The Very Best of Quentin Tarantino & his Favorite Actors (short documentary)

there's like anesthetic working in Melville's work that you get a sense that you don't have to know how to make a movie if you truly love cinema with all your heart and with enough passion you can't help but make a good movie you don't have to go to school you don't have to know a lens you know a 40 and a 50 and a [ __ ] all that [ __ ] crossing the line none of that shit's important if you just truly love cinema with enough passion and you really love it then you can't help but make a good movie [Music] if there's one thing that I've done that I'm like the proudest of of everything alright is the fact that people talk about wow you've had such success and it's just been so overnight and whatever well whatever success I've God has come after like eight years of just nothing working out yeah I worked in that video store in a in Manhattan Beach California for many years you know it says line you know I couldn't get anything sold as a writer and couldn't get any money made to direct any films that was like my one that store was my one source of artistic expression you know buying the right films recommending the films you know I even it used to have these little mini film festivals every week what I would do is I would do like a new theme I did my own little heist home section and I remember like looking I'd seen most of these before but I remember like looking at them all up on the shelf and I remember thinking to myself yeah you know they haven't done a heist film in a long time I'd like to see one of those again these are this is a really cool genre yeah and so that would put the germ in my head you know and so then later on I wrote one hey your name's mr. Brown mr. white mr. blonde mr. blue mr. orange mr. pink why my mr. pink because you're a [ __ ] alright take some money buy film put it in your refrigerator and if you're the kind of person they'll make a movie but you know every time you open up the refrigerator get some milk you get some whatever and you see film looking back on you you'll make that'll make the movie am i right give me the argue but the best argument you know for the power of cinema oh gosh you know um you know one of the things about cinema that I just find very moving it's why it's it's my favorite art form is there's a lot of things there's a lot of people will have much different aesthetics about what it is that they like about cinema to me what gets me is when you go to a movie and you see a certain sequence and if there is real cinematic power and there's cinematic Flair like there are these there are certain filmmakers out there that you feel we're touched by God to make move and it would be a combination of editing and sound and some usually it's like visual images connected with music or something but when those things work and they really connect and you know an example could be the final gunfight sequence and the gun and the gun tube and the ugly like a sequence I can't ever imagine popping that's like through the one sequence I can't ever imagine doing anything that good it's just like you forget to breathe you are really transported to a different place and music doesn't quite do that on its own and novels don't quite do it and a painting doesn't quite do it it does they do it their way but within cinema especially if you're in a theater and you're sharing the experience with a bunch of other people so it's this masked thing going on it's just it's just truly truly thrilling September 23rd 1994 opening night in New York Film Festival sure movie it's playing in the heart with the adrenaline shot yeah someone passes out is having a seizure what did you think this movie [ __ ] works I do like the idea that I can like do to the audience laughs laughs laughs stop laughing stop laughing laughs I I'm interested in playing any part that Quentin writes really and and that was when we when we work together last it was a everybody's feeling all the actors at one was were coming into a line if he wants us to or come and play a big putt doesn't matter but if he wants this would be there he thought you know John might be really good for this so he presented it to me and I read it and I thought it was one of the best scripts I'd ever read yeah Jack told someone I favorite actors I've just been a big big fan of his for like a really long time yeah he was great concern like fever and urban cowboy and in particularly in blowout that's like one of my favorite performances of all time and I just haven't seen him like used in a movie the way you know I thought he should be used either way I would use walk out the door get in the car go home jerk off and s are you gonna do when you did Travolta mmm-hmm when you brought him in for pulp fiction did you have any sense that you wanted to recreate his career there's something I think one of the worst things that happens in Hollywood is a very uncreated 'no swen it comes to casting and part of that uncreate if 'ti that uh NART lessness that happens in casting is you basically have the same names on this list that the studio makes alright and it's the same as the saying like list of names that are working on the high-profile films every once in a while somebody else gets in there but it's usually better better be young they better be a youngster alright and I'm not talking about Harrison Ford and Tom Hanks I'm talking about all the way down to the character actors the bumbling sheriff and everything of the the corrupt sheriff and his bumbling deputies a list for all of those kinds of roles yeah and it's like there's the high profile a character actor and that's why when you go see Hollywood movies you see the same big kind of more or less bigger name character actors in five six movies alright and what happens is as five years goes on