i want you to hit me as hard as you can... As fans eagerly await filmmaker Quentin Tarantino's 10th
and supposedly final film, currently as mysterious as the contents of Marcellus Wallace's briefcase,
let's go all the way back to the beginning. Reservoir Dogs marked the emergence of two
pop culture phenomena: the kinetic filmmaker who would change the shape of indie cinema,
and a movie that helped establish a new kind of cool. Let's get to work
and find out what the [ __ ] happened to this movie!
The story behind Reservoir Dogs all goes back to the video store, namely the now closed Video
Archives in Manhattan Beach California, the shop where Quentin Tarantino famously worked for years.
For a motormouth encyclopedia of cinema knowledge who was raised on double features and TV,
it was the best possible place to work. It was at Video Archives that Tarantino co-wrote My
Best Friend's Birthday. Shot on black and white 16 millimeter with a $5000 budget, it clocked in
at 70 minutes - which technically makes it the first film from Quentin Tarantino. Although My
Best Friend's Birthday is now partially lost - around half of it can be found online - it
served as good practice for the budding director. So did the makeshift workshops at Video Archives,
designed for the co-workers, including future Pulp Fiction co-writer Roger Avary, to pass
around and critique each other's scripts. One of Tarantino's early efforts was titled True Romance,
which began as a collaboration with Avary called The Open Road. Tarantino actually managed to
sell the script, which would later be directed by Tony Scott, whose own Top Gun would be the target
of a well-reasoned analysis on homoeroticism by Tarantino in the 1994 film Sleep with Me:
it is a story about a man's struggle with his own homosexuality. Sold for $50000,
True Romance gave Tarantino some go-ahead money to try and get a more serious movie made.
It would also help ensure that he wouldn't just end up playing Elvis impersonators or serving as
a PA who cleans up dog [ __ ] on Venice Beach for a Dolph Lundgren workout video. Reservoir
Dogs would be a heist movie that wouldn't show the heist, partly due to budgetary restrictions
and partly as a move in creative energy. Written in just over three weeks, Reservoir Dogs revolves
around a group of criminals all strangers hired for a diamond heist. Things immediately turned
sour at the robbery with the added tension that one of the men is an undercover cop. It would be
told in a non-linear structure, which would become as much of a Tarantino staple as witty exchanges
and women's feet. Inspirations for Reservoir Dogs came from all across the cinematic spectrum - the
French new wave was a huge influence, with Jean-Pierre Melville's gangster movies playing a
part, and Jean-Luc Godard being a stylistic idol. Tarantino even named his production company A Band
Apart after the French title for Godard's crime film Band of Outsiders. There was also Stanley
Kubrick's early racetrack heist film The Killing and the film noir Kansas City Confidential. His
initial idea was to make a heist movie where the robbers all got away, out of his annoyance with
crime films where minor quirks of fate would result in a bitter ending for the characters.
But he clearly changed his mind over the course of putting the script on paper, judging by the
ultimate bloodbath on screen. The idea of naming characters after colors was borrowed from 1974's
The Taking of Pelham 123 which featured similar criminal code names like Mr Blue, Mr Green and yes
Mr Brown. The stylish 1987 Hong Kong thriller City on Fire also seemed to share many elements, even
drawing accusations of plagiarism. Reflecting on this type of criticism, Tarantino openly admitted:
"I steal from every single movie ever made, if my work has anything it's that i'm taking this from
this and that from that and mixing them together." The Reservoir Dogs script was riddled with crisp
quotable dialogue, complete with a hot take on Madonna's Like a Virgin. it hurts just like it
did the first time, you see the pain is reminding the [ __ ] machine what it was once like to be a
virgin, hence like a virgin. Which the singer would later rebuke, signing one of her albums
to Tarantino "To Quentin, it's not about dick it's about love." Oh and about the movie's name - the
inspirations for later Tarantino titles were generally without mystique. Pulp Fiction comes
from pulp mags and crime paperbacks. Inglourious Basterds is a purposely misspelled take on a
schlocky Enzo Castellari war movie, Kill Bill is an uncomplicated description of the bride's goal,
and so on. But the title for Reservoir Dogs isn't quite as clear. The most popular origin theory
is that a video archives customer had mangled the name of the french film Au Revoir Les Enfants. But
this is more or less considered lore. Tarantino himself said "it's just a perfect title for those
guys, they are reservoir dogs - whatever the hell that means." With the script complete, Tarantino
got it to producer Lawrence Bender, who slipped it to actor Harvey Keitel through an acting
class Bender was taking. Keitel jumped on board, boosting the production budget significantly to
one and a half million dollars and providing real legitimacy to the film. According to Tarantino,
Keitel was so impressed with the script's apparent authenticity that he asked if the fledgling
filmmaker had grown up in a bad neighborhood or if he had family members connected with tough guys.
