Front page	From the Event Guide archive! This article refers to an event which took place on, or until, 18 October 2007 Film Interview – Quentin Tarantino / ‘Death Proof’ Death Becomes Him David O’Mahony is not worthy as he speaks to Quentin Tarantino. As I watched ‘Death Proof,’ Quentin Tarantino’s latest viscera-soaked offering, a familiar question demanded my attention, namely just who exactly is all of this for? The only logical answer to this conundrum appears to be none other than Quentin Tarantino. The director has been indulging himself of late, his cinematic follies sanctioned through the cavernous pockets of the Weinstein Brothers, of defunct production house Miramax, to which he has historically lent both credibility and cash; one is forced to cast one’s mind back to 1998 and the release of ‘Jackie Brown’ to locate the last time he has directed a film that channelled his peculiar preoccupations in a manner that could be digested by people other than movie buffs. Pastiche and Homage have long been the twin tent poles of the Tarantino marquee, but time was his pop-culture references were married to deliciously playful films boasting witty, loquacious scripts and teasing time structures which were entirely his own. Warning signs of the director’s blossoming excess came with the long hiatus that followed ‘Jackie Brown’ and with news that his next feature would be ‘Kill Bill,’ a martial arts extravaganza starring Uma Thurman; the film, when if eventually arrived, was bifurcated into separate volumes, and was a fan-boy redux of Tarantino obsessions. Undeniably entertaining and brimming with great scenes and characters it nevertheless beggared the question that has, to my mind, dogged the director’s work since - just who is all this for? Who, other than Quentin Tarantino, really cares that he has put the Shaw Brothers (Hong Kong martial arts movie factory) logo at the beginning? And who else notices (or gives two figs about) the carefully orchestrated references to obscure Asian action movies that supposedly pepper the two halves? Investigation, once again, stops at Tarantino’s door. When the arterial sprays of ‘Kill Bill’ settled, I breathed a sigh of relief, happy that Quentin had gotten that out of his system and could now get on with the business of making movies. However, like a despondent Radiohead fan clinging to the hope that guitars will someday replace dour electonica, it appeared that this was not to be, and that the director had yet more nonsense to disgorge himself of. In fact his next venture, ‘Grindhouse,’ a double bill of pseudo exploitation flicks made in collaboration with Robert Rodriguez, was to prove his greatest indulgence yet. It was an attempt to replicate the grungy aesthetic of 1970s underground cinema; replete with fake trailers for films such as ‘Werewolf Women of the SS,’ and ‘They call him Machete,’ the two films – Tarantino’s ‘Death Proof,’ and Rodriguez’s ‘Planet Terror’ – were artfully scratched and distressed, with phoney missing reels and audio glitches. The audience gave a collective shrug and ‘Grindhouse’ died a public death at the American boxoffice. Shorn of trailers, and with much previously excised footage reinstated, the two films are being released as separate entities. In Dublin to partake in a post-premier Q & A, the director is in an ebullient, cheerfully verbose mood; the focus, however, is very much on ‘Death Proof’ as opposed to that other double bill business. In common with many of his films, ‘Death Proof’ features an out of favour actor – in this case Kurt Russell as the homicidal Stuntman Mike - cast against type in a fashion that revitalises them in the eyes of the audience. Is he consciously engaging in career revival programmes? “Every once in a while something like that works out, and that can be really exciting and fun, but it’s a secondary concern. The first concern is my characters; I’ve written my characters and they have to be right. It’s not like I’m writing a play, and a lot of different actors are going to get a crack at it – this is it. When people ask me if I have a wish list of actors I want to work with, I say yes, but it really doesn’t work like that. I would love to work with Johnny Depp, but that’s not going to happen until I write a role that’s perfect for Johnny Depp. When I write that role, and put him in it, he will be perfect! That’s one of the reasons why people often have this response to my stuff. If that perfect casting then goes on to subvert someone’s image, well that can be fun too. But it’s secondary.” And the casting of Kurt Russell in particular, why did you decide on him for the role? “Well, I don’t know if Kurt really falls into the out of favour category, but I see what you’re saying. I have a great memory of actors whom I would like to work with; one of the unfortunate things that often happens in Hollywood is that the studios stick to the same list of whoever is hot at the moment. The moment is five years, and that list has around six names on it. By comparison my list is huge, and the only thing you have to be to be on that list is a) alive and b) liked by me. I realised something a long time ago, long before I ever started to make movies, back when I was watching actors in all of these exploitation B-movies - and these were terrific