"If I read the newspaper and I don't see my name,
my response is, 'Damn.'"
- Quentin Tarantino, Playboy, November 1994

 

Originally published by the Laughing Drunk. December 1997

This month, Quentin Tarantino finally unveils "Jackie Brown," the long-awaited follow-up to the Oscar-winning "Pulp Fiction."

Movie geeks and cinema autuers everywhere are salivating at the chance to bask in the glow that is Tarantino. A net quick search reveals hundreds of sites that blather on and on about the creativity of the writer-director that single-handedly shook up Hollywood and saved movie making as we know it.

Yeah right.

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Those of you who read the Drunk regularly or have picked up Jane Hamsher's "Killer Instinct" know better.

Hamsher is, of course, one of the producers of "Natural Born Killers." "Killer Instinct" details the making of "NBK," including the infamous battles with Tarantino (and Oliver Stone) that dogged the production.

Her book tries to shatter the myth that Tarantino is anymore than a video store geek that got really lucky; that he doesn't have a second act in him and everything in his canon is borrowed. (To be fair, the book trashes just about everyone.)

I've long argued that Tarantino, while a gifted dialogue writer, really has no original ideas of his own. "Killer Instinct" confirms my suspicions.

Remember, Tarantino started out as a failed actor who began writing movies so that he had something to appear in. His biggest credit prior to "Reservoir Dogs" was a small part on NBC's "The Golden Girls" as an Elvis impersonator in which he wore his own clothes.

It looks like his best impersonation is that of a writer. He may have tipped his hand on the Tonight Show recently...

Tarantino: "When I started out acting, you gotta have a resume. If you ain't done nothin' when you first start off, you know. It's like, the thing is, you can't write "nothin'"... or people aren't gonna pay attention to that. So you gotta lie, alright.

"I had better luck at it than most, because I kinda knew a lot about movies and stuff. I was a fan of Jean Luc Goddard, and he just had a movie come out called 'King Lear.' And I saw it and like there's no way in Hell anyone is ever going to see this movie, alright. So I wrote on my resume...'King Lear.' "

Jay Leno: "Did you ever get called on any of these? Did anyone ever call and check and say wait a minute?"

Tarantino: "No, no, of course not. So the thing is, they don't check on stuff like that. That's one of the cool things about this business."

Thus began a career built on little white lies that add up to a mountain of bullshit.

Let's examine the Quentin Tarantino history of paying "homage." Never before in the history of cinema has one man paid so much homage to so many different sources without ever telling anyone.

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Many of you may already know that the entire plot of "Reservoir Dogs" is lifted from the last twenty minutes of a Hong Kong film that has rarely gotten play in America.

1987's "City on Fire" garnered a Hong Kong best director nod for Ringo Lam ("Prison on Fire;" "Full Contact;" "Maximum Risk") and a best actor award for Chow Yun Fat ("The Killer;" "Full Contact;""Hard-Boiled").

In "City on Fire" a police lieutenant, desperate to track down a ring of jewel thieves, convinces his nephew (Chow) to go deep undercover to trap the ring. Chow infiltrates the gang and soon grows close to one of the thieves played by Danny Lee ("The Killer;" "Organized Crime and Triad Bureau").

Soon, Chow is torn between his allegiance to the police and loyalty to the gang. What follows is an entire series of shots lifted directly form "City on Fire" by Tarantino.

1.) Loyalty among thieves: the heist begins... The gang pull off the first heist wearing shades and walking down the street in a line. Tarantino lifts the scene in the opening shot of "Dogs," including the line of dialogue, "Let's go to work!"

In a Playboy interview, Tarantino admits he lifted the skinny tie/black suit look from John Woo's "A Better Tomorrow II:"

Playboy: Skinny ties, white shirts, black suits and sunglasses. How do you feel about the appropriation of the "Reservoir Dogs" look?

Tarantino: I think it's great. If an action movie is doing its job, you should want to dress like the hero. After I saw Chow Yun-Fat in John Woo's "A Better Tomorrow, Part II," I immediately bought a long coat and glasses and walked around with a toothpick in my mouth.

Actually, Chow sported a toothpick in "A Better Tomorrow I" he had a matchstick in II. Also from "A Better Tomorrow II," one the main gang members does away with a whole bunch of the bad guys with a samurai sword. Tarantino nicks this technique for Butch (Bruce Willis) in "Pulp Fiction."

