Tarantino Confirms Two More 'Kill Bill' movies

[Powerful T]

http://www.bloody-disgusting.com/index.php?Show=757&Template=newsfull

SDCC '06: Tarantino Confirms More Kill Bill!
Get more on Comic Con | Posted 10.22.03 @ 09:15 pm

Yup, Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez are still on stage here at the San Diego Comic Con promoting 'Grind House' but we just scored a bit of news you 'Kill Bill' fans are gonna freak over. Tarantino spilled the beans that once he finishes 'Death Proof' he will beging working on two more 'Kill Bill' films! Both films will be animated - the first being a prequel telling the story of Bill, while the second will be a new Bride story (maybe the future plot that was rumoured?). Watch this spot for more news soon and check out 'Grind House' in April.


Yay, anime, etc...

[TB4000]

He tends to be all over the place with his spastic ass, so I take it with a grain of salt. That Grind House flick is supposed to be released next year, but he edits and post edits his stuff constantly.

[younggiftedandblack]

He tends to be all over the place with his spastic ass, so I take it with a grain of salt. That Grind House flick is supposed to be released next year, but he edits and post edits his stuff constantly.
Yeah. I thought he was working on a WWII movie?

[Geese]

Does anybody even still care about Kill Bill? It made a lot of money and then just fell off the face of the earth. Some people I talked to said it's because it didn't really have any place to go after the movies were done and that it lacked any real substance when you thought too much about it.

What do you think?

[returntosender]

Does anybody even still care about Kill Bill? It made a lot of money and then just fell off the face of the earth. Some people I talked to said it's because it didn't really have any place to go after the movies were done and that it lacked any real substance when you thought too much about it.

What do you think?

You didn't have to think about it. At first I was amazed that there was an outcry over it not being nominated for an Oscar. I was like, WTF kind of cheap crack are you on to think that Kill Bill should get nominated for anything but a MTV movie award??

Then I realized that the tastebuds of the general movie going public has diminished over the years and they can no longer tell the difference between a 'movie' and a music video.

EDIT: Oh, and I clicked this thread thinking there will be ANOTHER 2 Kill Bill movies. Thank God that isn't the case.

[Yeahman]

Kill Bill wasn't a movie you have to think about. It was all about the visuals and dialog.

[mr. x]

Kill Bill wasn't a movie you have to think about. It was all about the visuals and dialog.

As oppose to...other movies which are about ambient noise and smell-o-vision

[Yeahman]

As oppose to...other movies which are about ambient noise and smell-o-vision
Or storyline. Tarantino films actually deemphasize the storyline. His films, more than any other, just makes me appreciate the directing and dialog.

[yoMAMA]

isn't tarantino a hated asiaphile?

[Geese]

I've been finding out during my research that Tarantino is quite into Japan and Hong Kong Cinema as well as telling people what Black people like to do and how... let's just say some of his quotes to the Japanese Press about how Black people behave have been... interesting.

Either way, I guess that really IS the reason why two movies... that were actually only ONE LONG movie, could make over 225 million and then simply die off without so much as a whimper. No substance is what it always seems to boil down to. I did listen to the audio interviews with Vivica Fox and Lucy Liu and to hear them was really interesting.

Vivica talked about how she couldn't get answers out of Tarantino about why things were the way they were between the members and Liu seemed like she was trying really hard not to say anything that might make it seem like she had a spine or an opinion except that her character died an "honorable death" and "you knew she was going to die."

I've found a lot of people talk about they felt as though O-Ren (Liu) was a punk and Vernita (Fox) was sneaky... or that Beatrix (Uma Thurman) was really a loser in the first place for running off without telling the father of her child that she was pregnant... until he finds her, beats her up and then is about to... put a bullet in her head.

Then again, some people have said that Beatrix was a saint and she could do no wrong... which I have to say was disturbing because we aren't told anything about her at all. Until we find out that she fakes her death in Volume Two while on assignment. Which isn't really a good career move more likely than not among assassins.

Oh and he is talking about making a third movie, but as someone else pointed out Tarantino is subject to change without prior notification. I just felt as though their was so much more potential and it wasn't even touched.

[tripostrophe]

^Could you provide some links for the quotes about black people? I've never heard anything about this, though I have heard about some offensive stuff (directed towards Asians) coming out of his movies...

[Geese]

No problem. Many of them are his wars with Spike Lee and some of the things that they went back and forth on as well as some of his comments during his Kill Bill Interviews. One was when he was filming Vivica's fight with Uma and told her to "Act more Black!"

I could only laugh at that one! But it wasn't a good laugh.

As for the offensive stuff about Asians. I would say that the only thing I found that really pissed me off was Lucy Liu's character of O-Ren and then the cooning by the Yakuza Bosses when she chops Boss Tanaka's head off. I wasn't laughing about that, really I didn't laugh at any of Kill Bill and I saw where he was trying to convince the audience that ay; this is ha-ha funny! Instead of showing it for what it really was. It's not funny.

Then again... hard to make a grind house type movie with a 70 million dollar budget. He just got carried away.

[thaite]

Uhhh, yeah. didnt they already kill bill?

