Listen to: Elvis Mitchell's interview with Quentin Tarantino on "The Treatment"Tarantino and Mitchell devote a lot of time to discussing storytelling in Hollywood film, exploitation cinema, the spectator's relationship to screen violence, and representations of gender in film. Identify three points that Tarantino makes with regard to these topics that you find the most interesting.
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Tarantino made a lot of interesting points in the interview. I loved how he presented the changing of movie theater experience. It’s really true. The first major point he mentioned was about exploitation cinema. I always thought critics didn’t like those movies because they had bad acting or were low budget. I never thought of it the way Tarantino does. He thinks critics hate exploitation movies because they aren’t conventional. They aren’t what you expect. Back then that bothered people. The second major point Tarantino discussed is America was known as the greatest storytellers. I never knew that. Now, Tarantino thinks we are the worst. You shouldn’t know everything that is going to happen in the movie or all the information in the first 20 minutes. Movies nowadays are about situations, not stories. Situations are presented in the beginning and the rest of the movie just tries to like up to the situation. The final major point Tarantino talked about was violence in his movies. Tarantino always sets up the violence. Like in Kill Bill, Tarantino always plays the same music before Kiddo fights anyone. If nothing happened after that music, we would be mad. After all the setup we want that violent act to happen. Then when the violence does happen, we get mad and grossed out at times. We claim we didn’t want that to happen, even though secretly we did. Onscreen violence is a lose-lose situation. No matter what the filmmaker does, someone will be mad. I guess that’s the life of a filmmaker.
Quentin Tarantino confidently says the he revels in being able to “use people’s subliminal knowledge of cinema against them” in the KCRW radio show “The Treatment” with Elvis Mitchell. Tarantino obviously has a vast knowledge of cinema but he claims that his audience does too. By seeing so many movies in their lifetimes and by movies being such an embedded part of our culture an audience has certain expectations of a movie and the way it is told. Tarantino said that he likes leading an audience down a road and the taking them left. For example, in “Death Proof” the audience is presented with the story of a group of very modern women and the makings of a slasher movie. However, after the very long set up and a satisfying punch line instead of following the killer on his spree we jump to another town and another group of modern women. We spend more time with them and the effect is that Tarantino is completely controlling the audience. He says the audience didn’t even realize they were being lead because what they were feeling was what they expected but when that anticipation is disrupted the audience can tell the difference. Mitchell and Tarantino feel that this is why exploitation films of the seventies got such bad reviews. They were not what critics or audiences expected based on the conventions of cinema they were used to.
However, in terms of storytelling exploitations films were, according to Tarantino, better than they are today. Tarantino feels that there has been a steep decline in the caliber of American storytelling. He makes a very good point that movies today are situations not stories. Everything is set up in the first twenty minutes and the rest of the movie is living up to that situation. A story is winding and goes on tangents and at the end you ask your self how you started in one place and ending in the other. I completely agree with this statement. Stories are more compelling than situations because you don’t know where you are going or how you are getting there. Being mindlessly lead through a movie is no fun. There is a balance that can be struck when giving out information to an audience and I think studio films today feel the American audience is less intelligent that they really are.
Tarantino was asked about how there was not a real monologue in Grindhouse a departure from his past films and if it was because he did not have the right actor to do the film. Tarantino responds that it is about his writing and that the actors must be able to say it and sing it. They have to be able to work with the material that he writes. I never thought about death proof as a musical but after hearing this I can kind of see the comparison. He did complement the actresses in death proof and labeled one of the as his female Samuel Jackson.
I liked how he talked about how he uses the viewer’s knowledge of cinema against them. He talked about how he leads the viewers down a path and that they think they know where the film is going and then he intentionally goes a different direction and pulls the rug out from under them. He then went further to talk about how America used to be the Country that made movies with stories and now we are the worst. They no longer tell stories, they set up situations in the first twenty minutes and then the rest of the film is devoted to this situation, it is not a story. A story is constantly unfolding and this no longer occurs. Again I never really looked at movies in this way but I can see his point. Today’s movies do start out with a situation and the rest of the movie is usually devoted to solving that problem or situation. They are not really stories. You see the initial situation and then you pretty much know where the film is going and are not really left guessing what is going to happen next.
I liked how Tarantino talked about the violence in his movies. He talked about how if he did it right the viewer would want to see the violence. He used the example of the car crash, by the time the viewer see it coming they actually want to see it. Then after seeing it they decide it was too graphic and they did not actually want to see it and his response is too bad. It is another way he pulls the rug out from under the viewer and throws them for a curve. They go from wanting to see the violence to complaining about it.
