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First Episode of "The Interpretation of Film Podcast". SPOILER ALERT FOR QUENTIN TARANTINO MOVIES.
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First Episode of "The Interpretation of Film Podcast". SPOILER ALERT FOR QUENTIN TARANTINO MOVIES.
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First Episode of "The Interpretation of Film Podcast". SPOILER ALERT FOR QUENTIN TARANTINO MOVIES.
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The podcast is about Quentin Tarantino films. The guest, Paul Casson, is an expert on Tarantino. They discuss Tarantino's latest film, "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood," starring Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio. They also talk about Tarantino's love for film and how his movies pay homage to different genres. They mention "Reservoir Dogs," "Pulp Fiction," and "True Romance." They specifically discuss a scene from "True Romance" involving Dennis Hopper and Christopher Walken. Welcome to the new podcast, Interpretation of Film. My name is Tessa, and I'm here with my guest, Paul Casson, who is an expert in Quentin Tarantino. That's true. I'm an expert. So, what's your favorite Quentin Tarantino film? That's a great question. Currently, it's probably Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Really? Okay. I'm not sure I remember that one. I'm not even sure if I saw it. It's his latest movie. I won't spoil it. Okay, latest, and when was it released in the theaters? I think it was released in 2022, I think. Okay. I think. I'm not sure. Starring Brad Pitt. Okay, he's a common Quentin Tarantino favorite, I think. He's been in two. This is the second movie that I'm aware of. Okay. And then Leonardo DiCaprio. Okay. This is his second movie as well. Leonardo DiCaprio was in Django Unchained. He played a plantation over, a slave over. He was a bad guy. Did a great job. And Brad Pitt was in Inglourious Basterds. He played an American hillbilly Nazi hunter who gets dropped off with a mixed bag of bad American soldiers behind enemy lines in Germany to do kind of like terrorism on the Nazis. Actually, he was technically in France, in occupied Vichy France. And he was, you know, killing Nazis. He was a Nazi hunter. He would sculpt them. Yeah, I remember that. I remember seeing that one. I have not seen Won't You Punish Him in Hollywood. So what would you say is the summary of that movie? The plot of the movie, the inspiration for the movie is, you know, Quentin Tarantino is a film buff at first and foremost. So what's interesting about him and makes him a good writer and director, I think, is not because he went to a fancy college or whatever. It's because he actually loves film. His school of writing film was working at a video store. Growing up in Hollywood and working at a video store and just geeking out on all the different genres of film, talking about films, arguing about films, taking crazy interpretations of films. He has this great, funny interpretation of the first Top Gun. I don't know if you heard it. No, his interpretation? No, I didn't. Yeah, so his first interpretation of Top Gun is that Maverick is gay. No way. It's all about him coming out of the closet. No. So he has this whole shtick. It's all tongue-in-cheek, but the shtick is that Kelly McGillis, who's the star in there, she basically can't land Maverick until she dresses like a dude and gets him to come out of his gay shell. It's really funny, but the idea is the guy thinks a lot about film. So most of his movies have a genre that he loves that he's doing an homage to. He's doing some kind of homage to some genre. For example, let's say Reservoir Dogs is the crime, kind of good thief, bad thief, crime genre, more kind of a mafioso thing, and Pulp Fiction has kind of a, literally a Pulp Fiction genre where there's kind of sub-stories going on that all kind of come together as a whole. You have True Romance, which I don't know what True Romance is. I mean, that was my love affair with Quentin Tarantino movies was True Romance. Maybe it kind of... What did you like about True Romance? Well, I think what did I like has to do with how old I was when I saw it. I was like 19 or something like that. I almost forgot. That's the third Brad Pitt movie. Yeah, right? Brad Pitt was like a nobody back then. He was that guy sitting on the couch smoking pot, right? He was Floyd. And Floyd smoked the other half of the letter. That's right. That's right. Yeah, well, I liked True Romance because it was romantic. Which is funny because I remember Josh Hill, a friend of mine growing up, when I was a young... I got really into Tarantino when he came out with Reservoir Dogs. I was probably, I want to say 19 or something. And I saw the movie and I went bananas over it. I felt like I just discovered gold. I felt like I was the only one who got it. I made everybody I knew, as you remember, watch it multiple times. And then it kind of... It was such a cult-esque. No one's ever heard of it. It was this B movie. And then it kind of blew up. And everybody was talking about it. Well, yeah. Do you remember that movie Swingers? Yeah, Swingers. They even did a cameo, I guess you could call it, of Reservoir Dogs. Oh, right, right. They did an homage in their own way. They're all walking, doing this thing. Yeah, it was back then. Looking really cool. That was one... Reservoir Dogs, if I remember right, B movie and Quentin Tarantino had to get all the actors to bring their own clothes. They had to dress themselves. Oh, that's funny. That's how low-budget the movie was. And a lot of that movie's kind of lifted from Japanese movies, Japanese crime movies. There's a lot of different things going on in that movie. But yeah, so I was... I liked that movie, and then my friend Josh Hill was like, Oh, well, you've got to see True Romance. Quentin Tarantino wrote it. He didn't direct it, but he wrote it. And I was like, Christian Slater? Isn't that gay? It's about a prostitute? I didn't even know. I had no idea what it was about. It just sounded like a girl movie or something. I was like, the Christian Slater romance movie is written by Tarantino? You must be confused. So he got me to watch that, and I was like, oh, my gosh. I know, all the guys loved it. It was hilarious. That movie is great. I honestly think it has either one of the best or the best scene in cinematography for me. Okay, okay. Why don't you guess which one it is? Okay, it's either... Well, it's probably not the you're so cool scene. No, that's another girl. I think it's... Okay, I've got to refresh my memory. It's in a trailer. Yeah, you got it. Who are the actors? I've got to remember. Well, I'm