[tripostrophe]

Eh, from what I've heard (haven't seen either movie), the offensiveness is more of the hordes of dragon-ladies willing to die for this white man etc. etc.

[returntosender]

honestly, as much as i am indifferent to the kill bill movies, I have no idea what you guys are talking about.

[Geese]

Okay, I'm simply going to paste the interview since I thought I had actually deleted it from my computer because I did so much digging for these movies so that I could write what I've written. I found a lot of behind the scenes interviews and press clipping crap, etc, etc! Right now David Carradine is about to release a book about his time on the set and the making of Kill Bill which between me, you and the NSA dude monitoring this site, HI THERE, I'm wondering when will something ACTUALLY follow the movies.

QUENTIN TARANTINO reveals almost everything that inspired KILL BILL in… The JAPATTACK Interview -01
By Tomohiro Machiyama

A MESSAGE FROM THE MANAGEMENT
This interview was conducted in Los Angeles on August 28, 2003 during a press junket for KILL BILL: VOLUME ONE held exclusively for the Japanese media. In this one-on-one chat, Quentin Tarantino goes deep into the many influences for KILL BILL; it's mythology, and even the future for his characters beyond the two-part film. Originally conducted by Tomo Machiyama for Japan's Eiga Hi-Ho (Movie Treasures) magazine, Japattack is proud to present this interview for the first time anywhere in English transcribed from the original recordings. The usual spoiler warnings apply.

PREVIEWS OF COMING ATTRACTIONS
Hi, I'm Tomohiro Machiyama. I usually write only for Japanese Magazines, but I would like you people who cannot read Japanese to read my interview because Mr. Tarantino told me a lot of information that American critics and viewers might never know. The night before this interview, I first spoke with Tarantino at a party after the screening of Kill Bill. Unfortunately, I didn’t bring my tape recorder. We were both totally smashed, but I remember these things he told me.

(Geese Note; The fact that Tarantino and Machiyama were smashed, but Machiyama "remembers what was said" doesn't exactly put this article high on the validated parking list of truth.)

The bloody killing spree at the climax of KILL BILL is a kind of re-enactment of Shogun Assassin (Kenji Misumi, 1972, Japan *Bigger image). And he also admitted to adding a dash of Ichi the Killer (Takashi Miike, 2001, Japan) in it as well. For the orange sunset sky behind the airplane, he wanted to evoke the look of the opening scenes from Goke, BodySnatcher from Hell (Hajime Sato, 1968, Japan). He ordered the staff to shoot a miniature set of Tokyo like a landscape from the giant monster movie War of the Gargantuas (Ishiro Honda, 1966, Japan). He even screened a video of Gargantuas to Daryl Hannah because in his mind, Kill Bill is a kind of War of the Blonde Gargantuas. So, I didn't ask about these things in the next day interview. Are you ready? Here we go.
AND NOW…
OUR FEATURE ATTRACTION

Tomohiro Machiyama: Can you give me some comments about some of the films referenced in Kill Bill?
Quentin Taranatino: Ok. Cool, cool.
TM: The scene where Go Go Yubari (Chiaki Kuriyama) stabs a guy who approaches her for sex…was this from Battle Royale (Kinji Fukasaku, 2000, Japan)?
QT: I went out to dinner with Kinji Fuaksaku and Kenta (Kinji's son) and I was going "man, I love this movie! It is just so fantastic!" And I said, "I love the scene where the girls are shooting are shooting each other." And then Kenta starts laughing. So I ask, "why are you laughing?" He goes, "the author of the original Battle Royale novel would be very happy to hear that you liked that scene." And I go "why?" And he says, "well, because it's from Reservoir Dogs!" Even when I was watching it I was thinking "God, these 14 year old girls are shooting each other just like in Reservoir Dogs!" And Kenta said, "he took that from Reservoir Dogs, so he'll be very proud that you like that!"
TM: I'm wondering why you changed the name of the girl force from Fox Force Five, in Pulp Fiction, to DiVAS in Kill Bill?
QT: Well, the thing is, as similar as they are to each other, they are different. Fox Force Five were crime fighters. They were secret agents. The Deadly Vipers are NOT secret agents! They are killers! But the idea is very, very similar. It's like the flipside.
TM: The DiVAS look like The Doll Squad (Ted V. Mikels, 1973, USA), right?
QT: Oh yeah, very similar. They definitely have that Doll Squad or Modesty Blaise look to them. Those girls just look cool in their turtle necks. Honey West was an American TV show, and that's in there as well.
TM: How about The Bride Wore Black (1968, Francois Truffaut, France)?
QT: Here's the thing. I've never actually seen The Bride Wore Black.
TM: Really?
QT: I know of it, but I've never seen it. Everyone is like, "oh, this is really similar to The Bride Wore Black." I've heard of the movie. Its based on a Cornell Woolrich novel too, but it's a movie I've never seen. The reason I've never seen it is because…I've just never been a huge Truffaut, fan. So that's why I never got around to see it. I'm not rejecting it, I just never saw it. I'm a Goddard fan, not a Truffaut fan. So I know of it, I know all that stuff, but it's a movie I've never seen.
TM: I thought of it because The Bride has that list of names she checks off.
QT: Oh, is that in there too?
TM: How about Hannie Caulder (Burt Kennedy, 1971, USA) ?

