[music] Well, opinions are like assholes. Everybody has one. I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like this before. You know, what was this? I'm kind of mad at you. And as a reasonable man, I'm going to do whatever's necessary to find a peaceful solution. It's a problem. Hello, and welcome to Punching Up Movie Podcast. That far enough website is, but this is the podcast where two long-standing friends with a love of movies, a shared love of movies, tech a film, an acknowledged classic. A court classic was simply very, very popular. One of us got an issue with it. The other one tries to defend it or maybe joins in. With the mutual kicking. And today we are looking at one of the titans of contemporary cinema. A generational filmmaker that we sort of, it's probably like the first one we've come in and just watch their career grow, isn't it? And it is quite a 10-10 keynote. And of his filmography, we're picking on Bill Bell volume one today. So I'm going to hand over to to Damien for a synopsis of Kill Bill volume one, if you haven't seen. Okay, greetings. So a brief synopsis, it's Quentin Tarantino's fourth film, came out in 2003, and it takes us on a bloody tale of revenge, starring Uma Thurman as the wronged bride, taking revenge on several assassins around the world. It's inspired by Lady Snowblood, a Japanese revenge film from 1973, and it takes its cues for many martial arts films in the genre. Kill Bill volume one is possibly Tarantino's most technically accomplished film, and ambitious up to that point, and there will be blood. 450 gallons of blood to be precise, which is one of the many, many interesting facts about making of Kill Bill volume one and two. Because Kill Bill is actually one of the few films that is co-collaboration with Quentin Tarantino. You could argue that Jackie Brown film preceding this was a collaboration between Elmore Leonard and Quentin Tarantino, because it was the only film that he's adapted from another source material, but Kill Bill volume one was conceived on the set of Port Fiction, where Quentin Tarantino was working with Uma Thurman, and they were just kicking forth ideas, and she came up with the idea of a vengeful bride, the image that opens the film of a sort of woman in a wedding dress covered in blood, and she goes on some act of revenge, and between them they came up with the plot of Kill Bill. So in the titles I think it's sort of QT and U, I think something like that. Yeah, you too, QT and you too. Yeah, and basically it took him, I think it took him six months to write it. Oh no, no, no, it took him six years to make it. I think he wrote it. I think he might have been on the press tour of Port Fiction, and then took him sort of like six years made Jackie Brown in the interim to get the financing. It was initially supposed to be one two and a half hour film, but he was persuaded, almost at the eleventh hour to chop it into two movies. It was the first film where he shot outside of Los Angeles, and so location where it takes him to Beijing, where he's shooting in there, the studios that were used to shoot propaganda movies under the heights of Mao, he shoots a bit in Japan. They bring in Yan Wu Ping, the legendary martial arts choreographer, to conduct three months of intensive fight training. He casts like one regular, you know, he casts Michael Madsen as one of the killers, and then brings in Daryl Hannah and Vivacia Fox. For the part of Bell, the eponymous, mysterious in part one, sort of master assassin, he originally wanted Warren Beatty, which would have been a very different film. Warren Beatty agreed, and then if you know anything about Warren Beatty, he's the most sort of difficult guy to pin down to any kind of commitment, and then withdraws, and there's different versions of this. See that he suggests David Caroline as Bell, or I've heard stories where I think Ooma Thurman and Eric Stoltz were involved at one point with each other, and Tarantino's around the house, and Eric Stoltz is reading Endless Highway, David Caroline's autobiography, and that's the catalyst for sort of roping him on. He's a crucial part of the casting. They bring in lots of cult, you know, kind of movie stars or figures from, you know, this is martial arts cinema, mainly Sonny Chiba, who plays Atari Hanzo, the sword maker, who was obviously, for those who don't know, is probably like the biggest Japanese martial arts movie star of the 70s and early 80s. Gordon Liu, who was a big sort of shore brothers, sort of Kung Fu star in the 70s, and he plays two parts over the course of the two movies, like Lucy Liu's henchman, and the crazy 88 gang, and then Ooma Thurman's martial arts instructor in part two, which we'll get to when we talk about that in another episode, but basically, did you know that Tarantino was originally wanting to cast himself as pay me? The martial arts instructor and having himself dubbed in bad English, which I think would have been awful, and I'm glad that he decided not to do that. And so, yeah, so it's, I think it's a, I think it's a six month shoe, and a whole, a big chunk of that is spent on filming the almost like 25 minutes sword fight that ends Killbell. It's probably the most kind of complex action sequence he's ever filmed. And this is where the 450 gallons of blood, which had to be specific blood, he wanted samurai blood, not, not sort of horror movie blood. And so, so he had to get the blood right. The possible problems with the sense of his incredibly gory fight that sort of apes a lot of the samurai movies of the 70s, namely sort of the lone wolf and cub movies with the spouting geezers of blood. And so there's bits where he shoots in black and white to sort of get, get around the sort of censorship problem of gallons and gallons of blood because black and white blood is more yes. So I think it was shot in color, but they made it monochrome because there is a, because I watched the full version in color. In the Japanese DVD that was released of Killbell, it was the whole sequence of the house of, what's it called? The house of blue leaves, flowers or something. Blue leaves. The whole of the house of blue leaves is in color in the Japanese version. So I saw that and I thought seeing that in color, like it's better in the black and white. I understand the black and white can lift it up a little bit and change it slightly, but I obviously haven't seen lots of Japanese old films from the 70s with the shooting blood. It looked amazing. I preferred it like that. So it's a shame that the senses took that out anyway. Well, I think he made a concession, didn't he, to the senses in America, and the American releases to have those certain sections of it shot in black and white in order to kind of get away with more blood. So he didn't have to cut anything from the fight sequence as far as I'm aware. He collaborates with quite a few people on this film. So the music, a lot of the music, I think it's the first film where he has original scoring, but it's also