Tarantino has a lot very interesting point of view about today cinema. The first thing is that He mention about the experience about the feeling of cinema, when the audience sitting down and watch the movie it too much of exploited or commercial like feeling to the movie. By trying to bring back the old seventy styles or early eighty style of storytelling. Even try to bring back some of the classic style or old school tailor before the movie was play. Making the audience feel the experience when they where young again or bring back memory from the past.
Next points that he mention in the interview on the radio, one thing that he mention in the interview is about the cast of his movie. He mention this about this most of the time what he what female characters to be like Samuel L. Jackson in his past movies. He would like the female characters to be kind of sexy but with strong male influence. The next thing he mentions is about is the form of storytelling. He mentions that some the American movie is losing their form of storytelling, how he what to keep some of his form of storytelling in the movie.
-Tony-
The End
I thought it was interesting that Tarantino sort of prefaced the whole of the interview with a discussion of what theater used to be. He alluded to the fact that people used to get ready and go to the movies not as a way to pass an otherwise boring evening, but to have an experience, to be inundated with the cinematic experience and go home having seen a story acted out and really been entertained by it. Now the experience is more about the two hours you’ll spend watching the movie, and not the first moment you walk into a cinecomplex. He made a very interesting point here about the digressive vs. the discursive nature of storytelling in present day cinema. “USA is the worst story tellers now, a story is not a situation, it unfolds…” QT directs both digressively, straying from the main point of the movie to tell us something about a character’s back-story as seen in Kill Bill and others, and discursively, by digging into the nuances of his characters just enough for them to become more interesting to the audience, further investing them to the film.
Then there was Mitchell’s point about violence being treated as a musical number in Tarantino’s films. QT agrees with this assessment, calling his treatment of violence and monologue a ‘cinematic set piece’, something that is both ‘outside of the body of the piece, yet is what the piece is about’. It is in this vein that QT entraps his audience within the dialogue and violence his films run on; he sets up scenes in which expected violence takes place, except QT puts that level of violence just above what the audiences needs to see to be gratified thus reminding them that it is still violent. In the midst of all this, QT uses his audience’s subliminal knowledge of film to move the story along. The poppy references and ‘to date’ lingo actually function as a device to move the story past the musical violence and biblical monologues he comes up with and puts together a story that is truly entertaining.
The first point I found interesting in the listening is how Tarantino approaches his dialog in Death Proof like a play. He says that he really enjoyed listening to his actresses sing his dialog, and if he wanted he could have let them talk for the whole 90 minutes because so much is revealed about them as well as important plot points. I agree when he says it is important to bury the plot in the dialog. He describes it as a "marbling in free talking" and he has a real skill in making these clues subtle enough that you may not consciously pick up on them until a second viewing. An example of this is the word choice of Stunt Man Mike when he offers Pam a ride at the end of the night. He never once says he will take her home, but because of Pam's assumptions and the subtlety of the dialog we assume with her until Stunt Man Mike makes his intentions all too clear. On a second viewing however, his distinction between a ride and a ride home is painfully obvious. It becomes torturous to watch as Pam repeatedly makes fatal assumptions.
The second point I found interesting is how Tarantino makes distinctions about stories and situations. The saying about Hollywood films lately is that if you've seen the first 20 minutes you've seen the movie. Tarantino's likening of these films to situations concisely sums up why that saying is true, because for the next 70 minutes or so the film works it way through the scenario it has set up for itself. But a story changes and grows, it evolves with its characters. Thinking of Kill Bill, this must have been a challenge, since even the title dictates the conclusion the film marches to. The achronological structure, as well as the sequence of the woven stories is a brilliant solution that preserves the story.
Lastly, Tarantino's discussion about his choice to avoid nudity in Death Proof is very interesting, if not even endearing. Following the tradition of grind house movies, exploiting nudity and sex is well within boundaries. He first defends his adherence to tradition by stating "it is full of legs and ass and feet and boobs", but eventually concedes that he wouldn't ask his actresses to do that. Which is kinda sweet. But his second reason is what really stands out to me. He said that he didn't want nudity to be a disengagement. Nudity evokes objectification, and with that a loss of power. He wanted strong female characters and wanted them to retain their power. It is rare for a director to care about the power of his female characters so much. Even films touting powerful heroins like Catwoman or the Resident Evil series resort to some form of objectification. So Tarantino's refusal to strip his characters' power is something I truly respect him for.
LAST post!
