BONUS The Friday Show - On the QT: Kill Bill
Marc:She opens the door to reveal this picturesque garden, snow-covered garden with little snowflakes going by, a little water tapestry thing.
Marc:Like a pump.
Marc:Yeah, like a water pump that is just, you know, going on in the background.
Guest:Again, I remembered that sound explicitly.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You should definitely get one of those.
Marc:I want to get one of those water things just so I can hear that in the background.
Yeah.
Marc:I'm going to get my fucking samurai sword and start stabbing the mailman or something.
Guest:Hey, Chris.
Guest:Hello, Brendan.
Guest:How's it going, man?
Guest:It's going all right.
Guest:I know that I said we were going to do listener feedback and stuff at a separate time because I've got a lot of stuff that's still in the mailbag here and stuff still coming in all the time.
Guest:And then we have a big thing to get into today.
Guest:We have a four-hour movie that we're going to talk about.
Guest:It's going to take up a lot of time.
Guest:So I didn't want to do anything else other than that.
Guest:But I have to address something.
Guest:Because I saw this comment come in and it got my attention right away because the first thing it said was, fuck you, Brendan.
Guest:So naturally, I was going to read the rest of that.
Guest:Oh, I am intrigued.
Guest:I'll subscribe to your newsletter, Jesse.
Guest:So Jesse said, fuck you, Brendan.
Guest:Always a great way to start.
Guest:And then said, I listen to your show while I'm at work.
Guest:Love the show, but now I have to spend the rest of the day with that damn RFK Jr.
Guest:Worms song stuck in my head.
Guest:Now I have an earworm to go along with that.
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:That was from Jesse.
Guest:And that wasn't the only one.
Guest:I also got this from Russell.
Guest:And he said, Brendan, can you please share a link to the RFK Jr.
Guest:song so I can properly share this with everyone I know?
Guest:So...
Guest:I think, Russell, and maybe for you, Jesse, if you want to eliminate the earworm, I will gladly put the link in the episode description.
Guest:It's easily shareable off of suno.com.
Guest:And in case you didn't listen, this was an AI song that I had created because RFK Jr.
Guest:has a worm that lives in his brain and ate part of it.
Guest:And I created a pop song about that, which I like to do.
Guest:It's a little hobby of mine.
Guest:And I also think, Chris, you know, there's some people that don't like the catchy pop hooks.
Guest:So I do.
Guest:I have another one.
Guest:Why don't I share this with our listeners?
Guest:Do you have a ballad?
Marc:Are we doing a ballad?
Marc:Indeed.
Marc:Oh, this is great.
Marc:I can't wait.
Guest:Three hours away, the light came from my phone.
Guest:Made my face shiny and bright.
Guest:I had to share this moment.
Guest:I reached with a gentle touch.
Guest:Softly shook my lovely awake.
Guest:It all led up to this moment.
Guest:I spread the news with joy in my heart.
Guest:It was a night drunk, got COVID.
Guest:It didn't get better than that.
Guest:Everything was downhill from there, but boy that was a great, great night.
Guest:We imagined what was happening and we knew he was terrified.
Guest:Later we found that he thought that was it.
Guest:He said to his wife, tell Bear I knew him.
Guest:Said to his wife, tell Bear I knew him.
Guest:Search with a gentle touch.
Guest:Softly shook my lovely awake It all led up to this moment I spread the news with joy in my heart It was when I drunk got COVID It didn't get better than that Everything was downhill from there But boy, that was a great, great night
Marc:Top down, this is a hit.
Marc:Brandon, I remember that night so vividly.
Marc:I'm not exaggerating.
Marc:It hasn't gotten better than that.
Marc:I, oh my God, I was just thinking, they're just thinking about what he, the fear he was going through.
Marc:Oh, it fills me with such joy.
Guest:And then we found out later he really was feeling that.
Guest:Like he told someone, I might be one of the dyers.
Guest:That's still one of my, I say that in life all the time.
Guest:Oh, he might be one of the dyers.
Guest:Tell Baron I knew him.
Guest:He just crazed off.
Guest:That is a particularly nice touch, I will admit.
Guest:God damn it.
Guest:So I will put those links in the episode description.
Guest:And if you want to send us anything else, go ahead and do that.
Guest:And as I said, in a future episode, maybe even next week, frankly, I will go through some of the things that you've been sending in because I have a lot and there's just been restrictions on our time.
Guest:We can't do four hour shows.
Guest:unlike the four-hour film that we're going to talk about today.
Guest:And so because of that, Chris, if you don't mind, let's push off what we were going to do about the week that was in WTF and elsewhere.
Guest:We'll try to get that in at the end of the show because I want to make sure we have the right amount of time to do what we've been doing every month here, which is talk about the films of Quentin Tarantino as it is the 30th anniversary of Pulp Fiction premiering at...
Guest:The Cannes Film Festival just happened, actually.
Guest:That was just recently.
Guest:We had the actual date in May here.
Guest:But we watched Pulp Fiction two months ago.
Guest:We did Jackie Brown last month.
Guest:And now this month...
Guest:we managed to find ourselves in perfect synchronicity with the world.
Guest:And a screening at my local movie theater was announced for back-to-back Kill Bill Volume 1 and Volume 2 on the same night.
Marc:Yeah, I've never seen it like this.
Marc:So that was going to be an exciting thing.
Guest:And it was how I was intending to watch it.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:This was part of our plan for the Tarantino thing.
Guest:When we get to Kill Bill, we will watch it all as one thing.
Marc:Which I have some notes about.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Okay.
Marc:Do you want to get to them as it happens?
Yes.
Marc:I mean, you lead.
Marc:You're the dance partner.
Marc:You lead, and I'll follow suit.
Guest:Okay, well, I mean, I think we can get into stuff anywhere you want with this.
Guest:Let's actually start off, though, in case people aren't up to speed on our rankings.
Guest:We have been watching these films.
Guest:We're going to get all the way through his nine films.
Guest:And by the time we hit October, which will be the actual 30th anniversary of Pulp Fiction's release here in the States.
Guest:But Chris and I have ranked, from the start, we have ranked Quentin Tarantino's films.
Guest:And we are, as we watch, moving the rankings around, depending on how we feel about the films.
Guest:And so...
Guest:Where this stands for me after three films was Death Proof at number nine, Kill Bill at number eight.
Guest:Okay, so that's my memory of this film, having watched it in two parts, six months apart when they were in the theaters.
Guest:And then since then, I don't think ever watching either volume in full ever again.
Guest:I think last night was the first time I ever watched from minute one of Kill Bill Volume 1 until the final minute of Kill Bill Volume 2 and saw everything that happened in between.
Guest:I don't think that's happened since 2003 and 2004 when these movies came out.
Guest:So based mostly on memory, I had Kill Bill ranked number eight, Inglourious Bastards number seven, The Hateful Eight number six,
Guest:Jackie Brown, number five.
Guest:Django Unchained, number four.
Guest:Reservoir Dogs moved up to number three.
Guest:Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, number two.
Guest:And Pulp Fiction sitting at number one.
Guest:What's yours, Chris?
Marc:My list is Death Proof at nine.
Marc:Hateful Eight at eight.
Marc:Reservoir Dogs moved down at number seven.
Marc:Django Unchained at six.
Marc:Kill Bill at five.
Marc:Inglorious Bastards at four.
Marc:Jackie Brown at three.
Marc:Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, number two.
Marc:And Pulp Fiction at number one.
Guest:You came into this exercise giving Kill Bill a lot more admiration and a lot more pleasure on your list of Tarantino films than I did.
Guest:Why is that?
Guest:What was this movie to you before we rewatched it?
Guest:This movie was...
Marc:Fucking cool.
Marc:It was his first action movie.
Marc:It was also a fucking kung fu action movie.
Marc:Like, this was fun times at the theater.
Marc:Okay, but you didn't think Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs were cool?
Marc:They were cool.
Marc:This was an action, a kung fu action movie.
Marc:Sure, sure.
Marc:That's fucking cool.
Marc:So it was just an exciting time.
Marc:The soundtrack, the...
Marc:The first volumes soundtrack, very catchy, a lot of stuff going on.
Marc:I just loved the vibe of it.
Marc:It was something he had never done before.
Marc:And he was expanding.
Marc:He was trying to be, I wouldn't say Michael Bay, just trying to shift the perspective a little bit.
Marc:uh and i loved it i just thought it was it was great it showed his versatility uh so yeah just you know really enjoyed the uh the characters uh the bride is such a cool character uh and the the viper squad fucking cool like everything about it was cool up until a point and then it sort of you know doesn't become cool
Guest:Okay, but so what was your feeling coming away from it when you saw it the first time and it ended at the end of volume one?