Tarantino just shrugged and responded "I watch movies." Initially, Monte Hellman,
director of acid western Ride the Whirlwind and road movie Two Lane Blacktop, wanted to
direct. But this was Tarantino's baby - he had even confidently put "written and directed by
Quentin Tarantino" on the script's cover page. And so Hellman would serve as an executive producer.
Now Tarantino just had to assemble the team of color-coded crooks. In addition to securing better
finances, Keitel also played a huge role in the casting, even fronting his own money so Tarantino
and Bender could hold casting sessions in New York, a location that would give them access to
a broader variety of actors. Keitel would take the role of career criminal Mr White himself.
Mr Pink would be Steve Buscemi, then on his way to becoming a Coen brothers favorite.
Tarantino actually wrote the part for himself but he would later settle for Mr Brown,
despite its connotations. Mr brown that's a little too close to Mr [ __ ]. Mr Orange would be played
by Tim Roth, who officially took interest after a drunken night out with the director.
Rounding out the lawbreakers were Michael Madsen as malicious Mr Blonde,
and crime novelist and actual ex-convict Edward Bunker as Mr Blue. There was also
the established Chris Penn as Nice Guy Eddie, and Lawrence Tierney as gruff ringleader Joe Cabot,
nudging out character actor Timothy Carey, who had appeared in key inspiration The Killing,
and Robert Forster, who would later work with Tarantino on 1997's Jackie Brown.
Other actors who auditioned or were pursued for roles included Vincent Gallo, James Woods,
future Tarantino regular Samuel L Jackson, musician Tom Waits - who called the script
"poetic" - and George Clooney, who would soon join Tarantino in From Dusk till Dawn. The cast had two
weeks of rehearsal, which according to Keitel nearly went longer as Tarantino entertained the
idea of doing it as a stage play. Production on the movie began in July 1991 and went 35 days.
The primary location of the movie, an abandoned warehouse, was actually a mortuary, which seems
appropriate considering just about every primary character is headed there by the movie's end.
The upstairs of the building was repurposed into Mr Orange's apartment. Those matching black suits,
in addition to making everyone just look really cool, were based on the idea that actual robbers
all dress alike so that witnesses have a harder time describing them as individuals to police.
The production itself ran relatively smoothly, even though Tim Roth sometimes got unintentionally
glued to the floor after spending hours under hot lights in a syrupy blood mixture.
The British actor did also have challenges wrapping his mouth around an LA dialect.
But the biggest thorny situation behind the scenes was actor Lawrence Tierney,
known for being an ornery brute both on and off the set. Things got physical when Tierney,
who Tarantino later described as a quote crazy [ __ ], shoved the director in front of the cast
and crew during an escalated confrontation. For that, Tarantino threw him off the set, only later
making nice to finish the movie. Monte Hellman said that Tierney terrified everyone on the set
and was a constant concern for potential lawsuits. Tierney also had difficulty remembering his lines,
another source of frustration for both the actor and the director, who puts premium importance on
his dialogue. As for the mystery surrounding the fate of Mr Blue - nobody's got a clue what
happened to Mr Blue? Eddie Bunker claimed that one final scene was planned showing his demise,
but the production ran out of money and it was never filmed. With shooting finished
and editing essentially completed - his first with longtime editor Sally Menke, who passed
in 2010 - Tarantino engaged in what would be one of his most pivotal moments of creative control
centered around the movie's most iconic scene. Set to Stealer's Wheel's Stuck in the Middle with You,
this scene features the sadistic Mr Blonde doing an improvised dance around a bloody
and bound police officer. Brandishing a straight razor, Mr Blonde goes to town on the cop's ear,
carving it off as the camera moves away, leaving much of the violence to the viewer's
imagination - which tends to be a more corrupt place than the screen. The gruesome scene,
an early gag by effects maestro Greg Nicotero, has been compared to the unsettling Singing in the
Rain assault from Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange. It was also the subject of much discussion and debate
between the filmmaker and Miramax producer Harvey Weinstein, who was primarily concerned about the
audience, stating "I was afraid it would turn women off." Always a gentleman that Harvey...
