In the discussion (3)
Approx. transcript time · 01:29:11Read transcript
- The choices: Christian Slater, Patricia Arquette, Tony Scott, Quentin Tarantino, Sonny Chiba, Floyd or Saul Rubinek; Sonny Chiba is the Johnny Chan of the movie, a big winner who did not really do anything; since it was not a hit, it has to be Tarantino, who was minted and became someone to watch for the next twenty years, giving him sustainability after Reservoir Dogs.
- Slater is underrated on this pod: by this film he was Christian Slater in every movie, the Jack Nicholson impersonation that had been exciting in Heathers was now held against him; he is a good actor and believable in the part even though a case can be made the movie is about a schizophrenic, wish fulfillment in his head, a dream woman, a classic bag-of-money scenario, note-perfect gangsters and everyone liking a loser from a comic book store.
- Tarantino wins it because it proved Reservoir Dogs was not just a weird indie fluke, established a narrative, led to Pulp Fiction and is belatedly great, the most personal of his films with Clarence as his proxy; Tony Scott was another's runner-up, since the movie needed him and the Gandolfini scene in the wrong hands would go badly, and Tarantino directing it in 1993 would have shot it closer to the ear-cutting scene in Reservoir Dogs; he was famously not on set, and started Pulp Fiction about three months after this came out.
Podcast choices
- Speaker not identified
- Quentin Tarantino
