Quentin Tarantino has become a household name as a filmmaker who receives immense praise
for films like Pulp Fiction and Inglorious Basterds but he also gets his fair share of
criticism, none of which is directed at a film in his entire career more than
Death Proof.
The black sheep of his filmmography that even he acknowledges.
It was originally paired with Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror and released as the double feature
"Grindhouse" back in 2007.
A Brief History of the Grindhouse... after the proliferation of television, theaters
were struggling, a combination of the convenience of TV and the decline of urban areas once
booming with business in the 30's were left to decay.
As a more racially diverse population filled the cities those who regarded people of color
as inferior left for the supposed greener pastures of a racially unified neighborhood.
The theaters that were once hot spots in the city were being abandoned, and theater owners
struggled to find a way to fill the seats.
Exploitation films started to be shown as double or triple features with low ticket
prices to drive business in.
A whole subculture of cinema began, with dozens of sub-genres blossoming; from cannibal films,
to giallo, to slashers, to women in prison films.
They all followed roughly the same outline, small budget, unknown cast, lurid content
and what most considered to be "cheap" thrills, and they were pumped out at a high rate and
put into Grindhouse theaters.
This subculture of cinema certainly doesn't get a lot of respect or acclaim, but plenty
of important filmmakers wouldn't be who they are today without them.
James Cameron got his first work as a director working for Roger Corman, just three years
before his career making film "The Terminator" his first feature credit was on a film called
"Piranha Part Two: The Spawning".
Paul Thomas Anderson's own father Ernie Anderson hosted a late night horror show similar to
Elvira or Mystery Science Theater, and was a big part of shaping his love for film growing
up.
Edgar Wright is an open fan of exploitation films, something we can see in his Cornetto
Trilogy, and as a matter of fact he participated in "Grindhouse" by directing one of the fake
trailers shown at the start.
There's an appeal to those movies that is lost on most, but I think it's an important
part of film history.
Without those exploitation films we wouldn't have had Night of the Living Dead, The Rocky
Horror Picture Show, The Evil Dead, Mad Max, and so many others.
I think Death Proof and Planet Terror were intended to be a window to the past, for these
younger generations growing up who couldn't see it for themselves.
Death Proof is Tarantino's Love Letter to a Bygone Era.
Once upon a time film was shot on film, editing involved physically cutting film together,
even though this technique is still used occasionally it's still hard to imagine in this current
era with software like Final Cut or Premiere.
So sometimes it meant in these films you'd see mismatched cuts, missing frames, or sound
cutting in and out where it's not supposed to.
These lower budget film prints weren't regarded with the same care as something like Lawrence
of Arabia, so you'd see scratches and dust on the print and all of it was meticulously
crafted for the film(at least the first half) to create the feel that you were watching
a film shot in that time period.
At its heart the film pays homage to two very different types of films of the time; the
slasher flick and the car chase flick, with the first and second halves pretty exlcusively
representing each one respectively with the narrative dramatically shifting halfway through
a la Full Metal Jacket.
The film is awash with 1970's aesthetic from the way it's shot to the way it's edited,
the bar is filled with old memorabilia, and even some of the T-shirts the characters wear
are references to that era, and of course, the soundtrack.
Tarantino is a master of choosing the right songs for the right scenes and honestly, this
film is my favorite of his for this.
And you look at the cast, in the old exploitation films you saw a lot of representation, a far
cry from the typically all male and all white cast of most films during the era where women
were just eye candy or romance options.
Most of the prominent characters in Death Proof are women, and only a few of them are
white, all of them written with care with real personalities and real conversations
that give them more than just worrying about boys, though we do hear a bit of that with
the first group of women.
They serve as our slasher flick group, all real human beings who get caught up in this
pyschopath's sick game on a night where they're just looking to have fun time with their girlfriends.
And then we look at Stuntman Mike himself, the centerpiece of the two distinct halves
of the film.
He's the product of these shifting times, an up and coming stunt driver seeing his career
suffer as car pictures start dying out, and as real stunts started being replaced by CGI,
rendering him a relic of a different time.
He misses the old days and the old ways so much that he'll do whatever it takes to feel
that rush again, to live in that world again, but that world is gone.
He has to find an alternative because no one's hiring stunt drivers like him anymore, and
it just so happens that his solution to this problem involves killing innocent women.
In ways Death Proof is Tarantino's most experimental film, and at its heart I think it's his most
personal film, you can see behind the scenes footage or early promotional interviews for
the film and he couldn't have been more excited to share it with the world, and not just the
film of Death Proof but the Grindhouse presentation harkening back to the drive-in double feature
days of his youth.
That it wasn't until it was met with an unexpectedly poor response that he canonized it as his
worst film.
And it's sad, you can feel his passion for cinema in every breath of this film, he has
a love for movies unlike almost anyone else out there, and to see this passion project
of his almost universally panned by even his most loyal fans, it must have been an awful
feeling, I'm sure he expected Grindhouse to be a tremendous success, but it just didn't
pull people in the way he thought it would.