sorry. It's Dennis Hopper. Yeah, he's being... Al Pacino? Christopher Walken. So Christopher Walken is giving Dennis a talking to, and... Why is he there? I didn't... What is Christopher Walken looking for? He's looking for his Dennis... Wait, what's his name in the movie? I don't remember his name in the movie, but his son is Christian Slater. Right. And he's... And he wants to find Christian Slater because Christian Slater has his narcotics. Has his narcotics. And the father, who, of course, Christian Slater has some conflict with, of course, and he came to his father for help because he found out... He accidentally acquired a suitcase full of cocaine or something like that. Right. And, okay, see, it's coming back to me. Yes. And... So he goes to free his prostitute girlfriend from the pimp. Right. And his father... Drexel. Drexel, is that what it was? Something like that. But the father is... An ex-cop. An ex-cop, and he's going to protect his son, and he is not. He doesn't care what this gangster is going to do to him. He's going to take it. He's taking the hit. The scene even gets better then, I think. But the father comes up with a strategy, Dennis Hopper, where when he realizes that Christopher Walken and the mob is going to torture him to death... That's right. He comes up with a plan to have a quick death. And the way... So the scene is... Okay, so that was the motivation of his... Insulting. So the scene is... So it's kind of funny. So the scene is that Christopher Walken comes in with his goons to look for Clarence, who's Christian Slater, and his new wife, played by Patricia Arquette, who's just, you know, that's when she was in her prime. She was beautiful. Don't confuse her with one of her brothers. Which one of her brothers? The dorky one? Do you remember the... Okay. Remember the wedding singer? Yeah. The boy George and the wedding singer? Yeah. That's another Arquette. I didn't. Who's the man? Anyway, sorry. I had to interject there. That's awesome. Oh, that's so funny, right? That's great. We should do another one on the other side. I know. I might get in trouble for that one, but whatever. So Christopher Walken's turning the screws on Dennis Hopper to tell where his son is, and Dennis Hopper is like, I haven't seen him in years. He's got everything down, and then he almost looks like he's going to get away with the lies because he hasn't seen his son in years, except for that one time, which was like eight minutes ago, you know, the day before or whatever, when one of the mobsters finds a little note on his refrigerator that says clearance call or something like that. So a little clue, and then Christopher Walken had him dead to rights, and Dennis Hopper tries to lie, and then he offers him a Chesterfield, right? So first what he does is he punches Dennis Hopper in the nose really hard when Dennis Hopper lies. So he's being really kind and kind of courteous to Dennis Hopper. Dennis Hopper's like, I haven't seen the kid. I don't know what you're talking about. And then he goes, bam, he punches him really hard in the nose. The nose starts bleeding, and he goes, and he gives him this little speech, and he's like, that's got to hurt, being slammed in the nose like that. But I'm going to warn you, that's as good as it's going to get. I love this line. It's such a great line. It's a Tarantino line. That's as good as it gets, and it's never going to get that good again. It's such a good line. I think there's an alliteration to it. It's like he's going to get tortured to death. It's only going to get worse from here. Forced shadowing, what's going to happen? That's as good as it gets. And then the next time he tries it again, the next time he lies, they grab his hand and they cut him, and it's great. They do this really close to that. Every time they hurt him and they cut him and they make him bleed or they punch him in the nose, they hand him a handkerchief so he can stop bleeding. So they do this thing like right away. It's like they have the handkerchief ready, he goes, bam, and they hand him. It's like this. They're just pros. They just know how to do it. And then that's when Dennis Hopper realizes he's in trouble. He's not getting out of this one. He's not going to lie his way out. He's going to get tortured until he talks. He's going to talk because they're just going to keep torturing him. So you don't know this until you're done, but he comes up with this plan and he goes. So it looks like he's about to just give up and spill his guts, and he says to Christopher Walken, hey, can I have one of those Chesterfields? Because Christopher Walken asked for a cigarette earlier, and that Chesterfield isn't a real cigarette. It's a Quentin Tarantino invention, if I remember right. So he starts smoking the Chesterfields. And then he says, let me tell you a little bit about myself. I'm a student of history. And he gives a speech with the intention of upsetting the mafiosi. It's a really funny speech about how the Sicilians, because they're all Sicilians, are spawned from black people from Africa, which if anybody knows anything about the Italians or the Sicilians that I grew up with and knew, they're very racist. They don't like black people. Notorious. I'm not saying all Sicilians like that now, of course. Sicilian Americans. Back then, well, real Sicilians, they don't. They're pure blood. They were a race-based thing. It was all you had to be Sicilian to be in the clique. And saying that they were, you know, they kind of thought they were a superior race and saying that they were, you know, spawned from Moors. So, you know, and that's what he keeps saying. So they thought it was outrageously funny, the Sicilians, and he goes to explain the conquering of Sicily by the Moors who were black and they did so much raping of Sicilian women that the Sicilians who used to be kind of wops, like from northern Italy with blonde hair and blue eyes became very dark skinned. And then they get, they're laughing. Then they're really getting heated. Right, yeah. But they're laughing about it because it's so funny. And then Christopher Walken shoots him in the head twice and says, I haven't killed anybody since 1984. It's just a really good scene of just absolute tension. There's just this menacing tension over the whole scene. You feel it's so tense. You want to release from the tension. The guy's in such a bind. But he's also, at the same time, he's making you laugh and the laughter is making you confused, like emotionally. It's such an emotional ride. When he shoots him and he kills him, and then you realize, oh, he actually won. He didn't commit suicide. He didn't commit suicide. He didn't give up. He didn't betray his