah, because if you shorten it, it

builds so wonderfully that you're able to

put it in the movie and

use it the correct way.

To really build that. That's what I

really loved about it. I kept waiting for

the edit because I know

that piece really well.

And it's like he's going to have to cut

it and you don't and it's so cathartic.

And everyone kept talking about, well, we

need to shorten it down, you know,

because it's a big long movie.

They need to shorten it down. And from

time to time, people would talk about,

well, what about that trip to Canyonland?

Does it need to be so long? And I never

said no, no, no, but I just would never

take anything out there.

Good.

On September 28th, 1993, I visited the

set of Pulp Fiction. It was the day that

you were playing Jimmy. You're in a robe.

But Sonny Chiba was there that day, too.

I remember you having lunch with him and

telling him, we're going

to do something together.

We're going to do something together. And

we were looking at Sonny and I got to

meet him and just thinking, wow, I wonder

what Quentin, if Quentin will ever get

the chance to make something for him.

He wore a pain in lip service. He worked

with him later and made him

a great part and killed Bill.

In your mind, do you catalog some actors

that you've always wanted to work with

that you still would love to work with?

And how do you keep track

of some of these people?

There's all these different actors that I

grew up watching and loving and

appreciating. And, you know, there's big

actors I wanted to work with.

There's also people that I thought should

be showcased more in American movies,

like Sonny Chiba or actors that I've

always liked like Robert

Forrest or Michael Park.

So I thought, should have done better.

And I could give them an opportunity to

give them a cool kind of scene. It's not

what they're used to doing now.

And finding that

little light in their eyes.

One of my favorite quotes you gave me on

directing was, sometimes being a good

director is just being a good audience.

What pieces of advice would you give a

filmmaker on how to work with actors?

One, don't be intimidated by your actors.

Don't be scared. You're

there to find it together.

But I actually think one of the best

things that a film director today can do

for an actor is not be

stuck in Video Village.

Not be watching it on a monitor, not be

watching it on a TV set, sitting in a

chair, oftentimes in a whole other room

than where the scene's taking place.

That's a fairly new phenomenon, and it's

completely taken over.

And I mean, so much so that I really

wouldn't want to be starting all over

again as an actor with the directors

watching my work from another room.

Hey, do this. Do a camera look. Could you

tell him to go and do a camera look?

I think you should be

sitting right by the camera.

Action!

If you watch the acting right next to the

camera, right in front of the actors,

it's as if they are acting just and

solely and utterly only for you.

The rest of the crew doesn't matter. The

audience later in the theater doesn't

matter. It's a million miles away. Maybe

it will never happen.

They are acting only for you. When you're

standing there by the camera, and they've

all acted in front of you, when you say

cut, cut, they all turn and

look at you. What do you think?

Now that's what I'm talking about.

Let's do one more like that.

That was a great one, Mark.

Cool?

So this is a segment in the show called

Questions from Other Directors.

Here we go. For a sec.

Action!

So this is a segment in the show called

Questions from Other Directors, where I

put a call out to other

directors to ask you questions.

Joe Dante has a question for you. What's

the most takes you've

ever done in a movie?

It was an effect take I was trying to do

in Kill Bill. She's fighting the crazy

88, and we were doing it the

old-fashioned way, the Shang-Sha way.

You take a Chinese condom and you fill it

full of the phony blood, and the actors

just have it in their hand.

And so when you slice the sword, the

actor squeezes the Chinese condom and the

blood explodes, and it looks awesome.

So the effect I was trying to do is the

camera is over the shoulder behind one of

the female crazy 88, and Uma has got her

sword slashing like her throat.

And what the girl's supposed to do is

she's got the condom full of blood in her

hand, and she's supposed to clutch it in

her throat as she squeezes the condom.

And so you never saw the throat slash

itself, because the camera

was behind the girl's head.

But after Uma does it and she grabs her

throat, you're going to

see, like, the blood go...

Every time we did it,

the blood went down.

Oh, I see the same thing.

It never went that way.

And so we kept doing it

again, doing it again.

Take 22, take 23.

We've changed her

clothes three different times.

So now she's off for the fourth change.

And I'm walking by myself, one of those

dark moments of the soul.

Do I commit, say, failure and move on?

Or if I don't, how

long is it going to take?

And how far am I

prepared to triple down on it?

And I swear, it was as if Shang-Shan came

to me and he said,

"Quentin, hang in there.

You have no idea how long you think. This

is very difficult. It's

going to happen, though.

It has to happen one

way or... You're due.

It's going to go up at some point. You

can't quit. Hang in there.

Do it six more times. See what happens."

And then, like, you know, maybe the fifth

time or so, then it

finally did it the right way.

So, I got 30 takes.

It was probably at 34.

Wow.

Jackie Chan still has me

beat, though, in Dragon Lore.

That hacky sack thing was a thousand

takes. That was the most takes ever done.

Guillermo del Toro

has a question for you.

Who, in your opinion, is the ultimate

badass actor of all time?

There's a lot of guys you could say, but

I have to say, right now, I'm in

particularly, right now,

over the last few years, I've been on a

real Lee Van Cleef kick.