the film where he just really kind of throws in as many needle drops from other films from spaghetti western 70s thrillers, Japanese Yakuza films and things like that. But he also has little bits of the score by Reza, the Wu-Tang Clan. He's a big martial arts movie fan. Robert Rodriguez, I think, contributes a bit to the soundtrack as well. And then there's an animated sequence that is done by the same studio that did blood the last vampire. Yeah, and also it kind of introduces him to one of his future kind of collaborators in the stunt woman, Zoey Bao, whose contribution is very important, because she, New Zealand stunt woman, who was previously famous for doubling Lucy Liu in Zina Warrior Princess, doubles for Uma Thurman in a lot more acrobatic bits of the fights, and then graduates to a kind of feature player of his next movie, Deathbury. Was Lucy Liu or Lucy Lawless? No, neither of them, Zoey Bao. Oh, Lucy, what did I say? You said Lucy Liu. Yeah, double their things. She was Lucy Lawless. Yeah, in Zina Warrior Princess, and then doubles for Uma Thurman in your belt, and then goes on to star in Deathproof, and then kind of crop up in pretty much every one of his films from that point on, and just becomes one of his favorite feature players and, you know, an amazing sort of stunt coordinator. So, I think there's probably lots more to say, but we'll stop there. I mean, it's a movie. Suffice to say that it was for Tarantino, a big commercial success. It was a gamble, split in two movies, and the first one, although to put it in context, it was the 38th highest-grossing movie in America. So it wasn't like a mega hit at the time, but it was a hit for Tarantino, and it has obviously gone on to come, possibly one of his most popular movies. And it's also the shift, it marks his shift as well in terms of setting his films in a kind of Tarantino-esque version of the real world into a kind of Tarantino world that is basically an assemblage of kind of movie references morphed into something that is uniquely his. So it's a violent film. It's an entertaining film. It's one of his most popular films. It has front and center when Uma Thurman passes away. That's probably going to be the thing they go to in the obituary star of Killbell, Volume 1 and 2. There was a fallout with Uma Thurman and Tarantino, which you talk about when we talk about Killbell Volume 2. We'll defer that, but at the moment, things were nice and racy. Tarantino is in the extended commercially. Uma Thurman is his Anna Carina with a Katana, and this is still possibly one of the world's largest favourite Tarantino movie, but this is punching up or slicing down, or like sort of like crane kicking to the face. Yeah. And Damien doesn't like this movie or has nominated it. Yeah. So I'm over to you, my friend. In 1992, I think it was, '93, Reservoir Dogs came out, and you and I were at drama school. We were in our last year of drama school. And I went to see this film at the Curs and Tottenham Court Road at Reservoir Dogs. I knew that it had been on earth festivals, and I was interested in it, sounded something special. And I was just totally and utterly blown away by it. I had not seen a film at the cinema that kind of had that impact on me, especially at like 21, coming out of drama school, looking at actors like Harvey Keitel, Michael Madsen, you know, Steve Ashimi. It was just filled with a certain reverence to the old with a mighty splash of the new, and the now, and the fresh. And it felt like the film that I wanted it to be, as an actor. I wanted to do that kind of work. And then a few years later, Pop Fiction comes out, and everybody loved it. And whilst I enjoyed it, and I still enjoy it, I always felt a little bit removed from it. I wasn't fanboying it like, you know, I think we talked about what was, there was another film that was like that that we inception, was one of those kind of films where everybody just loves it. And I was like, is it, is it like this? There's some great bits in it, but is it really some of this whole part? You know, the greater than some of this whole. The greater than some of this part. Yeah. And I just never really bought into it as much as I bought into Reservoir Dogs. And even Reservoir Dogs, I will say, like, I'm not a massive fan of Tim Roth in Reservoir Dogs. Fuck you! Fuck you! I'm fucking dying! I'm fucking dying! I find that Tim Roth in Reservoir Dogs is very showy, very theatrical, in a way that, you know, Tim Roth and Gary Oldman, they came up around the same time, Gary Oldman a little bit before. And when I watched Gary Oldman being theatrical, I don't mind it. But when I watched Tim Roth being theatrical, I mind it. So then Tim Roth, then again, in Pulp Fiction, you know, he's probably better in Pulp Fiction than he is in Reservoir Dogs. Anyway, anyway, anyway. Jackie Brown comes out, love Jackie Brown, love the aesthetic of it. I was being into black exploitation anyway. So, like the resurgence of Pam Greer, or bringing her back into the fold, I did re-watch Jackie Brown. And although I did enjoy it for the first time since 1999, I think it was, I did have a little problem with the scenes between Robert Forster and Pam Greer. I believe them. I believe they're in love with each other, but I felt dialogue-wise. There was too much air in there. You've got the scenes with De Niro, Samra Jackson, Bridget Fonda, they're brilliant. They're very talented, you know, they're snappy, they move along. Whereas those scenes, I'm sure he deliberately wanted to do that, but for some reason it didn't feel as dynamic. It didn't feel as, and the black exploitation films are a little bit more dynamic. Anyway, anyway, anyway. Fun film, what I didn't like, and this will get to it. The thing that pissed me off about Jackie Brown back then, and now, is he's using across 110th Street, the theme from the film, as the opening and closing titles to his own film. So, in a sense, that's like, "Oh, okay, let's just use the Star Wars theme." And then the end titles to it. Obviously, it's not as popular, I understand it's not as big. But it just felt like Magpie, lazy. It's different in the way that he uses music in Reservoir Dogs, where they're all kind of DJ needle drops, very sort of like the Warriors style. And so, now we come to Kill Bill, and that was another thing that, although it's fun and it works, it's like, yes, RZA did a bunch of the incidental music and the score of it, which there is, you know, not loads. There's loads of, right, I'm grabbing this, I'm going to use this and I'm going to use that. The anger, siren, that you hear, Quincy Jones, Ironside, was also used in the Five Fingers of Death, 1972 Shore Brothers film. Starring, no, not starring Gordon View, that was the 36th chamber of the challenge. Which I did watch a few of these films recently. I watched Five Deadly Venom's 36th chamber of Shaolin, and today I watched The Five Fingers of Death, which was great. Five Fingers of Death and the 36th chamber of Shaolin, brilliant