actors who might have just fallen on hard times - is that if you give these so-called out-of-favour actors good dialogue, and a good role, and basically a movie that they think is going to be good, you will get a commitment and a passion from them that you would never get from a currently successful actor. It’s like they’re a fish on dry land and you’ve given them water.” ‘Death Proof,’ much like ‘Kill Bill,’ is a game of two halves; the first hour is given over to Tarantino’s trademark, expletive-ridden banter as a group of sexy chicks drink margaritas at a Mexican diner, and discuss, well, nothing of any great consequence (these indulgent reels of film give the impression that Quentin really likes having cute girls say ‘fuck’). Having allowed us to acquaint ourselves, he then despatches them bloodily in an elaborately staged car wreck courtesy of psycho serial killer Stuntman Mike and his weapon of choice, a reinforced, allegedly death proof Chevy nova with a skull and crossbones emblazoned on the hood. The subsequent hour resolves itself into an even more elaborately orchestrated car chase as Mike has the tables turned on him by another group of foxy, fast talkin’ dames. If ‘Death Proof’ is homage – and we must assume it is – just what exactly is it homage to? “In the 70s car chase movies were a staple,” answers the director, “like gangster and blaxploitation movies. ‘Death Proof’ isn’t really a car chase movie; there are movies that have a car chase in them, and there are car chase movies, this is the former. That high-octane thing was always a lot of fun for me. I knew I wanted to do a 70s style, grindhouse film, and I settled upon both the slasher film, and the car chase film, and I kinda combined them together. One of the things I’m most proud of is that ‘Death Proof’ is not immediately recognisable as a slasher film – Stuntman Mike isn’t stalking these girls with a machete or anything like that – but it has the structure of a slasher film. Without you ever really noticing it, the slasher films hands off to the car chase movie in the second half; all of a sudden it’s a different film, it happens organically.” Difficult to believe as it might be, Quentin has been spraying cinema screens with the red stuff for fifteen years now, ‘Reservoir Dogs’ having announced his visceral intentions in 1992. A conspicuous consumer of world cinema, does he find it difficult to keep his passion alive now that many of goals have been achieved? “I have achieved a lot, and am very proud,” he retorts, gesticulating wildly, “but I intend to achieve a lot more. I plan on retiring from making movies at sixty, and I will write novels then. I don’t want to wind up make old man movies – I want everything I do have the same energy as ‘Reservoir Dogs’ did. If – 50 years from now – some young boy or girl stumbles upon one of my movies in a DVD store, as they’re not going to see them in order I want each one to be as invigorating as any other.” “And do I still have the same passion as I did when I worked in Video Archives? Yes – 100%, but its different now. Then I had the passion of a vivacious student, now I have the passion of a professor who’s filled his head full of cinema. I continue to absorb cinema; I’ll get hooked on particular actor or director and watch everything they’ve ever made. I rejected school, so I became my own student and professor.” Aside from directing his own features, Tarantino has had many lucrative collaborations and side projects throughout his career, his association with Robert Rodriguez being perhaps the most fruitful. However, his recent stewardship of Eli Roth’s gloatingly sadistic ‘Hostel’ has seen his name become allied to the ‘torture porn’ sub-genre; voguish and worryingly disassociative, these films, of which Roth’s and the ‘Saw’ franchise are indicative, have heralded a new permissiveness in mainstream horror movies. Can the director explain its popularity? “I actually think that genre has peaked, and we’re on the other side of it, but I love that genre, and I think the origin is in the ultra-violent Japanese horror movies that started coming out ten years ago with Takashi Miike’s ‘Audition’ and Kinji Fukasaku’s ‘Battle Royal’ leading the pack. In the States, these movies rarely got theatrical releases, and in the case of ‘Battle Royal’ - which never even got a DVD release - it was passed around from fan to fan, and became the closest thing to an underground hit for some time. So these current horror filmmakers were inspired by these movies, and six, seven, eight years down the line when they get a chance to direct, they show their influences. And low and behold, they were successful - successful because of the thing that would have previously made them marginal releases – being extremely gory.” Before we part company I enquire as to what the director is currently obsessing over; ‘I’ve got this Word War Two script I’m working on called ‘Inglorious Bastards’, which has been around for a while, and it’ll be the biggest thing I’ve ever done. I probably have another year of writing on that left. I can’t say it’s going to be my next movie because I have to finish the script, and I have to like it, but it’s what I’m working on.” ‘Death Proof’ opened nationwide on Friday 21st September, certified 18. www.grindhousemovie.net