[Music / Quentin Tarantino Movies]
I make movies for an audience and they indulge in big set pieces
that gets an audience reaction.
And to me, that's a good night at the movies.
[Music]
I see the movie in my mind before I make the movie,
I've watched the movie.
I've got a genuine vision.
That's how I see it.
So Mr.Willis is this the finest moment of your acting career or what?
That first real flash of excitement is always when I'm writing something
that should go this way and then all of a sudden
inspiration happens and it goes somewhere else and I'm party to it.
I was put on Earth to face the blank page and pull stuff out of me.
Find whatever story or genre,
I want to deal with and do just my own little version of it.
[Intro Music: "Quentin Tarantino Movies"]
[Intro Music]
[Crowd Cheering]
According to filmmaker and historian Peter Bogdanovich,
you are the single most influential director of our generation.
[Music]
And the Oscar goes to...
Mr. Tarantino.
[Crowd Applause]
[Music]
Some boys are into sports.
Some boys are into cars.
I was always into movies.
[Music]
I work in a video store in Manhattan Beach California.
Place called "Video archives."
We were specialty was like foreign films
classics, TV shows, you know this oddball stuff.
I had like the shelf and every week I would do like a new theme.
The films of Michael Parks, the films of Andre DeToth,
you know, that store was five my one source of artistic expression.
[Music]
The time I never even thought about writing.
But where I actually realized I had a little bit
of talent at it, was going to acting class.
And I always doing bizarre scenes in acting class.
Little by little, I just — I started adding more and more and more to the scenes
and that was me learning how to write dialogue.
[Music]
All of my writing techniques, I never took any writing classes
or seminars or anything like that. I didn`t read any pamphlets.
My whole thing was - everything I learned as an actor of studying acting
for six years, I've basically applied to writing.
If I'm playing on, I don't know whatever, "Sugar Babies"
something really crazy in a theater production.
And I break up with my girlfriend,
who I'm like madly in love with and in my heart is shattered.
When I go out on stage,
I have to bring that experience on with me.
Well the same thing with me as a writer.
That pain that I'm feeling has got to find its way
into the story or else what am I doing?
[Music]
I mean "Kill Bill" was insanely personal.
-Hello, kiddo.
I don't necessarily want you to know why it's so damn personal
and why it was like ripped from my heart.
So, I bury it inside of a bunch of other stuff,
but it's still all very real and it's still coming from me.
... it`s been a pleasure chatting with a fellow cinema lover.
Sweet dreams, mademoiselle.
I really like taking my story
what I have to say, my tale, my little autobiographies.
But sticking them in crazy genre world.
[Music]
-Your unique storytelling.
What led you to constructing that?
Sort of back and forth non-linear style.
[Music]
-I've read novels and in novel you can start in the middle of the story.
They're doing something and it's just moving in the forward momentum
of what they're doing that's taking place in the here and now.
And now it comes to chapter 3.
And chapter three happen two years before. -Right.
-I always thought if you did it the way they did it in novels
that would be inherently cinematic.
The cross-cutting would be neat.
[Music]
And they just put it all in chronological order was inherently not cinematic.
It was drab.
-How did you get out?
-Shot my way out.
They start shooting, so I blasted my way out of there.
[Gun Shooting]
[Music]
My first movie "Reservoir Dogs",
everybody else in that set could know, a hell of a lot
more about filmmaking than I did, and they all did.
But I knew this material better than they did.
What I could do is put a bunch of actors in a room and get the best out of them.
And being able to talk after talk.
[Music]
I always knew that that would be one of my strengths.
The cops didnt`t show up when the alarm went off.
They didn`t show up until after Mr Blonde went off.
I mean, that's how I know, we were set up.
Come on, Mr. White, you can see that.
- Look, look. Fuck this Mr.White shit. All right.
Hey, hey, hey, wait a minute,
don`t tell me your fucking name, I don`t want to know it.
Jesus Christ, I ain`t telling mine.
Don't be intimidated by your actors.
Don't be scared.
You're there to find it together.
Bruce, Bruce, Bruce gives just a little bit more of a slow burner.
Blank.
And then boom action. -Okay.
[Music]
[Cut]
One of the best things
that are film director today can do for an actor
is you should be sitting right by the camera.