films. Five Deadly Venom's is alright, but I really enjoyed those too. Anyway, yeah, the anger thing and the iron side. I don't know, it just, like, sometimes it works and sometimes it just gets in the way for me. It feels like it's just too, you're just too much of a magpie, like, I get you, I get you love it. And I also feel that some of it is, some of his work is, like, immature, is teenage boy, video geek. It's fine when you're in your 20s. But now where he is now, when I see little flourishes of that, and I know Kill Bill was 2003, right? - Yeah, 2003. - 2003, yeah. The Vivica Fox Uma Thurman fight at the start. I wasn't overly annoyed with this. Choreography-wise, it's great. But for some reason, I just didn't, I didn't slot into it, I didn't buy it. It's not that it's women fighting. Michelle Yell's a brilliant fighter, I can watch her all day long, you know? It was just something about, so I think the dialogue felt a little bit like, you know, what Lucy Lewis has silly rabbit at the end, and it's not that. But it's that kind of dialogue that just sort of gets in the way. It's like our Tarantino trying to be cool. He can write brilliant dialogue. He's very good at it. Like, let's not, you know. - Well, that's his thing, isn't it? Above and beyond anything else. He was the man that reinvented screenwriting, you know, and just brought it, you know, different. You know, he was the most exciting screenwriter, and I can't think of a, you know, even someone like, say, Charlie Kaufmann, or, you know, you think of, you know, kind of great people, you go and watch them even because they've written that. Maybe Taylor Sheridan now, you know, but he's different. - Yeah, Alan Sorkin. - Alan Sorkin, yeah. - Yeah, you know, maybe to an extent. - Yeah, yeah, I mean, I'm probably, you've got to go to Manit before that. For someone who's worked, you would go and see because they'd written that. Like, you know, yeah, you know, and even to the point of going to see something like Crimson Tide, because you know that he's done a, uncredited script doctoring on it. And you kind of go in there thinking, well, which bits did he do? Which bits, you know, so even something like that. So yeah, dialogue, if his dialogue falls down, it's like the main, it's like the main God in his armour, isn't it? - And I think 85% of it is good. There's just 15% that just irks me a little bit. It just feels a little bit teenagey. It feels a little bit fucking immature. It's the same stuff with the feet fetish stuff, you know. It's like with Uma Thurman's leg fingers on display. You know, you've got, in Jackie Brown, you've got Bridget Fonda's feet all over the place in Robert De Niro's grill. And then you've got the feet in this. And like, I get it, but it also, it's just like, okay, well, that's your little kink. You like feet, so you put in loads of feet in there. And it's like, it just feels childish to me, you know. It doesn't feel... - And kill Bill Vol. 1 is the most fatishy of all of his movies. No one wears shoes. And you've got like ladies feet all over the place. All sorts of ladies, you know, a sort of a smorgasbord. It's a smorgasbord of attractive feet in your face. And they're not kicking people. They're just there to be objects of... - Oh, gold. - Oh, gold, those toes. - I know, I know, I have a friend. Yeah, before you do, we're just a lot of people. I know somebody who's into feet, yeah. A dear friend of mine. I'm definitely not going to air him out on this podcast, but sometimes they're definitely listening. So if you're listening, you know who I'm talking about. I mean, he's the type of guy who gets excited when he sees artists collaborate with each other, like Slipknot Feet, Taylor Swift, whatever he sees feet. His favorite films, Happy Feet, his favorite TV shows, Six Feet Under. - What does he feel like when Terry Gilliam's massive foot comes down at the beginning of like Monty Python? - Yeah, I'm sure he starts salivating, mate. - Does he just... - Do they have to call the vice? - They do. He's banned. He basically puts a ban on like any Monty Python opening credits come on. I'll see. He can't take it, mate. He just explodes. - He's got restraining orders from Andy. I don't even know this guy. Whoever you are, I'm so sorry. It's funny. He was training order at any sort of Monty Python convention. It's not allowed within 50 yards of things like that. Yeah, can I read something? This is from the Esquire magazine, sort of 20, 20 years ago, Kill Bill article. And I'm trying to think what kind of used to annoy me about Kill Bill and Tarantino. Yeah, this is from Esquire 20 years ago, Kill Bill article. And I have to contextualize this. This person loves Kill Bill, but isn't afraid of just calling attention to some of Tarantino's audiences, it says, the dialogue that was once effortlessly quick fire is now pointedly drawn out desperate to call attention to its own cleverness. And I think for me, I will agree with a lot of what you say. I think for me, I mean, I had a similar experience for you. We can't emphasize how much of a bomb going off Tarantino was in the early '90s. And especially if you're a drama student as well and reservoir dogs, not only did you have incredible dialogue, but there was new. You've got this array of actors, old and new, like you said, but it's hardly quite out, Tim Roth. But I haven't heard of anybody else. So you've got these guys coming on the scene, Michael Madsen and Steve Buscemi. And then he sort of does what he does. He digs out an old veteran I'd never heard of, Lawrence Taney. And the way that they presented the violence and the fact they seem to be critically celebrated rather than lauded, and then the fact that it kind of more or less gets banned on video and all of those things just add to this cue-dance. And there was a kind of relatable actor for all of us, wasn't there? Everyone was like, well, you know, I could potentially be a Steve Buscemi or Michael Madsen or Tim Roth. And then I remember being absolutely blown away by Port fiction. I remember going to see it in the ode in this absolutely packed studio cinema in Richmond, an idea. And it was just like such a struggle to get tickets. And, you know, like, and it was a packed cinema. And I remember just being, I can't, I can't remember, like maybe a more joyous experience in the cinema watching something I'd anticipated that absolutely lived up to everyone in my expectations. And I remember thinking this is what it must have been like to sit and watch Bonnie and Clyde for the first time. This is as much a sort of paradigm changing movie as that. And it is, you know, it's like, when you think about it, it sort of changed the way movies were made. And you can measure that in the amount of like knock offs, rip offs, people who kind of got the formula, but didn't really have the magic source, if you like, of Tarantino. Even now, I don't know if you, did you see Bullet Trade last year with Brad Pitt or for film? And one of the things it's got is this backwards and forwards between Winston Duke and Aaron Taylor Johnson, two actors I really like talking about Thomas, two assassins. One of those has a philosophy based around Thomas the Tank Engine. And I thought this is 20, 23, like 30 years after Reservoir Dogs and people are still doing really bad riffs on Tarantino. So that's, that's the extent of his influence even now. Love Jackie Brown. I loved everything that I've seen him do when I first saw it. And then I go back and have a revisit. And it was a shock horror. I found a lot of his dialogue a bit difficult to take, a bit too desperate to call attention to its own cleverness. And that was my issue with Killbell, saw it once, loved it, went back and saw it. Oh, I'm not quite sure I like it. And I just single that one bit of dialogue. I remember, I was thinking, I can't, I can't replicate it because I can't replicate the rhythms of it. I have to find a piece of dialogue. So it's, it's the, it's the bit that Uma Thurman says to Sophie Fatal. Do you remember when he, she chops her arm off and then delivers a message for her to deliver to, and obviously I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to kind of murder this when I read it. Because I'm not being directed by Tarantino, but it's the wicked, wicked life speech. Do you remember that? The, the, you know, I'll just, I'll just read it. As I said before, I've allowed you to eat your wicked life for two reasons. Two reasons. And the second reason is so you can tell him in person everything that happened here tonight. I want him to witness the extent of my mercy by witnessing your deformed body. I want you to tell him all the information you just told me. I want him to know what I know. I want him to know. I want him to know. And I want them all to know. I want them all to know. I want them all to know. But all soon be as dead as Oren. Um, I mean, I've read that deliberately flat and dispassionately. But even when you listen to Ooma Thurman read it with a little bit more drama and, and, and intent, it sounds kind of like it's kind of tripping over itself. And it's trying to have this import. The, the, and it just feels very clumsily constructed. And, and, and, and it is drawing attention to its own construction in a way that maybe maybe didn't do when Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta chatting about burgers. Yeah. And the first time you hear that, this is brilliant. You know, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and I think those, those are the things that have often taken me out of Tarantino movies because I think he must be at that point because at that point, you know, we, you know, there's a kind of an elephant in the room and it's hardly Weinstein. At that point, he's Weinstein's boy and he can do no wrong. He has a carte blanche, more or less to do what he wants to do, not completely because, you know, it's not his decision to chop the film into two pieces. The wheels come off the wagon a film later when, when he does grindhouse, he wants to do this double bell. And it, and he says only real bomb, you know, and they have to, they have to sort of, they have to release them as two separate movies and neither of them make that much money as far as I'm aware. But, you know, he, he, he gets that point. We've talked about this with other directors where no one's saying no to it. No one's saying to him, he hasn't got Robert Towne coming up to him or some veteran screenwriter or even Elmore Leonard, a cop who confused alive at this point saying, listen son, just rein it in a bit, edit that dialogue, tighten it a bit, and it'll be perfect. And so, so you have moments like that. And then you do have the sort of a world constructed from other movies, which I don't mind so much. But I like him. I like listening to him. I like the fact that he genuinely doesn't care what people think of him. That he, he, he, he resists any kind of critical pressure for battle or worse to kind of evolve if you like. It's like, this is what I do, you know, and take it or leave it. And people come and take it. But I've always more than any other director that I've followed. I change my mind every time I watch his movies. And I remember writing, I used to keep like a little film journal, I remember writing, I remember like, I remember quoting like Chris Kristofferson, he talked about feeling giddy when he listened to Bob Gillan. And I remember, I remember putting that down in my journal. It's probably a little bit embarrassing to read back now. But I remember seeing like Kill Bill 1 for the first time. I came out, I felt giddy. I loved it. I loved too as well. I remember Jonathan Ross famously loving one and disliking too. And he's like Tarantino's biggest fanboy. But I remember that, I remember watching like every film subsequently that I've watched. I've felt differently when I've watched it again. You know, so I watched hatefully. I actually really liked that. I was nervous about watching it again. So it's Django and change and I loved it. But I felt that the end bloodbath was just, I thought, you know, I should all die. You know, you've cocked out, you know, you know, things like that. And you know that once upon a time in Hollywood, I, you know, because this was during our like email exchanges, I was savage about the ending of that. Maybe I loved it until like what he did with the Manson murders. I thought this is offensive. This is Tarantino. Like basically self abusing and, and, and sort of it's so self-indulgent. It's disrespectful. But I couldn't get it out of my head and I had to go back and watch it again. And also in that instance, there were a lot of people around at the time, you know, they went like James Elroy. There was some old Scott stunt guy, Joe Dante, who were around in the 60s during the time. And they were just like heralding this movie. So that's what it was like. This is great, you know. So I went back and watched it again. And every time I've subsequently watched it, I've liked it a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more, maybe go back and watch Django and Shane. I thought, yeah, I can't get what he's doing with the ending now. I've, I've never gone back to Inglorious Bastards because I've been afraid to, because I enjoyed it so much when I watched it. And I don't want to, also because it's two and a half hours long. And, and I didn't, so, so of all the, of all the directors that we've talked about, he's the one that I kind of just go backwards and forwards, which is, which is good in a way, is that because you constantly engage you with missing stuff, seeing stuff, maybe seeing stuff that isn't there and then getting annoyed next time you watch it. Well, I mean, what, I mean, what, have you changed your mind on Tarantino movies at all? Well, I think, yeah, just the rewatch of Jackie Brown recently and feeling seeing the air in those scenes that I just wasn't on board with as I was before. He is a divisive director. He is an interested director. It's like, you know, like when we did the, the inception, I am glad to Christopher Nolan's out there. I think he's a brilliant director. I just don't like watching his films. I'm not for me, you know, but I'm happy that he's out there. Tarantino, I suppose I'll always watch his films for whatever reason. I mean, it's not that he, you know, don't know. It was going to be one more to watch, isn't there? If he, if he remains true to his work. Supposedly. And then maybe a TV series I've heard of something, you know, and I will read that book that you read eventually that his book was it called? What cinema, cinema speculations. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's brilliant. It's absolutely. And if that's, if that's the course he's going to go, I tell you, he's a phenomenal writer about film. He really is. His film essay is absolutely phenomenal. Yeah. And he does what we do. He's not, he's not kind of, he's not tied to the sort of canonical status of a film. He does this brilliant essay on Taxi Driver, where he kind of takes it to task and says it would just be a much better film if, if, if Brian DiParma directed it. And just sort of makes his case as to why Brian DiParma is like tastelessness. Studied tasteless was a better for Taxi Driver. It almost like Taxi Driver's like, I remember it correctly. It's almost like too tasteful in the hands of like Scorsese and it is a trachea. I'm approach and aesthetic. Um, so, so you don't, you don't, you don't like the sort of patchwork nature of Kill Bill so much. Um, it takes me out of the film. Yeah. I, yeah, I think bits of it do bits of it don't. I, I, but I think, but you, but you're not a thing. Do you not think that what he does is he draws, he draws attention to other movies, which is because he's also like an evangelist, a missionary. But neglected and disrespected avenues of court cinema. So had he not put 110th street in there, it wouldn't necessarily draw attention to Bobby Womack or the movie. Um, yeah. The thing that, the thing that actually delighted me was, was like over lockdown. I was watching a lot of spaghetti western. So I went, you know, I went on a bit of a leave and cleave down a leave and cleave rabbit hole. And then I'm watching "Day of Wrath" or something like that. I can't remember what it is. I can't remember the name of the lead, like Cleethal, but they've got that beautiful, it's not, it's not, I don't think it's Morricone. I think it's the guy with the Django soundtrack. Was that like beautiful music within the firm? No, it's not, no, not within the firm. It doesn't matter. There's some, any way to the music that they use, it's essentially a lead on Cleethalie's theme. - In "Kill Bill." - Yeah, in "Kill Bill." Yeah, and... - Grandeur. - Grandeur. Yeah, the grandeur, yeah, that's what it's for. I've got the grandeur, I've got it all, you know, and it's like, so the grandeur music is beautiful. - Yeah. - It's a largely forgotten, you know, Lee Van Cleef Western, that he essentially revives because he uses that music. And then it gets the Blu-ray treatment and it gets elevated to cool classic status. There's a consequence of his inclusion, and I think he does that a lot, and he does that with his casting. I mean, what do you think about his sort of, because he's got, because I think in there, he's got really, really good performance from Sonny Chiba, kind of in the middle. - That's the best. I think that's a lovely best part of the film. - Beautifully written as well by the two of them. It's just so nice, it's so kind of, and the subtext as well, which there was maybe not a lot of it in "Kill Bill," but there's this whole thing where it takes him a while. She's coming in as a kind of flirty American tourist, and then at some point she's gonna reveal who she is, and that's the tension of the scene. But also the dynamic between him and his chef as well with the kind of... - Brilliant. - The fact that it's all done in Japanese as well, so it's sort of translated dialogue, and it just works beautifully. And the casting, almost like the countercasting of Sonny Chiba in a non-action role, even though he's clearly a guy with a bust. I think works really well. - Yeah, I agree. And Michael Parks, the fact that you've got Michael Parks, who I'd never heard of before, it appeared in a Tarantino movie, just becomes... - Yeah, but essentially playing the same character, isn't he, he's playing the same martial, across all of these movies. So he creates a shared universe. So technically vampires, 'cause he's in from just sort of the vampires existence, they say, "Well, just kill Bill." If you wanna kind of be that literal about it, it's inclusion. And also the chronology, because he doesn't make it through from "Dust or Dawn." So "Kill Bill's" set before that, if you wanna be literal about chronology. And so, I love all of that. I love the fact that he's got this sort of shared universe, before Marvel just made it their own. But they're all his characters. And I always feel that he's more, more than the sum of his references. He creates his own world out of other people's worlds. And yeah, so he's like, what do they call it? Like, a found object artist, you know. - Mm-hmm. - Instead of finding terms. - Yeah, "Makpai." - Yeah, you do. (laughing) - That's what "Makpis" do, right? - Yeah, they're starting not to create. - They're starting not to create. - Yeah, they mixed up. - No, they don't create good films. - Yeah, they don't create like lovely little sculptures. You know, they just make things. - Yeah. - Yeah, so that's, but, I don't know. I mean, I think the way he uses David Karadine is right. I love the way he kind of resurrects careers and stuff. You know, that he's got a real reverend. So like he says, he's abandoned that now. I remember him saying, like, I'm just casting people because of their suitability for the role. Like, that's it. You know, he says, so in a sense, he's abandoned the rep company thing. It's like, I'm not going to cast someone 'cause I've used them before. I'm going to cast them because they're right. And, but obviously the thing that he was famous for, initially as a casting, almost like a sort of defacto casting agent was, you know, the resurrection. - Reanimated. - Reanimated, yeah. Reanimating John Travolta's career. I suppose people who weren't around before Pulp Fiction kind of don't necessarily appreciate how radical that casting was, how much of a spent force and a bit of a sort of joke he was. You know, and then, you know, that Pulp Fiction will probably be the first thing again in his obituary that's mentioned, even above Greece and Saturday Night Fever. I mean, what do you think of that? He's sort of, he's basically a sort of duty of care to great, forgotten or disrespected, be me, the actors. - That's great. I think that's great. Robert Forster, you know, gets a, I mean, I never knew who Robert Forster was before. I might have seen him in something, but like, you know, a lot of films that I wasn't really aware of. Great that he, that he gets reanimated. Same thing with Pam Greer. She'd not really been as far as I was aware of doing anything on that level for a long time after the '70s black exploitation stuff and, you know, "Coffee's a great film, right?" - Yeah, and "Coffee's" one of the movies that been with them and was told to watch as well. So that, that influence, even though it's not, like front and centre is in the background of... - Yeah. - Yeah, and so yeah, I think you told her to watch "Coffee." Yeah, I think I remember what the others were, but she watched "Gloria" as well. - And he saw that as well. - Yeah, and yeah, she watched Cassavetti's "Gloria" off her own, but, you know, again, you know, sort of a female-led gangster movie about a woman trying to protect her child and things like that. What do you think of Uma Thurman? 