Guest:Were you like... Oh, I want to run through a fucking wall.
Guest:So you at the time were like, this was great.
Guest:Volume one was great.
Marc:Yes, of course.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Volume 1 was a highlight of mine at the theater.
Guest:I felt ripped off, though.
Guest:I felt that we were being deprived of seeing the movie he intended for us to see by making us wait for six months.
Guest:Well, what deprived meaning?
Guest:Oh, he just wanted to just keep watching.
Guest:I'm like, why?
Guest:The guy intended to make a four hour film.
Guest:Why am I not watching it?
Guest:And I was as I as much as I enjoyed the full 140 minutes of volume one.
Guest:I loved every second of it.
Guest:I felt it ended on a down note because it was not a two-part movie.
Guest:It was a one-part thing that they were artificially creating a cliffhanger to.
Marc:See, for me, if there was never a part two, I would have been perfectly fine with this.
Guest:Well, I feel that way after watching it again last night, frankly.
Guest:I mean, actually, it's not so much that I don't wish there were a part two, but it's that I do think that, well, we'll get into it.
Guest:But let's say the second half of part two becomes the part where I wish he would have jettisoned it.
Guest:But beyond that, then when you saw part two in isolation back in 2004, what was your reaction to it then?
Mm-hmm.
Marc:To part two back then, I thought, honestly, I was like, man, this guy is hanging out with some people that are just not giving him good thoughts.
Guest:And yet you still rank it as number five for you.
Marc:Because the first part of the first volume is so good.
Marc:All right.
Guest:Fair.
Marc:Fair.
Marc:it, it elevates it.
Marc:I could, I can't possibly like put it further down because the first part is so good.
Marc:Like it carries it, you know?
Guest:Well, I think it is important to remember what was happening with him.
Guest:You're talking about he's around people here who aren't giving him good ideas.
Guest:That's how, that's your impression.
Guest:You're not saying he actually is, but you're saying that's the impression that comes off the screen that it's like,
Guest:this is a guy that's being said yes to for everything, right?
Guest:And somebody could be reeling him in in certain areas or giving him notes in others and whatnot.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:I do think it's important to note, though, that six years elapsed
Guest:between the films, right?
Guest:Like, it's not like this guy just is like turning stuff out, churning out, churning out.
Guest:And, you know, it's like, you know, M. Night Shyamalan had that phase where it was like a movie every year.
Guest:And after like three or four of them, people started making fun of the twist.
Guest:Those are the moments where you go like, it's just a law of diminishing returns, right?
Guest:This guy has made three movies and then took a break for six years.
Guest:What was he doing in those six years?
Guest:Well, there's some things, but definitely not doing as much in the culture as he was during that previous time that we talked about between making Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown, where he was everywhere.
Guest:This is like, yeah, he shows up in some things.
Guest:He's a bad guy on Alias, if you remember that, for a few episodes.
Guest:And he's in some people's films.
Guest:He's producing other films.
Guest:But it's not a ton of shit.
Guest:And he was quoted as saying, I lived the life of an artist.
Guest:That's what I was doing during those years.
Guest:I didn't have to work anymore.
Guest:There were no demands on me.
Guest:So I got to just sit, think, create, work on things.
Guest:Smoke.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's probably a big part of it.
Guest:But this dude was enjoying himself and whatever, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then Uma Thurman sees him somewhere along the line.
Guest:And she says, what about the thing we talked about?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that thing we talked about was The Bride, which apparently got invented by the two of them going out drinking during Pulp Fiction.
Guest:So over beers, the two of them invent this character of The Bride that's going to be the greatest assassin in the world, and she's betrayed.
Guest:Basically, they sketch out the whole story, which goes to show you that the story of Kill Bill isn't much.
Guest:It's a very simple story.
Guest:You could sketch it on a napkin while you're out drinking it.
Guest:And they have but they have the whole beginning part even shot in the head.
Guest:That's at the very beginning of the notes.
Guest:And he does what he always does.
Guest:He hyper fixates on it and he creates the whole thing, writes it out on a legal pad.
Guest:He's got a full treatment of it ready to go, goes in his drawer and he forgets about it.
Guest:This is we're going to this is going to happen many times over the course.
Guest:course of his career right yeah just forgets about it whatever till she says what about that thing so he pulls it out and he's in his like living as an artist phase also watching a shitload of movies buying a lot of personal prints of things that he loves because now he's rich right uh and so he's uh he's way into like his brain is locked in to all of these things that are like his
Guest:you know, fundamental appetites, kung fu movies, spaghetti westerns, you know, Italian neorealism, all of this stuff.
Guest:And he takes this script out and he works it up again.
Guest:And now we've got a movie on our hands, right?
Guest:He wants to make this thing so much, right?
Guest:And gets the ball rolling on it that then when Uma Thurman tells him, I'm pregnant, he goes, fine, I'll wait another year.
Guest:Wait, puts it on the back burner for another year.
Guest:So this is now we're achieving that level of like destiny project, right?
Guest:Dream project.
Guest:And what he comes up with is a 222 page shooting script.
Guest:So from the get go, you're like, well, that's a four hour plus movie, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, um, you know, Miramax, which is just thrilled to have him directing something for them again, uh, is like, okay, you know, he gets final cut and his contracts and that, but like, we should be talking him out of doing a four hour movie.
Guest:So they start from the get go working him over.
Guest:I'm like, you think maybe you do this as a one movie and then do the rest as a sequel or whatever.
Guest:Nope.
Guest:Make him one movie, make him one movie.
Hmm.
Guest:Also, what you have to remember is at this time, the indie revolution that he like came up in, that's over, right?
Guest:The Sundance era is done.
Guest:And it's not because something bad happened, quite the opposite.
Guest:It's over because that's all now in the mainstream.
Guest:All these people who came up in the mid-90s as the down and dirty pictures is what that whole book is about.
Guest:They're now in charge, right?
Guest:They're the people making the rules, winning the Oscars and winning box office, right?
Guest:So it's like they're going to let this guy do this thing, but they're thinking money, right?
Guest:They're thinking the finances of it.
Guest:It's not like we're going to make a splash with this little indie film and take it to Cannes and then it wins the, you know, Palme d'Or there and then we're off to the races.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:This is like we're going to market this like we market big budget blockbusters, right?
Yeah.
Guest:And it really is the start of Tarantino being a genre unto himself, right?
Guest:Like I remember when Once Upon a Time in Hollywood came out and it did, you know, boffo business and people were like, wow, it's great that like original things can still survive in the land of superhero movies and Star Wars and that.
Guest:And I forget who it was, but there was some critic or industry watcher.
Guest:I don't remember who.
Guest:I wish I could credit this person because they were absolutely right.
Guest:They're like...
Guest:What are you talking about?
Guest:Tarantino is IP.
Guest:Like he is as valid a piece of IP as Star Wars, Star Trek, you know, Marvel.
Guest:Like that guy is a brand.
Marc:He has a following.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And an instant signature of you know what you're going to get when you pay your ticket for this thing.
Guest:And lots of people like that thing.
Guest:Right.
Right.
Guest:So, okay.
Guest:So that's just to kind of set up the backstory of this and the development of it.
Guest:And I do think a big part of this is his desire to make a real deal action movie, as you identified as the most pleasurable thing about the film, is just the action filmmaking.
Guest:And I want to give myself a little credit here that I pointed this out when we watched Reservoir Dogs, that it jumped out at me then just because it's just short little scenes that I was like...
Guest:Oh, my God, this guy was at the very start, highly, highly capable in directing action.
Guest:And it's it's almost like Mozart's situation where he was just such a genius at the the this art, this this form of art.
Guest:that he knew how to do it just by picking it up, right?
Guest:Like with Mozart, it's like a kid who could pick up an instrument and just by the way he heard things was able to play it.
Guest:It's like almost the same thing with this guy, just because he was so absorbed by movies and the visuals and the style of it.
Guest:He just knew how to make these types of scenes.
Guest:You go just from that heist scene in Reservoir Dogs to the action beats in Pulp Fiction.
Guest:And then this movie, especially this first part, is just wall-to-wall action.
Guest:And all of it is done at the highest possible level.
Guest:And I found this quote of him, of people asking him, like...
Guest:Were you approaching the action in Kill Bill for any, like were you trying to emulate anyone at the time?
Guest:Were you trying to get a different style of movie in your future?
Guest:And he said, nope.
Guest:The reason I did this is because I wanted to see how good I am.
Guest:Like he did it as a test for himself.
Guest:Like I wanted to see, can I do this?
Guest:Can I pull this off?