QT: Oh yeah. Hannie Caulder is definitely in there. That was definitely of the revenge movies I was thinking about. I had a whole list of revenge movies, especially female ones like Lady Snowblood (Toshiya Fujita, 1973, Japan). But one of them definitely was Hannie Caulder. You know who I love in Hannie Caulder so much is Robert Culp. He is so magnificent in that movie and I actually kind of think there's a bit of similarity between Sonny Chiba and Uma and Raquel Welch and Robert Culp in Hannie.
TM: How about Dead and Buried (Gary Sherman, 1981, USA)?
QT: Ok, yeah. I've seen Dead and Buried. So what's the connection?
TM: Daryl Hannah disguises herself as a nurse and tries to kill the Bride in a coma with a syringe.
OT: Oh! Yes! Lisa Blount! The girl from An Officer and a Gentleman! Yeah, exactly. Actually, to tell you the truth, there's another movie that I kind of got that idea a little bit more from. And that's John Frankenheimer's Black Sunday (1977, US). There's a scene where Marthe Keller goes into the hospital and disguises herself as a nurse and she's going to kill Robert Shaw with a poisoned syringe.
TM: The character of Daryl Hannah is based on They Call Her One Eye (AKA Thriller, Bo Arne Vibenius, 1974,Sweden)?
QT: Oh, definitely! I love Christina Lindberg. And that's definitely who Daryl Hannah's character is based on. In the next movie, she's wearing mostly black. Just like They Call Her One Eye, she's got some color co-coordinated eye patches. And that is, of all the revenge movies I've ever seen, that is definitely the roughest. The roughest revenge movie ever made! There's never been anything as tough as that movie.
TM: It was supposed to be a porno.
QT: Well, it has those insert shots in there. I remember showing Uma the trailer to They Call Her One Eye, and she said, "Quentin, I love that trailer…but I don't know if I can watch that movie! I'm actually scared to watch it. It looks too tough." I showed Daryl the movie. I gave her the video tape. She watched it without subtitles, just in Swedish. And she said, "Quentin! You had me watch a porno!" I said, "yeah, but a good porno!" She'd never had a director give her a porno movie to watch as homework!

TM: How about Master Killer (AKA 36 Chambers of Shaolin, Chia-Liang Liu, 1978, Hong Kong)?
QT: I'm a huge fan of Master Killer and of Gordon Liu in particular. He's fantastic. He doesn't look any goddamn different today then he did back then. And it's just so cool to see both him and Sonny Chiba in the same film together. They are every bit the superstars. Living legends. As I am framing shots, I'm thinking "I can't believe Gordon Liu is in my movie! I can't believe it." And to have been so influenced by seventies kung fu films and to have, as far as I'm concerned, my three favorite stars of kung fu from three different countries .. Gordon Liu representing Hong Kong. Sonny Chiba representing Japan. And David Carradin representing America. That's a triple header. A triple crown. If Bruce Lee was still alive, he'd be in it. If Fu Sheng was still alive, he could be in it too.
TM: So will David Carradine play a flute in the sequel?
QT: Oh yeah! He does! You saw that in the trailer, right? And it's actually “The Silent Flute". It's a flute he made, he carved it out of bamboo. And that is the silent flute from the movie Silent Flute (AKA Circle of Iron, Richard Moore, 1979, US). You've got a great thing with David because Bill really is a mix of Asiatic influences and genuine American Western influences.
TM: Not only was he on Kung Fu, but he was also one of The Long Riders (Walter Hill, 1980, USA).
QT: Yeah, and who else are you going to get to do that?
TM: How did you get the rights to use the music cue from Master of the Flying Guillotine (Jimmy Wang Yu, 1975, Hong Kong)?
QT: We bought the rights to it. First, we had to find out what it was (Super 16 by German group Neu!). Once we tracked it down, we went to them and just commissioned it and they gave it to us. That little bit of music is even on the Kill Bill soundtrack album. (imitating music) "Doing! Doing! Doing!"
TM: I can't remember the title, but there is a Hong Kong movie where Jimmy Wang Yu fights with 100 enemies. The fight in the House of Blue Leaves reminds me of it.
QT: That's from Chinese Boxer (Jimmy Wang Yu, 1969, Hong Kong). It's where he's created the iron fist. He's turned his fist into iron and they're burned black. He's got a surgical mask over his face and he's got these mittens on his hands and Lo Lieh is the bad guy and he goes into the casino. Well, did you know that this is very historically important movie? That was the first full-on open handed contact movie in Hong Kong. Chinese Boxer is the first movie where the hero didn't fight with swords. He just fought with his hands. That was the first time that was done. I mean, there are kung fu movies before that. But this kind of like, what we know today as a real kung fu movie. Before that, they were doing wushu, swordplay; and even though they were doing it in a Chinese style, they still had one foot in the Japanese samurai movies. But with Chinese Boxer, they took that foot away. And that fight scene is so fantastic. That's become one of the staples of the genre: one against a hundred. Well, that was the first one. Wang Yu directed it too. It was so cool because I remember showing Yuen Woo-ping that scene to show him something I wanted to capture and Woo-ping goes, "Hey! That's my dad!" His father was one of the guys in the movie. You know, when all the guys are circling Wang Yu, he's the one with the chain. His dad was Simon Yuen, the old guy from Snake in Eagle's Shadow and Drunken Master. That's Woo-ping's father.

