Tarantino and Rodriguez Collaborations By Catie Eller & Leslie Peckham

When Quentin Tarantino met Robert Rodriguez at a film panel at the Toronto Film Festival in 1992, the pair became fast friends. “We were like, finishing each other’s sentences after like, only 45 minutes of talking! I thought he was so cool! Like I’d been waiting to meet a guy like this since I was in film school!” raved Tarantino when asked the question at another film panel recently. “And after that, we ended up having studios next to each other at Colombia,” reminisced an infinitely more laid back Rodriguez.

Since 1992, Tarantino and Rodriguez have worked collaboratively together several times. Their first film, released in 1995, was also in collaboration with two other, then up-and-coming directors, Allison Anders, and Alexandre Rockwell.

“There were not really any rules, except that all the action had to take place in a hotel room on New Year’s Eve and we had to use the bellhop…” said Andres in an interview by Peter Biskind.

The project turned out to be a challenge for all directors concerned, and almost didn’t happen. Rockwell was laid up with knee surgery when he got a call one day from Anders saying that Quentin was backing out. At the time, an over taxed Tarantino was working on the final editing for Pulp Fiction and didn’t feel like he would have his heart in the project. Upon hearing this, Rockwell replied to Anders:

“You know what? He can’t back out. That’s just not one of the choices. If he checks that box, I’m going to get a gun and shoot him, and then He’ll experience violence first hand. He won’t have to watch it in a John Woo Movie.”

Eventually the project got off the ground displaying unconventional humor and, situations packed with hilarity all in the mind of Tim Roth’s character Ted. Rodriguez is the third director to grace the screen in this film; He chooses to direct a ‘family style comedy’, called “The Misbehavers” starring Antonio Banderas, fresh off the set of Rodriguez’s second film, Desperado. This film also has appearances from Salma Hayek, who dances on the program one of the children watches, and Patricia Rodriguez, sister of Robert Rodriguez, appears as a corpse that has been stashed under the bed. The segment is approximately 24 minutes in length, and contains over 600 cuts, an indicator of Rodriguez’s fastidious editing style.

The final installation of Four Rooms is called “The Man from Hollywood”. Tarantino, the man of the movies, chose to base this one off a 1960’s episode of “Alfred Hitchcock Presents”, called “The Man from the South”. Referenced in the movie as “The Man from Rio” the original story was written by Roald Dahl, and features a bet in which the gambler (played in “Presents” by Steve McQueen) bets his car that he can light his lighter 10 times in a row. If he fails, he loses a finger. Tarantino’s adaptation is based on similar pretense, but instead takes place in the hotel on New Years. The gambler, played by Paul Calderon (seen also in Pulp Fiction), is challenged this time by up and coming star, Chester Rush, played by Tarantino. The segment wraps up the movie nicely, with all the crude hilarity one can expect from Tarantino.

“Even if we had failed and ended up hating each other’s guts, we tried something that had not been done.” –Anders

The second collaborative effort of the famous team was released in 1996. From Dusk Till Dawn was one of the first screenplays by then, up and coming, Tarantino. Originally written in his early days, FDTD was Tarantino’s meal ticket to tinsel town, enabling him to quit his day job and start being paid as a screen writer. The story idea originally came from Robert Kurtzman and Jon Esposito who pitched it to Tarantino:

“Bob Kurtzman’s original outline had maybe four paragraphs or about a page and then they got to the Titty Twister and then the next six pages were inside the [bar],” said Tarantino. “Well my tale was, ‘Let’s put the Titty Twister way, way away! And let’s really build up to the point when they get there.”

The script spent the next several years in ‘developmental hell,’ according Kurtzman who, originally hoped to take the directorial credit.

“People wanted to do it for more money and because I hadn’t directed anything they wouldn’t let me direct it at a ten million-dollar budget because I was a first-timer.”

It wasn’t until after several frustrating revisions and, nearly scrapping the project that the script found itself in the capable hands of new hot director, Robert Rodriguez.

“Robert was actually the real reason why the project got going,” said Kurtzman. “I optioned the script to some producers and they hooded up Robert, whom I had never met before. Robert took it back to Quentin and said, ‘I think I want to do this,’ And Quentin said, ‘Great, then I’ll be involved!”

The feature, at 108 minutes, begins with two brothers, George Clooney and Tarantino, holding up a convenience store to bloody ends. Then the pair flee to a nearby hotel where they make hostages of the Fuller family played by Ernest Liu, Harvey Keitel, and Juliette Lewis.

The movies stars several actors favored to both Tarantino and Rodriguez. Danny Trejo, who appears in several Rodriguez films, appears as Razor Charlie, as does Cheech Marin in several roles, and Salma Heyak as the devilish Santanico Pandemonium. Keitel and Lewis are favorites of Tarantino, and credit must also be given to Michael Parks, who shows up as the ubiquitous Earl McGraw, Texas Ranger. From Dusk Till Dawn exemplifies the styles of these two directors, mixing Tarantino’s classic mash up of violence and sexuality, with Rodriguez’s preoccupation with thematic devices including the Southwest, and supernatural antagonists.

Sin City, directed by Rodriguez, written and based on a comic by Frank Miller, and is the third collaboration between these two. Here, Tarantino appears as a guest director as a favor to Rodriguez. During the making of Kill Bill Vol. 2 Tarantino asked Rodriguez to do some of the music for the cost of $1. In return for this favor, Rodriguez had Tarantino direct two segments of Sin City: the scene in which Miho nearly decapitates Jackie Boy, played by Benicio Del Toro, and the segment following that in which Dwight, played by Clive Owen, drives Jackie Boy and the rest of the bodies to the Pitts. These scenes are note-worthy of Tarantino’s style, for the fact that, Miho is using katanas from Kill Bill and, the exchange between Dwight and Jackie Boy takes place inside a car, one of Tarantino’s favored methods of transition.

Tarantino and Rodriguez went on to direct Grindhouse (2007), which boasts a feature for each director, plus a few fake trailers in between. While Grindhouse wasn’t met with critical success, it is the most ambitious project the pair has taken on and exemplary of the collaborative genius that these two are.

BIB:
"IMDB." Four Rooms. 20 July 2008 .
"IMDB." From Dusk Till Dawn. 20 July 2008 .
"IMDB." Sin City. 20 July 2008 .
"IMDB." The Man From the South. 21 July 2008 .
Woods, Paul A. Quentin Tarantino: the Film Geek Files. London: Plexus, 2005. 91-117.
"YouTube." How Tarantino and Rodriguez Met. 20 July 2008 .