Guest:And like, I don't know about you.
Guest:Maybe you could talk to this.
Guest:So the movie that we watched last night, at least where it starts, right, is from 21 years ago.
Guest:If you made that today and put that in the theaters today, people would be writing about it like it's like, you know, the Mad Max movie.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:this revolutionary thing like I cannot believe there's no CGI so to speak I mean I'm sure every once in a while things are punctuated for blood reasons or whatever but he deliberately in the action staging did not want
Guest:any computer graphics or trickery.
Guest:He wanted practical effects.
Guest:He wanted camera effects and on-set live action.
Guest:And it all works.
Guest:It's astounding.
Marc:Out of the gate, you are, like, guns a-blazing or knives a-blazing.
Marc:Like, it is so hot.
Marc:It comes out so hot.
Marc:Like, I...
Marc:I loved it.
Marc:I forgot how fast this movie started.
Marc:And it keeps going.
Marc:It never stopped.
Marc:It never stopped.
Marc:It was just a boulder that was just rolling down a hill.
Marc:And it was awesome to experience.
Marc:Like, I truly...
Marc:loved how it opened like probably my favorite 20 minutes in a movie like it is so much fun uh so yeah so yeah you're right the action that one scene and you're like okay this is the first 20 minutes we still have another hour and a half to go how is this going to uh to top it and he just constantly tops himself each and every time with each different set piece it is just unbelievable honestly
Guest:Yeah, I mean, the only time it really slows down in this first part, you know, volume one, is when she goes to Japan to get the samurai sword.
Guest:And it's funny because in the context of it just being that scene just being part of volume one.
Guest:It's actually a kind of nice, necessary moment to slow the movie down.
Guest:And it's the only thing in the movie that's actually taking any time to build character, right?
Guest:Not even that much, just a little bit.
Guest:And I do think that's one of the strengths of that first volume is they don't care about character.
Guest:He's like, no, this is the bride.
Guest:The bride is getting from point A to point B.
Guest:You don't really know anything about the backstory, but she's going to get revenge.
Guest:And you are totally fine, completely satisfied.
Guest:The story is supplemental, right?
Guest:It is just about the structure.
Guest:And he brings everything to bear on that structure.
Guest:And then when you see this scene in that volume one, you're like, okay, this was my time to feel the gravity of
Guest:of whatever has been in their past but it's all through this weapon that's being made this sword it has nothing to do with like someone's like deep regrets or their a flashback to their own past or whatever no it's just like we're gonna play this reverent tone about this sword to me that changes a little bit when you watch the whole four hours and then you're thinking back to this part where you're like well wait
Guest:The rest of the movie then does get to backstory.
Guest:It does start hashing out the relationship between the bride and Bill.
Guest:And so then you're like, well, then this thing, really what this is, is like a fetish scene for people who love samurai movies.
Guest:And you're like, what I want to do is I want to make the best possible scene of someone getting their samurai sword.
Yeah.
Guest:Okay, that's cool, but that's also very genre-specific.
Guest:That's for samurai movies.
Marc:It's hard to talk about this without bleeding into part two.
Marc:Well, go.
Marc:Go do it.
Marc:Bleed into it.
Marc:Because...
Marc:The conceit of the movie is the flaw.
Marc:Like, the title is the flaw.
Marc:Like, if the movie was just called The Bride, first of all, would fucking rule.
Marc:Like, sign me up.
Marc:The fact that it's Kill Bill...
Marc:And you put all this weight on getting to this bill.
Marc:It's like a video game where, all right, got to get through all these bosses to get to the final boss.
Marc:And the fact of the matter is...
Marc:Bill sucks.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:The final boss should be the best boss.
Marc:And he wasted the best boss in volume one because Lucy Liu is the final boss to end all bosses.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like that was the final boss.
Marc:So it's a, it's so hard to sort of like the,
Marc:carry this movie because they are two different things.
Marc:And the structure just doesn't hold when you talk about both of them because Bill, the character of Bill, the actor who performs Bill just cannot bear the weight of the title.
Marc:And for Uma Thurman and Quentin Tarantino to have created this character, the bride, they should have like...
Marc:had the sense to be like, hey, you know what?
Marc:We're putting a lot of emphasis on this other person who is behind the scenes.
Marc:It's not called Mr. Claw.
Marc:It's called Inspector Gadget.
Marc:We should call it who the main character is.
Marc:It is...
Marc:it is incomprehensible why no one could have like told them any different because, well, I mean, it's, it's, I don't think it's incomprehensible at all.
Guest:I think it's exactly who he was at the time.
Guest:I think that it was like anyone around him was like,
Guest:Dude, he's the magic man.
Guest:Like he makes, takes these things, the detritus of the past.
Guest:I know.
Guest:Blaxploitation and gangster movies and now Kung Fu movies and that.
Guest:And he's going to make magic out of it, make it contemporary in that.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I get why everyone had the faith that it would work, but you're one million percent right.
Guest:The problem is Bill.
Guest:That's the problem.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And the fact that the first movie, first of all, the first movie has an anime flashback, which is awesome.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Again, this is a flashback scene.
Guest:Like, you know, we were just talking about like, oh, the Hanzo Hattori scene doesn't require a flashback.
Guest:They just tell it about the story, the sword itself.
Guest:Well, this is a flashback.
Guest:And what does he decide to do for, you know, violence reasons and sexually explicit reasons, of course, but also just for style reasons.
Guest:He's like, this is going to be in the style of storytelling from this culture.
Guest:So here's an anime sequence.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And it's a it's a compelling story and it's great.
Marc:It propels the story forward.
Marc:And then in part two, we get another backstory, except this backstory is by Campfire.
Marc:And it's oh, dude, interminable.
Marc:It's the worst.
Marc:Why isn't that an anime sequence?
Marc:Like, why are we just watching this story of these two people who have zero chemistry?
Marc:That's the other thing.
Guest:Well, yeah, no chemistry and no, and then when you think about their relationship in hindsight, which we were able to do watching it on the rewatch, it's a toxic, negative, horrible situation when you really, when you start to apply who Bill is,
Guest:to the character you're like okay so this is a psychosexual abuser but also they're using violence but like he's basically like a polygamous cult leader right like he would not be out of place in like some like you know uh mormon like like big love right or something like that but but but now also he turns them into assassins right and there's this weird thing that the movie is
Guest:Gets to a point where it acknowledges this is happening, right?
Guest:She goes, she has that scene where she, another interminable scene, where she meets up with the guy who was supposed to be played by Ricardo Montalban.
Guest:And he's now played by Michael Parks doing a...
Marc:This scene is the definition of a goddamn deleted scene.
Marc:This scene had no purpose in the movie.
Guest:Well, it's got no purpose because the actor didn't do it, right?
Guest:And so they put another actor, a white guy, in to play the Mexican and do a brown face.
Guest:Is that bad?
Guest:Okay, so if you pushed him, Tarantino, why did you keep that scene in the movie?
Guest:I think he would say, because I want to show what these bad men have done to these women.
Guest:This guy scarred up the face of a woman who's probably much like the bride.
Guest:And now we start to project onto everything that's been happening.
Guest:Oh yeah, these horrible men have been dominating these supplicant women and disfiguring them or in the case of the bride, destroying her humanity in a way, making her into this killing machine.
Guest:So he's clearly understanding that about the character dynamic, right?
Guest:And then we have to spend a half hour with Bill and pretend like he's a cool guy.
Guest:Yes, a good dad.
Guest:And like, you know, one of the great things of Tarantino is like the joy of his villains.
Guest:Like we're going to get to two movies with Christoph Waltz.
Guest:I mean, he doesn't play a villain in one of them, but just he's still the same kind of character in both of them where he's enormously fun to be around.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Marcellus Wallace is fun to be around.
Guest:Mr. Blonde is fun to be around.
Guest:This Bill is a dud.
Guest:So not only is he shitty, he's shitty as a human being where you're like, oh, this is just a fucking basically a sex trafficker.
Guest:And he is, you know, there's nothing admirable about Bill.
Guest:But then he's also boring.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's like the unforgivable sin is that there is not one memorable line of dialogue between the bride and Bill when they're finally having their... Can you repeat anything other than the broad terms of it that, oh, there's that one section he's talking about Superman.
Guest:Or there's that one section where he talks about the fish that's flopping around on the rug.
Guest:But can you repeat any dialogue the way you can quote chapter and verse things from his other movies?
Marc:I mean, from the line from the trailer, right?
Marc:Like, baby, you ain't joking or something.
Marc:Yeah, or something.
Guest:You don't even know what that's the line.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:And I just watched it.