TM: How about Takashi Miike's Fudoh (1996, Japan)?
QT: I haven't seen Fudoh. I know of Fudoh. I've seen the trailer for it. I couldn't be a bigger fan of Miike, but I've never seen Fudoh. I've been meaning to see it, but that's one I haven't seen yet.
TM: I thought the idea of the Crazy 88s was inspired by the teenage gangs from Fudoh.
QT: I just thought that once O-Ren became the queen of crime in Tokyo, which is kind of a reference to Black Lizard (Kinji Fukasaku, 1968, Japan) because O-Ren runs the city the way Black Lizard did…she wouldn't have a bunch of bruisers. No! She'd have a bunch of moptops. This isn't in the movie, because I'd have to stop and tell the audience this but the Crazy 88s are…because O-Ren is half-Chinese and half-Japanese, so is her army. So there's 44 Chinese people and 44 Japanese people! But that's part of the mythology I would only go into if I wrote a book. (Geese note; he tried to write a book and stopped) The black suits are from Reservoir Dogs. And the masks are from Kato. I just thought that it looked really cool. Now, while I'm saying that I haven't seen Fudoh, I'm not saying I haven't been influenced by Takashi Miike. Personally, my favorite cinema right now is this violent pop cinema coming out of Japan. As far as a group of directors that are my favorites…and there's a lot of American directors that I really like…my favorite as far as a group is all the directors doing those kinds of movies in Japan. Obviously, I'm talking about Takashi Miike, Takashi Ishii, Sogo Ishii.
TM: How about Teruo Ishii?
QT: Oh, Teruo Ishii is a fantastic director, a great director! I love Teruo Ishii. Also, Kiyoshi Kurosawa. And the other guy…I know him, I'm friends with him, but I keep forgetting his name…the guy who did Shark Skin Man and Peach Hip Girl and Party 7 (Katsuhito Ishii). He actually did some work on Kill Bill. He did the character drawing that starts the anime when you see O-Ren when she was eight and then you see Boss Matsumoto, you know, just those two drawings? He did those drawings for me just as a present. He didn't do any of the anime. That was Production IG. But he did those character drawings and I ended up using them in the movie. And, not only that, he did a drawing of Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah) in her nurse's outfit and she had a red cross on her eye patch. And I thought it was such a good idea that I put it in the movie. His name is in the credits, but he didn't get paid for it or anything. It was a gift. I met him in Hawaii and we became friends and I see him whenever I'm in Japan.


Geese says; Now that I've posted that... it just seems pointless in some weird way.
-_-

[Geese]

The whole Dragonladies fighting over/for a White man? Could be. From the other info I've collected Bill was knocking them all off at one point and then eventually picked Beatrix and then Elle. Lotta stuff that Tarantino left sitting out there and made innuendo about but wouldn't tie directly to the story, but would speak on it in print and with Carradine.

Never mind the fact that for whatever reason I posted the same entry twice and just tried to simply delete it and it didn't exactly work, so I changed the text to talk about some of the other posts prior.

[Geese]

Well I already posted the first part so here is the second. I'm starting to remember now why I deleted most of the background information that I found about these movies. I still feel as though the idea of Kill Bill was great but the way it was done was not only predictable but seemed kind of "oh well they'll watch it anyway so here ya go!"

Aside from the fact that I had avoided Tarantino movies like the plague prior to this I felt somewhat let down. Anyway here is Volume Two of the interview;

QUENTIN TARANTINO reveals almost everything that inspired KILL BILL in…The JAPATTACK Interview -02
By Tomohiro Machiyama


TM: How did you come up with the name O-Ren Ishii?
QT: It wasn't like “I'm going to honor this movie or this thing,” but finding the right name for your character is one of the most important things about writing them. You almost can't really go forward until you get the right name. And what is the right name? Well, who the fuck knows that? You'll know it when you hear it. So as I'm just formulating the movie, I'm also watching a bunch of stuff to get myself going again on it. They used to show the Sonny Chiba TV show Kage no Gundan(Shadow Soldiers) on a Japanese TV station out here in Los Angeles during the eighties. Me and a bunch of my friends used to get together and watch it. And we'd tape it. So I'm going through my tapes from the eighties to look at the show. And one of the female ninja (played by Etsuko Shihomi, AKA Sister Streetfighter) on Kage no Gundan 4 was named O-Ren. I thought "Well, that a pretty name. And it's unusual too." Also the combination of O-Ren with the name Ishii I thought worked really good together. I wasn't necessarily trying to do an overt homage to Kage no Gundan, even though I love that show, but once I saw that name, I went with it. Then, that became her name. Lucy Liu fell in love with it. Everyone responded to it. Even Japanese people were like, "well .. that's a Japanese name, a very unusual one, but it's a good name." About Kage no Gundan for a bit. There's like multiple sequel shows. You know, Kage no Gundan 1, 2, 3, 4. Every time they did a new series it was always a different Hattori Hanzo. It was set a little further in history. Hattori Hanzo number three, Hattori Hanzo number four. It just kept on going down. So now Sonny Chiba is playing Hattori Hanzo one hundred and still continuing that character. Now the thing about this is that, the audience doesn't need to know any of this. I'm very much a believer that if you're creating your own universe and your own mythology, you can have no question unanswered. But here's the thing: I don't have to answer the questions to you the audience. You just need to know I know the answer. I can tell you the whole story of how Hattori Hanzo ended up in Okinawa and why he didn't make a sword for 30 years, and who the bald guy is. I can tell you that. I don't have to tell you this during the watching of the movie, but you need to know how large this world is. This is how much I'm going to tell you now, and what I don't tell you, you can figure out. You can make up your own things. I know what's going to happen with Nikki (Vivica A. Fox's daughter). She will grow up and she will seek her revenge. I could go backwards. Once we get all done with this, we're talking about the concept of doing a couple of prequels with maybe Production IG just doing full-on animation. You know, the origin of Bill for instance. But I could do it with any of the characters. As far as actually continuing the story…again, I don't know about shooting this in live-action or animation or writing it as a paperback, who knows? But it would be every ten years. Right now, The Bride is 30. The next one would be at 40. The last one would be ten years later when she's 50.

