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- Unknown Date - Tarantino on Blaxploitation
- This is a really interesting interview. Tarantino gives really great answers to questions.
- Undated - Quentin Tarantino - How I got out of Loserville
- Summary: He decided to try to surround himself with people who were further along than he was to achieving his goal.
- 1992 - Tarantino on Reservoir Dogs
- He gives a great explanation of how he got his start. I should really transcribe this at some point.
What is a reservoir dog? Well, a reservoir dog is Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Chris Penn, Steve Buscemi and me! In a nutshell it's a story about a bunch of guys who plan a robbery and everything that go wrong, goes wrong.
I worked in a video store in Manhattan Beach, CA. For many years, since I couldn't get anything sold as a writer, and couldn't get any money to direct any films. So that store was my one source of artistic expression. You know, buying the right films, recommending the films, I even used to have these little mini film festivals in the store because I had a few shelves that were mine, and every week I would do a new theme. I did my own little heist film section, and I remember looking at them all up on the shelf and I remember thinking to myself, "God, you know, they haven't done a heist film in a long time. I'd like to see one of those again. This is a really cool genre." And so that put the germ in my head, and so I wrote one.
Harvey Keitel got involved in the movie by the fact that he had always been my favorite actor, you know ever since I'd seen him in Taxi Driver, and the Duelist, and Mother, Jugs & Speed, I'd always been a big fan of his, and it was a dream to be able to work with him sometime. Well my propducer, Lawrence ? is a good friend of mine, what happened was, he was taking an acting class, his acting teacher's wife is an actress who knows Harvey in the actor's studio, so Lawrence got the script to his acting teacher. His acting teacher read it and liked it and gave it to his wife. His wife read it and liked it and she put it in Harvey's hands at the actor's studio. Three days later Harvey calls me on the phone and says, "Hi, is this Quentin Tarantino? I'm Harvey Keitel. I want you to know I think this script is magnificent; it's absolutely magnificent and I'd like to be part of it. I really would. I'd like to even help produce it if I possibly could." And it was like, "PFFFTTTT" (spits out his coffee) "...This is Harvey Keitel??"
He came aboard and helped us out...he lent his name to the film, which basically made me and Lawrence filmmakers as opposed to just a couple of knuckleheads just walking around with a script in our heads. We became legitimate; we'd walk into people's offices and say, "Well, you know we have Harvey Keitel attached." That didn't necessarily mean they were like, "Whoa, here's all the money you want." But they did take us seriously. We did come from somewhere. But also, Harvey went above and beyond what an actor would do, because, we were the casting the film, and we didn't have any money when we were casting, and me and Lawrence didn't have any money at ALL, and so what happened was Harvey goes, "You know, I think you guys really owe it to yourselves to go to New York and do a little bit of casting there are very fine actors out there and you're not going to see 'em just stayin' in LA." "Well, Harvey, that'd be really good but we can't afford to go..." "Well, I just can't stand this anymore. We're goin' to have to go to New York. And if I have to pay for it, I'll pay for it." And he flew us out to New York, he put us up in a hotel, he arranged with a casting director friend of his for a weekend of casting, and he paid all that out of his own pocket, just cuz he thought the film needed it. And from those New York casting sessions we got Steve Buscemi, who plays Mr. Pink.
[The rest of the conversation is about casting / aesthetic decisions.]
It's funny, a reporter or something will say, "We want to do a big in-depth story on Quentin. We want to just spend some time with him and have him do what he does during his day. What I do during my day is I go out to restaurants and I go to movies. That's what I do. And I hang out with my friends and stuff. I'm not into sports, I don't like sports, anything with a ball, no good. I'm not into sports, I'm not into cars, I mean, I'm into driving a car, but I'm not into, I don't collect cars or make model cars. I'm into movie stuff and horror stuff and like I said, hanging out with my friends and watching TV and messing around.
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