Guest:Yes, that's what I'm saying.
Guest:We got to that part last night and I was like, man, I don't really remember this at all.
Guest:And then it ended and I didn't remember it last night.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Also, I have a problem with the bride finding out that her daughter is alive in the last minutes of the movie.
Marc:Because part one ends with...
Marc:The bill asking the the now, you know, deformed secretary, the assistant to Lucy Liu's character asking, does she know that her daughter is alive?
Marc:And I remember gasping at that in the theater the first time.
Marc:And then you get the credits.
Marc:And then this movie starts off, and I'm like, all right, well, we're going to find out.
Marc:And, like, Uma Thurman doesn't find out until the very last minute.
Marc:And it's put in a way where I'm like, has Quentin Tarantino ever met a woman or a mother ever before?
Marc:Like, this is just weird.
Marc:It's a weird, like, like...
Marc:situation to be in like, Oh, here is my, the person who murdered me and I have to play house with them and sit through a goddamn making dinner scene.
Guest:I'm going to say, I'm going to say what you're reacting to Chris is that it's done poorly because I think there's something cool there.
Guest:I think there's a, I think there is a, a neat, uh, uh,
Guest:you know, kind of philosophical quandary that you could mine for some good material.
Guest:But the problem is this dynamic between Bill and the bride, because it amounts to nothing, or in the worst case, it amounts to start, you start thinking about like just the negativity of it.
Guest:you don't get to mine that territory of like, wow, what would you do if all of a sudden you're face-to-face with a child you didn't know existed, that you thought was dead, right?
Guest:Like, that's a thing to explore.
Guest:And frankly, you know, I don't think you give them enough credit for...
Guest:dealing well with the women he had been putting in his films, even by this point, forget about like Shoshana to come in, in glorious bastards or whatever.
Guest:But like, if you think back to even just Jackie Brown or Mia Wallace in, in Pulp Fiction, like I,
Guest:This guy, I think, was unfairly tarred with some idea of, like, he was, like, a dude's dude, and he just didn't care.
Guest:Like, he just wanted to make things that guys liked.
Guest:And, like, I'm watching this movie, particularly that first hour, and it's all strong women with no exceptions.
Guest:Like, there is no one in that beginning part where you're like...
Guest:Oh, he doesn't understand.
Guest:Like he's, he's trying to bring all the female characters into these worlds that he's creating.
Guest:And I thought he does it pretty seamlessly.
Guest:Like he's not, it doesn't feel like they're women, but they talk like guys or they're like, you know, some type of,
Guest:of what a guy is thinking an ideal woman would be.
Guest:They all seem independent.
Guest:They all seem to have agency.
Guest:And you got to remember this is like a dude raised primarily by a single mom, you know, then later a stepdad.
Guest:But like, I do think he was like at his core, he was like, I'd like it.
Guest:You know, he was not above calling them chicks, but I do think in his mind, he was like, this chick is cool.
Guest:Like he wasn't thinking like, I don't know these people.
Guest:He was just, they're going to live in my world.
Marc:But what I see is these chicks are all cool and they're all capable until they become moms.
Marc:And then they're just going to be moms.
Marc:Vivic A. Fox, she's just a stay at home mom.
Guest:Well, I get what you're saying there, that he does put this like almost mythical like attachment to mom and then it stops there.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Now it's a mom.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:The character is, it's a dead end, right?
Marc:Because Uma Thurman finds out that she's a mom.
Marc:Guess what?
Marc:I have to quit doing my job because now I'm a mom.
Marc:And like, it's, it's just a weird, weird, like subtext to put in there.
Marc:I do not enjoy, I did not enjoy that.
Guest:I get you.
Guest:I also, I mean, I think, okay, so here's the other thing.
Guest:that this is all getting me thinking.
Guest:We're talking about this very negatively.
Guest:Yes, I know.
Guest:We're going to get to the good stuff.
Guest:We're going to get to some good stuff soon, but I will say this.
Guest:He talked about, I found this quote like twice in two different places, like two different ways of saying the same thing he said in interviews, that one of his big stylistic choices, and just, I think it's really, it's kind of like what drives him to making movies in general, is having genre choices
Guest:interfere with real life and vice versa.
Guest:And there's this quote about Pulp Fiction, two quotes from two different interviews, where he says, I like movies that mix things up.
Guest:The starting point is you get these genre characters in these genre situations that you've seen in other movies, but then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, they're plunged into real life rules.
Guest:And then there's a similar quote that's even a little more specific.
Guest:He says, I thought the idea that would, in the case of Pulp Fiction, would be kind of cool was to take these separate stories and make them the oldest stories in the book.
Guest:And then what happens if we hung out with them all night long or all day long?
Guest:Like after they've killed the guy, what happens with the rest of their day?
Guest:And that's actually a very self-aware realization for him.
Guest:And it is what most of his output winds up being.
Guest:The deal with this movie is when real life happens in this universe of Kill Bill, all you want to do is go back to the genre fantasy.
Guest:It's the opposite of the other movies where you're like, oh, that's great that these gangsters are shooting things.
Guest:But you know what was the best part when they were talking about McDonald's?
Guest:right like that is way better than any violence that i saw right this it's like as soon as the real life stuff which is where you're like why this mom stuff like that just like why does that stop the plot dead like why is all of a sudden it's like okay well now i'm a mom and that's over and it's like yeah i go back to the fantasy part that's where this was all singing right
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:And also the rules kind of change or at least the stakes kind of change from the first volume to the second volume in a weird way.
Marc:Like as soon as the second one starts, it's like, well, it wasn't a wedding massacre.
Marc:It was actually a wedding rehearsal.
Marc:It's like, oh, OK.
Marc:So it's like, all right, we're lowering the stakes there.
Marc:and then it's um it's you know she doesn't kill anyone except for bill in the second one whereas she was killing everyone in the first one so she doesn't get you know her revenge on on bud she doesn't kill ellie necessarily so it's like all right it's not really a kill list anymore it's just like a to-do list to to get out of the way so
Guest:It is so weird because it does seem like two different movies and it's just so strange to know that it absolutely 100% was not.
Guest:Like he did not do any work on them ahead of time to conceive of them as two parts.
Guest:Like it was as arbitrary a cut as any slice that she does against the crazy 88s from where they cut the film.
Guest:Like it was just like, okay, here's this point.
Guest:This is a good place to stop slice.
Guest:Like it wasn't like, okay, we're going to rework this now so that it's two distinct movies, which is why he consistently calls it one movie.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, the problem is volume one ends and you are soaring high and volume two starts and you're literally and figuratively six feet underground clawing your way out from the Merc to get to like, you know, some, some stuff, some stuff of substance.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I will say this though, that like, I thought this, I, I had the, you know, this kind of negative reaction for 20 years in my head over volume two and watching it last night is particularly continuing along from one to two.
Guest:I was way, way, way into the initial, uh, I, you know, I guess two thirds of the, of part two when it's still about the, the goal of the movie, which is this kill list, you know, all of the stuff involving, uh,
Guest:Daryl Hannah and Michael Madsen and just anything along her journey of accomplishing this list was great.
Guest:To me, it doesn't really fall apart until the movie decides that this was about something all along.
Guest:Oh no, this is, this is about some real human issue that she has with Bill.
Guest:And now we have to, you know, throw the throttle on this whole thing.
Guest:And I have to, speaking of throwing the throttle, it did not escape my notice that just as this movie kind of,
Guest:careens into an area that I find unsatisfying.
Guest:You are shown the shot of Uma Thurman careening down a Mexican dirt road in this convertible car that we now know many years later was a shot she fought very long and hard not to do and was pushed by Tarantino in full...
Guest:Francis Ford Coppola megalomania that he was going to get his shot no matter what pushed her to do this not a stunt driver and she crashed the car fucked up her knees got a concussion and it basically destroyed their relationship right it was the end of their working relationship they were not on speaking terms for quite a long time they have said they have since reconciled and she's kind of at peace with what happened but it was a sore sore spot and
Guest:It cannot be more symbolic of the nature of the end of this movie that this very unnecessary thing that this guy was so determined to accomplish kind of ruined something beautiful that he had.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:He kind of, I mean, he needed a Brendan for, you know, Mark talks about it all the time.
Marc:He's like, I contemplated tons of stuff.
Marc:And Brendan's like, nah, I'm going to cut that out.
Marc:I'm not going to include that.
Marc:You know, he needed a Brendan.
Marc:He really did need someone who wasn't just a yes man.
Guest:Well, and you know, the sad thing is the guy who is not a yes man was Harvey Weinstein.
Guest:All he saw was make the most money at all costs.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So, yeah, it's hard to be on that side of the ledger, unfortunately.