'Cause Uma Thurman essentially is front and centre. It's her film as much as it is his film. What do you think of her? - Yeah, I think she's great. I mean, she looks a certain way. I do feel that she suffers from the dialogue doesn't help her at times. - I think she looks great. She, like Keanu Reeves in the Matrix films, she kung fu's convincingly. - I think she, I think some of the sword work looks a little bit clumsy. I have to say, if I'm being really picky and I'm no expert in like, in a ton of fighting, but it feels like she's sort of sword-bashing a little bit. And in the bits where she's fighting in silhouette or there's like, yeah, it seems evident maybe that they've got a double in, the sword works a bit more fluid. Whereas I feel like Keanu Reeves is a more natural fighter, more natural athlete. And like he's never unconvincing in any fight in a John Wick movie, he just looks like he absolutely knows what he's doing and you can't see the joins when they get a stunt guy in for maybe a flip or a bit, you know, where they might damage him, you know, if they throw him or something like that. - Mm-hmm. - I really like her. I always remember like, 'cause that was a thing on the rewatch, I joined the rewatch. I really did and my memory had been quite negative of the last time I watched Keanu Bill. But I really, I had a good time with her and I thought she was great. You know, I thought she was great. And I thought there were scenes of, I mean, we talk about it being kind of sort of shallow and stuff, but there were scenes of like real, you know, when she wakes up and screams after a camera, she screams when she realizes like, 'cause you're always great. - Mosquito bites. Yeah, there's a mosquito, a mosquito bites her just before she wakes up and screams in the same way that happens in pulp fiction. She's just the same kind of thing. - Oh, no, I didn't think before that. - That's pretty cool, right? - Yeah. And, you know, and this sort of, 'cause I always thought, I was put in the thermon in like, I really like her, but I'm not convinced she's, I don't think she is a great actress, but I like her. You know, and she was better than I remember the being, but there's that moment where she just sort of screams when she realizes that her baby's been sort of taken out of her, which I thought was just genuinely moving. And it seems to be kind of a bit of raw emotion that seems to come from another film, you know, because everything else is to touch, ball, you know, blip, you know, and a lot more kind of like, I don't know, a lot, yeah, just not in a majority sense, but a lot more sort of cartoonish in a way and stuff. So, but I thought she was good. I thought all of the activities was great. - Talking of cartoons, I really did enjoy the anime - Fantastic. - So you had to, you know, just coming out of nowhere at that time as well, 2003, just dropping a whole, you know, 10, 15 minute section of animation just to give a great character story, a backstory and Lucy lose brilliant, like, she's brilliant. - I'm also sympathy as well. I think in all of the, in all of the people that she kills, I mean, yeah, 'cause she takes out too in this movie, doesn't she? And then say, I think there's, I think you kind of, there's an element of ambiguity there that these people with a vase of thought, she's trying to live a good life and in the film is not gonna let her. And so your sympathy is with her on many levels rather than in the film, and then Lucy Liu has honor. And you see where she's come from. You think, well, you know, considering the background that she's had as sort of related in the animation, you kind of like her, you know, or you kind of, you kind of understand, even though, you know, some of her behavior is reprehensible and she has, oh, I can't remember the name of the actress from Battle Royale. It was brilliant, you know, it'll go and go. - Yeah, yeah. - But she's absolute psychopath. She's a lunatic, and so, so somehow she could reconcile having this like kind of schoolgirl murderer, sadist sort of lunatic on a payroll. And they seem to enjoy intimidating restaurant owners and things like that. So she is, she's evil, but you kind of, she has a code, she's honorable, up to a point. And this seems to be genuine respect between her and Anuma Thurman. So I think there's more sort of kind of nuance. I don't know if that's too strong a word. There's this dimension, you know, there's a lot of kind of ambivalence in a mix to all of her comic books, "Slicing and Dyson", which is admittedly kind of brilliantly choreographed, you know. - Yeah, like I said, I think it's probably his most accomplished film to debt to that date. - Yeah. - The actress is Chiaki Kuriyama, who played the... - Yeah. - Yeah. - Japanese... - Go, go, go. - Yeah. - Go, go, yeah, from Battle Royale. Brilliant. As soon as she, you know, when I remember seeing her and knew that she was cast, it's like, "Wow, she's Battle Royale." Like, that was... - Yeah. - And I re-watched Battle Royale recently, and it's still totally and utterly holds up, and she's fantastic in it as well. - And she's really fair to, you know, the, oh, the Mikay Takashi movie. I don't really bad with movie titles today. - The headphones. - Yeah, it's the one, you know, it's the one based on the manga, where the guy, the samurai, the samurai is like, cuts a bit, but then he can't die. His body's like, kind of, put back together with like, little bloodworms. It's quite, quite a famous manga. And she's in that as a kind of assassin-con ally. And she's great as well. - It's not Juan, is it? Is it a horror film? - No, it's not Juan. It's a samurai movie, and it's people who listen to this, or just be embarrassed that I'm like, stumbling for the name of it. It's a very, very famous manga. Doesn't matter. - See it on her. - Yeah, don't worry about it. - Yeah. - Blade of the immortal. I think it's a blade of the immortal, I think. - Okay, yeah, I don't think I've even seen that. - Yeah, that's good. It's very good. - Yeah, blade of the immortal. I have a love-hate relationship with Takashi Mikay. - That's a good one. I think if you like 13 assassins, I don't know if you do. You may like