THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, October 15, 1994 TAG: 9410140085
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, ENTERTAINMENT WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 82 lines
IT WAS ONLY a little over a year ago that I sat in a Beverly Hills restaurant with an unknown, chattering writer-director named Quentin Tarantino. His film, ``Reservoir Dogs,'' had not yet been released, but the buzz around Hollywood was already hot. Everyone stopped by the table to speak to him - people he freely admitted he'd never seen before.
Things haven't cooled off since then. In fact, they've gotten hotter. With ``Pulp Fiction,'' the all-star and very unpredictable new film that already won the Cannes Film Festival prize, Tarantino has become the center of a fast-growing cult of young moviegoers who like the man's unbridled rebel nature.
It was only two years ago that he was employed as a video clerk on the late shift in a Los Angeles store. Since no one ever rented videos at that hour, he looked at films over and over and wrote scripts. For five years, he had tried - and failed - to become an actor. His switch to writing, and now to directing, has proven more successful.
``Writing is really the tough thing,'' Tarantino said while in New York last week for the unveiling of ``Pulp Fiction'' at the New York Film Festival. ``I can spend a year on a script, and I'll still scrap it if it doesn't work. I'll never make the film if it doesn't work on the page first. There's no way that you can save a film while filming it, if the script wasn't right in the first place. You can improve upon it - and I do encourage the actors to add their ideas - but you can't save it. Once it's written, the hard part is done.''
The director gets excited when he talks about old movies. His movements get faster and faster, waving his hands in the air as he recalls that he gave Travolta an Aldo Ray haircut. Everything in his life apparently has a reference to movies.
``When I was a kid, I used to make up, and write, entire new episodes for `Star Trek,' '' he said. ``I didn't know the rules, so I would have Mr. Spock doing the wildest things. I didn't know that they wouldn't let actors do those things, but I wasn't bound by the business. I'd like to be like that again - bound only by imagination.''
He's miffed at what Oliver Stone did to his ``Natural Born Killers,'' even though he admits he hasn't seen it. ``I wouldn't care if he made a masterpiece. I still wouldn't like it. I don't like people rewriting my stuff. I got screen credit for the story, and I think I deserved it, but I wanted to distance myself from the film because he rewrote my script. My sensibilities are very different from Oliver Stone's. He likes to issue big messages. I'm just a storyteller. I'm not sending any messages at all.''
Many say the violence in ``Reservoir Dogs'' prevented critics from putting it on their 10-best lists and giving it other honors. ``True Romance'' and now ``Pulp Fiction'' are getting the same criticism. And detractors say he doesn't know how to write scripts for women characters.
``It so happens that most of my scripts so far have been about criminals and most of them are men. I like women, too. Maybe that's why I haven't written about them as much. But I think I wrote a good character for Patricia Arquette in `True Romance.' I'm getting out of the crime thing soon, and then you'll see other characters - some of them women,'' he said.
``Violence,'' he added, ``has started to happen to normal people in real life. It's no longer something that happens only to other people. When you think about it, you might as well laugh. Why not? It always comes out of nowhere. No one ever expects it. For example, a man at the next table in a restaurant socks his wife. What do you do? Do you try to stop him? Do you call the cops? The unexpected always nets comedy.''
He likes exaggerations and contradictions. ``I can look at Gene Kelly singing and dancing to `Singing in the Rain,' and it's very entertaining. But if I saw him doing that in real life, I'd cross to the other side of the street. I'd think he was crazy. Putting things up on the screen makes them different - funny or whatever. You can put normal, everyday things in a movie and, suddenly, they're very funny.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
Travolta, left, worked with director Quentin Tarantino in the film.
Photo
MIRAMAX
``Pulp Fiction'' Quentin Tarantino also directed ``Reservoir
Dogs.''
by CNB