Guest:By the way, last night was hilarious that this movie starts and the credits are coming up.
Guest:And it's as typical.
Guest:If you don't go to repertory screenings, particularly in like, you know, big city where there's lots of like movie nerds and that.
Guest:And this was a sold out screening, hundreds of people in there.
Guest:So people start applauding for below the line names as they show up in the credits, you know, editor Sally Menke.
Guest:She gets a lot of applause, right?
Guest:Cinematography, Robert Richardson.
Guest:Oh, a lot of applause.
Guest:And then it has the executive producer credits and it says number one in big, bold letters, Harvey Weinstein and Chris starts booing and screaming, fuck you.
Yeah.
Guest:And the whole audience did the same.
Guest:They followed suit.
Guest:That was what was great about it.
Guest:Yeah, I was very proud of that moment.
Guest:Well, speaking of that, though, that was an enjoyable way to start the night.
Guest:And I have to say, we've been talking about what doesn't work.
Guest:We have to talk about the things that do.
Guest:Because I know you talked about the action being cool and that, but it's so much more than that.
Guest:It's a movie that works perfectly.
Guest:When it works, it's got a guy at the tip top of his powers and he is so joyfully expressing them.
Guest:So when that song kicks in, that music cue of the battle without honor or humanity, which is a 1970s song, is a classic Tarantino thing where he pulls some bit of pop culture ephemera that no one else remembered and he repurposes it and uses it in this absolutely perfect,
Guest:perfect moment like i i we're sitting at a thing that has a table i slapped it like i was like like it was like if i if i had a gavel i would have hammered and been like case dismissed this is the greatest yeah i mean the the whole showdown at the house of blue leaves
Marc:I mean, put that shit in a museum.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:That is a fantastic bit of filmmaking.
Marc:Like, the way she is dressed with that goddamn all yellow jumpsuit.
Marc:The Bruce Lee jumpsuit, yeah.
Marc:Like, she is...
Marc:Like, the coolest killer I've ever seen.
Marc:And what's Lucy Liu's character's name?
Marc:Oren Ishii.
Marc:Oren Ishii.
Marc:Super cool.
Marc:Also, like a ninja.
Marc:Like, she's throwing darts out because she senses Uma Thurman.
Marc:Like...
Marc:This was awesome.
Guest:It's actually quite shocking that Lucy Liu did not have a major superstar career after this.
Guest:Probably owes to like, you know, a kind of unspoken but, you know, innate anti-Asian discrimination that would just go on in Hollywood.
Guest:And I mean that just from an institutional standpoint that, you know, we really didn't kind of...
Guest:supersede until like crazy rich Asians, right?
Guest:Or, or Shang-Chi, right?
Guest:Like there was just this thought like, oh yeah, well that's an Asian person.
Guest:They're not going to be the top of the line movie star.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And she is such a movie star in this movie.
Marc:Like she has the, carries the weight of all this power.
Marc:And I
Marc:I mean, the boardroom scene is fantastic.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like the way that she's able to slice off someone's head and then recite this charming English-spoken, you know, just like you would hear a CEO talk.
Guest:So, dude, that scene –
Guest:That monologue, this goes to exactly what I was saying about Bill's stuff.
Guest:So I don't know that I've watched that scene with the boardroom scene there for... Maybe I've seen it since I saw this in the theater.
Guest:But it's got to be 10 years, could be longer, 15, whatever.
Yeah.
Guest:I knew the whole speech like as she was saying it I remembered every word of it I remembered her intonation of it you know like I remember that she cocks her head when she says I'll take your fucking head like I remembered all of that about it and
Guest:There's nothing memorable about Bill.
Guest:Nothing.
Guest:And it goes to your point that this was the Tarantino villain of the film.
Guest:She stands there next to Hans Landa from Inglourious Bastards.
Guest:She's Marcellus Wallace.
Guest:That's right.
Marc:And you apparently didn't realize that there was a time jump in the very beginning.
Guest:I didn't remember it.
Guest:Yeah, I had thought that my memory was that Vivica Fox was just the first one she killed.
Guest:But no, it's Lucy Liu is the first one she killed.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right, which is something to think that she went from killing Lucy Liu to then going to Vivica A. Fox, which is, you know, quite a gambit.
Guest:Or what's actually really crazy about it is that she went from being paralyzed from a coma to...
Guest:a little while later going and fighting off all of the 88 ninjas.
Guest:Like there was no warmup in between there.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So like the crazy 88s are like the coolest bad guy team that I've ever seen.
Marc:Like they are just crazy.
Marc:Like there's Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon stuff in there.
Marc:There's Battle Royale stuff.
Marc:Like it is this mix of all of these cool martial arts like movies all mixed into one.
Marc:And the style of this sequence is so amazing.
Marc:Like there's guys being picked up by samurai swords, thrown into the pool.
Marc:Minutes later, that pool that was clear, a koi pond, I'm guessing, just now is just a blood pond.
Marc:It's just all red at the end.
Guest:Also, this is a case where him being told, you have to cut this movie in two for business sense.
Guest:And he does that.
Guest:And if you ask me, it's the wrong move.
Guest:It's the right move business-wise, but it's the wrong move for it as a movie.
Guest:But this sequence is a case where he was told he had to change something for a business sense in that it was too violent, right?
Guest:So that's why there's a section of it that goes to black and white.
Guest:And that...
Guest:somehow ridiculously gets you around the violence clause, right?
Guest:These bean counters are like, oh, now there's less red violence.
Guest:It's paint now.
Guest:Yes, right.
Guest:But regardless,
Guest:It's a good move.
Guest:It's like a stylistically cool choice.
Guest:Like he was able to make the thing that he was being told is a compromise and be like, man, fuck it.
Guest:I'll just make it look like this.
Guest:And it's going to be this cool black and white sequence within this fight scene.
Marc:And then he turns off the lights and it becomes this ultra cool blue.
Marc:The blue scene.
Marc:Yeah, no, it's a blue scene.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:fucking coolest thing I've ever seen and it is awesome and I mean this scene for me like it's the greatest it's up there with anything he's ever made this 18 minute sequence is you know as good as anything he's done
Marc:And then she opens the door to reveal this picturesque garden, snow-covered garden with little snowflakes going by, a little water tapestry thing.
Marc:Like a pump.
Marc:Yeah, like a water pump that is just, you know, going on in the background.
Guest:Again, I remembered that sound explicitly.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You should definitely get one of those.
Marc:I want to get one of those water things just so I can hear that in the background.
Marc:I'm going to get my fucking samurai sword and start stabbing the mailman or something.
Marc:But this is...
Marc:Like, the crescendo.
Marc:This should have been the end of the movie.
Marc:Like, that's the thing.
Marc:Like, this was the coolest end to a movie.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:This samurai fight with this cool villain.
Marc:And, I mean, everything that came before...
Marc:It's funny, you just realize in that first volume, you don't need so much backstory.
Marc:You don't need exposition.
Marc:You didn't need any of that stuff in volume two to put over all this stuff in volume one.
Marc:It all just works so magnificently.
Guest:You know, I also think there's something to be said for all these people playing, you know, he's got a lot of actors in here, probably the most at this point that he had done in the four movies that he had made where he's kind of reclaiming careers, which had become a kind of trademark for 10.
Guest:Like Charlie Brown.
Guest:Charlie Brown.
Guest:Charlie Brown's best role.
Yeah.
Guest:Man, I love, you know, it was so great.
Guest:I definitely remember the first time I saw this movie that as soon as that guy showed up on screen, I was like, why does that guy look like Charlie Brown?
Guest:And then, you know, you're just fingering like some dumb joke that they decided to have that guy dressed like Charlie Brown.
Guest:And then five minutes later, the bad guys are like, hey, you know, you look like Charlie Brown.
Marc:It was great.
Marc:It was so great.
Guest:But I'm more talking about like, okay, you've got Daryl Hannah, you've got Michael Parks, you've got Sonny Chiba.
Marc:I feel like that's like part of the reason why the second one doesn't work is that people are expecting this.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Whose career is he going to resurrect now?
Marc:Right.
Guest:And he gave and I'm not so quick to put it all on Carradine, David Carradine, who's playing Bill.
Guest:I think it's hopeless for anybody who was going to play Bill.
Guest:I don't think he gave them the same material that he gave to all these other people.
Guest:I just think you said it perfectly.
Guest:It's two words.
Marc:Bill sucks.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, do you think like recasting him with like Burt Reynolds would have helped?
Guest:No, I mean, like, you know, the story is apparently that he wanted it to be Warren Beatty and he gave and Warren just could never get on board with the like, he was like, why does everybody have samurai swords?