son. Yeah, he sacrificed himself for his son. And he manipulated his opponent's vice, his anger and his pride against him. And then you're like, oh, that's really sophisticated. That's a really sophisticated process. And then when you're done with that, you have that catharsis, that feeling like, oh, my gosh, I've just been through something. You come from the other end of that scene and you feel like you've been. You're so engaged. Right. You're so invested in these people at this point. Right. It's like you went on an emotional rollercoaster on the other side and you kind of feel like this release. Somehow, like through God's divine justice, the good guy won even when he had to die. Right. It's still God's mercy is infinite. That's one of the annoying things. I don't know if Quentin Tarantino does it consciously or subconsciously. I don't know if he's a religious man. But his movies are constant. You know, I tell my children all the time, what makes a good movie or a good story is moral dilemmas. Absolutely. And there's no good story without moral dilemmas. You have a good person and a bad person or a bad person and a bad person, and you put them in these dilemmas where you go, what do you do? Hard moral dilemmas are harder. And if you can navigate them right and you can come out on the other side of them where you watch and you go, yeah, that actually was the right thing to do, then it's a good story. If you come out with some cheapskate, ghost of the machine, you know, deus ex machina solution to their problems or it's an immoral solution to the problem, it falls flat. You don't get that catharsis. You don't get that emotional happy-sad release. And Quentin Tarantino, I think, is just a master of navigating the emotional moral conflict in human life. I just think that's his shtick. Yeah. Any good storyteller is one that is going to dive deep into the human condition. Right. So we have, like, Dostoevsky is a good example, and even Jane Austen. But I don't want to digress too much. But you just compared Quentin Tarantino with Dostoevsky and Jane Austen. Sure. So now you're in my world of respect for Quentin Tarantino. Well, I mean, because the virtuous prostitute, you know, crime and punishment. It's like that. Tell me about her. I never finished reading Crime and Punishment. I don't think I could do it justice right here, right now. But Crime and Punishment is, basically, you're inside the mind of a psychopathic killer. Okay. And his redeeming grace is. . . You already sound like you're talking about a Quentin Tarantino. Go ahead. His redeeming grace is that this prostitute, who became a prostitute, because I can't remember exactly all the details, but so that she could, basically, feed the children or something like that. Right. Because of the poverty in Russia during that time. Right. And so, you know. . . Many such cases in women's history having to prostitute themselves to save their families. Yeah. And so, but she believed in God, and he didn't, the psychopathic criminal. However, he was attracted to her sacrificial love. I haven't heard anybody summarize it like that, but that was my impression when I read it. And in the end, despite all the sufferings of life, love truly wins. Mm-hmm. And it's. . . I. . . You know, so. . . I think. . . That's my. . . I'd love to. . . I think. . . It sounds like a Quentin Tarantino movie right there. He just. . . Yeah. Already. I wonder where he. . . It makes me curious about how he got. . . Quentin Tarantino got the incenses. Like, for example, which I think is funny is, like, that whole conversation about. . . that he places in the mouth of Dennis Hopper or Claire's father upsetting the mafias. That's from a real conversation that he had with, I believe it was his stepfather who was black. Quentin Tarantino. Yeah, so I think Quentin Tarantino's stepfather, I believe, was black and was a stand-up guy. And he would. . . He was an intelligent man who would say all sorts of crazy, you know, wild stuff like that. And he would, you know, say stuff like that. So Quentin Tarantino would take it and put it in his movies. And the funny thing is that he'd take all these things that his stepfather would tell him, and he'd put it in his movies. And then everybody. . . Because, you know, having, like, black urban culture in Quentin Tarantino movies is totally his shtick. Like, he's really good at writing black characters. And that's why Samuel L. Jackson loves them. Samuel L. Jackson will do every one of his movies. Yeah. Because Quentin Tarantino knows how to write a black urban tough guy character. He just knows how to do it. Better than black, you know, artists seem to know how to do it. And so he does that. He writes these characters that everybody loves, including, you know, black urban tough guys like Samuel L. Jackson. And he gets accused of racism. And the irony is that a lot of the dialogue that he's putting in there were from his actual conversations with his stepfather that he thought were interesting. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah, that is fascinating. Yeah. So he's a guy who could just use his own life experience and just create a story out of it. At the same time, he must be some kind of amazing read on people. I don't know. Yeah, no. I don't mean to deify the guy. No, but it's, you know, when you have a person who has, you know, a diverse background with a lot of different kinds of people in his life, you know, it's interesting to sort of have this window into, you know, these different groups. I wouldn't know what it's like living in a trailer park and whatever is in Detroit. Yeah, in Detroit. In Detroit, in True Romance or dealing with mobsters and stuff like that. So it looks like, it just seems like he has a lot of diverse experience and insight. And so to a person like me who lives in, you know, the beautiful suburbs here, to see that so clearly with such detail and character development is, I think it's not just like informative, but it's edifying in a way so that you can connect to different people and in humanity. Right, for sure. That's what I'm trying to say. For sure. Which I think it's funny about Tarantino, too, is that he was not the critics' choice. He was the people's choice. And in some way he was our generation's choice. Yeah, like how old were we? Like he was not a boomer guy. Yeah. Like boomers weren't really into him. I don't know if zoomers are into him or whatever they are, millennials or whatever. He was Gen X's, I don't know, he was Gen X's guy. And he was chosen by people like in our age group. And this guy's got it. And I think it's really interesting. I think it's super interesting. It's given me a lot to think about. I'm going to actually really ponder this. I'm going to do some reading of Dostoevsky. You inadvertently compared him to Dostoevsky, then you went on to explain Dostoevsky's kind of world. And it is very similar to Quentin Tarantino's world, right? It's the world of the sin and corruption of, you know, the urban streets in America versus the sin and corruption of the Russian streets, you know, in the 19th century of Dostoevsky, right? Yeah, absolutely. That's interesting. And they both have this idea of this grace under – wow, this could be an essay in itself – the grace undergirding the criminal underground or whatever you call it of the subculture, right? Yeah. And the grace being that – this is, you know, just to speak what I'm talking about with Tarantino and what I notice in a lot of his movies is where if you look at a genre like Breaking Bad or some great movie, there's lots of great stories. I can't think of one off the top of my head. But where you have a good person – it's a great story, right? I love this storyline. I can watch it a million times. You got a good person who's got a kind of easy being good. They have some kind of moral dilemma. They take the cheap way out, whatever. They compromise their morals and make one bad decision. That bad decision leads to another bad decision. And soon they're in the downfall to perdition. They're on the road to perdition. Everybody's hurt. Everybody around them's life is falling apart because of their one bad decision and their fall from grace. And that's true enough in the world. You know, you got to watch your step. And you got to not compromise. You got to repent when you fall down, right? Sure. All for it. But there's a corollary to that. And Quentin Tarantino and maybe Dostoevsky – I haven't read enough of him – have, you know, artistically teased out the corollary. And the corollary is that, you know, you have a sinner. You have someone who's in the drugs society, that criminal underbelly or whatever you call it, and they make one good decision, one selfless altruistic decision, one behavior, one action, and then that opens a crack. It's a crack and it opens a little bit of grace to come into their world. And then that one action leads to a second series of actions. And all of a sudden, before you know it, they have heroic virtue and they're dying for the love of their neighbor or their friend, and there's no greater love than that, says our Lord, right? Yes, I love it. I love stories of redemption. I love having hope for humanity, especially people who are vulnerable or whatever. They made a million mistakes, whatever it is, it doesn't matter. Just that there is hope that people, by the grace of God, can end up making redemption and making sacrifices for others and finding true love. Right. So, I mean, I love those stories. I mean, most of the stories like that, talking about the human condition, you know, there's other ones like Jane Eyre. Yeah. You know, there's some of that in there. I've read Jane Eyre a couple of times. I think twice I've read Jane Eyre. I remember running that. Yeah. At least once I read it. I know I saw a movie at one point. Yeah. But I vaguely remember it. I mean, it's not exactly that kind of story. Is it the husband or the landlord, the employers? Mr. Rochester. Mr. Rochester seems to be a brute. Well, he has, you know. They've all just misunderstood. He's misunderstood. He has a wife who has a severe mental illness up in the attic, but he's in love with the virtuous Jane. I mean, that's what I mean. I guess I really love that. I love the idea of people falling in love with a good person. Right. You know? He withholds himself until his wife passes. That's what I remember. Yeah. He's an honorable man. Well, it's a little bit more complicated than that because he was, like, hiding his wife from society and from Jane because he wanted to marry Jane, but he was like, well, it's an invalid marriage. I mean, I don't remember the language they used, but basically the premise was, well, it's an invalid marriage so I can marry, because they didn't tell him that she was crazy. Oh. That's a good moral dilemma. I love to take that. So, yeah. So, anyway. You've got to navigate that because he still takes care of her, but at the same time it was. You know, he's lonely, right? Because she has to be contained, but he didn't want to put her in an insane asylum, so she's upstairs, but she's stabbing people and lighting things on fire. Oh, right. You know, I mean, you're like. I remember this. But he's in a bad mood all the time. I mean, it depends on the interpretation. I do remember enjoying the book quite a bit. It's very sophisticated. Great writing, if I remember. And I remember it made a pretty good movie on top. Yeah. I think it's excellent on film, actually. Right. Yeah, so some great moral dilemmas in Jane Eyre. So, I guess going back to our subject of Tarantino, which is my expertise. I don't know about everybody's. I think my original question, I could be wrong, was what was your favorite movie by Tarantino? And you said Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. I haven't seen it. Let me walk you through just a couple good scenes of Tarantino movies, and then I'll talk about Once Upon a Time in Hollywood if you want. So, you have Reservoir Dogs, which I love, which I'm sure everybody's seen it, but you have Mr. Orange played by Tim Roth. Yes, give us a refresher. So, Tim Roth is an undercover cop infiltrating a diamond thief gang. Mr. Pink? Was that one of the characters? That was Steve Buscemi. He was a classic, the big brain. Was he Steve Buscemi? Steve Buscemi was. Mr. Orange was Tim Roth. He was the undercover cop. Mr. Blonde was the great Michael Madsen, the psychopath. I mean, okay, as a little, I don't know, disclaimer, like I watched some of these movies as a teenage girl, and it was like taking a bite of the apple, as it were. Like it was. Don't mind the maggots. Anyway, but I did see them, but, you know, viewer discretion advised. Right, it's a hard movie to watch. It's a hard movie to watch. I remember, yeah, so I like, I remember telling Dad to watch him, to watch Rose Verdox. Did he? I don't remember. And he turned it off after the first ten minutes. Oh, okay. The opening scene is Quentin Tarantino, he's one of the, he plays as an actor in his own movie, is one of the criminals in a cafe with the, okay, so you have Harvey Keitel, who's kind of the professional wise man, the professional thief. You got Mr. Blonde, who's played by Michael Madsen. He's kind of the heavy, he's the tough guy, the psychopath. You got Mr. Pink, played by Steve Buscemi, who's kind of the noticer, the guy who's switched out, who sees what's really going on and nothing gets past him. You have Tim Roth, who's an undercover cop, who's supposed to be playing it cool. And then you're led by the great Lawrence Tierney, who's in, you know, he's in Dad's generation of a tough guy actor, who Quentin Tarantino somehow roped in to be the boss. Okay. Joke habit. Yo, listen here, Mr. Pink. Oh, yeah. No way they're doing this, my way or the highway. So they're in a cafe in a scene, and I think it's funny, now as an adult, but I also thought it was kind of funny then, that Quentin Tarantino is breaking down and defending to a bunch of tough guys the Madonna song, Like a Virgin. Oh. And it's very graphic and disgusting. He swears a lot and he talks. He basically says, which I think is ironic, because I think this is Dad's big point about Madonna too, is that, no, this song is about a woman who's a whore. Right, right. She's just a whore. And, like, the idea that, like, guys don't listen to Madonna. I don't know if you know that. It's that weird al who made a parody. He did, like, a third check. Madonna is for gays and chicks. That's it. No dudes listen to Madonna. So the idea is so funny to me that Quentin Tarantino wrote a scene of a bunch of tough guys sitting in a cafe talking about Madonna. I believe, I recall it was quite a heated conversation. Right, and they were arguing it's funny because it's so absurd, and I think it's absurd on purpose. And I think it's one of those things that Quentin Tarantino does tongue in cheek, like I was telling you about. Like it makes him laugh. Yeah, like the whole Top Gun being gay thing. He's basically using the Madonna thing as a vehicle to basically undermine someone who's very popular at that time and just kind of reframe her. This is my interpretation. Reframe her for being some pop celebrity. It's being just a slutty skank. Sure, yeah. I don't know. So that's the way I saw it. Maybe that's not that sophisticated, but maybe he just really likes Madonna and likes to talk about stuff like that. But anyway, so Dad turns it off. He can't even handle it, right? I get it. The irony is, the grand irony is, there's no nudity in any of Quentin Tarantino's movies. There's no sex scenes in any of Quentin Tarantino's movies that I'm aware of. Okay, there was one nudity. I'll refer to it. There's one nudity. It's not erotic at all. It's a brutal slavery scene where in Django Unchained, they're abusing the slave owners in the South, the slave owners in the South are abusing Django's wife, and they throw her in a metal box, and you briefly see her naked being thrown in a box. So it's not erotic. It's more of a very brief. It's not as bad as Schindler's List or anything. It's very brief, kind of to show Southern brutality, which if you know anything about my views on the Civil War, I can respect that kind of honesty. Sure, sure. Anyway, other than that, he's actually no sex scenes, there's no erotica in Tarantino movies. I think he doesn't get credit for that. People think he's such a bad guy, and he gets no credit. He's made now nine movies, no sex scenes, no erotica, no pornography in his movies, and he gets no credit from us Christians on the right. How hard is that to do? To make R-rated movies that are super edgy, that... Yeah. All right, so one of the moral dilemmas I think is interesting in Reservoir Dogs is you have a man who's an undercover cop who's got to refold. He gets a shot in the belly, but he had become good friends with the professional Mr. White, played by Harvey Keitel. And they become friends, and Harvey Keitel loves him. Why does he love him? Because they bonded, they had good dialogue, and Harvey Keitel can tell that he's a good person, even though he's lying to him the whole time he's an undercover cop. And Mr. Orange, the cop, gets shot during the robbery in the stomach, and he's going to die, and Mr. White doesn't leave him behind. He doesn't abandon him. He takes him with him, and he saves him. And then the whole mystery of who's the informer, who's the cop, unfolds with the criminals, and the window's closing that it's going to be his friend Mr. Orange, Timothy Roth, and it's all closing in on him. And he decides to stand up for his friend and say he's going to vouch for him and decides he's willing to die for his friend. No greater will than this, right, than to give one's life for his friend. And then he does die for his friend. He gets shot, he kills the other guy, he gets mortally wounded, he's dying. Mr. Orange is dying. And Tim Roth and Mr. Orange turns and goes, I'm a cop, because he can't keep the lie. He can't. He can't. Well, he's dying, right? He's dying, and he loves Larry. Mr. White was never supposed to tell Tim Roth his name. They're all supposed to not know each other, so they can't keep each other up. And he connected with him so well he actually told him his name. Isn't that biblical when you give someone your name? Yeah. You reveal your name. Yeah. And he gives them his name, and then Tim Roth can't hold the guilt back from lying to this man who loves him for the whole thing, who decides to die for him. And he goes, Larry, I'm a cop. And Tim Roth, you know, pulls his own plug. And he's so betrayed. He's so crushed and betrayed that he was lied to. He kills him. He kills Mr. Orange. And he's already dying. It's very sad, but it's cathartic because it's like, I mean, the guy does something good, Larry, Mr. White, decides to give his life to his friend, and then he's betrayed. And then it's just all kind of false pride. Now, that's early Tarantino. Later Tarantino kind of grows in sophistication of his moral, kind of the resurrection story, I would say, the redemption arc. Sure. I think when he's young, I think he likes a little bit more of that horrible tragedy. And then his movies start turning into, like, by the end of his career, his movies start turning into bizarre comedies. So we'll go through. Let's just jump over to Pulp Fiction, right? So Pulp Fiction has all sorts of fun stuff in it, right? Well, the John Travolta, Uma Thurman dance chorus. Iconic. Totally iconic. Okay, so one, not in the movies, but in reality, there's a redemption story. What's the redemption story in reality? With Pulp Fiction. What do you mean in reality? In real life, not fake. Real life, not in the movies. There's a real redemption story in Pulp Fiction that shocked everybody. I think this tells you something about Quentin Tarantino. Can you give me a hint? I'm not sure. John Travolta. Oh, his redemption story in the movie. No, he's the redemption story. John Travolta was the biggest thing in the world during Saturday Night Fever. He was from Welcome Back, Conor. He was a Saturday Night Fever handsome guy. Could dance like no