some of them stay on that list some of them drop off new people come on alright Robert Forster didn't go anywhere alright he's been working but he's way off that list and he's like doing like straight-to-video movies and stuff and some of those movies are okay and some of them are even pretty good and some of them are horrible but he's good in all of them alright and the thing is I don't have that list I have a good memory I know that Robert Forster is still there and he's still kicking butt alright I know Pam Grier is still there and she's still kicking butt I've got a much longer list and the only thing you need to be to be on that list is a good actor point in my career when I stopped getting work and I was getting a lousy work and I had three four kids two ex-wives I was trying to get the kids through college I began to worry that this was not going to happen for me I walk in as every morning I do I came out out that door Quentin Tarantino he said in my seat and before I can even get to the table he lifts up a script he hands it to me and he says read this see if you like it no chasing no nothing this guy gave me a gift the size of which cannot be exaggerated and and that put the career back into motion he's a director and writer in demand right the biggest stores the biggest people want him and he's going to tell me he's gonna invest two years of his life to write something for me and I'm gonna believe it hey and then he tells me again another year later I'm gonna okay now this has got to stop okay you know don't it don't break my heart I actually think if people are like knowing about my movies thirty or fifty years from now it's gonna be because of the characters that I created what is it that makes you two sort of perfect cinematic cinematic partners I used to feel like sort of a fragile person you know kind of waved like and and it's not that I don't feel that way anymore but it's it made me feel powerful to find your own thresholds of endurance and have to push them further and then think you've met you know your setpoint your breaking point some point you won't pass in this movie when I would hit those points I still would be only at 5% of what he needed me to do I just never knew that I could I could I could bear the weight of that I could I could have the strength I could have the energy I had such such reserves of endurance it kind of makes a lot of other things in life seem so much more manageable I mean made me feel like wow I'm I'm I'm made of stronger stuff than I thought the most influential piece of film criticism I've ever read of my aesthetic that applied to me very young I remember reading it at that at Philippe's that French sandwich plays all right I had one appalling Cales books and I'm reading her review of a band of outsiders also known as Banda par which I named my company after she's reviewing guitars movie and she says it says if a couple of movie crazy young French young Frenchmen or in a coffee coffee house all right and they've taken a banal American crime novel and they're making a movie out of it based not on the novel but on the poetry that they read between the lines and when I read that I was like that's my aesthetic that's what I want to do that is what I want to achieve and he actually thinks that you deserve to see it on film like he did when he was a kid and I'm sure that there's this generation the kids growing up who watched films digitally who have no idea what he's talking about a white thinks it's such a big deal but one of these days when they get to be 40 or so years old and they're beaming movies directly to your [ __ ] head yeah and the post are you going to movie to see it you because I miss going to the movies I was just getting to learn Quentin Tarantino so he was again a tyrant you know he was he was at this do not [ __ ] my film up Tyron in the sense that is he insist on every word being just the way he wrote it that's what you want you you want you wanna you want a director who even if you're going off the cliff you know that you're going off the [ __ ] cliff don't you want the freedom to also kind of and without him know the first day of rehearsal I'm reading my lines like yeah did-did-did cut but then Nesbitt and he said cut can I talk to you for a second clothes doing oh what the [ __ ] is that I knew I was gonna have this problem uh-huh listen all of this [ __ ] you have to be a [ __ ] slave okay he's a slave he's not cool he's a [ __ ] slave right he doesn't know how to read you come in with your [ __ ] Louie bag and your [ __ ] Range Rover and your [ __ ] Jessa I'm so [ __ ] you're not Jim Brown he's a [ __ ] slave and then and then he becomes the hero but lose that [ __ ] door swings open he walks out Wow would you work with Quentin Tarantino again or is it just two guys housing time oh you know if I'm doing a movie about slavery I don't mind traumatizing the audience you should be somewhat traumatized and watching a film about about slavery you you you need to know what America was like at that time you need to know what slavery means per se to some people like the way you die he has enough problem being being vilified himself as a racist because he uses [ __ ] and his scripts that much or puts those kinds of words and a character's mouth but you know I always tell people I don't understand why they can't look at his work and realize that every character he's ever given me has pretty much been the smartest character in the film it has the most dignity and respect and kind of runs things and his his is not a fool of any sort and understands a whole lot about what's going on in life and in the world and for him to write characters like that for me would be impossible for your racists to do thanks Quinn you too man amen you too man thank you I've always believed that I wanted to have a novelist write to have