(Geese note; when I read the above part the first time I said to myself "Is anybody gonna care 10 years from now, they don't even care 2 years removed. Is he out of touch or me?" My brother said I think too much. He simply said Kill Bill was Tarantino's fantasy attempt to be Asian and have women beat the crap outta each other when the reality is the movie should've lasted 10 minutes tops with the Bride going straight to Bill and either killin him or gettin killed and then roll credits... he's not a big fan of Kill Bill or Tarantino)

TM: How about the quotation which went something like "if you want revenge, you have to be willing to kill God and even the Buddha"?
QT: That was actually paraphrased - I rewrote it, just like I did with the Bible in Pulp Fiction - from the speech of the Yagyu ninja that Sonny Chiba would repeat at the beginning of every episode of the Yagyu Family Conspiracy TV show. And at the end of the movie, when Uma is in her helmet giving that speech, that's the theme from Yagyu Family Conspiracy playing in the background.
TM: Did you get any inspiration from Seijun Suzuki?
QT: It's funny…I'm not inspired by his movies as a whole, but by certain shots and just his willingness to just completely experiment to try and get images that are really cool or psychedelic. I'm very inspired by that. To me, his films…well, he's a little bit like Russ Meyer for me. It's easier to like sections of his films than the whole movie. I'm not putting him down, its just that I think he works better in sequences and scenes. And some movies work better than other movies. As for Russ Meyer, Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! is a complete masterpiece. That was one where everything worked. Suzuki did that with Branded to Kill (1967, Japan) even though I do like the first half better than the second. When you bring up Suzuki, are you more or less thinking about the Kabuki fight in the House of Blue Leaves with the silhouettes?
TM: Yes.
QT: To me that was more something in my brain from Japanese cinema in general than Suzuki stuff in particular, but I do know what you are talking about. You'll see it again in Volume 2 when The Bride is in her training session with Pai Mei (Gordon Liu), there a big silhouette sequence against a big giant red background. Every 15th movie in Hong Kong had an opening sequence where the characters were doing martial arts in front of a background. Sometimes you saw them, sometimes you didn't. An usually the theme music from Isaac Hayes' Shaft was playing!


TM: Here's a very general question. Should I laugh at this movie, or not?
QT: I don't think you should laugh AT it, I think you should laugh WITH it.
TM: Because I heard you laughing through the screening.

Geese note; This is one of the weird things that started finding with Tarantino as I dug for info on Kill Bill. IN this next part he's about to tell Machiyama something where I don't think he's qualified to speak about how Black audiences REACT since last time I went to the theater I didn't see Tarantino sitting at 69th Street Terminal theater or Waterfront Theater or Delaware Avenue Theater. Nor do I see him at screenings at Howard University where the audience is Black... gives me the willies to see someone talking about Black people when they know the person they're talking to has 0% Black population in his homeland and really has no means to see for himself under normal circumstances. If I'm being sensitive, well yes. All Tarantino has to do is TELL Machiyama WHY HE LAUGHED, keep me and mine out of whatever HIS REASONS ARE and that's where my sensitivity comes from. Kind of like when you ask someone a question and they need to include Rob, John and Andy and then somewhere in there is why they did whatever they did.

QT: I don't hold a Japanese audience to the same rule that I would hold a black audience to. A black audience is like, "Ha ha ha ha!" You Japanese are a little more subdued when you watch a movie. Just because they're not going "Ha ha ha ha!" when they're watching it doesn't mean they're not enjoying it. I was having a good time because I was able to watch the audience without being intrusive. So I was smiling all the way. All my movies are funny, but I also wanted to go up and down, up and down. I want you to laugh, laugh, laugh, and then stop you laughing and show you something else. Maybe start you crying, and then get you laughing again. I want to just constantly keep moving. For me, if I'm watching a movie and I'm going from laughing to crying, that's me having a good time. That's when I know I'm seeing a movie. I'm being jerked around emotionally and it's great.
TM: I guess I'm thinking specifically about the scene at the end of the duel with Lucy Liu.