that one. Yeah, 13 assassins is one for, I would recommend. - Okay. - Yeah, yeah. There we go. - Mako Kaji, who played the lead in "Lady Snowblood." And interestingly, like "Lady Snowblood" is, I rewatched that. I'd seen it a year ago, and it was okay. This time around, I was much more on board with it. "Lady Snowblood" was written by the guy who did "Lone Wolf" and "Kel'S", the guy who wrote the manga. And the film is done very similarly to Kill Bill, as far as chapters go, chapter one, two, three, four. I think it's in four sections. But yeah, "Mako Kaji" sings the song Shura no Hana in "Lady Snowblood" and it's used in "Kel'Bill." - Ah, yeah. - Two of the first songs used in "Kel'Bill," which I kind of like. - Yeah. - What happened there? - I don't know, you used to have balloons come up in front of your face. - I know. I don't know how. I don't know why. - "Lady Snowblood" anyway. - "Lady Snowblood" is coming to tell me. - Yes, I did enjoy that. - I also really enjoyed the five, six, seven, eights. - Yeah. - Apparently Tarantino was in a clothing shop about to get a flight somewhere in Japan, heard the music and went over, asked them what it was. They said it was five, six, seven, eights. He said, "Can I buy the CD?" It's not a CD shop, it's a clothing shop. And they were like, "Oh, we have to ask the manager." So he said, "Look, I'll give you the money. "I can't go to the shop. "I've got to go to the plane now. "So let me give you the money. "You give me the CD and you can't get another one. "And give them more money or whatever." So which he ended up doing that. Had he not got the CD, he might have forgotten about it, but then he listened to the music and then got in touch with them and then got them on board for that blue leaves opening, which I thought was great. - And then you just heard that in like adverts for "Time of Memorial," didn't you, that song? And say, "Isn't that brilliant there?" That he does that, that he can sort of just reanimate. - Yeah, reanimate. - Oh, anime. - And he does the reanimator, yeah. - I love that. - Well, even, even, sorry, even Mako Kaji, who sang those songs after the popularity of those songs from Kill Bill came back to light. She started recording and playing new music again after she'd not done any of that for a long time, so. - But this is what he does. And the thing that he's often praised and criticized for is that he doesn't evolve. - I argue that he does. I mean, we can talk about his late work, like where we think he's gonna go. In our next episode, I'd like to talk quite a bit about what's on a time in Hollywood a bit more about, you know, I think there's a maturity in that film. And also, oh, you can talk about it a little bit now if you want, there's a maturity in that movie that isn't in a lot of his other films. I think he just seems to, it's got a different vibe. What is it? Is it a crime movie? Not really, is it a drama? Not really, is it a hangout film, really? It's a hangout film for about two and a half hours and the last 20 minutes have become a very violent black comic genre movie. One of the things I love about that is his characters that don't talk, and he doesn't get enough credit for like the dialogue he doesn't write. So you've got Robert De Niro's character in Jackie Brown, his monosyllabic. Come back, that comes from the book. - He's so brilliant in Jackie. - Robert De Niro is so, so brilliant in Jackie Brown film. Like you've never seen him play a character like that. - Yeah, 'cause he's dim, isn't he? - More after. - He's just so dumb, but he's so committed to his dimness. - Yeah, and it's not sympathetically dim, but then there's levels of darkness that even Samuel L. Jackson knows about that anybody doesn't pick up on it, but it just changed the nature of the plotting at the end. But also Brad Pitt, and it's a very quiet performance in "Once Upon a Time" in Hollywood. And I think one of my favorite performances in any Tarantino movie. So he gets to that point where I don't have to, I don't have to wear all my references on my sleeve in the dialogue. I can actually have the most compelling character in that is a character who says virtually nothing. And he's an actual enigma or he's not, he's not this open book, this open genre book. And that's the movie that I've gone back and forwards on in the most obvious and visceral manner. - Yeah, I'll try and watch that again, because I've only seen it once before we reconvene. Hatori Hanzo's, it's only Chiba playing Hatori Hanzo. The name of Hatori Hanzo comes from a TV series that Sony Chiba did in the 1980s called "Shadow Warriors." - Oh, yeah. - Shadow Warriors, there was four of them, and in it he plays Hatori Hanzo. So obviously he's taken that, again, I like that. That's nice and it's random enough for most people not to know. And I suppose in the same way like you were saying about across 110th Street. I don't mind him using the music, I just mind him using the music 'cause of the theme tune to Jackie Brown, you know? Just, anyway. - I'm gonna be a bit hypocritical now 'cause it didn't sort of, I was aware of 100th Century if I hadn't even seen it, but it was like, it didn't bother me with that. It really did bother me. I saw a sort of movie cop shop front grilleau. - I know that one. - Yeah. - And that opens with the theme tune to "Magnon Force." That annoyed me, so it's a completely arbitrary, whether it annoys me or not. I really like the film cop shops. Really good, sort of, you know, like me, me, me. - Yeah. - Crime film, the fact that they opened. On the one level, it's like, "Yeah, nice one." You know, it's like, it's getting me "Magnon Force" theme out there, again. Like, "Lay low, shift, friends." I thought, that's a bit lazy. It's like, it lays you using the magnum force, you know? But then when he does across 100th Century, I don't mind. - Yeah. - But then I'm more invested in "Magnon Force" than 100th Century, so it's all very subjective. - Yeah. - I don't know why I said anything. - Yeah, for sure. - Boss Tanaka, who was played by Jon Conimora. Like, I don't remember anything very little about "Kill Bill" volume two. So, right, at this moment, like, it's gonna be quite interesting for me to watch it. I want to do this podcast first and then watch two. So, I don't know whether or not he's in it or not. I'm not sure it's fine. I don't wanna know. But he was the guy in "The Tea House" who gets his head chopped off by Lucy. - Oh, yeah. Yeah. Disrespecting her. Yeah. Disrespecting her, yeah. - Asian American heritage, yeah. - Well, he was in the South Korean film, "Hara Film", the whaling, which you haven't seen yet, which you must. - No, I've seen whaling. - You have seen it. Okay, yeah. So, he's in that. He's like the main, you know, the main Japanese dude, which I'd not, you know, only plucked when I did a little bit of, and he was also in, he was the guy who had his brains blown out at the start of "Hard Boiled". - Oh, really? - Yeah. - By Cheyenne Fat, you know, with the flower. - Oh, wow. So, he