As part of our Empire 30 celebrations, we delivered your reader questions to the one and only Quentin Tarantino. Originally published in the July 2019 issue of Empire.
You had Qs for QT, lots of them, ranging from the serious (his formative years) to the arcane (his current LaserDisc facilities). Well, allow him to retort.
The Good, The Bad And The Ugly is your favourite film. But what is your favourite shot from it? – Abigail Tanner
That’s easy. During the three-way bullring showdown at the end, the music builds to the giant orchestra crescendo, and when it gets to the first big explosion of the theme there’s a wide shot of the bullring. After you’ve seen all the little shots of the guys getting into position, you suddenly see the whole wideness of the bullring and all the graves around them. It’s my favourite shot in the movie, but I’ll even say it’s my favourite cut in the history of movies.
What inspired Drexl Spivey [Gary Oldman] in True Romance? – Danny Welch
Well, I wrote Drexl for myself to play. Because I didn’t think it would get made as a Tony Scott movie — I thought it would be, like, an $800,000 movie. I thought, “No-one’s going to let me play Clarence, but I could maybe play Drexl in a cheaper movie.” So basically it was just a role that I thought I would do a good job with.
Alright, Quentin. Everyone says I look like you. Who have you been told you look like? – Sandy Nelson
Well, when I was younger I did resemble Kurt Russell a little bit. And in my twenties I resembled Elvis a little bit because I was trying to look like Elvis. I had a pompadour, my hair was dyed black and I had sideburns. I don’t know how much I looked like him, but I was trying to look like him!
What’s your favourite memory from your Video Archives [the video rental store he worked in] days? – Kavey Ang
One would be the camaraderie of the guys who worked there. The way you have those friendships in your twenties where you’re like a little family and do everything together. We went to the movies all the time, we watched movies all the time in the store, we talked about them ad nauseam — people came in the store just to talk to us. It was just a lot of fun. But my greatest memory is my first real girlfriend — the first girl I ever really fell in love with and she loved me back. She was a girl named Grace Lovelace, who started working at the videostore. Meeting her and the relationship we had for three years is my favourite memory of that time.
You appeared in four episodes of Alias. Can you reveal an alias that you’ve used for hotel bookings etc? – Matthew Cavill
The name oftentimes that I used, especially when I was going to Austin a lot for my QT-Fest, was William Devane’s name from Rolling Thunder: Charlie Rane.
Captain America: The Winter Soldier references Pulp Fiction. Do you watch Marvel films? – Phil Crocker
I haven’t been keeping up to date with them for, I guess, the last four years. I think the only comic-book movies I saw last year at theatres were Wonder Woman and Black Panther. But about a couple of weeks ago I started catching up with some of the Marvel movies so I could go see Endgame. I just finished Captain America: Civil War, so next up is Doctor Strange. Actually, the last one I saw was Thor: Ragnarok. I loved it. It was my favourite one of the series since The Avengers — drastically my favourite.
How many films do you watch a week? – Andrew Carr
Right now, frankly not that many. When I’m done with this movie and my life is my own again, I’ll start watching stuff again. It’s funny, the first time I met Scorsese we talked about this. I was in Vegas when he was doing Casino and I got invited to the set on a Thursday. They mentioned at the production office that they were having an Anthony Mann double-feature on 16mm that Saturday — Raw Deal and T-Men or something. And I go to Scorsese, “Oh wow, you going?” “No, no, I can’t.” “Why not?” He said, “I can’t watch anything that good! When I’m making a movie I can watch Antonio Margheriti all day, but I can’t watch an Anthony Mann movie.” And that’s where I’ve kinda found myself too. When I was making [Once Upon A Time In Hollywood], I got into a big kick on ’70s TV movies. And I had about three or four friends on the crew watching them all with me. I also got on a Darren McGavin kick, where I wanted to watch episodes of shows that he guested on, his Mannix, his Man From U.N.C.L.E., his Mission: Impossible. That kind of stuff, that I didn’t have to pay too much attention to, but still enjoyed. That’s not to say I didn’t love them, but they were one step back.
You have famously used a large purple dildo named Big Jerry to wake up sleeping actors. Where is Big Jerry now? – Alex Evans
He’s in my office. [Laughs] He’s in a little purple sack — or rather a big purple sack. And he’s not coming out again.