Geese note; I didn't see the humor in this next response either. If I took this line to the Psych Department at Lincoln I'm sure they would raise a few eyebrows at where the hell this guys moral compass is sittin at. I've tried a zillion times to find the humor and all I got was Lucy Liu's character of O-Ren was not only smug-arrogant but ungodly stupid. This is confirmed in Volume Two when Bill dismisses her passing along with that of Vernita's and he goes one step further by mocking O-Ren's useless Loser-88 Gang by talking about it made them sound cool. However even with my limited knowlegde of Japan. I figured out that the 88 was probably a reference to the 88 Shinto Shrine walk that one would do to purge a curse or cleanse a spirit that's haunting them.

QT: It's supposed to be kind of amusing and poetic at the same time. And also just a teeny-tiny bit solemn. When you see her head, it's funny. And then her line, "that really was a Hattori Hanzo sword.," that's funny. But then, the next shot is not funny, when she tips over and Meiko Kaji is singing about revenge on the soundtrack. So, it's all together. Funny. Solemn. Beautiful. Gross. All at the same time.
TM: Do you think American audiences have this kind of taste?
QT: The thing is, for some people they'll be seeing things they've never seen before. In Hong Kong, in China, in Japan, in Korea, they are going to have a context for where some of this stuff is coming from. Even when it comes to stuff like Macaroni Westerns (the Japanese name for Spaghetti Westerns). Most young people in America have never seen a Macaroni Western. That actually can be an extremely good thing! You know where these things are coming from, but it's still kind of a new experience to see Kill Bill, right? Well, for them, imagine how new it is going to be.
TM: About the Ironside musical theme. That music is very popular in Japan. That theme was used on an "Inside Edition" style tabloid show.
QT: Here's the thing. They use that theme in Five Fingers of Death (Chang Ho Cheng, 1973, Hong Kong) and every time, the screen glows red. You know it from this tabloid show, but when I was a kid, I knew it from Ironside.
So every time the screen would glow, people in the audience would bust up laughing because it was the Ironside theme. But at a certain point, they actually begin to like it better in the movie. By the third time they hear it, the audience is going "YEAH! KICK ASS LO LIEH!" I think it works great. And in Bill the third time you hear it, you know she's going to kick ass! Uh .hey, can I ask you a question? Did you have a favorite scene in the film? Can I ask you what was it?
TM: I think the fight with Go Go Yubari (Chiaki Kuriyama).
QT: That's mine too. I'd never shot action before, and this was my chance to really do it, and that was my first action scene. That was how I learned to do it, on that one. And I think that my be, so far, my favorite thing I've ever shot. Just cinematically, director-wise, I think that might be the best thing I've done so far.
TM: During the fight, Go Go is kind of a Master of the Flying Guillotine.
QT: She definitely is. That was Chiaki doing most of that stuff. She spent three months learning how to mess with that ball. People ask me, "where did you get that ball from?" Actually, I didn't really take it from any movie. I mean, I've seen Hong Kong movies where they swing things, but this one I kind of created. So people say, "what's it called?" And I say, "the Go Go Ball!"
TM: Do you think Japanese audience will understand the line, "Silly rabbit, Trix are for kids?"
QT: Oh yeah, the Trix commercial. There's all of these Japanese and Chinese things in the movie that I have no expectations that Americans will get at all and that's one of the things that I don't expect anyone outside the US to get. In my thought, that was a something O-Ren and The Bride used to say to each other when they were Deadly Vipers on a job. It was a private joke between the two of them.
TM: How about the samurai swords on the airplane?
QT: Well, this whole movie takes place in this special universe. This isn't the real world. It's funny that you bring it up because in the original script, Bill was going to have a different introduction. This is back when I was writing the part for Warren Beatty. The idea was that Bill would show up at this casino carrying a samurai sword, and the bodyguards, who also have samurai swords, ask him to leave it at the front desk. Warren goes, "wait a minute, hold it Quentin Everybody has a samurai sword?" I go "yeah." He says, "how does that happen?" I say, "that's the world that this movie takes place in. Everybody has a samurai sword." And he goes, "oh! So this isn't real life?" I go, "no! this is a movie movie universe and in this universe, people carry samurai swords. Not only do they carry samurai swords, not only can you bring a samurai sword on an airplane, there's a place on the airplane seat to put your samurai sword! Now, I'm not saying you can do this on every flight, but on Japanese airlines you better believe there's a place for you to put your samurai sword!
TM: I think maybe you should have directed Road to Perdition because it was inspired by Lone Wolf and Cub.
QT: I haven't actually seen that. I remember me and Samuel Jackson saying "oh shit! This is just Lone Wolf and Cub! What the fuck is this?" I wouldn't mind seeing it, but it just looked so arty. You know, drowning in art. That was one of the things I wanted to be really strong about when it came to Kill Bill. This isn't an art film mediation on these movies. This is the genuine article. The real deal. And that was one of the ideas behind splitting it in half. There just seems something pretentious about a three hour exploitation film. But two! Two exploitation movies! That's ambitious.