says that's his job is to come on and get and suffer massive ed trauma. - He was in "Black Rain" that had Thomas Abouro Wakayama in "Who's Art, Okama, Ito", a little wolf. - And also as the lean round. Was it Ken Capacura? You know, the, obviously, like the Asian leader now. It was like the Tanaka Ken and the Yakuza. - Yes. - Yeah. - I gave "Black Rain". "Black Rain" is a great sort of like gathering house for Japanese- - It's not a great film. - I've watched it for a while. I kind of, I remember enjoying it, but I've watched it since it came. I didn't see it this summer. I think I watched it video or something. So, I remember you're not liking it, but you're liking "The Low Wolf" guys to see with Michael Douglas. - Yes. - Yes, yes, yes, yes. I just got, again, with Michael Douglas film, and also John Cunningham more recently, he was in audition, "The Tashtikashini", and he also voiced a hatori in "The Wind Rises" and "The Parakeet King" in "The Boy in the Heron". So, he was like, "Who are those actors?" It was, yeah. - Oh, so no, so I would have heard him, 'cause when I saw "The Boy in the Heron", I saw, it's weird with Miyazaki movies, because I often don't mind watching them in English dubs, because-- - They're well done. - And also, because the voice cast is extraordinary, they always get incredible actors to do it, but I couldn't get a screening of it. It was really weird. I went to watch the subtitle version, like the pure version, because there was a screening at the time of the dubbed one, and so I would have heard him, I would have heard his voice as "The Parakeet King". - Can I just say, can I just say, what do you think of, 'cause it's called "Kill Bell", and I remember watching it the first time, really looking forward to on and off throughout my life, I always liked David Carraday, and I remember coming to food from when I was a kid. Death Race 2000, he just popped up "Cuba Wing Serpent", he's always sort of woven in and out of things I really like, "Lowball from a Quade" and all of that sort of stuff. And I was so looking forward to seeing David Carraday do his thing, and the way they use him in the movie is as a voice on a phone, and a blurred face, and I kind of loved it. I remember at the first second, are we gonna see more of David Carraday and then we'll talk about how maybe too much Carraday is maybe not a good thing in the next case. But I think the use of "Kill Bell" volume one is it's almost like sort of, you know, like fall, you know, Luciferian. - Spectatype character, right? - Like voice on the end of the phone, like spouting, kind of evil wisdom, and things like that is brilliant. - Yeah, I agree. - Yeah, I agree. - Ominor, I think the sparing use of him, and he's got a very good voice, you know, his-- - Amazing voice. - And he looks great. - Yeah. - We'll see, we'll see. - Do you know the famous story about him? I don't know how apocryphal this is. You know, like, have you seen "Lowball from a Quade" where him and Chuck Norris, like sort of, he's the villain in that. They fight to the death at the end. It's probably maybe my favorite Chuck Norris movie. It's a very small list, but it's like-- - Yeah. - Yeah, yeah. - There was always a question mark about how good he was at Kung Fu, because he wasn't a natural student of it. He was very, you know, he was very, very physically, he was a dancer, he was very physically fluid, and obviously they cast him controversially as Kane of the TV series Kung Fu, not 'cause he could do Kung Fu, 'cause there was something always a bit mystical about him, and then it was a bit of a question mark about how good martial arts he actually was. And Chuck Norris's quote was like, well, he said, "Is he a good fighter?" He says, "He's as good a fighter as I am an actor." - Brievens. - And we haven't really talked about, like, Dara. I think, but then these, like, Dara Hana and Michael Madsen, and Michael Madsen barely features a bit, so, you know, Dara Hana. - Yeah. - I think Dara Hana's great. I think she's so spiteful, it's such a, and I love his countercasting as well. We haven't talked about that. In fact, he's great at countercasting people. In fact, the Dara Hana is so sweet and lovely, even in Blade Runner, when she's trying to kill Dara's form for something very dull-like and, sort of, tragic about her death and splash, obviously. And the fact that he casts her as the most unlikable and spiteful and genuinely evil and unrepentant of all of the assassins is marvelous. And I think she has, like, that one scene where she's sent in to murder Uma Thurman with the syringe, and he's told not to, which freaks out, you know, things like that. And I think she's brilliant in it. And we can talk a lot more about it in our next episode. But any thoughts about his countercasting, 'cause I'd also throw in Kurt Russell. I don't like death proof particularly. I loved it when I saw it, hated it when I saw it again. I think his dialogue is absolute worst and most self-indorging. I remember his whole thing saying, "I know how to write for girls." And it's like, "Do you, do you really?" But I think you know how to write, how you wish girls would still-- Yeah, and they're not saying-- And they're not gonna tell you otherwise, 'cause they wanna be in your films, but it's like, but I think the thing that is, for me, unequivocally brilliant about death proof is Kurt Russell as the villain. And the fact that I can't think of it another time when he's played someone, so vile. Evil. And it's brilliant, you know, and it's like, you know, and I love the fact that Kurt Russell's now a regular part of the Tarantino stock company and he's, I think they made three movies together now. What do you think about his countercasting? So you've got Darryl Hannah as a villainess. Yeah, great. Yeah, I'm all for it, mate. I'm all for it, I mean, any kind of countercasting, to be honest, is good in my books, whoever the fuck does it, because an actor is an actor, is an actor, and all that idea of stereotyping these actors is limited and it's myopic and I don't really dig it at all. So whenever you see an actor who's then playing something that you're not used to seeing, great, well, it works or not, it doesn't matter. Let them do it, you know, it doesn't matter. If they're shit, it's fine, so it's all so fine. But yeah, great, I'm into it. Brilliant, into it. Okay, are we killed, are we killed Bill? We've killed half of Bill anyway, we're gonna kill the rest of him next week. Not even half, not half the running time, not even half hours, it's to go. Less fighting, less fighting, watch God. Yeah, yeah. Oh Bill, less killing, and Bill, less killing. Yeah, I'm interested to see how I feel about the pacing of the next one, compared to this, should it have been re-jigged. And anyway, we'll see, I'll let you know. But yeah, until next time, signing off from sunny Australia, from rainy Nottingham in England. Bye. Ciao. (upbeat music) (indistinct) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)