Black suits and skinny ties...followed by a little sword play.

If you can't find "A Better Tomorrow II" in your local video store, rent "True Romance." Alabama (Patricia Arquette) is watching this scene on TV when Clarence (Christian Slater) returns from killing her pimp, Drexyl.

2.) Harvey Keitel, like Danny Lee in "City on Fire," unloads two pistols through the wind shield of a police car that happens upon the gang after the botched heist.

Harvey Keitel blows the Hell outta some cops...

...But it looks like Danny Lee's already beat him to it!

3.) Tim Roth, like Chow Yun Fat, takes a bullet in the gut while fleeing the scene with Harvey Keitel/Danny Lee.

4.) After getting trapped in an abandoned warehouse, the leader of the gang accuses Roth/Chow of being a police mole. Keitel/Lee calls bullshit on that and a three-way mexican stand-off results in everyone getting shot.

Chow, er-Roth, then makes a near-death admission that he is indeed a cop. Keitel/Lee then threatens to kill the cop. In "Dogs," Keitel does in fact pull the trigger. In "City," Chow dies while Lee cries in anguish for his dead "friend."

Of course, the character names in "Dogs" are borrowed from "The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3" (1974). The four subway train hijackers are all dressed alike (hat, glasses, moustache, big overcoat and machine gun) and had the pseudonyms of Mr. Blue, Mr. Green, Mr. Brown and Mr. Grey.

Tarantino has publicly acknowledged the influence of John Woo, but has casually left out the contributions of Ringo Lam. As a matter of fact, when the "homage" was exposed by Mike White's "Who Do You Think You're Fooling," MTV quoted Tarantino as saying, "He's dying to see the Hong Kong original" (RealPlayer required).

I say he watched it on the playback monitor of the set of "Reservoir Dogs." But like any thief, Tarantino changes his story often:

"I loved CITY ON FIRE, I got the poster framed in my house, so it's a great movie." - Quentin Tarantino, Film Threat, Issue 18, pg. 23.

"I've got the poster right here. That's Danny Lee. Ringo Lam is like my second, after Jackie Chan, third favorite of all the Hong Kong directors." - Quentin Tarantino,The Village Voice 10/25/94 No. 43, pg. 31.

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And then there's Roger Avary.

Back in 1985, When Tarantino worked at Video Archives in Manhattan Beach, his video store cohort, Roger Avary wrote a sprawling screenplay called "The Open Road."

"Road" centered around the character of Clarence Worley, comic book store geek, and his wife, Alabama Whitman. Clarence writes a screenplay about two serial killers named Mickey and Mallory and their cross-country killing spree. Clarence's life then begins intertwining with the fictitious screen story.

With Avary's approval, Tarantino then appropriated the script and rewrote it, eventually fashioning it into two separate stories: "Natural Born Killers" and "True Romance." A lot of the left over bits were salvaged for "Reservoir Dogs" and "Pulp Fiction."

Avary wrote Steven Wright's DJ bits in "Reservoir Dogs" and later came back to give a happy ending to "True Romance" for director Tony Scott. Tarantino and Avary eventually had a falling out over screen credits.

Avary received only a story credit for "Pulp Fiction," when in fact he wrote a third of the film. "Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino" read the last card of the credits at the beginning of "Pulp." They very publicly reconciled during the Academy Awards telecast the following year, when both ascended the stairs to receive Oscars.

Another important Avary monologue was stolen by Tarantino in "Sleep with Me." Tarantino has a brief but memorable cameo espousing on the homosexual overtones of "Top Gun" ("You can ride my tail anytime!!!"). The entire bit was written by Avary but uncredited by Tarantino. Another heinous theft.

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"True Romance" has a lot of similarities to Terence Malik's "Badlands."

In "Badlands," two young outlaws, played by Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek, go on a cross-country killing spree in a black Cadillac.In "True Romance," two young outlaws, played by Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette, go on a cross-country killing spree in a purple Cadillac. Sheen's character is obsessed with James Dean and Elvis Presley. He even insists that his girlfriend call herself Priscilla. Slater's character is obsessed with Elvis Presley. He even has imaginary conversations with Elvis' ghost.

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"Pulp Fiction" was co-written by Roger Avary. Uncredited. Avary was credited only with writing "The Gold Watch" segment.