In “The Treatment” interview with QuentinTarantino, three points were talked about that were very interesting. First point is his concept and idea for starting Grindhouse; which is for the spectator to experience a double feature night, not just feel like they are renting a television for two hours. Tarantino is trying to reestablish that feel of the seventies—going to the movies and getting stoned before you go, etc…--that’s the feeling behind he wants to re-establish. The second interesting point Tarantino raises is how America use to be the storytellers and now they are considered the worst. Tarantino goes on to explain that films now a days are just situations dragged on. The film’s first twenty minutes basically shows what the film is about and then the rest of the film tells what led up to that outcome. Or, everything in the movie is squeezed into the last twenty minutes and the beginning of the film leads up to that final ending. Either way, Tarantino believes the best films are films that expose little by little; building up suspense and emotion. Looking at Tarantino’s films, he clearly uses this idea in all aspects. He uses this concept, which is partially embedded in his dialogue, to add depth to his characters and to reveal little breadcrumbs of what is going to happen. The third interesting point Tarantino presents is the “slasher” genre and how it can depict sexuality as well as the genre itself. Typically, these films begin with a female posse and the movie shows how each girl is different. The film basically sets up the final girl who is the outward, weird girl. This genre, which is used for Deathproof, enables Tarantino to do both genre and exploitation in one film.
1. Tarantino talks about how he uses the audience’s subliminal knowledge of cinema against them. Our collective knowledge of slasher films has us following the filmmaker’s bread-crumbs in a particular direction. Tarantino is really pulling back the curtains on the manipulative nature of cinema and how filmmakers have to be very conscious of where they are taking the viewer. We identify our heroines and the threat, and then we head down the road where some characters die but the bad guy is inevitably and satisfyingly destroyed. It is our knowledge and experience of film history that sets us on this path. In the grindhouse tradition, Tarantino pulls the rug out from under our expectations, but, in the end, actually gives us the denouement that the genre and the audience demands. Our collective knowledge and the auteur’s manipulation make it all possible.
2. I enjoyed how Tarantino was interested in bringing back the whole grindhouse experience at the movies. He spends a great deal of time talking about how going to the movies was a more complete evening of entertainment back in the 1970’s. The theaters were bigger, the posters were crazier, the evening was longer, and the experience was more comprehensive. Today, Tarantino posits that we merely rent a seat for a couple of hours. I found his motivation thought-provoking in that it places a slightly different perspective on this Rodriguez-Tarantino collaboration. The double-feature is about more than the movies themselves. Grindhouse, instead, is meant to be the kind of night-out-at-the-movies experience that simply doesn’t exist anymore. The fact that these are exploitation films is important to the project, certainly, but Tarantino’s more global perspective is much more ambitious than simple dead genre recreation. He wants us to experience, and even spark a renaissance, in an extinct movie-going thrill.
3. Finally, I enjoyed the discussion of movie violence in the Mitchell-Tarantino interview. I’ve never heard a director address the issue in such a straightforward manner. He aspired to play with our emotions with the violence and get us involved. He uses the example of the head-on collision to illustrate this manipulative strategy. Tarantino wants us to root for the head-on collision at some level, and then -- when we see the horrific consequences -- try to pull back from our complicity. We want it, we’re horrified by it, and we change our minds when our heroines are gone. This exploitation movie arc puts us on an emotional rollercoaster of engagement with the characters and the violence. Exploitation films seem like a good study ground for the manipulative tools of cinema in general. If something works with an audience, the B-movies will have already tried it in every over-the-top manner imaginable. Undisguised by mainstream niceties, the exploitation film unabashedly pushes our buttons as an audience and exposes these core cinematic techniques for all to see. Sex, violence, or any technique that gets us paying and engaged.
I actually found about ten points in the Tarantino interview that I found interesting, partly because he's such an animated talker that you want to agree with everything that he's saying right then and there, even if afterwards (once you've gone back and thought about it) you won't agree at all. But a main point that really stood out to me was his talking of how storytelling has changed over the last three decades or so. He says that storytelling has been reduced down to the "movie situation comedy", where a situation happens in the first twenty minutes and then the audience spends the rest of their experience in the after effects of the situation. It's interesting to think about for someone like myself, who grew up with the late 80s and completely all of the 90s films. My generation really doesn't have that double experience where we can compare films from the late 60s and 70s where films were more storytelling than now (I believe he used "Macon County Line" as an example). We've been conditioned to want the goods up front, and even now you see the films that try to revisit the old ways getting bad reviews.
Another point I found interesting was Tarantino's shyness about asking actresses to be nude to become the audience's eye candy. This is only because Tarantino doesn't shy away from violence and racial slurs and so you would think that sex would be okay with him to. After hearing this, though, I realized that in all of his films (to date) you don't see the actresses actual flesh. As Tarantino pointed out, you see them in the skimpiest outfits, but never nude. Finally, Tarantino's choice not to incorporate his trademark monologues in "Death Proof" caught my attention. He explained it by stating, "If they can't sing my dialogue, then they don't belong on my set. Sam Jackson and Christopher Walkens don't grow on trees." It just reminds me that he was an actor first, and that he still rings true to finding the perfect actors/actresses that will bring out his dialouge, not just shock the audience with the star quality.
