Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.metro From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: Tarantino pleased with 'Reservoir' of violence Date: Wed, 28 Oct 92 15:01:10 EST Message-ID: \SE B;METROPOLITAN;LIFE \SS (WS) \HD Tarantino pleased with 'Reservoir' of violence \BY ASSOCIATED PRESS \DT NEW YORK NEW YORK - Director Quentin Tarantino has this scene running in his head: Some friends are at a restaurant, eating hamburgers, when a fight breaks out at another table. Someone gets stabbed with a fork, blood spills on the floor, people are yelling for help. As he describes the action, Mr. Tarantino becomes more and more animated - his arms waving like a manic traffic cop, his eyebrows arching until they form a pair of black rainbows. The camera keeps rolling in his mind, showing the maitre d' calling the police, the waitresses running to the kitchen. Let others complain about violence in movies; Mr. Tarantino doesn't have a problem. No one gets a fork through the hand in the director's acclaimed debut, "Reservoir Dogs," (which opened Friday in Washington) but it's still a bloody, "B" movie-styled affair - the story of a gang of thieves and a jewel heist that goes brutally wrong. "There's two kinds of violence," Mr. Tarantino, 29, says during an interview in a Manhattan hotel suite where comic books and crime novels are piled by the sofa. "There's the kind of violence you have in 'The Last Boy Scout,' cartoon violence that's supposed to be funny, and I really get a kick out of that. In my film, I want it to hurt. People tell me they've had bad dreams after they saw the movie. That's exactly what I want. I'm interested in outrageous violence, because outrageous violence is real violence." Among the crooks in "Reservoir Dogs" are director Tarantino as Mr. Brown, Harvey Keitel as Mr. White, Tim Roth as Mr. Orange and Chris Penn as Nice Guy Eddie. Lawrence Tierney, a veteran character actor whose films include "Prizzi's Honor" and "Born to Kill," plays the mastermind who brings everyone together. One scene, Mr. Tarantino's favorite, understandably could cause nightmares. Someone has tipped off the police about the attempted caper and the gang is holding one officer hostage in an old warehouse, demanding he reveal the informer's identity. The interrogation is unsuccessful; not even a few blows to the head can get the policeman to talk. Eventually, he is left at the mercy of the sadistic Mr. Blonde (Michael Madsen). "I met this director in Paris, and she was saying to me the reason the scene disturbs her is because I had such a good time making the scene," Mr. Tarantino says. "I said, 'No, you had a good time watching it.' She said, 'No, if you do a scene and if you don't have a feel for it, no matter how good you do it, that is apparent on the screen. If you do a scene and have fun, you capture that, that is on screen.' "That scene was a blast. It wasn't like, 'Oh my God, this is a really hard scene.' We were having a party. The next scene, when we show the cop's reaction, that was painful, that was disturbing. We weren't working from Michael's point of view, we were working from the victim's point of view." The director adds one special touch to make sure you don't forget what happened. As Mr. Madsen goes about his business, the soundtrack blasts a bland golden oldie, "Stuck in the Middle With You," a piece of psuedo folk-rock with a melody that refuses to leave your head. "The lightness, the catchiness, the frothiness - it makes it harder not to watch. You hear that guitar riff at the beginning, a song kicks in that you haven't heard in a while and you respond to it. . . . The song can never be heard the same way again. It's like whenever you hear 'The End,' you think of 'Apocalypse Now.' " Mr. Tarantino is a Los Angeles native who says he knew by age 3 that he was going to be in movies. He studied acting for several years and appeared in Jean-Luc Godard's "King Lear," as well the television sitcom "Golden Girls" and several local theater productions. About five years ago, with no film school training, he decided to try directing. He worked as a video sales clerk to support himself and graduated from the directors' workshop at the Sundance Institute. A fan of old crime movies and pulp fiction, he wrote "Reservoir Dogs" in the same spirit. It was supposed to be an ultracheap black-and-white production, but producer Lawrence Bender managed to get a script to Mr. Keitel, who both stars and serves as co-producer. This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM