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The Rewatchables ·

Reservoir Dogs

year 1992decade 90sdirector Quentin Tarantinogenre Drama
host Bill Simmonshost Sean Fennesseyhost Chris Ryan
All 18 categories

Most Rewatchable Scene · 30:32

The commode story

The opening diner scene is the first candidate: the Madonna 'Like a Virgin' theory leads into the tipping argument, and the clip of Mr. Pink refusing to tip because society says he has to is played.

A lot of guys came out of the movie with a new vision of the service industry; one host, who had worked as a busboy and waiter for two summers, was offended by Buscemi's character and says anyone who has worked food service knows you tip.

The Neil McCauley “A Book about Metals” Award for Best Line from the Movie · 1:19:38

"I'm hungry let's get a taco"

The category was left empty because the whole movie is the best quote; nominated small lines include 'asshole you better stop talking because we got shit we need to talk about', compared to Pacino in Heat, 'you're gonna be okay', 'Say the goddamn fucking words', 'Oh are you a doctor', the personal favorite 'I'm hungry let's get a taco' after the finger speech, and 'I got a big fucking problem'.

The film

Reservoir Dogs (1992)

Directed by Quentin Tarantino · Drama

99 minutes

IMDbLetterboxdJustWatch
Cast

Selected cast credits · Film reference

Harvey Keitel Larry Dimick "Mr. White"
Tim Roth Freddy Newendyke "Mr. Orange"
Michael Madsen Vic Vega "Mr. Blonde"
Chris Penn "Nice Guy" Eddie Cabot
Steve Buscemi "Mr. Pink"
Lawrence Tierney Joe Cabot
Randy Brooks Detective Jim Holdaway
Kirk Baltz Officer Marvin Nash
Edward Bunker "Mr. Blue"
Quentin Tarantino "Mr. Brown"
David Steen Sheriff #2
Steven Wright K-Billy DJ (voice)

Everything from the episode

In the order the hosts got to it. Open a row for the discussion.

30:32

Most Rewatchable Scene

The commode story; the Mr. Blonde and Mr. White showdown through the ear-cutting; the ending where Chris Penn's chara...

The commode story; the Mr. Blonde and Mr. White showdown through the ear-cutting; the ending where Chris Penn's character figures it out

In the discussion (21)
Approx. transcript time · 00:30:32Read transcript
  • The opening diner scene is the first candidate: the Madonna 'Like a Virgin' theory leads into the tipping argument, and the clip of Mr. Pink refusing to tip because society says he has to is played.
  • A lot of guys came out of the movie with a new vision of the service industry; one host, who had worked as a busboy and waiter for two summers, was offended by Buscemi's character and says anyone who has worked food service knows you tip.
  • Mr. White is teased as woke for dropping knowledge that waitressing is the number one job for non-college-educated women; the scene is said to foreshadow the rat, since Mr. Orange snitches on Mr. Pink when Joe demands to know who did not tip.
  • A low-key favorite detail is the Budweiser bottles at breakfast; Tarantino scenes often happen in the morning with people behaving as if it were night, like the wolf arriving at six in the morning.
  • It occurs to one host that the crew, dressed in uniform right before the heist, should not be seen together in public; it is called ludicrous and parked for nitpicks, defended as pre-surveillance state, and the waitress they stiffed would remember five guys in black suits smoking like chimneys and drinking Budweisers at nine in the morning; Joe should never be seen with them.
  • A nerd question asks whether the roving camera around the table, shooting backs and sides of heads, was stolen from someone; Terry Gilliam loved it at Sundance, it is Scorsese-ish, and the handheld over-the-shoulder following of Madsen going for the gas can feels like a flex.
  • The Copacabana tracking shot in Goodfellas is the comparison, called the greatest tracking shot in movie history; a Goodfellas episode could run four hours and needs a live audience.
  • The shooting style is read as naturalism, putting the viewer inside the conversation, and the scene characterizes everyone at once: a beef between Blonde and White, jumpy Pink, Orange lying in the cut watching, Nice Guy Eddie showing who runs what, and Eddie Bunker as pop critic preferring the early stuff.
  • It is one of the hosts' favorite opening scenes; an opening-scene week bracket is floated, half of Tarantino's openings would qualify including Inglourious Bastards (as transcribed), and openings and kickers are what matter most.
  • Keitel versus Buscemi over the bleeding Tim Roth is the second candidate: a long, escalating, well-acted scene; it is argued as the best Buscemi performance, intense, neurotic and imposing, and the two guns pointed at each other was the first John Woo reference one host caught.
  • Buscemi rankings: this first, The Sopranos second, Domestic Disturbance third ahead of Fargo and Miller's Crossing; Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead, remembered for 'boat drinks', Amongst Friends and Very Bad Things are recalled as the Tarantino rip-off era.
  • The ear-cutting scene followed by the unexpected Tim Roth murder is the third candidate; Madsen gets the gleam in his eye once White and Eddie leave, talks to the severed ear, and the cutaway to the graffiti above the door at the perfect moment is why the scene does not gross one host out.
  • Tarantino, for someone so violent, often does not show things: Marvin's head in Pulp Fiction is quick and the trunk dummy is obvious, though Hitler's body and Jamie Foxx's forty kills in Django are counterexamples; he also had no money and never shows the suitcase, and Mr. Blonde's speech before the torture is recited.
  • The movie does not get many Fraternal Order of Police screenings; Mr. Orange's unexpected murder of Mr. Blonde is a great twist nobody saw coming the first time.
  • Tim Roth performing the commode story, from meeting his boss at the diner through the different settings, is a candidate, with the 'panic hits me like a bucket of water' passage recited.
  • He had never seen anything like it at the time: the color palette shifts to the graffiti background and the movie comes alive, Roth's energy changes completely as he learns to be the character, and it layers Tarantino's recurring themes of story within a story, seeing Freddy instead of Mr. Orange, and the former actor's process of memorizing lines in the apartment with the Silver Surfer poster; the jumps between settings were unlike anything he had seen. — Chris Ryan
  • Roth gets to flex his chops with some of the most anguished yelling in a movie, but his accent is called very bad even though a dialect coach was on set the whole shoot; is he supposed to be Dutch? A rare bad accent inside a great performance.
  • Roth delivering the monologue in the bathroom to cops who stand still while the German shepherd watches showed one host that writing could do that.
  • Buscemi arguing about the name selections is a shorter but iconic scene, with the trade request and Joe's 'city council meeting' refusal recited; the Joe Cabot bit is saved for later.
  • Chris Penn doubting Mr. Orange's story, and Vic Vega's return from prison with the Scagnetti talk and the wrestling with Chris Penn and Tierney, are thrown in as further candidates.
  • The final choices split three ways: the commode story; the ear-cutting scene, taken as the whole twenty-five-minute stretch from the Mr. Blonde and Mr. White showdown to learning what a psychopath he is, since the shootings are never shown; and the ending with Chris Penn figuring it out in seven minutes, which displaced the opening diner for one host after twenty years. Three-way shootouts in general are loved and are said to have influenced one host's later work.
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49:53