In the KCRW “The Treatment” interview we get to hear Tarantino discuss film and get specific insight on how he sees things with Death Proof, and most interestingly, film in general. In regards to exploitation film, I thought his comments on how the movie going experience has changed to be very interesting. He states that in the 70’s and with exploitation film, “You got a night out…It was an evenings entertainment, and now it has been reduced to ‘you rent a seat for two hours’.” He talks about going downtown LA to a theatre with giant murals, trailers, and tons of excitement. This is what Rodriguez and himself were trying to reproduce with Grind House, an experience and not just films. The project wasn’t just about creating two films, but trying to bring back the feeling of the days of exploitation and how going to the movies was more than “renting a seat”.
Tarantino also discusses the ideas of group dynamics and gender roles in film, something that has had strong focus in his own films. He tells a story about when he was younger and working at a video store, how him and the other guys working there would treat each other a certain way. He says that younger male groups can become kind of abusive to each other, and that they would become so used to the created dynamic of that group that once they (or he) was in a different situation they would catch themselves acting out, as though they are still in that other group atmosphere. I saw this as a metaphor for some of the groups he has created with characters in his movies, or even his movies in general. His movies can create these atmospheres (or groups of people) that probably couldn’t exist outside of their boundaries (e.g.: the film). The viewer can become involved with it and accept it, and once that is over (the film has ended), the real world outside of that dynamic might seem different. I think that Tarantino can do so successfully, taking the viewer to a created place or getting them involved with a certain group dynamic. It’s always convincible in its context, even though it might not stand a chance of existing in ‘reality’.
A third interesting comment (of many) that Tarantino makes, is this idea of story vs. situation. He states that American film was always great at story telling, and other countries were invested in other aspects of film. He says that we are the worst at it now, most films are setting up situations in the first 20 minutes and then the rest of the film are based on that. The difference he claims is that with story telling if you go from the end to the beginning you’d say ‘how’d I get here!?’, and that movies now are long versions of situation comedies. I don’t know that much about film history or even the current, but I could see this being true. In just thinking about his movies, this use of storytelling is evident, at the end I could look back at the beginning and say “how’d I end up here”.
Tarantino talks extensively about American screenwriting in the 60’s and 70’s as opposed to what it has transformed into in recently. He mentions that American screenwriters used to be known for complex storytelling elements and a plot that keeps unfolding throughout the duration of the script. He argues that today, Americans could possibly be known as the worst storytellers. He compares modern screenplays to expanded situational comedies, where everything about the characters is revealed within the first twenty minutes, and the rest of the movie builds off of what we already know. Tarantino’s goal in writing “Deathproof” was to challenge these predictable contemporary scripts and decrypt the turns the movie would eventually make.
Another main point Tarantino and Mitchell focused on was the spectator’s relationship to screen violence. Tarantino talked about how the violence in “Deathproof” is initially exactly what the viewer wants to see, but immediately afterwards, he or she questions it. He mentioned that in order to connect the audience with the girls who are eventually attacked, he had to put a lot of emphasis on character development. This accounts for the extensive dialogue between the girls before any action occurs. Tarantino mentions that in the belligerent sequence between Stunt Man Mike and the first group of girls, the result was inevitable. He states that the crash is exactly what the audience hopes will happen, but immediately after the sequence unfolds they may regret their wishes. This feeling is enhanced after the extensive conversations that the girls have, as the viewer may feel like they “know” the victims.
Tarantino talks a lot about exploitation films and how the experience of going out to a movie has changed over the years. In the 70’s, he mentions, going to see a grindhouse film or double feature was truly an event. He says that nowadays, movie-goers do not get this experience, and are even subjected to watching commercials before the movie starts: a real “buzz kill”. His goal for “Grindhouse” was to recapture this experience, fake trailers and all. 70’s exploitation films challenged all of the cinematic formalities, incorporating blatant sexual and violent elements into them, and this was Tarantino’s goal for “Grindhouse”.
Storytelling, exploitation, on-screen violence, gender: all of these topics seem to intertwine in Tarantino’s mind. He mentions that in slasher films, as coined by Carol J. Clover, we have the investigative gaze from the female’s perspective. We see this in Tarantino’s latest film Deathproof, asking the questions of who has the power in these films since, as Tarantino says, the gaze, “is a purely masculine trait in cinema. Also, Tarantino mentions the idea of being able to lead the audience down one long path, setting them up for the next step of the film violence, but never cluing us in until the last second. He also talks about Hollywood storytelling and how the audience knows about the history of this medium and how he has expectations for us and for himself to recognize when a film has been written for a certain type of moviegoer. All of these subjects come straight out of the slasher genre, from which Tarantino got his inspiration for Deathprooof.