[Napoleon Chynamite]

Kill Bill sucks. I didn't even watch the 2nd one because I heard it was even worse.

[nameless]

Thanks for the article. Didn't think I could not respect Tarantino any less, but wow...

And hordes of Asian women fighting over Bill? Now I'm really glad I didn't see it.

[mr. x]

isn't tarantino a hated asiaphile?

well it's like this see. some people hate asiaphiles

some people have asiaphilephile

and of course asiaphiles are by default asiaphilephilephiles

course he did say "dead nigger storage" in pulp fiction and is still alive so...

[returntosender]

what was the response to jackie brown? I thought it was a really well received movie, even by the african american sector.

[Geese]

Jackie Brown? No one I knew went to see it because during my time Tarantino was still catchin flack for the nigger truck storage shit from Pulp Fiction, but the reason why he's still walking around is because back then Black people still had sense. Nobodies gonna run up and fill him full of extra holes, at least not back then. NOW? I have no clue what might happen to his ass now with these non-fightin gun totin faggots! It may be why he doesn't really throw the word nigger around because the same Black people he's cool with now, may not be so cool with it later. Totally unpredictable.

When Pulp Fiction came out and I heard about Tarantino's nigger tirade I just said "I'll never watch his movies" and I did a pretty fuckin good job up till Kill Bill Volume Two came out on DVD in August of 2004, so that's about a decade of just going around anything that even had his name on it. Then he had the big blow-up with his one time buddy Spike Lee during the 90's and I just took it all in stride. I've lived with the "types of Whites" he tries to pretend he is a part of. White people who grew up around and with Blacks who may not have had much, but they had dignity and pride in themselves and didn't call themselves nigga or nigger, because they're parents would put their head in their lap. Most importantly, they remembered who called them that and why and that people had to die for them to have what they have.

White people who came from these kinds of "Black neighborhoods" already knew that it wasn't alright or cool for their Black friends, classmates, co-workers, girlfriends, boyfriends, to say that shit. So they already knew if the Blacks are knockin each others teeth out for sayin it, I'm DEFINITELY NOT GONNA PLAY WITH THAT!

I don't know what kind of Black people Tarantino grew up around, which is also what caused him and Spike to start fighting because he started trying to tell Spike that HE KNEW what Black people wanted and how to talk to Black people, etc, etc. Or that's what's claimed, but when I read some of Tarantino's other interviews... guy speaks first and thinks later, at least earlier on he did. I think he grew up around Blacks that had given up and so they denegrated themselves and that was cool and acceptable to them, him, their parents, whatever. He would've gotten his ass handed to him everyday where I grew up talkin that nigger-shit and I would'nt have felt sorry for him or anyone else.

As for Jackie Brown? Jackie Brown came, Jackie Brown went. There was no big anything in the Black community over Tarantino unless it was to talk about his Nigger Trunk comments. I finally, recently, saw Jackie Brown so I could try to get into where Tarantino gets his inspirations from and I watched it with my brother and some other friends. We saw it for what it was. It was a Saturday Afternoon Philly 57 matinee movie, but it had character development and some sort of sense. I wanted to see whether or not he was gonna have Pam Grier run off with the White Bail Bond dude, but he didn't. Which I thought was kinda lame, but I guess that might have been in the book that he based Jackie Brown off of, which was written by a Black author during the Blaxploitation era, if memory serves.

But in Jackie Brown, Sam Jackson was Sam Jackson, Chris Tucker was Chris Tucker, it just looked like the same ole same ole that I'd seen in the old blaxploitation films, except... it was 1990-something when he shot it and when I saw Jackie Brown its 2005. Just isn't the same. The Age of Blaxploitation Films ran their course. It was the same way I felt about Kill Bill and his attempt to make it grind house. It just isn't the same when you have 70 million, state of the art sets and can pay Shaw Brothers studios a boatload of cash to make things.

Ironically Machiyama, said in his review that Tarantino has lost whatever creativity he had in/from Pulp Fiction. Machiyama liked Jackie Brown and liked watching the characters and actors play off of each other. Some of Tarantino's fans that I've talked to on-line and off, complain that they think he's hiding because he's shown his best with Pulp Fiction and now all he can do is Crappy B-Movie remakes, I dunno. I do know that Kill Bill HAD POTENTIAL, but didn't live up to it because of the way that he wrote it and just everything in general.

It made its money and then quickly fell off the radar...

[soulman386]

It surprises me that not more asian men find 'Kill Bill' offensive. In particular the scene where the Bride eliminates the Crazy 88. I like Uma Thurman but that scene was sick racist. It plays up the emasculating stereotypes of asian men. Think about it. At first the asian men are portrayed as full of bravado. They think they're tough but even a woman can come into the joint and slaughter their asses. The impotence of asian men is typified by the Bride breaking the sword of that little man then spanking him. The image is: "asian men are like little boys acting tough. But they're not real men." Why aren't more asian men outraged by this? Have they become so docile that they just accept it.

