Gott
December 23rd, 2003, 07:30 PM
Many filmmakers long ago came to the conclusion that the subject matter of movies nowadays is actually other movies rather than what it used to be, which is human experience. They call this 'self referentiality.' Tarantino, who is a very sharp guy, understands this and pushes it for all it is worth. Even though he had it tougher than most who make movies, what with never having gotten a high-school diploma, and having to work instead of spending four years in college protected from the horrors of real life caused by jew liberalism -- still, he has had almost the same virtually-zero life experiences as most kids today. You go to school and then you get a job and are insulated and separated from real life every possible step of the way.
Filmmakers once made movies about life because they had the experiences to know about it. Take as an example Frank Borzage, who is maybe the most original and in some ways greatest of all American filmmakers. Born of an Italian immigrant family in Salt Lake City, he was working as a coal miner at the age of 13 and went on to become a touring actor, a bit player in movies, then a lead, then a major director. He knew plenty about life before be began recreating it on screen.
Today the system does all it can to see to it that those who might be a problem are culled out and away from such real-life experiences -- thus college, which is either the most expensive form of babysitting ever devised, or more likely, an intensive bout of brain washing and acclimatizing to the nightmare values of our world, which are so totally at odds with the instinctive idealism of youth. Ironically, even though Tarantino missed all that -- he got the equivalent by working in a video store where he studied movie never-neverland rather than life. His own movies reflect this completely being, all of them, much more about the medium and riffs on specific movies than they are studies of human beings in relational and social situations. He is very cheerful and refreshingly honest about it all too.
Reservoir Dogs, which is an excellent movie, is virtually stenciled from two Hong Kong action pictures - City on Fire and Hard Boiled (well, from a number of John Woo movies). In it, as in all Tarantino movies, are almost constant movie and pop culture references, from Madonna, to Pam Grier to Howard Hawks to Lee Marvin to giving a really nice part to Lawrence Tierney who was one of Hollywood's resident 'pulp fiction' bad boys of the 1940s. There is a terrific major sequence right in the middle of the movie which is almost the Quentin Tarantino credo in which one undercover cop instructs another undercover cop in acting and how to put over a performance. Coming in at a nice 100 minutes, Reservoir Dogs is unusually economical for Tarantino -- another big plus.
Pulp Fiction, which I find much too long and extremely uneven (that French number who plays Bruce Willis' girlfriend is awful and much of her cutesy material really sucks) is just as indebted to other movies as is Reservoir Dogs. The set for the retro diner that Travolta takes Thurman to is a literal copy of one in Hawks's Red Line 7000. Tarantino told his art direction people to study the set in Red Line...but they misunderstood and virtually copied it exact. The absolutely terrific dance that Travolta and Thurman do in that set is copied from Disney's The Aristocats. And the scene in which Christopher Walken goes to see Butch as a young boy is an almost incredibly clever weaving of Pulp Fiction right into the body of Hawks's Air Force. Many other specific examples of sampling other movies and movie performers could easily be cited from this film.
Jackie Brown, which I think is the best of his movies, is much more about people and relationships than any of his previous films, and in it are some marvelous things. I don't care if Pam Grier is black, she is a really terrific and admirable person and it is just wonderful to see her given such great material as this role. And she does sublime things with it. So too does Robert Forster. And, of course, both of them are 'self referential' and 'sampled' the same way that Lawrence Tierney and John Travolta are.
I didn't go to the last one because I just don't care enough...I'll see it when it comes out on DVD. Whenever I asked about it, what I heard was it is really good Kung Fu action and very cartoony. So it sounds like Tarantino is scurrying away from his dangerous encounter with real life in Jackie Brown back into the safe territory of a work not once (your average movie) but twice removed from reality. I don't need it.
Tarantino is very talented and extremely clever. He is a genuinely superb writer not only in that he consistently comes up with vivid and memorable dialog, but in the structuring of his stories. His non-linear story structures are about as influential as anything in contemporary cinema. Movies like Magnolia, for instance, are literally unthinkable without the non-linear structures that Tarantino almost single-handedly brought back into the American Cinema. He got them -- self referentially -- from Film Noir, of course.
I think he is a good actor - not the understated kind, but rather quite into the actor as craftsman who knows and uses theatrical technique. Most people seem to like the quiet unassuming approach better, but as Tarantino's riffs are usually fundamentally comic, his fruity, over the top 'acting' acting seems perfectly appropriate to me. And his performances never upstage the really important performances. He is having fun in acting and I have fun watching him have fun...if you know what I mean.
As a director, he is OK. I'm sure he let action specialists do the fight stuff in his last picture as he has absolutely no experience with action at all -- none of his previous films have any real action. His style is extremely simple with uncomplicated camera set ups involving very little camera movement or reframing (Jackie Brown is formally way more complicated than are his first two movies), basic lighting and very long takes which play to his strengths, which are almost entirely in the area of acting. He loves acting and is very good at getting fine performances out of people. Actors in movies owe him a lot as he is almost singlehandedly responsible for the return of the long take to American movies, and with it, the return of legitimate acting. His demonstration that audiences actually like acting and have the concentration spans to appreciate it (everybody remembers the 'foot massage' scene in Pulp Fiction as if they saw it yesterday) is as important and influential on the shape of modern filmmaking as is his use of non-linear structures.
