Alternate Takes 8.22.09: Quentin Tarantino

Posted by Shawn S. Lealos on 08.22.2009

With the release of the long awaited Inglourious Basterds, Alternate Takes looks at some of Quentin Tarantino's written work from True Romance through From Dusk Till Dawn.



Welcome to Week 65 of Alternate Takes. I am Shawn S. Lealos and you have entered my world.

There are a few movies hitting theaters this week. One of those movies is a chick flick starring one of the Gilmore Girls called Post-Grad. No one cares about that movie. What everyone should care about is Inglourious Basterds, the latest film from Quentin Tarantino. This is Tarantino's fifth or sixth directed film, depending on whether you count Kill Bill as one or two movies and whether you count Four Rooms as one at all. Looking at his career, there is not a movie on his resume I don't love. Reservoir Dogs is an excellent debut film and Pulp Fiction is a masterpiece. Jackie Brown remains my favorite QT film and both Kill Bill films are visually dynamic treats. Grindhouse was a spectacularly misunderstood treasure as well. And now it is time for the Basterds, a film QT has been talking about for years now. I have no doubt in my mind it will be fantastic and I already have my tickets for the midnight showing (this column having been written before I see the film) and will have a review up this weekend. The third is, ironically, Tarantino's best friend Robert Rodriguez' new kid's flick Shorts.

This week's Alternate Takes will not look at the major films in Quentin Tarantino's career but the films he has written or has been a part of outside his mainstream hits. This week I look at Quentin Tarantino, the writer.

Before I get started I recently did an interview with Project Radio where we talked about District 9, the summer movie season and the current state of the WWE. CLICK HERE to listen to this interview.



When Quentin Tarantino was a child his mother and step father took him to every movie, whether appropriate or not, from the time he was three. "We lived at the movie theater," his mother said. "We went often and would do double, triple features." With that early introduction to film, it is obvious where his love for the medium began.

In 1985, his close friend and confidant Roger Avery wrote a script called Open Road which he showed to his friend in 1987. Tarantino mentioned they could change the concept of two rebels racing across the country into star crossed lovers. The two became collaborators and the final script ended up at around a monstrous 500 pages. In an interesting turn of events, the monster was split into two separate scripts, The Clarence and Alabama element becoming True Romance and the more fiercely homicidal aspects becoming the basis for Mickey and Mallory Knox in Natural Born Killers.

The intended conclusion to True Romance was not what you see in the final cut of the film. In the script that Tarantino sold everyone dies in the end. Director Tony Scott called Tarantino and asked him to rewrite the ending because "you can't shoot a $50 million movie and have everyone die at the end." Tarantino refused, telling Scott "Go fuck yourself, you paid for it, you rewrite it." Finally Avery was called in to rewrite the ending using the same finale he would later use in his own film Killing Zoe and received a "special thanks" credit in the finished film. In another bit of interesting trivia, Tarantino had a memorable cameo in the 1994 film Sleep with Me in which he improvised an entire monologue about Tony Scott's hit film Top Gun. Avery claims the entire improvisation was something he came up with years before that he and Tarantino used to riff about for fun.



Tony Scott had a lot of success early in his career, breaking out with the aforementioned Top Gun but his best work has always been with scripts written by some of the best screenwriters in Hollywood. The Last Boy Scout was written by Shane Black and Man on Fire by Brian Helgeland. True Romance was written by a writer who might be the best writer Scott has ever dealt with, although Shane Black is pretty damn close.

The movie showcases the love story of Clarence, a comic book nerd, and Alabama, a hooker bought by his boss to show Clarence a good time on his birthday. He is one of Alabama's first clients and, unfortunately for her, she falls in love with him. She quits prostitution and the two are determined to make it work. When Clarence goes to tell her pimp (an amazing Gary Oldman) she quits and get her stuff, he ends up killing the man and grabs the wrong suitcase. It is full of cocaine which gets the Sicilian mafia (led by a spectacular Christopher Walken) after the two who must find a way to walk out of this in one piece.