A lift that most people have missed is the heroin overdose scene with John Travolta, Uma Thurman and Eric Stoltz. Lance's (Stoltz) entire explanation of the proper usage of an adrenaline shot is taken, almost verbatim from a little seen 1976 Martin Scorsese documentary, "American Boy."

TO SEE A DIRECT COMPARISON, VISIT THE ANTI- TARANTINO PAGE (REAL PLAYER REQUIRED)

The Ezekiel monologue is lifted from a title crawl from the movie "The Bodyguard." Marselis Wallace's "pair of pliers and a blowtorch" speech is stolen from "Charley Varrick" (1973). The glowing suitcase is a "homage" to "Kiss Me Deadly" (1955). For a RealPlayer comparison of this "homage", visit the Anti-Tarantino Page's Video page.

Way to earn that original screenplay Oscar, Quentin!

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It's too soon to tell about "Jackie Brown." But he's already changed the name of the thing from Elmore Leonard's original title, "Rum Punch." He also changed the location from Florida to Los Angeles and the name of the character played by Pam Grier (Jackie Burke); no doubt paying "homage" to television's "Foxy Brown." He also pays "homage" to the 70's blaxploitation film, "Coffy" starring - you guessed it - Pam Grier.

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I'm sure "Jackie Brown" will entertain, but I refuse to hail Tarantino as genius until he backs up his body of work with something he actually wrote himself.When will Tarantino write something original that's any good?

His only original piece is "From Dusk 'till Dawn." Panned by EVERYONE. Some may cite "Four Rooms." But his segment, "The Man from Hollywood," is a remake of an old Alfred Hitchcock Presents, "The Man from the South."QT's next project? He told a UK newspaper that he's going to do the movie version of "The Man from UNCLE" television show at Warner Bros.

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In the final analysis, "Reservoir Dogs" admittedly kicks "City on Fire's" ass. "Pulp Fiction" changed indie films forever (for the worse). All his screenplays have resulted in enjoyable movies. Hell, I'll even admit to liking "From Dusk 'till Dawn." The second half was great fun.

Tarantino's real knack is for writing great dialogue, the way Barry Levinson used to. You believe characters like that exist, except in Quentin's world, all of them carry guns.

Unfortunately, there's an entire Tarantino Army that will continue to praise his creativity from here 'till Kingdom Come and there's no way to convince them of anything except that Tarantino is a film god. And there's good evidence that Tarantino believes his own press.

I point to a note that Tarantino passed to Jane Hamsher a couple of years after trying to screw her out of the rights to "NBK." He was at a film festival promoting "Pulp Fiction" when he ran into Hamsher. He decided to hit on her, despite their animosity. On a recent "Late, Late Show" with Tom Snyder, he even referred to himself in the third person. A sure sign of an ego run amok.

Recently, I had an argument with one of the Tarantino worshipers, arguing that even Steven Spielberg wrote "Close Encounters" and Martin Scorsese wrote "Mean Streets." His response? "'Mean Streets' sucked!"A revealing look at the pedigree of the average Tarantino Soldier. Kill me now.

Better yet, someone kill Quentin Tarantino.

 

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Notes:

Read about Mike White's "Who Do You Think You're Fooling?" troubles and how Quentin's friends at Miramax have shut him down.

Miramax seem to have a history of shutting down Tarantino's enemies. They rescinded a deal with Jane Hamsher and Don Murphy after they realized Tarantino REALLY didn't like these two. They had warned Bob and Harvey Weinstein of as much BEFORE they were signed. They were signed despite the warning. For the full story, read Hamsher's "Killer Instinct" published by Broadway Books.

If you want to see where Quentin got his moves, check out the films of these fine Chinese directors: John Woo- A Better Tomorrow, A Better Tomorrow II, The Killer, Hard Boiled, Face/Off (U.S.). Ringo Lam- City on Fire, Prison on Fire, Prison on Fire 2, Full Contact, Maximum Risk (U.S.). Tsui Hark- A Better Tomorrow 3, Once Upon A Time in China, (the awful) Double Team (U.S.)

"American Boy" examines the life of Steven Prince. Prince played the gun dealer in Scorsese's "Taxi Driver" and this fascinating documentary was made shortly after "Taxi Driver." You can find this movie on the "Three from Scorsese" laserdisc collection from the Voyager Company. It may be out of print though, so check Ebay. 

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