[BigLew]

It surprises me that not more asian men find 'Kill Bill' offensive. In particular the scene where the Bride eliminates the Crazy 88. I like Uma Thurman but that scene was sick racist. It plays up the emasculating stereotypes of asian men. Think about it. At first the asian men are portrayed as full of bravado. They think they're tough but even a woman can come into the joint and slaughter their asses. The impotence of asian men is typified by the Bride breaking the sword of that little man then spanking him. The image is: "asian men are like little boys acting tough. But they're not real men." Why aren't more asian men outraged by this? Have they become so docile that they just accept it.

Dude you need to buy a dick pump or take some pills, maybe if it works you'll feel better. Seriously, nothing you are saying is new.

If this movie destroys your self esteem so much then maybe you should concentrate on yourself, making yourself a better man and quit watching movies.

[Geese]

Soulman; The Loser-88 member who gets his sword cut into quarters and then gets spanked is actually a teenager. He's not a man to begin with. Why don't Asian men find it offensive? I couldn't tell you, I'm not an Asian man, but they probably considered the source and realized that they have a million better things to worry about besides Tarantino.

I will say that I personally didn't like the fact that the movie was billed as a homage, but I couldn't find the homage parts that weren't something that I didn't need to ask myself "Is that a compliment or an insult?"

When you know the movies he's supposedly paying tribute to it does make it hard to watch Kill Bill after awhile. The original movies that he is making reference to, those are all BETTER than Kill Bill. I personally just think he got carried away. Others have explained that this is the way that Tarantino makes his movies and then after I saw Jackie Brown I was kind of stumped.

I'm sorry, but I just don't see the quote, unquote, genius of Tarantino. So that certainly can't help, but I will say that I watched Kill Bill with expectations of him delievering what was promised and I saw a LOT of potential where I just felt as though he had cold feet. Least to me he did. It's easier to show the Loser-88 as losers then stage a scene like Age of Warriors or any number of ACTUAL Asian OR OTHERWISE movies where the main character fights masses of enemies and it looks good and not cheap and childish.

But prior to that he shows that O-Ren was a child prostitute, he says it, but does very well not to REALLY let the audience linger on that rather disturbing fact. Mind you she had already lost her parents, but when it is time for live action acting to be done by Lucy Liu we don't REALLY get to see her portray what the mind of a woman who has survived all of that is REALLY LIKE.

Instead it is inferred by the inferior fools that she surrounds herself with. It's inferred by the fact that she's a woman working for a White man or at least she's the protege of one and you might as well say working for, because the movie does state that he backs her in the war. But she's working for the man who stabbed her father in the back and killed him, then she is also supposedly lording over and being extremely disrespectful to Yakuza bosses in a male dominated society.

The movie was all over the place and really did reflect the hyper personality of Tarantino that I have seen in his interviews.

Like I said, I don't know why it wasn't seen as offensive. Maybe people just dismissed as; it's just a movie, who cares. Maybe people were just happy to see a lot of Asian people up on the screen and I actually had a few people tell me that one... which I was a little disturbed by, but HEY... whatever.

I will say that to me it missed the boat on how it COULD HAVE made its own mark by actually delving into those things, but then the movie would have been about anything other than what Tarantino made it for;

Uma Thurman.

So none of these other things are really important and that is why I said "I just don't see the genius." When he has a chance to actually create something worthwhile... he kind of swerves to avoid it. Also I think Tarantino realized he had developed O-Ren TOO FAR and we still have/had next to nothing about the main character Beatrix. Some of the inference about O-Ren is done deliberately so that the audience doesn't find itself rooting for her and not the still unknown and supposedly oh-so-wronged Uma Thurman character.

I never saw the Crazy-88 as tough. It may be another inference of how weak we are ultimately shown O-Ren is by the way she meets her end.

[Martino]

It surprises me that not more asian men find 'Kill Bill' offensive. In particular the scene where the Bride eliminates the Crazy 88. I like Uma Thurman but that scene was sick racist.

Well, for one, there is a whole genre of movies based on the plot idea of a woman getting revenge on (usually killing) men who wronged her: Truffaut's The Bride Wore Black is a good example.

Re the specific case of a white woman beating Asian men at their own game, a slightly darker answer is that it is a common fetish in a lot of cultures for men to be seen to be beaten by these kind of heroines/dominatrixes (take a look at the German and Japanese porn markets, which has carried it to the nth degree).

In a lot of men's heads its a kinky thrill to see these kind of Elektra-esque pretty ninja's doing their thing. There's a two way East-West thing going on there. Super distilled asiaphilia and femdom combined.

Re Tarantino ripping off or being influenced by all the sources cited in that wordy article - what a load of hot air. The Kill Bills are just a compressed remake of the Female Prisoner Scorpion movies of the 1970s (various directors). More Kill Bills? No surprise, all these pulp franchises always go a sequel too far, whether you're talking Nightmare on Elm Street or The Matrix.

And lastly: these movies are mindless entertainment. Think about the level of the minds they're aimed at. Not really worth endless analysis and discussion (which is free advertising, BTW). Go and rent La Femme Nikita (remade as Hei mao, remade as Point of No Return ) instead.

[TB4000]

http://comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=17629

[mr. x]

^---lemme guess, it's gonna be Tarantino with a top hat and mutton chops going "Aww man, I'd pay so much FUCKIN money to see these MOTHERFUCKIN JAPS kill each other"