The slasher genre almost caters to Taranitno’s favorite things about cinema. He has room to play around with “current dialogue” but he can focus on female characters, re-inventing his writing style for the opposite sex. The violence is still present but it is prolonged throughout the film to keep us on our toes, knowing something is coming but not how, why or when. Also, he can reinvent one of his favorite kinds of film, exploitation film. Tarantino talks about how we want the violence in his film to happen because we know it’s coming and we’ve been waiting and waiting in suspense for the climax. Most interestingly is how he can twist our view of on-screen violence from one thing to another in a matter of seconds.
As he talks about in the interview, he wanted his audience to feel like they wanted the violence to happen. His scene in Deathproof where Kurt Russell barrels his car into the first posse of girls is an emotional rollercoaster. We know it will happen and we wait and wait for it until it finally does, and it’s oddly satisfying, until Tarantino begins to replay the violence that happens to each girl in slow motion. Then, after seeing the crash replay, we begin to realize how sick and twisted this scene is and how brutal the violence is. This happens all the time in slasher films where, by the end, we realize how horrible all the killing is and we really want it to stop. We want the female lead to succeed and stop all this unnecessary violence.
Tarantino has a way with re-creating genre films in his own light, as we know. In this case, he re-invents the perfect genre for his style of filmmaking. Not only does he touch on all the themes one loves about the slasher film, but he plays with the way it’s told and the structure in order to re-invent it to his current pop culture standards.
Throughout the Elvis Mitchell interview of Quentin Tarantino they both make mention of the structure and storytelling of modern day cinema that Tarantino is trying to avoid in his film Plant Terror. “We are trying to bring back the whole Gindhouse experience of going to the movie in the Seventies…” (Tarantino) “Whatever pomp and circumstance… of theater exhibition that used to existed, we’ve watch for the last two decades be actually cut down to, nothing!” Along with Tarantino’s mission for creating a nostalgic movie experience he also creates an uneasy relationship between the audience and violence. For Tarantino to formulate this desire that the audience has for disaster is a part of this cinema he is trying to revive. “You want that crash to happen, if at the last second they avoided it you would be mad at me. But then when it happens its so horrible and your like ‘oh I didn’t want that.’ To late you’re already complicit. I love to set up the violence so you enjoy it. Oh you feel a little nasty about it now, maybe a little wrong about it now, to bad.” (Tarantino) I find that Tarantino’s mission was completed in the sense that he makes the point for the audience to feel guilty because of the fact that they want to see destruction, and at the same time they want to see the good/moral characters (the women) to prevail within this foreign yet very familiar cinema style.
Tarantino’s interview with Mitchell proved very insightful regarding Tarantino’s latest film Grindhouse. During the interview he answered some questions I had regarding old Grindhouse movies and how he attempts storytelling. His answered not only explained his directing and writing but also explained how Hollywood cinema has evolved from a night out experience, to a two-hour screening.
The first interesting point that caught my attention was about the whole Grindhouse experience, the back-to-back, action packed films. Tarantino shed light on the whole idea, which was to give the audience this whole night of thrills and to bring the audience into a whole other dimension. Comprised of atypical 60’s family flicks, which were exploitive B films that contained sex, violence, speed, gore. But these films were more than that. The typical films in the 60’s were directed towards the family audience and promoted family values, but Grindhouse films had a more rebellious storytelling, a cultural experience along with a satirical social aspect to it. But present day theater has removed those films and instead is moving into a completely singular, two-hour sit down. Tarantino’s attempt was to try to give that experience back to a new generation.
Another interesting point Tarantino worked with was the idea of monologue in his films, something I never gave much attention to. Tarantino talked with Mitchell about script delivery with actors. Actors in his Grindhouse film, Death Proof really have to sing his script and deliver it as Tarantino envisioned it and the second half of the film definitely achieved that. He stated that when writing the bar scene he realized that the whole movie could be a musical where the girls just sit around and the plot develops through their conversations.
Lastly, Tarantino talked about the relationship between guys and relationships between girls. He made the points that guys are more upfront about situations and will openly mock each other but forget about it right away. This shed light on Tarantino’s other movies where the script dialogue between men represents that notion of verbal abuse.
The first of the three points that Tarantino makes, that I found interesting, was how America is now considered the worst storytellers. According to Tarantino America was once considered the country with the best storytellers. I don’t know if people in other counties would agree, but it made me think about my preference to watch older films over new releases. Tarantino talks about how films now days either give away too much information in the beginning or pill it all on in the end. He believes that the movie should continue to reveal information evenly as the film moves along. The second point that he makes is how he was trying to reestablish the feeling or the experience of going to the movies years ago. Going to the movie theater should feel different than watching movies at home. Part of the movie is the experience at the theater with all the sights, sounds, and smells associated with it. The third point is how no matter how he shows violence some people are going to be upset. Most of the viewers secretly want to see the violence, but when he does show it people may get upset. It’s a lose-lose situation.