People are all too aware of his influences, and people respond well when those influences
are Scorcese, De Palma, or Leone.
But there seemed to be no love for his tribute to those exploitation films, that the next
film in line vying for lowest ranking in his filmography would probably be Jackie Brown,
a tribute to the blaxploitation films of the 70's.
Clearly illustrating the lack of connection most people feel to grindhouse cinema, and
at the end of the day, why it's important to call it what it is, self indulgence.
Something he's no stranger to and never seems to bother anyone, but this sort of self indulgence
just seemed to miss the mark.
Tarantino is a film romantic, and in his mind the good old days are slowly fading, digital
is the death of cinema, the death of the magic that made movies his passion in the first
place, and it's a part of why I imagine he plans on leaving it behind.
He only has two more movies lined up and then he's leaving Hollywood and plans to write
and direct theater, write fiction novels and occasionally film criticism or essays.
I think he's been really disillusioned by things, and I think the failure of this film
was what sparked it, this was his way of saying “Things don't have to change, I can prove
that the old way is better and that there's still a place for that with modern audiences”,
and for it to backfire like that must have really changed his perspective.
His way of seeing it is this, film is meant to be on film, not a harddrive, no one's going
to the theater anymore because it's not the same experience.
If I wanted to watch a DVD I'd stay at home, that paying to see a movie these days is basically
just renting the seat.
It's why he developed Grindhouse, and it's why his latest film “The Hateful Eight”
was released in 70mm with roadshow presentation the way the big films like Ben Hur used to
be shown.
In these ways I think the character Stuntman Mike is even more autobiographical than he
intended, his feelings of a lost era are reflected in his work and in his comments.
Tarantino himself is becoming a relic that doesn't quite fit in with the modern times,
that he's still making great films but he's not quite rolling with the punches and the
shifting times, instead lambasting them for destroying this romantic image he has of early
cinema.
And in that way, the end of the film serves as a sort of omen of what he feared.
That he tried to challenge the system, by doing things the old way and in his mind the
proper way, but it didn't quite work out in his favor.
He's not the only filmmaker that's expressed these opinions, plenty of people in the industry
can't stand digital, and moving away from real movie magic.
Like in Death Proof, real cars going really fast and the camera just being along for the
ride is now cars on a track or a green screen with all of the other action edited in later
in post.
But, and this is the point I'll end the video on, I think he's dead wrong.
Digital isn't killing film, it's just offering a different way of making movies, and one
that's more accessible.
For someone who so fervently romanticizes the days of the super 8, when a rag tag team
of film buffs could make whatever movie they wanted on a shoe string budget, he seems to
be completely missing the point that that is exactly what digital is doing for a new
generation.
It's damn near impossible to get your hands on old celluloid and a camera to film it,
shooting on film is so expensive that even billion dollar studios are moving away from
it.
When a sea change like this happens it's easy to see the negative and despair for the future.
But this is the new way to encourage young people to get out there and make films, and
not to do it for some studio or a paycheck, but because they care and have that burning
passion to create something, which is exactly what was happening back in the 70's with the
Grindhouse films.
He and many others are looking at the wrong culprit entirely.
Shooting digitally doesn't inherently mean shooting on a sound stage and a green screen,
and as a matter of fact plenty of movies shot on film took the easy way out just like they
do today.
But the biggest reason for this downfall of quality is the size of the industry, and how
much money it pulls in.
As long as a studio can churn out crap and make millions of dollars, we're going to see
a ton of crap get churned out; and as budgets skyrocket and as millionaires want to get
into the producer's game and play it safe to make a quick return on their investment,
it makes it that much harder for the little guy to make a successful independent film,
and what I find so ironic about it all is that he never could have made Reservoir Dogs
today, the film that made him a star couldn't have been done on film with those actors on
such a tight budget, but you know how you'd stand the best chance of getting a movie like
that made today?
By shooting with digital.
But of course, everyone has a different opinion on the whole film vs. digital debate, so I
think the most important thing to keep in mind, whether you agree with Tarantino or
whether you agree with me, the one thing that no can argue, is that we're still getting
incredible films all of the time.
It's easy to look at Hollywood and see nothing but reboots and sequels and cash grabbing
garbage, but we still get films like “The Revenant”, we still get films like “Her”
or “Boyhood” or any of the other amazing films of the last decade..
They seem to be fewer and further apart but that's just because of how many movies get
made compared to what it used to be and how much exposure we get to what is being made.
And even though the indie film as we know it may be dead, there's still hope for aspiring
filmmakers such as myself out there, and I think digital is the only way for an indie
filmmaker to get their start these days, but as long as passionate people want to make
something they really care about, and there are people willing to pay to see what they
create, I don't think we have any need to worry about the future of film.
Thank you for watching and I'll see you next time.