I mean, I really wish I could have worked

with Lee Van Cleef in

that, like, 69, 70 time period.

I don't know if you've

ever noticed this, you know.

Lee Van Cleef is a dead

ringer for Snoop Dogg.

They look exactly alike. I mean, as if

they are the same guy.

Francis Ford Coppola asked

him for a question for you.

He said, "Even though all your films, of

course, reveal very much about you,

would you ever consider making a film

that depicts more about your

own life, feelings, and times

without that almost protective layer of

genre? Would you ever

think about doing that?"

I would think about doing that, but at

the same time, though,

I like that protective layer of genre.

At the same time, I do know what he

means, and I know where he's coming from,

and I know the journey he's been on. That

was part of his thing.

I remember him thinking, you know, "I

want to see people make a

movie about, like, you know,

no one makes a movie about how they feel

about their brother."

And that could be a very personal thing.

You know, the kind of things that you

would imagine, you know,

little novels being based on.

And that's where he's going with it, and

I think that's where he's

going with that question.

And right now, I really like taking my

story, what I have to say, my tale, my

little autobiographies,

but sticking them in crazy genre worlds

and having it reflect that way.

Maybe when I get older, then I will be

like, "No, let's do this on the surface.

This is about a guy in love, or this is

about a guy who doesn't

know what he wants to do,

or this is about a guy who feels he's

failed, or this is about

a guy who didn't have kids

and wishes he had kids now."

Maybe I want to tell that story later,

but I don't want to tell it now.

Now I want to be completely tell you the

truth and be completely

personal, but inside of a genre.

I mean, Kill Bill was insanely personal.

I don't necessarily want you to know why

it's so damn personal

and why it was ripped

from my heart and my soul.

I want to create a little subterfuge.

So it's not just the story of a squint

and farantino filmmaker, and this is

what's happening in his life.

So I bury it inside of a bunch of other

stuff, but it's still all very real, and

it's still coming from me.

But there's another

question that's sort of like that.

That's like, "Well, when are you ever

going to do a comedy?"

"What the hell are you talking about? All

my movies are really funny. I'll put my

comedies against anybody

who's out there, laugh for laugh."

"Yeah, yeah, but when are you going to

just do a full bore straight up comedy?"

"You mean like pulp fiction, which

belongs in the comedy section?"

"I mean there's not really a dramatic

moment in pulp fiction."

"Bring out the guilt."

"Like they're a little dramatic, but

they're more outrageous."

"And I still think they're funny anyway."

"I think people, when they talk about

comedy, they have a very narrow view of

comedy, and I'm trying

to expand that view."

"This is what you get for

fucking who value kuzas!"

"Go home to your mother!"

"But then you get somebody saying, okay,

I guess what we're trying to say is, will

you ever do a comedy without violence?"

"What's your flinching?"

"You mean like the

Three Stooges? Alright."

"Kuz slapstick is violence? Alright, well

no, I'll get more social commentary."

"Jango isn't a slave."

"Jango is a free man, you understand?"

"You won't ask to

treat him like wise folks?"

"No."

"Okay, would you ever do like a Billy

Wilder-like comedy?"

"Billy Wilder, you mean like, some like

it hot, which has two different machine

gun massacres in it?"

"Violence doesn't

make it any less funny."

"Maybe in somebody else's

hands it does, but not for me."

"Peter Bogdanovich, one of my all-time

favorite filmmakers, has a question for

you. Who has been the

greatest influence in your work?"

"You know, at the end of the day, I think

the one artist that I think is the most

influential to me, and my work, has got

to be Sergio Leone."

"That kind of half-assed operatic quality

that he brought, and the way the music

takes over, and kind of set pieces,

directing via set piece a lot of times."

"I think he is the filmmaker that you can

spot the most in my work."

"You know, that kind of operatic quality

I'm trying to bring."

"Edgar Wright, how does it feel to have a

style that audiences and critics can

identify, and how important is it to

create a body or work

that is uniquely you?"

"It feels magnificent. I wouldn't want it

any other way. To be able to work in this

art form at a level of genuine artist.

And your filmography is not a hit or miss

thing. You have a vision."

"Tell him fuck you to him, and then throw

it to everybody all around."

"You have a voice."

"Tina!"

"You have a sound, and each new film is

your new conversation. And each new film

is what you have to

add to the conversation."

"Kill the Nazis!"

"And to actually have it be recognized,

not just by critics, not just by your

fans, but by the world."

"The Palme d'Or."

"Our original screenplay."

"And the Oscar goes to..."

"Grenton Tarantino."

"Mr. Tarantino."

"That's playing the

game at the highest level."

"That's Bobby Fischer chess, and everyone

else is fucking around with checkers."

"Who's to war time?"

"Why?"

"Because we love making movies!"

"You're an inspiration to us all. You're

a dear friend of mine

and the El Rey Network."

"Yes."

"I'm very pleased to have you here with

us today on the director's

chair. Thank you, Seymour."

"It's my pleasure, mate. Thanks so much."

"Thanks, guys."