-Rob Mueller
Tarantino's radio interview raises some very interesting points about the audiences relationship to on-screen violence, exploitation cinema and the role of women in these films. When asked about the though process behind Grindhouse, Tarantino said, we wanted to recreate the experience of going to a movie in the 70's, not just the types of movies you might have seen, but the experience itself. This accounts for the use of trailers before and between the features, as well as the cinematic effects, such as burnout, bad splices, developing mistakes, and missing reels. As he discussed, the films themselves are just one part of Grindhouse. The other elements I just mentioned are just as important to recreating this "experience."
Likewise, violence was part of that same experience, something Tarantino is known for in all of his films, including his half of Grindhouse, Death Proof. In mention of the head on collision in the film, he said something particularly striking about our relationship with violence in cinema. He said that while he's intercutting between the two cars speeding toward each other, he wants the audience to want to see it, and if for some reason he were to make one car swerve and avoid the accident, this would greatly upset the audience. Yet the impact itself, because of just how explicit and disgusting it is, it makes the audience feel guilty for having wanted such an event to occur. Most movies would just give us the long shot of the cars colliding, yet Tarantino shows us Julia's leg soar through the sky and land floppily on the pavement. He is very much interested in this love-hate relationship: we want something to happen, but we don't really want to see it all--to which he eloquently says, "Too bad."
Women also play a significant role in exploiation cinema, a very strange one at that. They are simultaneously sexually exploited and sexually impowered. He brings up the idea of the woman vanquisher in the slasher films, who is the last one, pure in morals, left to defeat the evil man. Some critics believe that in the murder of evil one, she is having sex with him--therefore there is some underlying sexual theme to these types of films. There is no sex in Death Proof (Tarantino says it is because he is too much of a gentleman), yet that is not to say it isn't sexual. Even Tarantino admits, "there's a lot of feet, ass...and legs." These same women who he reduces to their body parts, are also given the power to vanquish the killer. The power they are given is most notably traditionally masculine: driving a fast car, performing dangerous and incredible stunts, and ultimately beating up, bare-handed, a supposedly tough stuntman.
One of the most interesting topics I thought that Tarantino and Mitchell talked about was how they discussed the violence in the film. How he described the setup of violence, like the car crash in Death Proof and that the audience wants to see it happen but after it happens they become too disgusted by it. As Tarantino says he pulls the rug out from under them. I feel that even though the audience is disgusted by it, deep down they are excited that they saw it happen.
Another interesting topic was when they discussed storytelling in Hollywood. I agree with Tarantino when he says storytelling has changed in America. In the past movies had a lot more dialogue and plot, you would really get to know the characters. Now though, a lot of movies are just straight to the action, you do not really get to know the characters and the whole movie is pretty much explained in 20 minutes. Tarantino goes a different route and lets you really meet the characters.
The third point Tarantino makes that I found interesting was his reasoning for all of the dialogue. Instead of making it “balls out” like planet terror, Tarantino puts in a lot of dialogue in it so you get to really know the characters. Also, he did not want to make Death Proof just like Planet Terror, he wanted to make it his own creation with very witty dialogue. At the same time he still has the action packed car chase scenes that keep the audience at the end of there seats especially because now they really know the characters and you want the women to survive.
Ronnie Dhaliwal
Point one: Tarantino refers to the way the first half of Deathproof is written , that being he believes it's written as a play. He stated it was the first time since Reservoir Dogs that he actually sat down, thought of a new idea, and then proceeded to write it all the way through. For his previous films he had already had the idea in his head for some time. He mentions that he hates exposition, when the characters just give away the story without any actually build up. He discusses how this film is similar to a musical, in that a moment may take place outside the body of the material, but that moment may actually be the body of the material.
Point two: Tarantino says that when someone goes to watch a movie they already have built in expectations from prior movies they've seen. He likes to experiment with the viewers expectations. He chooses to build up a moment, and instead of just giving it to them, or going the opposite direction and not giving anything at all, he goes over the top and gives the viewers more than they actually may want.
Point three: Tarantino discusses the role of the female protagonist in slasher films. He states that the last character alive is almost a female who was an outsider to the group and a virgin. These traits or shared by the killer. In the end when they face off against he each other it's almost as if they're engaging in sexual intercourse.