Guest:And and he was Tarantino was like, because that's this in this.
Guest:everyone has a sword.
Guest:Like that's like, like he was trying to explain something that's in his mind makes perfect sense.
Guest:And to an outsider that's asking for an explanation, like that makes no sense.
Guest:And so the way Warren made sense of it was that he was like, Oh,
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:I guess you mean it's not real.
Guest:This isn't real.
Guest:And if like that drove Tarantino crazy, like this is the most real to him, but you could just see why that's oil and water.
Guest:Like that's just not going to work.
Guest:If you don't, if you don't buy into the conceit that this is not, this is not, not real.
Guest:It's just,
Guest:Like this guy, this is Tarantino's thing.
Guest:He lives in the movies.
Guest:So if you're in a movie where in the rules of this movie, everyone has samurai swords the way you would have a gun, then that's just it.
Guest:It's not that it's fake.
Guest:It's not that you're watching something that's a fantasy.
Guest:That's just the movie that's being made.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:By the way, another sequence that's great.
Marc:Pai Mei's training sequence.
Marc:I mean, I remember liking it the first time I saw it.
Marc:I loved it this time.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It felt great.
Marc:It felt real.
Marc:And it came at the right moment.
Marc:And it gave the movie all the momentum for it.
Marc:With to continue on with Dara Hannah's and Bud's interaction like it was all of a piece and it all it all actually fits so well when you find out that that that Dara Hannah's character killed Pai Mei.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:You know, I feel like I didn't land the first time that like, oh, wow, like this this woman came in after Uma Thurman and got trained by this guy.
Marc:But this guy took took her eye and now she just, you know, killed him.
Guest:Right, but it's also, it's like, again, you don't need some real life, you know, parental conundrum to be in this for there to be emotional stakes.
Guest:Or for there to be resonance.
Guest:Because Daryl Hannah, so you assume, is like the second version of...
Guest:of Beatrice, right?
Guest:The bride.
Guest:And so she, and you know, because Bill basically treats all these women like they're his concubines, right?
Guest:So now here's another blonde concubine and he has sent her off to Pimei.
Guest:And she can't take it the way that, you know, he warns them, don't,
Guest:do crazy shit.
Guest:He'll rip your eye out.
Guest:So she don't mouth off to him.
Guest:So she mouthed off.
Guest:She got her eye ripped out.
Guest:And then because she's a sociopath, she kills him, right?
Guest:Well, that inherently means she's going to lose to the bride, right?
Guest:Like that's the, it's like the die is cast.
Guest:These are all, these are all like almost mythological stories, right?
Guest:So like there's no reason to have to, and again, goes back to the point I made.
Guest:When you're now told, well, there's reality happening over here.
Guest:You're like, well, wait, that other thing was so much more interesting.
Guest:This this world you're showing me of these like kind of faded martial arts techniques and stories like I'd like to live in that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, the one area where your theory goes to shit is at the titty bar where the real life of Bud going to work.
Marc:That is true.
Marc:At the titty bar.
Marc:For some reason, this is like the best scene I've ever seen.
Guest:Well, but it's like, it's also an area where the backstory totally works.
Guest:Like, I'm like, oh, now I'm like, you don't need, you don't get a backstory of Vivica Fox's character.
Guest:You just know she moved to the suburbs.
Guest:She has a daughter.
Guest:She changed her life, right?
Guest:You don't get that backstory about Elle Driver until, as you said, this very brief backstory at the end of her character, you know?
Guest:And yet with Bud, you get this whole backstory that amounts to nothing when you think about it.
Guest:Like, there's no... You're watching this and you're like, oh, is he going to come back there and kill everybody in the place or whatever?
Guest:Like, nope.
Guest:It's just the scene to show that this dude is a loser.
Guest:And he allows this actor, Joey Bishop's son, I forget what the actor's name is, but he allows this guy...
Guest:Five minutes to fucking shit all over Bud in the most hilarious way possible.
Guest:And you just keep thinking like, oh, man, this guy's going to get it.
Guest:Nope.
Guest:The scene is just there because he's going to tell Bud what a loser he is.
Guest:And Bud eats it and then leaves.
Marc:It's, it's a scene that I feel like would be in like a Paul Thomas Anderson movie.
Marc:Yeah, totally.
Marc:It is, it is such a great character scene, like, like handing a stripper some Coke and be like, here you go, baby, be somebody.
Yeah.
Guest:But again, again, he does not achieve that with Bill.
Guest:No.
Guest:There's nothing about anything Bill does where you're like, yeah, man, Bill sucks, but man, that scene with him is so cool.
Guest:Nope.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Nothing about him is cool.
Marc:And I think it's because he admires the actor.
Marc:So he didn't, like, he was kind of pulling his punches with him.
Marc:It's like, oh, I want you to hate Bill, but I kind of want you to love him because isn't this guy great?
Guest:Yeah, maybe, or maybe he thought he was giving him more than he was giving him.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:It's just, like, it's actually a thing I would recommend.
Guest:Try to watch this and try to figure out what the hell is wrong with Bill.
Guest:Like, why does Bill just not connect?
Yeah.
Marc:But Bill, you know what?
Marc:You know what?
Marc:The one scene that Bill does work in is his scene with Bud where they're talking.
Marc:But again, it's Bud.
Marc:Right.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:It's like, but I just love the idea of like, you pawned a Hattori Hanzo sword like that.
Marc:It was priceless.
Guest:And then the great reveal is that he didn't.
Marc:He didn't.
Guest:Bud's a great character.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And another thing is Bud's a great character and one of Tarantino's guys is playing the part.
Guest:Like this is like, man, it just, it stands out so much.
Guest:It's just like the thing with De Niro in the last movie.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Putting these people in this universe who don't, and in this case of the story, it's both the actor and the character not meshing with the rest of Tarantinoville.
Guest:But when they don't mesh, it,
Guest:oh it stands out it's just so obvious also bud and rick dalton make margaritas the exact same way my guy that can't be a mistake that like when he when he makes the margaritas and once upon a time in hollywood they must have re-watched
Marc:bud making these margaritas because it's it's like identical shot for shot the way he cracks the ice i mean it was just it was phenomenal honestly um like the what else what else do you want to talk about like have we talked about like how how cool hatari hanzo steel is like that was my fantasy baseball team for like five years in a row
Marc:Like, I love that.
Marc:Just that name is awesome.
Guest:Well, you bring that up.
Guest:It makes me think about the fact that this movie, and I was realizing it through all four hours of it last night, is that so much of this has become, like, memeable in the culture.
Guest:You know, that Quincy Jones sound, the siren sound that indicates revenge is coming, right?
Marc:Which, by the way, it happens once in part two.
Marc:Like, that's the other thing.
Marc:All the grace notes.
Marc:They don't come back.
Marc:They don't come back.
Marc:It doesn't feel like the same movie, which makes it so hard for me to call it one movie.
Marc:Because it's just not one movie.
Marc:They are two very different movies, you know?
Marc:I mean, God, I hate to pile on with Bill, but when I was watching that last scene between Bill and the bride, which, can I ask you,
Marc:Like, what was the point of bleeping out the bride's name?
Guest:No, that's definitely an annoying thing.
Marc:Yes.
Guest:Because here's why it's annoying.
Guest:Aside from being a thing that calls attention to itself and all this stuff.
Guest:you can do that through without it yeah like there's no reason to ever say her name yes until you say it like it's bleeped with vivica fox saying this is my friend to her daughter and then uma thurman says yeah i'm beatrice and they bleep it it's like she didn't have to say her name to a four-year-old not at all like it's so unnecessary and it was always a distraction and just
Guest:But it's again, it's, it's one of those things.
Guest:Nobody said, do you need this?
Guest:Like what's, you know, and, and it goes to the immediate thing that it came to my mind when I heard it last night was, oh, this is him on the, uh, the answering machine and Jackie Brown, just this stupid little thing where you're like,
Guest:Why'd you do that?
Guest:Like, it's not like it's of no consequence.
Guest:It like doesn't it's more confusing than anything.
Guest:So why'd you do it?
Guest:There's there is one thing that I read that he apparently was talked out of.
Guest:And thank fucking God he was.
Guest:What was it?
Guest:He was initially going to dub Pimei's voice with himself.
Guest:Oh my God.
Guest:Like a, like an actual, you know, chop sake movie that he would do the English voice on Pai Mei.
Guest:Thank God he was talked out of that.
Marc:Can you fucking imagine?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I can.
Marc:And I'm glad he didn't do it.
Marc:Oh, man.