other. Cool. And then what happened to him, right? There's some kind of internal scandals, I think. He fell off the face of the earth. Totally. He was a loser. He was dunzo. Right. He was a son of tradition. Because I was a little guy. My understanding, he got trapped in some kind of weird Hollywood kink show. Gay porno. Well, he's a Scientologist, right? He's a Scientologist. I don't know if something weird was going on with that. But yes, you're saying Pulp Fiction was his redemption, his comeback. So, Quentin Tarantino says, I wrote. So, in Pulp. So, Travolta was like his muse to a certain extent. So, in Reservoir Dogs, Quentin Tarantino created a character called Victor Vega. And he wrote that character for Michael Madsen. Yes. In Pulp Fiction, he wrote a character called Vincent Vega. Vincent Vega. Vincent Vega. Vincent Vega. And he wrote that for Robert De Niro. He wanted Robert De Niro. Oh, Robert De Niro? I'm sorry. Did I say Robert De Niro? I'm sorry. Oh, Travolta. John Travolta. He wrote it for. Robert De Niro. I don't know. I'm just going totally crazy. We're having some scotch. It's okay, guys. Right? You guys are drinking with us, right? John Travolta. I got some wires crossing. So, and John Travolta said nobody. He got over to Pulp Fiction. He's like, no, John Travolta said nobody. He's old. He's whatever. John Travolta comes in and he kills it. Like, he kills it. He's great. So, now in the movie, of course, there's a lot of nerves. I'll give you two and then we'll move on. One is the obvious one where it's super, it's very in your face in the movie. Samuel L. Jackson and Robert. John Travolta are hit men. They go to retrieve this mysterious suitcase, which nobody knows what's inside of it. Whatever it was, was fascinating for Ms. Olagwala. There's like a theme of suitcases. Suitcases are a theme, right? And he, there's this whole adventure. They get the suitcase, but John Travolta accidentally kills. They purposely kill some people. John Travolta accidentally kills somebody in the car and gets blood all over it. They have to go and lean on the courtesy of a friend who's played by Quentin Tarantino to clean up the car and hide the body and get away with it. And Samuel L. Jackson is haunted by the fact that he didn't die during the gunfight. He assassinates the guy who still steals the suitcase, but another person comes out of the bedroom with a gun and shoots right at him about four feet away from him or something very close, and none of the bullets hit him. And he's haunted by this. So this is, in my view, this is grace. And he realizes that he's a horrible person. He should have died. And he has this conversation with John Travolta in a diner once again. Always in a diner. Suitcases and diners. Suitcases and diners and girls with no shoes on. And red apple cigarettes. And he has this thing where he quotes the Bible before he assassinates people. He had a moment of clarity, right? Was that part of them? And he has a moment of clarity. And he explains, he's like, I'm the bad guy. I'm the bad guy. I'm giving this life up. I'm out. I'm the bad guy. And John Travolta is trying to talk him out of it. And then the diner gets robbed, if you know the story, by whom other than Tim Roth, who played Mr. Orange in the first Tarantino movie, Reservoir Dogs. Tim Roth is, in this movie, a burglar. And he has some kind of armed gunman. And he decides to rob the cafe at the time, the wrong time. And there's this. That's right. The wrong time or the right time? Or it was God's time. God's time. Now, Samuel L. Jackson has a moral dilemma. He's being robbed. The guy's a punk. And he can kill him easily. But he's already had this kind of new face. So he makes one good decision. The decision is he warns the guy, I'm going to give you my wallet. And you're going to walk away and you're going to leave. Blah, blah. And he gives his whole thing. But he explains to the guy, it's like, if it was any other day, you would die. I would kill you. But I'm going to give you my wallet. And you're going to walk out and you're going to leave everybody alone. And now he has this moment of grace where he's going to be a good person. So that's one. That's obvious. It's super in your face because he actually dissects. So when he kills people, he quotes, I believe it's Isaiah. Walking in the sand. My name is the Lord, and you will know my name when I bring my vengeance upon you. Oh, that's wonderful. Vengeance, bring it up with another Bible verse. Yeah. Okay. Well, it's a Bible verse. I don't know which one it is. I probably should have had some notes. I didn't know we were going to do this interview. I had some preparatory notes in my brain, but that's all gone now. It's going on in a different direction. But it's great. Keep going. So the theme of the quote, I wish I had the Bible verses, is that basically there's wolves and there's sheep. And the wolves are going to attack the people of God. And then God's going to have holy vengeance on them. And through his conversation, through this experience of almost dying, almost being murdered, almost being killed, and the conversation with John Travolta, with Vincent Vega that Samuel L. Jackson has, he says, I'm actually the wolf. I'm the bad guy who's killing God's people. And God's going to have vengeance on me, if I remember. Okay. Right? I'm the bad guy. I've got to wake up and realize that. So he has this opportunity to kill this thief, and instead he gives him his wallet. And he intimidates the guy at the same time because he's a tough guy. And he saves everybody in the diner. He doesn't wreak vengeance on the guy. And basically he's like, I'm out of this lifestyle. I'm not going to do this anymore. I'm going to turn my life around because I've been given mercy by God. It's super in your face that it's religious. It's super in your face Quentin Tarantino being explicitly Christian and explicitly religious, which he almost has never. He's way more subtle than that. This is in your face. Right? I don't even know why he doesn't get hosannas from the right on it. Everybody loves Tarantino, so I shouldn't worry about it. I think he's reaching a different audience. I think that the people that Catholics and Christians to the right probably don't have a lot of respect for him. They would never consider him a moral artist. But that's all right. I don't mean to deride. But I'm saying that that's not his audience who he's writing to. I mean, I could be wrong. Maybe he doesn't have that. No, I don't think that he's writing to Christians. I think it's funny. Actually, I should say, Potter Edmund, good old Potter Edmund Bauchstein, when Josias did their movie reviews, he said, Potter Edmund said, Pulp Fiction is a