I thought it was interesting when Tarantino was talking about storytelling and how when you read or hear a story you don't know everything about it right away. He was saying that a lot of American movies now set up the situation in the beginning of the movie and explain the whole story right away. I hadn't really noticed that and I think that is a big reason that Tarantino's movies seem really different from a lot of movies in theaters recently. I think it's more fun to see a movie that doesn't tell you everything in the beginning because it makes you wonder why things are happening and what's going to happen, just like we do in life. I think that his storytelling style is another way Tarantino makes his movies so realistic, because he doesn't show us everything that's going on like some movies which give the audience so much information it seems like you're watching it from the perspective of an all-knowing God and make the audience feel like they know what can and can't happen, and that they really don't need to watch the rest. I think that by using this narrative structure Tarantino can manipulate and surprise the audience because of their expectations from watching many movies with a linear narrative.
Another aspect of Deathproof that Tarantino talks about is how he uses violence to play with the audience's emotions. He talks about how he tried to set up the situation of the first crash so that the audience wants the crash to happen, and then when it does, they see how horrible it is and feel bad that they wanted it to happen. I thought this point was interesting because I'm not sure I understand it. When he says this I think he is kind of making an assumption about his audience that may often be incorrect. I think it's hard to predict how people will feel about any movie and to say that people will want the crash to happen seems kind of arbitrary. I guess the part I don't understand is how does he know this and how did he try to set it up to make us want them to crash because personally I didn't think that when I was watching it. He says that the audience would be mad if the crash didn't happen, and that he sets up violence so the audience accidentially enjoys it. This comment reminds me of how in Reservoir Dogs he tries to put comedy and violence together, and also in Pulp Fiction. I can see how putting them next to each other kind of blurs the lines of where the comedy ends and the violence starts, but I don't really think it makes the audience enjoy the violence. It might desensitize them by seeing violence taken lightly and surprise them because they are not expecting it to happen, but I don't think he sets up these sequences to have enough power to change how the audience would react were they separated more. I think this positioning of violence doesn't really have the power that Tarantino describes it to have when he says that it makes the audience enjoy it and want it to happen.
When talking about his female characters, Tarantino was saying that he wrote them to be like women today, and like those he has known. Mitchell also made a comment about how in his other movies, Tarantino shows people in a group interacting with regard to their status in that group and their power over the group. I thought this was interesting because to me the way the 2 groups of girls interacted in Deathproof seemed similar to how the group of guys in Reservoir interacted. In the interview Tarantino also talked about how his group of friends at Video Archives who were all guys had a way of interacting that was kind of abusive towards each other. I think Tarantino brought this into his representation of the groups of women, and I think that if he was trying to make them realistic, he may have overdone this aspect of their interactions because in my experience girls tend to be a little less harsh with each other than guys, and to me, some of the girl's interactions in Deathproof seemed like they should be a group of guys. I'm not saying that the things they said and did couldn't possibly happen, just that it doesn't seem very likely. It also must have been hard for Tarantino to write this dialogue, not being a female, and not being able to see how in a realistic situation, interactions in a group of all females might not be as similar to interactions between males as Tarantino represents them.
The first point that Tarantino makes that is very interesting to me is the fact that he says if one is doing the types of movies that Tarantino is doing, they are very based in dialog, and the actors must be able to sing the dialog. His movies are very dialog driven and if the actors can’t “sing” the dialog, and get all the jokes than the movie will not be good. He compares many film making elements to a singing performance or a Broadway musical, such as the inevitable build up this final song that is almost a piece on its own. Another point that Tarantino makes about story telling in cinema is the fact that America was once the king of story-telling cinema and is now the worst country in the world in this aspect of cinema. He is saying that Hollywood scripts today are not sophisticated and they, in too many cases, just set up a situation in the first twenty minutes or so and just play off of that for the remainder of the film. A third point that I found very interesting was the part where he talks about the structure of slasher films these having one of the most rigid structures of subgenre, only women in prison films as an exception. These slasher films usually feature a female posse with great dynamics in the group. One of the ladies end up being the hero in these movies. These traits definitely show up in Death Proof.
-Alex Sokovich
Throughout Elvis Mitchell’s interview Tarantino discusses many points, from ones of grandeur to those of minute detail, which put his intuition and intimate knowledge of film on display. One of the most intriguing topics of discussion was his rehashing of narrative storytelling in American cinema. He complains of lack of anticipation and build up in the recent decade or so of filmmaking in the country and his discussion of which forces the listener to come to a sort of realization through recollection. This point brings to mind recent films of easy dismissal such as Joy Ride, Cry Wolf, The Black Dahlia, Jumper, Shoot Em Up, etc, all of which devote far to little time to character development, leading to a lack of bond between character and spectator and therefore the end result does not carry a significant level of emotional reaction. However films like 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Deliverance, and Vanishing Point, an obvious influence on his latest film, build up the audience with character development and dialogue leaving the impact of the latter half of the film with a much more substantial effect. Affiliating Death Proof with the classic Slasher genre reverts to some interesting commentary on the female gaze and masculinity. Tarantino admits that his film is not really a “Slasher” film but draws comparisons through the structure and the way in which they both “set up the final girl,” referencing the use of the female possy in an effort to find the girl with what Carol J. Clover calls an, “investigative gaze.” Through that inherent gaze the female is given pure masculine fortitude that was almost never attributed to women in American cinema, outside of the “Slasher” genre.