What’s Aged the Best?

The opening credits sequence; young Madsen; the ironic juxtaposition of music and violence; the who's-the-mole device...

The opening credits sequence; young Madsen; the ironic juxtaposition of music and violence; the who's-the-mole device; Steven Wright as the radio host; the L.A. setting

In the discussion (8)
Approx. transcript time · 00:49:53Read transcript
  • The opening credit sequence is fun to watch after Swingers blatantly ripped it off four years later with the slow-motion strut out of a diner, while joking that everyone was ripping off Tarantino; the Swingers characters are exactly the guys whose lives were never the same after Reservoir Dogs.
  • The shot remains influential: The Farewell, an immigrant story out this year, has a slow-motion group walk that reads as meaningful; the hosts joke about filming themselves walking the Sunset Gower lot, which one once did with Jalen, walking away from an exploding car.
  • Young Madsen is another: a top-five lottery pick who became a whatever-happened-to like Tom Gugliotta, with a bit of Newman and Dean Martin, tall, black-haired and calm; he has had a complicated life, and a college friend loved even bad Michael Madsen movies.
  • Madsen is likened to Kenny Anderson and may have market-corrected himself; it is telling he is not in Pulp Fiction, though the long-term plan was a Vega Brothers movie with Travolta, and he returned in Kill Bill and The Hateful Eight.
  • Species is one of the great cable movies with no Oscars; Madsen then went down the road of Man with a Gun and Donnie Brasco and became the Skinamax lord, and his once olive-oil voice now sounds like gargled concrete, hard to understand in The Hateful Eight.
  • The juxtaposition of music against what it scores, easy-listening soft rock during the ear cutting, was mind-blowing and has been copied so often it is now undetectable; who's-the-mole plots remain a favorite device, as in The Loudest Voice.
  • Steven Wright as the radio host sets the scene; it is a good L.A. movie, with the warehouse in Eagle Rock, Tarantino living in Glendale, and his first three films being L.A. movies set in different parts of the city, like the True Romance hotel on Sunset.
  • The closing personal pick is the opening credits sequence.
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56:40

What’s Aged the Worst?

The N-word dialogue; six white guys with no Black or Latino crew member; Buscemi's theory on Black women; Lawrence Ti...