Of all your characters, who was the most fun to write? – James Clayton
Oh wow, that’s a good question. Probably Colonel Hans Landa [Inglourious Basterds]. The minute he enters a scene, he dominates it. All the things that he was supposed to be good at, he was that good at them. I found I had a really interesting situation with him that has been hard to have with any other character. It was the fact he was not only a bad guy, not only a Nazi, but a Nazi known as the Jew Hunter, who is finding Jews and sending them to the concentration camp, but when he shows up towards the end of the movie, kinda figuring out what the Basterds are doing, the audience wants him to. They’re not rooting for him, but it’s a fucking movie, and if he figures it out it’s going to be a more exciting movie! You know, you don’t want him to let you down. We’ve set up that he knows everybody’s secrets, so he’s got to know theirs. And it will make a more exciting climax if he does.
In a world of Netflix, can we rely on you to still own a LaserDisc player? – Simon Cripps
Oh yeah, absolutely. I love my LaserDisc player. There’s a few films that I don’t have on video or DVD — I only have them on LaserDisc. And I have no reason to update them, because I like my LaserDiscs! The last one I watched was Dressed To Kill. I have many versions of Dressed To Kill, but for whatever reason I like watching it on LaserDisc.
Have you ever seen a Carry On film? – Barry Francis
I’ve seen scenes from them, alright? I wanted to see them when I was younger, like eight or nine, because my stepfather brought them up. And every once in a while you’d see little suggestive ads for them in the newspaper — Carry On Cleo, Frankie Howerd’s Up Pompeii!… [Laughs] But I’ve never watched one from beginning to end.
I was fortunate to see you on Broadway with Marisa Tomei in Wait Until Dark. Why do you not do more stage work? – Martin Blackburn
Because that was so traumatic! Look, that was fun. But it’s just a huge commitment of time. I kinda got it out of my system, frankly, doing that play. If I wasn’t a director, if I didn’t have the situation to do what I get to do, then yeah, maybe. But during that time when I was kinda pursuing acting, there was this thing where whether you liked my acting or not, there seemed to be a negative attitude about it. I actually understand it a little bit now, more than I did then, when I just thought it was unfair. I get it now a little bit more: “Hey, if you’ve got the time to hang out for three months on somebody’s stupid fucking movie, you’ve got time to write another script! So why aren’t you doing it?”
How do you rank the screen Bonds? – David Chin
Sean Connery, Pierce Brosnan, then just a little under him, Roger Moore. And then everybody else. Connery’s at the top, but I really, really like Pierce Brosnan. I didn’t care for the movies that they put him in, which I always thought was a bit of a tragedy, because I thought he was a very legitimate Bond. I’m a huge Roger Moore fan — I just like Roger Moore a little better when he’s not playing Bond.
How different would True Romance be if you had directed it? – Simon Appleton
It would have been fairly similar, but with two big differences. I would have done my original ending, where Clarence dies. And I would have had all the comedy and all the romance, but it would have been a little rougher. And with it being a little rougher, we could have earned the more tear-jerking ending. I mean, with the fairy-tale popcorn movie that Tony made, that almost would have been a dirty trick, killing Clarence. You would have had to have earned the ending that I wrote, and I think I would have earned it more. But Tony made exactly the movie he wanted to make, and ultimately I think he made the right choice for the movie he made.
Has there ever been a scene or line of dialogue where you’ve read it back, thought, “That’s too extreme”? – Peter Aitken
Yeah, a couple of times. Nothing I necessarily remember, but every once in a while, especially when you’re dealing with profanity and curse words and energetic invective, you write something and all of a sudden go, “That sounds too ugly. That’s uglier than I thought it would be.”
What made you pick Liverpool for your Death Proof premiere? – Sean Ponzini
Usually when you do press in England you go to London, do shit there and then they send you to Manchester and maybe Glasgow. But that time I said to them, “Let me go to Liverpool. I’ve never been.” I had three days there, just to mix it up. I actually have an anecdote from that trip that I’m very, very proud of. I was walking around and spotted a used-record store. I always go into them. So I’m in there looking at a bunch of stuff, and it’s almost an hour before I even start talking to anybody. And I’m hearing the two guys who run the store talking, and they’re already impressed with me big time, not because of who I am, but because I’m not another American asking them about a bunch of Beatles shit! And when I did ask them about something, it was a real cool thing. I’d read in Alex Cox’s Spaghetti Western book [10,000 Ways to Die: A Director’s Take on the Spaghetti Western] that the theme Ringo Starr did for Blindman [but wasn’t in the end used] is the B-side of ‘Back Off Boogaloo’. So I go, “Hey, do you guys have the 45 of ‘Back Off Boogaloo’, with ‘Blindman’ as the B-side?” Well, that they didn’t mind! [Laughs] “Fuckin’ hell, yeah!” I mean, that is really knowing your shit! They dug that!