perfect movie. Which is great because Gen X, he's like me, is younger, though. He's a little younger, yeah. Right. But that's his take. He's not like, he's about as traditional as you can get. He's a theologian. He's extremely sophisticated, and he also has a sophisticated sense of humor. He's the one who was talking about the death of Stalin. Oh, yeah. And Steve Buscemi. Yeah, I think he said that, right. Yeah, he's a cruise chef. He's a cruise chef, that's right. And I saw that movie, and I was like, this is probably the most hysterical movie I've ever seen in my life. And not everybody really gets it for lots of reasons. You should probably watch it with you. Yeah, I'm not saying that. I didn't get it for a lot of reasons. Well, I get it because I was a missionary in Russia, blah, blah, blah. You're intimate with the Russian struggle, right? Yeah. So, Pastor Edmund, it's just the fact that he thought it was as hysterical as I thought it was hysterical. I was like, he has just, I think he has just insight on maybe like a greater. Well, he's not, I mean, I think part of it is that he's so base and grounded that he can appreciate things that are a little. Well, what I'm saying is like when you're with, when you have exposure to the dregs of suffering humanity, you have a little more, I don't know, tolerance for grittiness, I guess. Or movies or stories that maybe seem scandalous and inappropriate or something like that. I'm not really sure if I'm expressing myself. No, I think it makes a lot of sense. And it's like, I don't know, I don't mean to be, I'm not a tough guy or anything like that. But I do remember, you know, a big formative part of my life is growing up on the west side of Chicago, even though it was only for like 10 years. And there was a grittiness about it. And then when I moved to the suburbs, there was a blue collar kind of criminal underbelly that I was kind of, it wasn't like mobster or anything. But it was, that I was close to where it was like, I had one foot into, you know, like you probably that, you know, PhD parents or father has, you know, I believe a master's from the University of Chicago, which is, by the way, University of Chicago is not Ivy League. It's called like something stupid like extra Ivy League or something. So it's not just Ivy League. It's like hyper Ivy League or something. Whatever. So we have Ivy League. It's a big deal. It's a big deal. And I don't, you know, so it's like I got one leg into some not so good blue collar stuff. And then, you know, another leg into kind of like some sort of high society. I think Potter Edmund isn't intimidated by gritty art. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Like he must have had something in his background or in his formation where he was, you know. Well, I think one of the problems, one of his experiences being in Austria, which has, you know, much more. Austria is sophisticated, though. Yeah, but they have a lot of, you know, Germany and Austria have a lot of, you know. Conflict? I mean, like I'm talking they're, you know, there's like a lot of debauchery. It's, you know, cabaret. It's about the Weimar Republic. There's a lot of deviance in, you know, Central Europe over there. A lot of sexual deviance. America looks tame. Germans and Austrians mock Americans about how prudish we are and how puritan we are. Right? So I think living in Austria, it gives people a little different respect. Like in America, we're like scandalized by stuff. But by European, especially German European standards, it's we're animals. I mean, it's just a different animal. They've been targeted with social engineering at a level that we don't even understand because of the, you know, they're in the middle. There's all sorts of power players who are trying to, who do not want Germany and Austria to be powerful. Because when Germany and Austria are powerful things, it makes it complicated for the rest of the world. So they, you know, they kind of control them with, you know, sex and debauchery. Pornography, as we know, because we Europe has got some, we know that pornography and drugs and sin is political control. It keeps men weak. Right? Absolutely. Enslave men to their passions. Get them working in gambling, sports, pornography, and it keeps them weak and they don't pay attention to. They're slaves of their vices. They're slaves of their passions. We all know this. I don't need to drone on. But so Quentin Tarantino is nothing compared to the weird stuff that goes on in Central Europe and their films. We don't even know. Oh, in their films? Yeah, films in Central Europe are, you know. I haven't seen them, honestly. Well, my advice is don't. You're not missing much. Anyway, so let's go back to higher level things. Okay. Do you want to talk about Once Upon a Time in Hollywood or not? I'll go to. Should we save that for another? No, no. I'll just, I'll march through. I'll march through and then if you tell me when we stop because I still got a few minutes of video. Are we doing an hour show? I think we're close to an hour anyway, so let's just keep rolling. Okay. So, if you are, okay. Yeah, go ahead. We go, let's just jump over to interesting stuff in. So, okay. Interesting stuff in Pulp Fiction. So, the second one, which is way more subtle, as you and I have talked about before, is Butch. Oh, yeah. Butch, played by the great Bruce Willis. He's a boxer. He's going to throw a fight. Also, who's going to hurt, Marcellus Wallace, who's the keep, which is connected with the John Travolta plot. He's going to throw a boxing match and Marcellus Wallace, played by Ving Rhames, the tough guy, gives Butch this talk about pride. Don't let pride mess with your head. Pride. Don't let it mess with your head. Don't do it. Throw the fight. Let the guy hit you. Throw the fight. And everything on the kick, don't. It's pride fucking with you, that's what he says. Right? Okay. Now, it's interesting because he's confusing. He's played the great Satan character, right? He's telling Bruce Willis, he's confusing the sin of pride with honor and dishonor, with honesty. So, he's saying, if you don't lie and cheat, you're actually sinning. You're being prideful. You're being unreasonable. The reasonable thing is to cheat your fellow man. That's what's reasonable. And it's never sad, but Bruce Willis doesn't like this plan. But he's dishonest. He takes Marcellus' offer to fight, and he bets on himself. And he fights Sebastian Kinsey and ends up killing his opponent in the ring. And he runs out of dodge. He escapes with his French girlfriend. Except, well, it's a perfect crime. He's got everything figured out. He's leaving town. They're never going to catch him. He's got it all worked