to write characters that are however they are they have to be interesting they have to be fascinating but you don't have to like them now actually in some of the cases I want to make it actually hard for you to like them but you like them anyway and then though that's on you now when I finish that script I knew that Colonel Landa was one of the greatest characters I've ever written in one of the greatest characters I will ever write I think I was quite white rightfully proud of that character I didn't think I was going to find it and I called the producers and said look if we can't find the right Londe I'd rather just publish this script and do something else if we don't find him I'm pulling the plug on Thursday and we're just gonna publish the script and that's gonna be it tell me where you're acting life was when you got this grip from Quentin Tarantino you know for the region it was satisfyingly okay for me as a person it was frustratingly not okay one of the things about the character is the fact that he's a linguistic genius it is just simply one of the main one of the aspects about the character and I knew that whatever actor I cast to play this has to be as much of a linguistic genius as Londe is or else he would never he would never come off the page he would he would be trapped on the page and actually to do the best job they could have they could try they could try but if they just didn't have that in as part of their character it just wouldn't work well the thing about language for example you know this guy speaks several languages okay you know there there are a few people in this world who speak several languages like you know it's not such an accomplishment really but but you know what does it mean to speak a language and what to what aim and what goals does a person employ the usage of language and on what level does he communicate but I relearned the the you know the enthusiasm and and kind of yeah I hesitate to say it but why should I hesitate love for my craft and that you can learn from Quentin I wasn't being cavalier when I said I wouldn't make it this movie meant everything to me but there was something there was also something very liberating about knowing he wanted it exactly the way it had to be and you would walk away from it rather than make a compromise and then the audition and there you know you expect this zany enfant terrible kind of wild guy yeah mr. Tarantino mr. Tarantino everything we know about mr. Dino and you get in the room and and there's this this refined gentleman immensely polite they ask you to sit down and converses you know funny ly inspired and then asks asks whether you would mind to read and I thought kidding I can just tell you the day that Christophe came walked in the room sat down and read two scenes I remember thinking and Lawrence was sitting right next to me go we're making a movie [Music] [Laughter] whenever Quinton says here's the thing you better pay attention because he's about to say something very important you do a good job you get it cool man you get a really great take dose crunches for a head nod and you get to sometimes and every once in a while when you hit that sweet spot you'll get a genius I never got that [Applause] Kristof did and as for the depth of his work like the Tavor seen in Basterds for example you would find that the German movie star in double agent bridget von hammersmark is based on a real-life third reich star Zara lettner who was reportedly a spy for England the clandestine meeting takes place in the tavern la Louisiane it's named after a two-star Parisian Hotel where Quentin wrote pulp fiction the characters are forced to play a game that tests one's knowledge of pop culture history and more specifically cinema the game references an Apache an Apache Indian a polish film star and King Kong which all leads to a discussion about American slavery and it's beneath this level we find the gist of the scene covertly reminding the audience that other nations also carry shame and pain from their own atrocities in true Quinta knees or Quentin knees I would say that's a bad move that must say damn good stuff huh and if you've happened to forgotten what you loved about movies in the first place I tell you you only have to spend one night with Quentin well not in that way I mean like an evening with Quentin yeah I said that to Quentin on the third day I remember exactly up there in the Hills next to the farmhouse and I said you know and I'm grateful that you remind me of the reason why I have become an actor there is this element that is that is alluded to it's absolutely true and there's a certain pride that goes with it and it's just there's a certain sense of isolation that goes with it Orson Welles had his mercury players and to be able to sort of be in a category like that with Tarantino that that's that's not an untruth the feeling that you have when you're working and in years to come you you have the feeling that his movies will be studied they'll look at them and they will we were just talking about today in group there was one fellow was putting in that term that Quentin talked about into groups of threes and the fact that you you were involved with that on a very important level I think I think what you allude to sometimes with a question like that is that's that is there mm that's not lost on us [Music] [Applause]

Channel: Best of Humans

Views: 768,650

Rating: 4.9277925 out of 5

Keywords: quentin tarantino, uma thurman, tim roth, samuel l jackson, brad pitt, jaime foxx, leonardo dicaprio, christoph waltz, harvey keitel, jon travolta, david carradine, pam grier, robert forrster, video essay, film, film critic, pauline kael, director, movies, passion, education, robert forster

Id: zt1rl1d3xF0

Length: 19min 59sec (1199 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 28 2019