Filmmakers once made movies about life because they had the experiences to know about it. Take as an example Frank Borzage, who is maybe the most original and in some ways greatest of all American filmmakers. Born of an Italian immigrant family in Salt Lake City, he was working as a coal miner at the age of 13 and went on to become a touring actor, a bit player in movies, then a lead, then a major director. He knew plenty about life before be began recreating it on screen.
Today the system does all it can to see to it that those who might be a problem are culled out and away from such real-life experiences -- thus college, which is either the most expensive form of babysitting ever devised, or more likely, an intensive bout of brain washing and acclimatizing to the nightmare values of our world, which are so totally at odds with the instinctive idealism of youth. Ironically, even though Tarantino missed all that -- he got the equivalent by working in a video store where he studied movie never-neverland rather than life. His own movies reflect this completely being, all of them, much more about the medium and riffs on specific movies than they are studies of human beings in relational and social situations. He is very cheerful and refreshingly honest about it all too.
Reservoir Dogs, which is an excellent movie, is virtually stenciled from two Hong Kong action pictures - City on Fire and Hard Boiled (well, from a number of John Woo movies). In it, as in all Tarantino movies, are almost constant movie and pop culture references, from Madonna, to Pam Grier to Howard Hawks to Lee Marvin to giving a really nice part to Lawrence Tierney who was one of Hollywood's resident 'pulp fiction' bad boys of the 1940s. There is a terrific major sequence right in the middle of the movie which is almost the Quentin Tarantino credo in which one undercover cop instructs another undercover cop in acting and how to put over a performance. Coming in at a nice 100 minutes, Reservoir Dogs is unusually economical for Tarantino -- another big plus.
Pulp Fiction, which I find much too long and extremely uneven (that French number who plays Bruce Willis' girlfriend is awful and much of her cutesy material really sucks) is just as indebted to other movies as is Reservoir Dogs. The set for the retro diner that Travolta takes Thurman to is a literal copy of one in Hawks's Red Line 7000. Tarantino told his art direction people to study the set in Red Line...but they misunderstood and virtually copied it exact. The absolutely terrific dance that Travolta and Thurman do in that set is copied from Disney's The Aristocats. And the scene in which Christopher Walken goes to see Butch as a young boy is an almost incredibly clever weaving of Pulp Fiction right into the body of Hawks's Air Force. Many other specific examples of sampling other movies and movie performers could easily be cited from this film.
Jackie Brown, which I think is the best of his movies, is much more about people and relationships than any of his previous films, and in it are some marvelous things. I don't care if Pam Grier is black, she is a really terrific and admirable person and it is just wonderful to see her given such great material as this role. And she does sublime things with it. So too does Robert Forster. And, of course, both of them are 'self referential' and 'sampled' the same way that Lawrence Tierney and John Travolta are.
I didn't go to the last one because I just don't care enough...I'll see it when it comes out on DVD. Whenever I asked about it, what I heard was it is really good Kung Fu action and very cartoony. So it sounds like Tarantino is scurrying away from his dangerous encounter with real life in Jackie Brown back into the safe territory of a work not once (your average movie) but twice removed from reality. I don't need it.
Tarantino is very talented and extremely clever. He is a genuinely superb writer not only in that he consistently comes up with vivid and memorable dialog, but in the structuring of his stories. His non-linear story structures are about as influential as anything in contemporary cinema. Movies like Magnolia, for instance, are literally unthinkable without the non-linear structures that Tarantino almost single-handedly brought back into the American Cinema. He got them -- self referentially -- from Film Noir, of course.
I think he is a good actor - not the understated kind, but rather quite into the actor as craftsman who knows and uses theatrical technique. Most people seem to like the quiet unassuming approach better, but as Tarantino's riffs are usually fundamentally comic, his fruity, over the top 'acting' acting seems perfectly appropriate to me. And his performances never upstage the really important performances. He is having fun in acting and I have fun watching him have fun...if you know what I mean.
As a director, he is OK. I'm sure he let action specialists do the fight stuff in his last picture as he has absolutely no experience with action at all -- none of his previous films have any real action. His style is extremely simple with uncomplicated camera set ups involving very little camera movement or reframing (Jackie Brown is formally way more complicated than are his first two movies), basic lighting and very long takes which play to his strengths, which are almost entirely in the area of acting. He loves acting and is very good at getting fine performances out of people. Actors in movies owe him a lot as he is almost singlehandedly responsible for the return of the long take to American movies, and with it, the return of legitimate acting. His demonstration that audiences actually like acting and have the concentration spans to appreciate it (everybody remembers the 'foot massage' scene in Pulp Fiction as if they saw it yesterday) is as important and influential on the shape of modern filmmaking as is his use of non-linear structures.