You’re known for your movie soundtracks. But please settle an argument for me: what’s the best decade for music? – Jo Webb
Well, that’s kind of not fair, because everybody will pick their pre-teen years. Why wouldn’t you? But I guess we’re talking about the ’50s, ’60s or ’70s. And I would have to say the ’60s now, not because I’m promoting my movie, but because I’ve been in such a deep dive on it for the last two to three years. But I think that’s actually legit, because you’ve got the great pop bubblegum hits on one side, you’ve got Bob Dylan on another side… and on and on.
What is the Gimp’s backstory in Pulp Fiction, and what happened to him after Butch left? – Radu Andronescu
It doesn’t quite play this way in the movie, but in my mind when I wrote it, the Gimp’s dead. Butch knocked him out and then when he passed out he hung himself. In terms of backstory, he was like a hitchhiker or somebody that they picked up seven years ago, and they trained him so he’s the perfect victim. I heard a funny thing from Jon Lovitz, who knew Stephen Hibbert, the guy who played the Gimp, from The Groundlings. Jon watches Pulp Fiction for the first time and is like, “What the fuck is this?” And he stays in the theatre as the credit crawl is going on and sees Stephen’s name. He said out loud, “WHAT? I know the Gimp?!” [Laughs uproariously]
You worked on Crimson Tide. What’s your favourite submarine movie? – Lizzie Hampson
It would be between Crimson Tide — I’m happy to say — and The Hunt For Red October. My third one would probably be Gray Lady Down. Charlton Heston and David Carradine. It’s a good one.
Do you think people misunderstood Death Proof? – Claire Waddingham
Well, in America they got Grindhouse. In the UK you got Death Proof. With Grindhouse, I think me and Robert just felt that people had a little more of a concept of the history of double features and exploitation movies. No, they didn’t. At all. They had no idea what the fuck they were watching. It meant nothing to them, alright, what we were doing. So that was a case of being a little too cool for school. But as far as the movie playing in England as the movie, I think people took it okay. Although there is a story.
I’m in London doing press on the film before opening weekend. And I go to Edgar Wright, “Hey, let’s you and me and your friends go see it on Friday night in Piccadilly.” So Nira [Park], his producer, and Joe Cornish and the whole Edgar group, we head into the heart of Piccadilly Circus to go see Death Proof on opening day. And we walk in the theatre and there’s about 13 people in there. On the opening 8.30 show, alright? [Laughs] That was a rather humbling experience. But we sat down and watched it and had a good time. Edgar was like [launches into Edgar Wright impression that sounds more like Jason Statham], “That was very impressive. I think I would have turned around and walked out of there. The fact you said, ‘Fuck it,’ and sat down, I admired that.’”
Your first Hollywood job was as PA on a Dolph Lundgren workout video, Maximum Potential. Was it a good experience? – Robin Brekke
Yeah, it was a ball! It was me and Roger Avary working on it, and John Langley and Malcolm Barbour who created the show Cops, just before they created it. John Langley used to come into Video Archives, so he knew us and thought, “Oh, I’m going to give those guys a shot.” It was really fun, though the cinematographer was really, really mean to me. But I remember going down to Venice Beach and there’s this grassy area where Dolph Lundgren is going to do his exercises, with people behind him following along. And there’s just an acre of dogshit, all over this small area of grass. So me and Roger have to clean it up, alright? We’re scooping up the dogshit and the crew is fucking around, and me and Roger are going, “This is literally a shitty job.” We start talking about how we want to be directors one day and I go, “The day when I’m a director, man, I’m gonna be out there with the PAs, scooping up the dogshit right with them!” Cut to Pulp Fiction. We’re out there shooting something and sure enough, there’s a bunch of grass and some dogshit on it. And they grab a couple of PAs and go, “Clean that shit up.” And I go [sighs], “Okaaaay...” I joined them, I grabbed a shovel and I did a couple of scoops. I had a debt to pay.
