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HE WAS GONE FOR SIX YEARS. NOW DIRECTOR QUENTIN TARANTINO SLASHES
HIS WAY BACK ONTO MOVIE SCREENS WITH KILL BILL, VOLUME TWO.
BY ANGELA BALDASSARRE
Quentin Tarantino is unapologetic about what he’s been up to for
the past six years. Since releasing his last feature film, Jackie
Brown, in 1997, America’s foremost independent filmmaker found
himself unable to get anything done, including finishing a screenplay
for a long-gestating World War II movie (Inglorious Bastards).
"I was burnt out," he says. And, according
to his friends, terrified by the prospect of making another movie. Who
can blame him? 1994's Pulp Fiction changed the course of indie
filmmaking in the United States by earning over $100 million at the
American box office alone, garnering seven Oscar nominations (including
a screenplay win for Tarantino and co-writer Roger Avery), and turning
the Weinstein brothers’ Miramax Pictures into a world player.
When Jackie Brown proved disappointing critically
and commercially, Tarantino drowned his sorrows in marijuana and procrastination
until his muse, Pulp Fiction actress Uma Thurman, confronted
him at an Oscar party in 2000 and asked about Kill Bill. It seemed
that, while making Pulp Fiction, Tarantino had written 30 pages
based on an idea of Thurman’s about a female assassin who is nearly
murdered at her own wedding by her ex-colleagues and her former boss,
Bill. That night Tarantino went home, dug up the script and a year and
a half later had a screenplay ready for production.
"I want to top expectations, I want to blow you
away," says Tarantino. "It’s that kind of movie. This
film is a straightforward revenge movie. Forget the fact that it crosses
all of the genres that I’m dealing with. Spaghetti Westerns, Kung
Fu, Samurai – it crosses all of those genres. But not only that,
it crosses every genre, so we’ve all seen this before. So, since
you already know the story before going in, it’s easy to follow.
So you can go off in all these other directions, but you’re always
staying on course with the objective of the movie."
But Kill Bill isn’t really that straightforward,
at least not structurally. Instead of releasing a three-hour version
of the movie, the director decided last summer to slice Kill Bill
in two, with the second half to be released April 16.
"I always wanted to make two films but I didn’t
think going up to Harvey Weinstein and telling him at the beginning
would be too prudent. But when he came on set and said ‘Gee, I’d
hate for you to lose any of this, Quentin. Why don’t you release
it as two films’, I told him, ‘That’s a great idea, Harvey.
Genius!’"
Splitting the film in two, however, is causing several
logistical problems. Miramax signed contracts with the stars well before
it made the decision to do a two-part release. The company is now trying
to figure out how to resolve the issue. Reps for the actors say Miramax
must reach new deals – i.e. pay more money – before they can
release Vol. 2.
Aesthetically, Miramax considers Kill Bill
to be a single picture that’s been split in two. But other considerations
– marketing and contracts – make them separate. Thurman, as
the movie’s central character, is likely to land the biggest extra
payday. Other actors may not be as lucky. Many characters may not even
make it into the second part. But how does the split affect the film’s
dramatic structure?
"Quite a bit," explains Tarantino. "As
opposed to a movie where the whole first half is just complete eye-popping
action and the resonance comes in the second half, the second one will
be the deeper exploration of it. Real life will now enter into Uma’s
journey and she will have to deal with that.
"One of the big differences between Volume
I and Volume II is that Volume I is the straight revenge
thing. Volume I, it was hard for her to do what she had to do.
Now it’s time for the human stuff. Now it’s not just killing
them all the way down the list; it gets more complicated. It’s
not quite as easy. One of the first scenes in Volume II will
be where we actually see what happens at the wedding chapel, and I’ve
had people say to me after they saw it that they would’ve liked
to have seen it in Volume 1 so they would’ve liked Uma’s
character even more. And my response was, ‘You don’t need
to like her anymore than you do’."
 Poor
Bill.
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