Tarantino insisted it remain and unlike so many before and after he eventually won the
editing battle against Weinstein. It's still one of the most controversial scenes in movie history.
Tarantino stated "for some people the violence or the rudeness of the language is a mountain
they can't climb. That's okay it's not their cup of tea, but i am affecting them. I wanted that
scene to be disturbing." And disturbing it was, to the point that horror director Wes Craven walked
out during a film festival screening, utterly shocked by the sequence. The movie's soundtrack,
presented as part of K Billy's Super Sounds of the 70s radio show, would be the beginning of
Tarantino's perfect incorporation of songs both familiar and obscure in his movies. He wanted
more incongruous music, which he described as "the super sugary 70s bubblegum sound" he grew up with.
It certainly worked - the Mr Blonde torture scene would not be nearly as disturbing without Jerry
Rafferty and Joe Egan's harmless and now infamous pop song in the background. The real breakthrough
for Reservoir Dogs came at Sundance in 1992. Even though it was his first feature, Tarantino
had already established a reputation and a genuine buzz within the community, having taken workshops
there the previous year when he had the script with him and even had Steve Buscemi perform scenes
in front of Monte Hellman and Terry Gilliam, who was given a special thanks in the credits.
Along with In the Soup's Alexandre Rockwell and Gas Food Lodging's Allison Anders, Tarantino was
part of what came to be known as the Sundance class of 92. It was Reservoir Dogs that had Park
City foaming at the mouth, despite a premiere in which the film wasn't projected properly and
suffered a power outage during the screening. Reservoir Dogs rocked the festival and marked
a true change in the sorts of films that would get accepted. Author and historian Peter Biskind noted
that characters rarely died in Sundance films lest of AIDS, old age or boredom. Even Robert Redford,
who nurtured the festival, didn't want a slew of violent movies. Reservoir Dogs, as Tarantino
put it, was no quote Merchant Ivory [ __ ], referring to stuffy period pieces like a Room
with a View and Howard's End. The director and his debut, bridging genre movies and art house films,
kicked down the door and held a blade to its ear. Reservoir Dogs would later play at the
Toronto International Film Festival where it won the international critics award, and the Cannes
film festival, where Tarantino would soon win the Palme D'or with his follow-up Pulp Fiction.
Distributed by Miramax, Reservoir Dogs opened in New York in October 1992, but made less than three
million dollars domestically. It was definitely not universally praised by critics at the time,
with assessments like "this movie isn't really about anything" and "the only thing Tarantino
spells out is the violence." But it would go on to become a VHS phenomenon, which seems fitting since
its origins are at Video Archives. Reservoir Dogs marked not just the emergence of one of
cinema's most unique and visionary filmmakers but also propelled the resurgence in the independent
film movement. Empire magazine would call it "the greatest independent film ever made" edging
out classics like George Romero's Night of the Living Dead and Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets.
It may have started as a small labor of love by a hyperactive video store kid but its immediate
influence rapidly spawned countless copycats filling those same store shelves, each desperate
to mimic his black comedy, fractured chronology, articulate sociopaths and jolts of violence.
As Tarantino phrased it "I became an adjective sooner than I thought I was going to." The movie
has been widely revisited in many formats since its release, from action figures to video games
to Suicide Girls burlesque. A young Michael Fassbender produced a stage version even though
the film itself was banned in Ireland at the time. 20 years after the film's release director Jason
Reitman staged a live reading with an all black cast that included Laurence Fishburne, Anthony
Mackie, Anthony Anderson, Terence Howard and Cuba Gooding Jr. Among his dozens of unrealized
projects Tarantino has frequently considered resurrecting some of his characters and movies,
from a Vega brothers spin-off that has aged out of possibility to Kill Bill 3, which would find
the Bride and her daughter tracked by some of the movie's survivors. Reservoir Dogs is certainly
no exception, with Tarantino having flirted with turning it into a book, so far writing
two chapters before shelving it to focus on the novelization of Once upon a Time in Hollywood.
Tarantino recently stated "i actually considered about doing a remake of Reservoir Dogs as my last
movie - I won't do it internet, alright, but I considered it." Oh well, he can tease his audience
all he wants, we'll show up for whatever comes next - or last, as the case may be.
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