Another Interesting point made by Tarantino is how the subconscious is always active in every moviegoer. Each viewer, through their past experience, has established expectations of how a film should operate whether they are aware of it or not. What will make a spectator think and react more convincingly is the skewing of this inherent framework, which Death Proof does through the elimination of the films main characters and unapologetic replacement of them.
Tarantino brings up many excellent points in the interview that all revolve around the idea of the experience of going to a movie. He talks about dialogue, gender roles, and storytelling, but all of these things effect the overall experience of a movie-goer. Specifically, Tarantino is being interviewed about his part of the Grindhouse double-feature “Death Proof”. One point that he made that I liked was his notion of dialogue within a film being sung by an actor/actress. He casts specific people who are really able to sing his dialogue. They must understand his language, jokes, etc in order to really bring the performance. This idea is compared in the interview to musicals and how the audience is being built up for that one moment or one song in the musical that is the crowning moment. In his films, Tarantino makes his monologues with that same philosophy. Another interesting point that Tarantino talked about was the idea of storytelling and how it has changed in modern day cinema. He likes to have his stories constantly unfolding so that they are often less predictable and it as a result engages audiences more so because they do not always know what to expect. He then goes on to say that now, Hollywood film plots are set up in the first 20 minutes and then the rest of the film tries to live up to that plot. It really makes the experience of going to the movies less interesting. Lastly, Tarantino talks about slasher movies in which Death Proof somewhat falls in this genre and the notion of giving the roles to a possy of women, as in most slasher movies. You have the very cliché group of friends (the popular girl, the odd girl out, etc) who often set up the story. Tarantino mentioned that the odd girl out is actually a more masculine character even though played be a female and that this character has a lot in common with the enemy of the film or the bad guy. He even goes on to say that this is usually the one to kill the bad guy in the end and this can be seen as a sexual experience where she is “loosing her virginity” metaphorically speaking. I thought this was interesting because I would never have looked at it that way, but in a very strange way his explanation made sense.
Tarantino made some particularly interesting points on storytelling. He gave the proper definition of storytelling and shared that he didn't believe American cinema told stories anymore. He claims that "back in the day", we used to be the best at it, and now American cinema is mostly setting up a situation for the audience and then living up to it. It is a true epiphany to realize just how true this is. And it's a shame because storytelling is a true art form that seems to be disintegrating. I remember watching DEATHPROOF and telling myself in several parts of the movie "what is the point? WHY are we STILL at the bar? If that guys is the bad guy why doesnt he just hurry up and kill somebody already!" Then the car chase scene with the 2nd group of girls I was like, "ok we know these bitches are going to die just hurry up and kill them!" but then everything changes and it takes you by complete surprise and it turns into a whole other movie! Then those moments where i had been 100% totally uninterested and bored, i end up appreciating to the fullest. I loved DEATHPROOF, it is up there in my favorite movies.
I also found it interesting how he related telling a story to telling a joke, how you give a lead just to get the audience to trust you, because they know you will be delivering a punchline. He described telling his story as "laying out the breadcrumbs" and before you knew it all of this dialogue that at first seems like nothing brings you from one place to the next and the next and then there you are in a whole other place not knowing how you got there from the place you began.
Breaking away from archetypes- another interesting point, along the lines of the storytelling and plot, the characters as well start of as archetypes in this movie, stereotypical women from the female posse of a slasher movie. Only by the end you realize they are characters, not archetypes.
We are used to having the story blatantly handed to us. Tarantino likes to give us bits and pieces that will come together at the end. He likes to hide the “breadcrumbs” and we need to find them to get home. He does this by feeding us bits and pieces in the conversations between the characters, the ladies at the bar and the ladies at the breakfast table.
Tarantino likes to let us think that we are going down one path and then twist it on us just like the exploitation cinema used to. He says that he likes to “use people’s subliminal knowledge of cinema against them.” He likes to make his movies follow a true story, a real story has a series of plot twists throughout the entire story, rather than an explanation in the first 20 minutes and the rest of the movie living up to that. That’s what the exploitation moves used to do.
Amongst all of the plot turns, Tarantino incorporates some bits of violence. He builds up to a climactic moment that you are ready for the crash to happen. You want the crash to happen and you are caught up in the emotion, but then when it happens you are questioning why he did it that way. He wants us to feel wrong about it just a little bit afterwards, like with the clips of how each of the first girls died.
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