Not be watching it on a monitor
and not be watching it on a TV set.
Sitting in a chair, oftentimes in a whole other room.
If you watch the acting right next to the camera,
right in front of the actors,
it's as if they are acting only for you.
-Tell him: "Fuck You."
-Fuck You.
-And then throw it to everybody all around you.
— and your Jew dogs.
[Laughing]
The three stages - one is like, ohhh. Feel the head and
it's like: "Motherfucker." That it's like get them.
-Struck a room.
Here you go.
Get out of your house.
Action.
[Fighting]
Cut.
Damn good, yeah.
Interior - wedding chapel day, overhead shot.
We hear a bang
and the brightness is a bullet in the side of her head.
CUT TO: BLACK SCREEN... "The 4th Film by Quentin Tarantino."
[Laughing]
[Music]
That was me, throwing my hat
into the action film making ring in a big way.
[Music]
When you were so painstaking and how you shot it,
I think even would shoot in one direction,
get a shot, turn around, shoot the next cut.
That's the Hong Kong way, you know.
The American way is like if you ever wonder
if we should in this room, we cut the room in half
and we do one thing on this side first,
and then we do everything on that side.
That's not really their way because you can't be organic. - Right.
And no one can ever keep all that stuff in their head.
And hope that all the editings works.
Okay.
Action.
So what you do is,
you break everything down to two,three or four fight movement.
[Fighting sounds]
Say, you've done four move.
That last move that fourth moose.
Well, that's what comes the first move of the next three of four.
[Fighting Sounds]
Then also because you're fighting in order.
Anything that happens to the costumes is fine.
-Right, right.
Because it's happening on camera and it's right there.
Completely works in continuity.
[Sword Slashing Sound]
She's leaving a trail of death and destruction behind her,
but it's all right there.
We just keep adding to it.
Good,good. You`re hitch.
[Laughing]
[Music]
Being the director -
the one artist that I think is the most influential to me
is got to be Sergio Leone.
He is the filmmaker that you can spot the most in my work.
[Music]
That kind of operatic quality.
The way the music takes over and kind of set pieces.
Directing via a set-piece a lot of times.
[Music]
It all started on Jackie Brown.
[Music]
Harvey Weinstein was like:
"That's not enough music in it. I think you really need to put a score.
I think you need to hire." And it goes:
"It's too late Harvey. We've just gone too far.
I'm not gonna hire some guy
that I could write a score in the next four days.
That's not how I'm going to do a movie."
He goes:
"Well isn't there some old movie that you like
that you can just like use the score that already exists?"
I could do that and that's not such a dumb idea.
Can I do that?
Well, yeah, I guess if I license it I can do anything I want.
[Music]
When you know on the day this is a piece of music you're using,
you can get even more clever with it.
I said: "Well, I don't see any reason to change. I like doing it this way."
[Music]
I didn't ever want to trust a composer with the soul of my movie.
[Music]
But I had a little voice
in my head saying this material deserved an original score.
With Marconi is because yeah, you know, so I see a theme
that it's moving forward.
There's a forward momentum to it, the suggest to stagecoach.
[Music]
Moving forward but the important part of the theme is the fact
that it truly suggest the violence
that will follow eventually.
That sounds pretty fucking good.
[Laughing]
[Music]
-I ain`t dead yet, you black bastard.
[Laughing]
A filmography is not a hit-or-miss thing.
You have a vision.
You have a voice.
And each new film is your new conversation.
Times are changing slowly,
but surely and it's men like you that will make a difference.
[Music]
It feels magnificent to be able to work
in this art form at a level of genuine artist.
We have a little mantra that
me and the crew doing a long time where we say:
"Okay, we've got it. But we're going to do one more.
And why are we going to do one more?"
And then the whole crew screams out.
-Because we love making movies!
And we do. We're living a great life
that we're just absolutely blessed to live it.
Starting with that pen and that blank piece of paper.
That is my journey.
That's my heart of darkness.
That's what I'm really here to do.
This is the Zeitgeist Movement.
This is a phenomenon.
I'm not going to get another phenomena the next movie out.
I should tell them for a loop.
[Crowd Chatting]