Marc:I mean, for the fact that the Beatrix kiddo to be the reveal and to have a snap cut to, like, a school and, you know, with kids taking attendance, like, I just didn't get it.
Marc:It fell flat.
Marc:It...
Marc:It was like the movie was already kind of like going south on me.
Marc:And then that happened.
Marc:And I was like, oh, God, another nail in this in this coffin.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So but when Bill and the bride are explaining themselves.
Marc:And we're having this long conversation.
Marc:It really felt like we were eavesdropping on this private conversation with two of the most boring human beings alive.
Marc:I didn't understand why we were watching this.
Marc:It was so fundamentally boring.
Guest:Well, again, it's asking you to invest in Bill.
Guest:With something that you can't, because you're never given any reason that he should be this guy who has some stature or something that would be appealing to not just this character of the bride, but to you as a viewer.
Marc:Yeah, but...
Marc:There were some great shots throughout this entire thing.
Marc:Like the Steadicam shot in the restaurant scene.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Loved that.
Marc:Like there's so many little touches that are great.
Guest:Oh, well, okay.
Guest:But here's something we have to address.
Guest:What?
Guest:That we're now four movies in, and of course, we've talked about it throughout this episode, that technically, this guy is now showing he's at the height of his powers, and he's doing it with a full-on action movie in most cases in this thing.
Guest:And I think we are now at a point, and this is one of the reasons why I still rank Reservoir Dogs so high, and Pulp Fiction as well is still in my number one slot, is when he was a younger man,
Guest:And he was pulling off this virtuoso filmmaking.
Guest:It was like shockingly impressive.
Guest:And now you're definitely at a point where you're like, I got it, dude.
Guest:You know what you're doing.
Guest:All this stuff.
Guest:It's like just going to a restaurant that has been around for a few years and everyone tells you it's the best restaurant in town.
Guest:It's got a Michelin star and...
Guest:It's you, you're going to get the best possible food that you go in there with the expectation that that is going to be the case.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And it should not necessarily get prey.
Guest:Oh, like you, you then wind up having to take the rest of the restaurant into account.
Guest:Cause you know, this food is just going to be awesome.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that's the case with these movies from this point on.
Guest:It's like you got to do something better than just be the most technically awesome director there is.
Guest:And like I love every second of the technical expertise, but you got to prove a little more to me than that.
Guest:I hear you.
Marc:Now, can I ask if you would allow to split these movies to be their own movies?
Marc:And by the way, I love in part two, the volume two comes up and it's a movie by Quentin Tarantino.
Guest:Yeah, not the fourth.
Marc:Not the fourth.
Marc:It's a movie.
Marc:Just saying.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Not the fifth either.
Marc:Yes, not the fifth either.
Marc:4.5?
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:But if you were to split these in two, where would part one and part two land in your rankings?
Guest:Well, interesting, because I mean, I have it ranked as low as you can go besides Death Proof, right?
Guest:And I think that if you busted out volume one, volume two stays at number eight.
Guest:And I think I jack number one, volume one, up to four.
Guest:I would place it below Reservoir Dogs and above Django Unchained.
Guest:As it stands, I am going to raise the movie after watching it again.
Guest:I'm going to raise it up to number six on my list.
Guest:It goes above The Hateful Eight, Inglourious Bastards, and Death Proof.
Guest:I'm almost certain it's better than Death Proof.
Guest:I have not watched The Hateful Eight and Inglourious Bastards in a while, and I'm doing the same thing with them that I did with Django Unchained.
Guest:Okay, prove it to me, Django Unchained, that you're better than Reservoir Dogs, right?
Guest:So it's the same thing with those movies.
Guest:We'll watch them again, and they can prove to me that they're better than...
Guest:This totality of Kill Bill that we watch.
Guest:And I think the reason I'm moving it up is because, like you said, you cannot deny that first 140 minutes.
Guest:If you don't want to call it volume one, if you want to call it... And frankly, I'd be willing to go the first three hours.
Guest:The first three plus hours of this thing is...
Guest:just really spectacular and uh yes the last hour drags it down uh but i am willing to to yank it up uh where do you stand because i do also have something more to say about this uh that i think kind of goes beyond the rankings and more just my overall feelings about tarantino as we do this process so so where do you rank it
Marc:So for me, volume two, if I were to split them up, would be at number eight, right after Death Proof.
Marc:And Kill Bill volume one would be number three, like right after Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
Marc:Like it is fucking great.
Marc:Like it's great cinema.
Marc:I might watch this every year, that first one, because it is fucking gold.
Marc:As it is, if it's as a whole –
Marc:I'm actually putting it down to number six.
Guest:So we're in the same spot.
Guest:We both have it at six.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Very interesting.
Marc:I mean, the anchor that is in volume two just weighs it down just too much for me.
Marc:So yeah, so that's how it is.
Guest:I think that's not surprising that we both arrived at that spot.
Guest:And I think here's why, too, that I don't want to just put it all on it being that anchor, because this is what got me thinking about Tarantino's career in general.
Guest:Kill Bill is a good demarcation point.
Guest:And one of our listeners wrote in about this, we read it last time, saying that Jackie Brown was showing kind of a maturity that he hadn't really displayed earlier.
Guest:And the negative reaction maybe, or just for whatever reason, it almost seems like he regressed moving forward in his kind of progress as an artist.
Yeah.
Guest:And I do think that ultimately what Kill Bill adds up to, even the great parts, is something that is lesser.
Guest:And I kind of have an analogy about us here that...
Guest:I do want to stipulate first that I am not comparing myself or what we do here to Quentin Tarantino's artistry and his skill as a filmmaker.
Guest:This is just a reference point.
Guest:It's a way to make a point and draw it out.
Guest:But there was a reason we started doing this show on Fridays, right?
Guest:Some people who are new might not know.
Guest:But if you don't know, or if you do, it's worth mentioning again, that we started doing this because we had done a series for the full Marin called Wrestling with Mark, where Mark got into wrestling and spoke to wrestlers.
Guest:And we went to an AEW show.
Guest:And what wound up happening was we got a few thousand new listeners, new subscribers.
Guest:And...
Guest:And it became a necessity to try to keep them around, mostly because a lot of these people joined up with a one-month free trial.
Guest:So they're going to stick around for some reason for free.
Guest:Why not keep them here?
Guest:So we decided to add, not replace, we added this Friday show.
Guest:And we were going to talk about wrestling to help keep these wrestling fans around.
Guest:So, you know, you know the history if you do.
Guest:And if you don't, what happened was the people who were subscribing to the Full Marin, whether they were wrestling fans or not, just kept listening to all the bonus content, whether it was bonus episodes with Mark, whether it was Friday stuff, whether it was producer cuts, whatever.
Guest:Everybody just kind of listens to the same thing.
Guest:And so at some point we had to decide, let's broaden this out for the audience, right?
Guest:But sitting there in that theater last night watching Kill Bill,
Guest:I started thinking about what it must have been like if you were a full Marin listener and you had no real interest in wrestling or anything.
Guest:You're interested in Marc Maron and you're interested in like podcasts or whatever.
Guest:But then all of a sudden on this thing,
Guest:There is a show where they're talking about wrestling once a week, right?
Guest:And they're talking about it at a very elevated level, trying to treat it like it's something to have, you know, thorough consideration to.
Guest:I have to imagine that there were people listening...
Guest:who maybe they weren't like totally dismissive of what we were doing.
Guest:And frankly, the numbers show they weren't.
Guest:They were still listening.
Guest:But no matter how enthusiastic we were about the subject, no matter how we like told the stories and like, oh, this is what was important about this match or these, we put them into context and tried to make connections with life, tried to tell the history of like what was going on in television at the time.
Guest:I could still totally see somebody listening to that and being like,
Guest:Okay, fine, but what you're talking about is very silly.
Guest:It's wrestling.
Guest:There's guys in underwear.
Guest:And there could be other people, basically like Mark was, who were like, oh, I get it.
Guest:That makes sense what you're saying.
Guest:I could see myself enjoying this.
Guest:And maybe they would watch an episode, and it was like, I had a good time.
Guest:But that was it.
Guest:They didn't become wrestling maniacs, right?
Marc:Right, right.
Guest:And then, you know, it's like maybe they like even like checked out a four hour long pay per view, four hours long, which is the length of most of these pay per views.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And they liked it.
Guest:But like it's four hours.
Guest:That's a bit much to invest in this thing that's that you only are paying attention to because these other guys told you, hey, this is cool.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then I bet you there were some people who were like, this is really fucking dumb.
Guest:I'm tired of having to pay for this wrestling stuff that I really want them to stop doing wrestling on this thing I pay for.
Guest:You know, we got it.