The ensemble cast is incredible. Christian Slater plays Clarence in arguably the best role of his career (along with Heathers and Pump Up the Volume). Patricia Arquette is Alabama. Dennis Hopper plays Clarence's dad and shares the best scene in the movie with the "Sicilians were spawned by niggers" speech to Walken. Gary Oldman is perfect as the wigger pimp. Michael Rapaport is the actor friend who gets Clarence and Alabama in contact with a movie producer (Warehouse 13's Saul Rubinek) to sell the cocaine to. Bronson Pinchot (Perfect Strangers) gives the only good performance of his cinematic career as the middleman. Brad Pitt is almost unrecognizable as the stoner in another memorable role and Val Kilmer appears as the Mentor/Elvis, never showing his face. Add in Samuel L. Jackson, James Gandolfini, Chris Penn and Tom Sizemore and you might have the best cast ever.

Critics were divided on the final product because of the film's supposed nihilistic views and the fact Clarence and Alabama are able to slip out of the bloodbath unscathed (save the loss of an eye for Clarence) and escape with the money. However, fans have made this a cult classic due to the geek fan boy sensibility of the film. The film loves comic books, kung fu movies and Elvis Presley. It is the ultimate wish fulfillment flick with the nerd finding a perfect girlfriend and making it out in the end, triumphing over both good and evil to ride off into the sunset. There isn't much better than that.



While Tarantino has nothing to be ashamed of with the final product of True Romance, he has little to like about the other half of that script in Natural Born Killers. Tarantino tried to kill it early on. He sold the option to Don Murphy for the standard pay for a new screenwriter. Murphy was sure they had a viable ongoing project until the day Reservoir Dogs became a hit. "He actively campaigned against the project," said Murphy. "He even told Brian De Palma he'd picket the theatre if he directed it." Unfortunately for Tarantino, Murphy found a director with the name and clout to get the project made despite Tarantino's objections - Oliver Stone.

Stone was a hot name at the time, coming off hits such as Platoon, Wall Street, The Doors and JFK and he had a specific notion of how he wanted this movie to look. Tarantino's script was described by Murphy as being a Badlands rip off but Stone set his mind on making the film a satire breaking down society's love affair with the macabre television exposure of serial killers. Stone shot the movie like an extended music video with a soundtrack by Nine Inch Nails front man Trent Rezner. It is hypnotic, hyper-kinetic and ultra violent. It bounces from a strange surreal style to the unusual comic renderings of studio television and back in the first few scenes of the movie alone.

In much the same way Stephen King vocally disapproved of Stanley Kubrick's treatment of The Shining, Tarantino is not afraid to voice his displeasure with Natural Born Killers. "You don't have to worry about seeing me in Natural Born Killers: you'll only see Oliver Stone," Tarantino has said. "His voice is so loud that people who like it give him the credit. People who don't like it are nicer to me. It's like, ‘Who knows what Tarantino meant?' He and I are pretty much at odds as far as our sensibilities and styles are concerned. I don't like to show things. I like things unexplained. He's obviously not into that. I would imagine if Oliver Stone showed his movie to a thousand people and a thousand people didn't exactly get the point that he was trying to make, he would think he failed."

Tarantino recalled a conversation he had with Stone, which may or may not have been embellished by Tarantino in the process. During the conversation, Stone is alleged to have told Tarantino that Reservoir Dogs is just a movie. "I make films and you make movies," Tarantino remembers Stone as saying. "Martin Scorsese, he makes movies. John Woo, he makes movies. But when you've been working for fifteen years, you may look back and say ‘Hey, all I've done is make a bunch of movies", and wouldn't it be nice to try and make a film someday?" Tarantino says he thought about that and decided that he doesn't want to make films, he wants to make movies.



