Talking Fiction

From The Quentin Tarantino Archives

(From German Rolling Stone magazine 7/2003)

Film maniac Quentin Tarantino about Carradine, the production of Kill Bill and his main source of inspiration – his record collection.

RS: Why haven’t you been to Cannes?

QT:- Because I was sitting in the studio cutting. I am behind 60 days and I just couldn’t go. I have to finish the movie by October. At this point I have – to be honest – only cut half of the final film.

RS: What’s Kill Bill about?

QT: A group of assassins is getting shot by their boss. The leader, at the same time Bill’s wife, is only injured pretty bad. 5 years later she wakes up from her coma and takes revenge of Bill. Only that much: The entire genre of 70s film influenced me, not only Hong Kong films. I am a genre lover – everything from Spaghetti Western to Samurai movie.

RS: How did you come up with David Carradine?

QT: He was one of my favorite actors since my early childhood. I always wanted to have him in a movie of mine but I never had a suiting role for him. Up till now there never was a suiting character. Even when I started writing Kill Bill I first had someone else in mind who was available. While I was writing the script I was also reading David’s auto biography and the more I wrote and read the more I came up with similarities and then – some day I thought: Hey, David could be this guy Bill.

RS: I heard it wasn’t that easy convincing Harvey Weinstein of David Carradine?

QT: That’s not completely right. I went to Harvey and suggested David. Weinstein wanted to get to know David before, and after he had met him, he just said: He is really cool – and then he supported the idea. I didn’t really had to fight.

RS: Will we see Uma and David in a Kung Fu duell?

QT: Uma will be seen in a sword fight, she trained 3 months for that. Daryl Hannah also had to get into all the Samurai stuff. The hardest stuff were the stunts, because they were intended to be kinda new. Fortunately, it was fun for both the stunt guys and the girls, the have been training for months. David of course, he’s the Kung Fu master, but which one of the girls is gonna fight against him, I won’t reveal.

RS: Were there any outstanding incidents during the shooting?

QT: You could say that. I was talking with some people of the team about drilling a hole into the ground. And while I’m still talking, one of them picks up the driller and starts drilling. I wanna go, as I notice that he drilled my shoe. I yelled at him, he should hand me the driller. He yelled back ‘No, it’s mine’. I wanted to switch it off but in that moment he pulled it up and went away cursing.

RS: Is it true that you wanted to make 2 movies out of Kill Bill?

QT: I don’t know yet, I am still cutting. But who knows, maybe I decide to do one, two or even 3 movies.

RS: And you already have a DVD for Kill Bill in mind, do you?

QT: Sure, and that’s the cool thing about DVD: You can pack stuff on the disc that woul’ve been too much for the big screen because actually it would’ve only interested yourself and a bunch of fanboys, who wanna know everything, but the majority of the audience would just be bored with it. I take the DVD very seriously, to me that’s like a movie of its own, not just a few pieces put together. But you have to know how to wait until the audience is really going wild for the DVD – then it’s twice the fun.

RS: When did you start getting interested in movies?

QT: I think I got that with my babymilk. I also got the job at the videostore with the words I’d be a walking video encyclopedia.

RS: How many movies do you watch during a week?

QT: Hard to say. While I am working, like now, it’s only very few. A few days ago I watched ‘The Italian Job’, and I liked it, from the directing to the actors.

RS: Where do you get your best ideas?

QT: Mostly, when I’m in my music room and play old records and sing along to them. In the trailer to Kill Bill you can hear Japanese music, which I ran into while browsing my collection. I liked it so much that I just had to put it in somewhere.

(Translated from german into english)

Tarantino XX BluRay
Bad Mother Fucker Pulp Fiction Wallet