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tarantino leftovers
This will be my last Quentin Tarantino post for a while, lest this become an all-Tarantino blog. Leftover scraps on various topics:
Textual poaching
Interview with Tarantino, where he discusses the (many) stylistic influences on Kill Bill, and, in particular, the casting of kung-fu stars like Sonny Chiba and Gordon Liu:
"As I am framing shots, I'm thinking 'I can't believe Gordon Liu is in my movie! I can't believe it.' And to have been so influenced by seventies kung fu films and to have, as far as I'm concerned, my three favorite stars of kung fu from three different countries .. Gordon Liu representing Hong Kong. Sonny Chiba representing Japan. And David Carradine representing America. That's a triple header. A triple crown. If Bruce Lee was still alive, he'd be in it."
There's a whole theory that could be written that involves Quentin Tarantino as the world's most successful creator of fan fiction. If you wanted to give it an academic spin you could say he's doing textual poaching.
Artifice
Same interview. Tarantino on the artifice of the Kill Bill "universe":
"this whole movie takes place in this special universe. This isn't the real world ... this is a movie universe and in this universe, people carry samurai swords. Not only do they carry samurai swords, not only can you bring a samurai sword on an airplane, there's a place on the airplane seat to put your samurai sword!"
If I want to think through Tarantino's relationship to artifice any further I have to think more about Tarantino's relationship to Godard, a filmmaker who Tarantino has referenced repeatedly as an influence and who has also made a body of work that deals explicitly with cinema as artifice (and who also shares a fascination with themes of crime, race, femininity, etc.). I've seen maybe a half-dozen Godard films and although they're all interesting, I can't say that I have a really good grasp on Godard's "project." An area for more research...
Metareference
Fred Coppersmith writes in with a quote from the New Yorker's profile of Tarantino:
"When [Tarantino] draws up a contract with Miramax, he has his lawyer include an unusual provision that secures him all the rights to the characters in the future, so that nobody can use them -- for sequels or spinoffs or marketing or anything else -- without his permission, and so that he can use them again himself in a movie whenever he likes. He intends gradually to build a whole Tarantino world, so that his movies intersect with one another. He has already started doing this: Mr. White, of Reservoir Dogs, used to do jobs with Alabama, the heroine of True Romance; Vic Vega, of Reservoir Dogs, is related to Vincent Vega, of Pulp Fiction."
Of course, Pulp Fiction / True Romance / Reservoir Dogs all occur in a universe operating at a particular level of mimetic fidelity, whereas Kill Bill operates at an entirely different level. This hasn't stopped Kevin Smith from doing something similar: all three movies in the "Jersey Trilogy" operate at different levels of realism, but the characters cross effortlessly between them. This reaches its inevitable nadir in the abysmal Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, which proves that a movie can understand meta-referentiality and still be dumb as a post.
Authenticity
My pal Laura has written a provocative response to my reading of Jackie Brown; check it out.
Libidinal narrative
Kill Bill comes pretty close to fulfilling my criteria for a feature-length movie driven by libidinal narrative. Dramatic tension (mostly) doesn't function in the film in any traditional way: there is rarely any doubt in our mind about the outcome of any given battle that "the Bride" engages in--even though her adversaries are equally skilled. As a result, a lot of the pleasure of the film comes from watching a super-powerful entity destroy other super-powerful entities. A weirdly contemporary sort of plot.
OK. Tomorrow I will write about something else. Possibly Gertrude Stein. Labels: media commentary, narrative |