Guest:We course corrected because we knew all of those things could be happening.
Guest:And frankly, it wasn't intended for a very wide audience.
Guest:But when the wide audience, meaning all of you Fulmeran people were listening, we knew like we shouldn't be force feeding you into this niche thing.
Guest:And I feel like Quentin Tarantino spent...
Guest:probably a decade of his career, when he was at the height of his powers, he would not relent on the niche thing.
Guest:And he kept insisting, this is the greatest, most important thing in the world.
Guest:And you all are going to enjoy it with me.
Guest:And I gotta say, four hours was a bit much, dude.
Guest:Like, even for me.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:That was well said.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I just I think overall, there's a there is a handicap on Kill Bill.
Guest:And boy, howdy, is there a handicap on the next thing he made?
Guest:Right.
Guest:Especially when you think of the next thing he made in the context of it being part of a larger project with other filmmakers doing the same stupid shit.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Like it would be like if you and I were like, you know, this Friday thing where we talk about wrestling, it's really, you know what we should do?
Guest:We should make every Thursday on WTF just about wrestling too.
Guest:And we'll get other people in to host a wrestling show.
Guest:Like Ron Funches, that's a comedian.
Guest:He can do wrestling stuff on Thursdays.
Guest:Like that's what fucking Grindhouse was.
Guest:It was like all these people, you're like, what are you guys doing?
Guest:Like this is not...
Guest:Like this is a cool thing for like some people, but not everybody.
Guest:And meanwhile, as we talked about Tarantino as a brand has proven to be an everybody kind of filmmaker.
Guest:Lots of people like all sorts of Tarantino films for many different reasons.
Guest:Oh yeah.
Guest:I love this guy's like, you know, way he writes dialogue.
Guest:I love the way he pays homage to great film or whatever.
Guest:But yeah,
Guest:very rarely is it like we are full on Kung Fu film fanatics.
Guest:And so therefore we love Quentin Tarantino.
Guest:It's like, that's a niche.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like his, his career is such a roller coaster, like to the point where I got off of the roller coaster.
Marc:I actually didn't see one of his movies, you know?
Marc:So like, it's,
Marc:the where we're, we're just, you know, we kill bill for me was still, we were riding high and kill bill too was, we are in a descent and we're not even at the bottom yet.
Marc:And it, uh, it gets, it gets pretty bleak there.
Marc:Uh, so yeah, I guess, uh, I can't believe it was a decade long that he was, wow.
Guest:That's.
Guest:I think so.
Guest:We'll, we'll, we'll try to track it, but, uh, but I, I have that feeling.
Guest:Um, uh,
Guest:Sure.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:By the way, can I just say, I guess the idea for me to put in the Kill Bill, that song that was featured in Kill Bill 1 to end every episode of Morning Sedition, that was entirely my idea.
Guest:Oh, yeah, it totally was.
Guest:You asked me that last night.
Guest:You were like, do you remember what that?
Guest:I was like, oh, it was you.
Guest:It was totally you.
Guest:That was our final song.
Guest:Battle Without Honor of Humanity was the final song of every episode of Morning Sedition.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So I'm very happy and pleased with myself for that.
Marc:But what stuck out to me the most was the Daniel Stern episode, especially when Daniel Stern was saying that David Rosenthal is getting all the girls.
Marc:My brain went to Jamie Taco is stealing all my lines.
Yeah.
Marc:That's exactly where I went.
Marc:So, yeah, he was he was a good hang.
Guest:I like that he just, you know, decided that he was going to stop.
Guest:But he was like, man, I'm good.
Guest:I'm going to go live on a farm and, you know, sculpt bronze and, you know, live my life.
Marc:i think it was cool that he was a paper boy who was delivering the post when woodward and bernstein was happening yeah like that that sounds so fucking cool and i of course can relate because i was a paper boy as well but him reading the paper at like 4 a.m when no one else was uh was you know getting it like that's fucking awesome like what a what a cool moment uh in time that will never be repeated because we live in a hellscape uh but yeah i thought that was uh fun uh
Marc:I have never seen Chud.
Marc:Have you ever seen Chud?
Marc:I sure have, yeah.
Marc:Yeah?
Marc:Are you excited for the Broadway musical with CeeLo Green?
Guest:I would not say I was excited for it, no.
Marc:Gotcha.
Guest:Chud was one of those great movies that I remember feeling like I had some privileged knowledge that I knew of this movie named Chud and had watched it and that I could say it and people would be like, you're making that up, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, no, there's a movie about these things that live under the sewers and they're called Chuds.
Guest:I love Chud.
Guest:And I did remember seeing Daniel Stern in things and then finding out later, oh, he was the guy in Chud when I was a kid.
Marc:Gotcha.
Marc:I also found it interesting that an Apple television show cannot get the rights to an ACDC song.
Marc:Like, that just seems unheard of.
Marc:Like, aren't they, like, the music company?
Guest:Like, Apple Music is like... I guess I'm not... Like, that came very close to being cut out of the episode, frankly.
Guest:Oh, no kidding.
Guest:Yeah, I was like, are we sure that you should be talking about this?
Guest:And he was like, that's fine, you know?
Guest:But, like, I don't know.
Guest:I'm like...
Guest:I always get nervous about stuff that he should be like.
Guest:There have been many times that he's been involved in some project and he just said something on the recording.
Guest:And then I check with him like, should you have announced that?
Guest:Like, I don't know that that's been announced yet or that that's part of something they want to divulge.
Guest:And he's like, I don't know.
Guest:Check with, you know, my manager.
Guest:And then I check and they're like, oh, yeah, no, don't let him say that.
Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, I love that you're the person who edits Mark's airing of grievances and I guess just spoiling things that would ruin his career.
Marc:You are such a steady hand, man.
Guest:Dude, I said it last week.
Guest:It's the job description.
Guest:Protect the talent from themselves.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:That's the description.
Yeah.
Marc:But yeah, I could go on.
Marc:But another great week of WTF.
Marc:What's happening next week?
Marc:Who do you got?
Guest:Oh, that's interesting.
Guest:We have Molly Ringwald on Monday.
Guest:Oh!
Guest:And do you know the name Tony Goldwyn?
Guest:I will tell you why you know him.
Guest:Was he on Scandal?
Guest:He is.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:You, you would watch scandal.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So that you would definitely know him from that.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Most people know him as the bad guy from ghost, which the thing I find fascinating is that essentially killed his career, right?
Guest:Like it was a hit film, but he was so negatively viewed by,
Guest:by people from that movie.
Guest:Like if he was in something and they got like test audiences and that, they'd be like, well, I hate that one fucking guy.
Guest:And people would be like, what?
Guest:He's playing a decent fella in this.
Guest:And it was like, they just couldn't get over the hump in their head of like, this is- He killed Patrick Swayze.
Guest:Exactly, right.
Guest:So that was actually the thing that like Mark and I were like, maybe he's got a story there.
Guest:But also his last name is Goldwyn.
Guest:he is the grandson of samuel goldwin like as in like hollywood goldwin mgm yes i was gonna say mgm wow so like he's like i mean like i they definitely have quite a nepo baby conversation in that because it's like nepo baby like i'm in the in like i'm part of the industry right it's creation you know right read the sign yeah yeah
Marc:Wow.
Marc:That's pretty cool.
Marc:So, all right.
Marc:That's an exciting week.
Marc:Awesome.
Marc:All right.
Guest:And I will, I'm wondering if I should reveal this because this is, it's not something that we've said, but.
Marc:No, don't reveal it.
Marc:It's fine.
Marc:We can end it there.
Guest:Well, okay.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:I will say that for the first week of June, it's a theme week.
Guest:Theme week?
Marc:Is this the first theme week?
Marc:No, it's not the first theme week.
Marc:No, we've done theme weeks before.
Marc:Yes, you've done theme weeks.
Marc:It's like shark week.
Guest:What do we got?
Guest:Well, I don't know.
Guest:I don't want to get you too excited about it.
Guest:In fact, I would say the general theme of the week is to use another phrase to say, don't get too excited.
Guest:Oh, I see.
Marc:I see.
Marc:I'll just leave it at that.
Marc:Get guessing, everyone.
Marc:Get guessing in the... In the comments.
Marc:In the link.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's great.
Marc:Excellent.
Guest:Comment to us.
Guest:That's the link right there in the episode description.
Guest:And we've got lots to say again next week.
Guest:Maybe we'll get back to some of your comments that have been coming in to us.
Guest:So send those things to us.
Guest:Get us freshened up with the mailbag.
Guest:But until then, I'm Brendan, and that's Chris.
Guest:Peace.
Peace.