The N-word dialogue; six white guys with no Black or Latino crew member; Buscemi's theory on Black women; Lawrence Tierney as Joe

In the discussion (6)
Approx. transcript time · 00:56:40Read transcript
  • The N word stuff was controversial even in the nineties and has gotten worse; Tarantino goes for it here and in Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown, where Spike called him out and Sam Jackson came to his defense.
  • It is weird that none of the six is Black or Latino, which would play differently now; but the movie is purposefully about bad, racist people, no character stands outside it, and even the cop is implicated when Tim Roth kills the woman in the car after watching Keitel gun down cops.
  • Tarantino is quoted at the time of release wanting the characters to say very ugly things and profound things, idiots one moment and geniuses the next, guys who did time in San Quentin; it is not palatable now but it is self-conscious.
  • Buscemi's theory on Black women is a tough two minutes, complicated by Tarantino's obvious adoration of Black culture and the characters' talk of Pam Grier, Honey West and the E. Lois story; in general these guys are idiot crooks.
  • Lawrence Tierney as Joe is called bad, with disbelief that Keitel could not call in a favor from a good old actor; one host disagrees, and the comparison is Mike Francesa if he could not act; Tierney visibly muffs a line before 'my way or the highway' in a take left in the film.
  • Tierney's fat Skeletor body brings a presence; a podcast interview is cited saying everyone had a hard time with him because he was distracted and forgot lines, and he was fired after the third day, so he is kept out of the third act until the last scene.
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1:06:29

The Dion Waiters Award for Best Heat Check Performance

Michael Madsen

Michael Madsen

In the discussion (3)
Approx. transcript time · 01:06:29Read transcript
  • Madsen is the first name; the heat is pretty equally distributed, but Tim Roth's shirtless boss in the vest does a lot with a little, chewing up 'that invisible bitch'; Madsen in the ear-cutting scene is compared to Vinnie Johnson in game five of the 1990 Finals, going for it in a career-altering way, except his career was not altered.
  • Barely worth mentioning is the extra Buscemi bangs into while fleeing the robbery, who yells 'fuck you, asshole' like an acting buddy making the most of one opportunity.
  • One more Dion Waiters: the earnest, mustached cop telling his story during the commode monologue, repeatedly ordering the motorist to put his hands on the dash; he looks like he is from Wisconsin rather than California and is handed the best that-guy award instead.
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1:09:16

The Joey Pants “That Guy” Award

Baltz, who played the cop Marvin Nash

Baltz, who played the cop Marvin Nash

In the discussion (1)
Approx. transcript time · 01:09:16Read transcript
  • The mustached cop from the commode story is given the best that-guy award; the Joey Pants pick had been Baltz, who played the cop Marvin Nash and has not been seen since, with his 'I'm fucking deformed' and 'I'm dying over here' lines recited.
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1:13:30

Apex Mountain

Michael Madsen

Michael Madsen

In the discussion (3)
Approx. transcript time · 01:13:30Read transcript
  • Madsen is a yes: a case could be made and nobody argues against this being his Apex Mountain; Chris Penn is floated as a possible case.
  • Tim Roth is not a yes here; Pulp Fiction is his peak, and he is not thought that great in this movie.
  • Chris Penn's peak is somewhere between this and Shortcuts, maybe At Close Range, though people would point to Footloose; one host loves him in this movie and no decision is made.
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1:14:00

The Ruffalo / Hanna / Rubinek / Partridge Overacting Award

Chris Penn

Chris Penn

In the discussion (2)
Approx. transcript time · 01:14:00Read transcript
  • Lawrence Tierney cannot win because he is a bad actor rather than an overactor; it has to be Chris Penn, bad for about ninety seconds after he shoots the cop, spit flying and eyes bulging, trying too hard like he is taking a shit, though he is really great overall; Sean Penn or James Woods are imagined in the scene.
  • Another nominee is the last thirty seconds of Keitel, climbing on Roth almost romantically after their father-son bond; they bet on the Brewers.
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1:21:13

Sequel, Prequel, Limited Series, or All-Black Remake

No new Reservoir Dogs content

No new Reservoir Dogs content

In the discussion (2)
Approx. transcript time · 01:21:13Read transcript
  • A case is made for a ten-episode Netflix remake: twenty-seven years later the movie is dated, seven guys could each get a Lost-style backstory episode, and done straight it would be a show about Roth building up to being a cop and then infiltrating the gang.
  • Nobody wants any new Reservoir Dogs content; the case was only played out.
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1:26:26

Who Won the Movie?

Quentin Tarantino

Quentin Tarantino

In the discussion (3)
Approx. transcript time · 01:26:26Read transcript
  • Tarantino is the no-brainer: nobody ever launched a career so aggressively, he was compared to Orson Welles as a debut shot out of a cannon, and unlike Welles, whose next movie was Magnificent Ambersons, he topped it with Pulp Fiction.
  • Agreement comes surprisingly easily; the runner-up would be Roth for his performance, which prompts the missed nitpick about his accent.
  • The Caruso call is praised, one host claims to have won the pod and a who-won-the-pod category is suggested, and the guests are thanked before the closing Vudu read.
Podcast choices
Speaker not identified
Quentin Tarantino
Speaker not identified
Quentin Tarantino
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