Next up for Tarantino was collaborating with three other of Independent cinema's hot young talents. Robert Rodriguez (El Mariachi), Alexander Rockwell (In the Soup) and Allison Anders (Gas, Food, Lodging) joined Tarantino for Four Rooms. Each director helmed a section of the story of a misbegotten bellhop played by Pulp Fiction's Tim Roth. The movie is, as expected, hit and miss. Anders worked with Madonna for her part of the movie about a coven of witches attempting to reverse a spell placed on their goddess. Rockwell directs a scene where the bellhop is stuck in a hostage situation by a couple in the middle of a confrontation about marital infidelity. As expected, the best two sections are by longtime friends and collaborators Rodriguez and Tarantino. Rodriguez teams with Antonio Banderas in his scenario, the bellhop asked to babysit while the parents go out. What follows is comic genius and is also rumored to be the basis for the Spy Kids movies.

Tarantino pulls in another group of fantastic actors for his part, the fourth and final section of the movie. Tarantino stars in this section as a flamboyant film producer. He asks the bellhop to bring a block of wood, a doughnut, a ball of twine, three nails, a club sandwich, a bucket of ice and a hatchet to the room. He has devised a game where he bets his friend Norman that if he can light a zippo ten times in a row he will win Norman's car. If he fails, the bellhop will lop off his finger with the hatchet. When they finally offer the bellhop $1000 to do it, he agrees.

Four Rooms has been ripped by critics and only ranks 15% fresh at Rotten Tomatoes. However, taken on their own, Rodriguez and Tarantino turn in spectacular work here.



It wouldn't be the last time Rodriguez and Tarantino teamed. Tarantino has been known to burn many bridges and leave many friends behind but someone as talented as Robert Rodriguez can hold his own with just about anyone. While there were problems with both Tony Scott and Oliver Stone while adapting Tarantino's work, he handed off his script for a movie called From Dusk Till Dawn to his fellow filmmaker Rodriguez and the two worked hand-in-hand. The movie was a difficult sale. When Tarantino sent the script to his manager she thought it was so bad she didn't want to send it out. When she did, producers and agents called back in disbelief that Tarantino wrote this "piece of crap."

The original story was a mishmash of ideas. It had traces of the vampire cult hit Near Dark, EC horror comics, monster movies and gangster flicks. It became impossible to raise any money to make the movie. By the time Tarantino was an unmitigated success he pulled it back out and Rodriguez felt there was something that held promise. Some things from the original script had been lifted for other movies. The Ezekiel speech in Pulp Fiction was originally wrote for Jacob to keep the vampires away. When Tarantino mentioned to Rodriguez he had a horror script that took place in Mexico, Rodriguez got excited because he always felt Mexico was perfect for horror movies. The script was optioned by Rob Kurtzman and he refused to sell it back to Tarantino, so the two filmmakers forgot about it for awhile. While filming Four Rooms, they learned Kurtzman had finally sold the rights to two other producers. While working on Four Rooms the two directors threw ideas off each other and were excited about making "two movies in one", a crime thriller that unexpectedly switches genres into an all out horror film about 40 pages in.

The movie went on to start the transition to movie star for television actor George Clooney as Seth Gecko, a bank robber who travels with his younger dimwitted brother Richard (played by Tarantino). Clooney had an early opportunity to work with Tarantino when he auditioned, without enthusiasm, for Reservoir Dogs. When they worked together on From Dusk Till Dawn, Tarantino ribbed the actor claiming "You really blew that one."

Clooney is joined by an eclectic cast that includes Harvey Keitel as Jacob and Juliette Lewis as his daughter. Rodriguez regulars such as Danny Trejo, Cheech Marin and Salma Hayek signed on as well. Rounding out the cast are some legends to the genre including makeup effects guru Tom Savini and exploitation stars Fred Williamson and Michael Parks.

The final result is one of my favorite films of the nineties and the DVD has one of the best ever making of documentaries titled Full Tilt Boogie. It is also a marriage of two great directors who have crossed paths a few times since (Grindhouse, Sin City) but is further proof that Quentin Tarantino's career stretches further than just his directorial efforts. He was, and still is, one of the premiere writers working in Hollywood today.

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