out. He has connections in Tennessee. He's going to get away with it. And then he realizes that his girlfriend, his French girlfriend, left his watch. Oh, yeah. Then you go, who cares? It's just a watch. It's just a watch. Well, now we start talking virtue, right? So, the watch is a flashback of where he got the watch from. And, ah, who's going to tell us where he got his watch from? Who? Who? But it's the great Christopher Walken, as we remember, from Tromath, who had the greatest scene in romance. That was the greatest scene in Pulp Fiction. And the reason why this scene is great is not because there's some great moral dilemma, but because Christopher Walken does something different than a moral dilemma. He plays the good guy, almost like an angel, comes down from heaven, to explain to the young, it's a flashback, the young child, Butch, about the virtue of what? Piety. This watch belonged to your father, who was a military man, who sacrificed. And he tells a very humorous story about hiding the watch in his anus in Vietnam while he was being tortured. And this watch gets handed down. Talk about bizarre humor. Right. And he talks about how that watch, before it was held by his grandfather, who died in this great military-naval battle, and his best friend agreed to deliver it to him. It's this patrimony of the watch. And the watch is a symbol, I think, of the grace of God. It's handed on from on high, and it's an act of piety. You can't leave the grace of God behind. It's the pearl of grace price. You have to go back to the kingdom. You can't leave it. Okay. I know I'm reading deep. No, no. It's good. He can't leave it. It's the pearl of great price. He's going to risk life and limb for the watch because it's a symbol of his father. It's a symbol of God. And then what happens when he goes back to the watch? They're going to kill him. Vincent Vega, you know. Vincent Vega. John Travolta is in his house waiting for him. He ends up killing John Travolta, who is not a good person in the movie. There's no loss. I totally forgot about that, actually. He gets the watch. And as he's escaping, he sees his nemesis. Marcellus Walsh. Marcellus Walsh, the mob boss, walking down the street. And Marcellus looks at him. They make eye contact. And he's like, what the? And then he slams on the gas. He hits Marcellus. They get in a big fist fight. And they wake up in the, as they explain it in their analogy, the spider's nest of a homosexual rapist. Yeah, that was like, I mean, we could probably do a whole show just on, like, why Quentin Tarantino would put that. Because he grew up in Hollywood. Yeah. One of his friends. His boss is Harvey Weinstein. I didn't know that. Super creepers. That is so wild. Wow. Wow. And he doesn't protect him. He doesn't say, it's okay, it was Harvey. He, I don't know what he says. I never said, well, I don't know what he knew. Because his, the actresses that worked in his movie, none of them are in the loop of that. So I don't know. I'm not going to make. Okay, I don't want to digress. We're totally digressing. So just, I think just sexual perversity in Hollywood is not a big stretch of the imagination that he is. Yeah, absolutely. Some contempt for it. Yeah. So, for those who have seen the movie all know, they end up tied up in the basement with these homosexual sadomasochists. Yeah. And it's totally ridiculous and bizarre. To a normal person, you'd be like, what? It's totally out of the blue. You don't even know where it came from. Yeah, it's like, yeah. And then there's the gib guy and the leather. It's so weird. Like, so weird. So much leather. It's so much, it's hell. They descend into hell. They're in a basement. So they literally descend into hell. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry. They figuratively descend into hell. Yeah. And now. And they're tied up or something. They're tied up. They're going to get raped. They have like ping pongs in their mouth or something. They got gag balls, these balls in their mouth, these homosexual sadomasochist things. They put these gag balls in their mouth so they can't talk. So weird. Yeah, okay. And Bruce Willis Butch escapes. He gets out of his bondage. And he, like, you know, Socrates, Allegra of the Cave, he escapes into the realm of the forms or whatever. Up the stairs. He's out. He's done. He's good. He's out. He's safe. And then what happens? He hears Marcellus and the stuff going on downstairs, the torture. And he can't. This is his enemy. This is his enemy. This guy wants to murder him. He's his archenemy. And Butch is walking out of the shop, the pawn shop. And he looks over the counter, and he sees a samurai sword. And he stops, and he grabs the sword, and he descends into hell. Who does that remind you of? He descends into hell. He's a Christ figure. And he slays the gimp, which I'm guessing is some kind of demonic manifestation of Satan. And he saves Marcellus. He kills. He saves him. He wounds the sodomites and the gimp. And he frees Marcellus, his archenemy, through mercy. It's just absolute virtue of mercy. And Marcellus says, in time running, this isn't really a corollary. Marcellus says, we're good now. Basically releases Butch from the debt, which is the exact opposite of how it really works. But anyway, so in that Christ released us from the debt, not the other way around, but he saves us. So they're good. They make peace. Vengeance will be Marcellus' on the sodomites. And then Butch takes the sodomites' motorcycle. His name's Zed. Really nice motorcycle. Goes and picks up his girlfriend, his French girlfriend, to ride away into freedom. And she says, who's Zed? And he says, Zed's dead, baby. Zed's dead. But then you get a glimpse, if I remember right, of his motorcycle. And the name of the motorcycle is? Grace. Grace. Come on. Come on. Is that all accidental? Come on. Come on. I like it. So this feeds well into the title of this podcast, The Interpretation of Film. Because there could be subconscious things going on, like in the interpretation of dreams, right? In that concept, right? Or it could be something really under the covers, sophisticated, theologian. We don't know. Maybe a mix. But it's manifesting in these little things that we think about and wonder if they mean something or not. Right. Well, okay. At this point, I'm going to surrender. And I think that if we want to talk again, we can talk about some interesting things on Kill Bill. But you never talked about Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. And we can talk about Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. But it is late. So maybe it is worthy of another conversation. Yes, absolutely. I'm up for that. This was Volume 1. Episode 1. Episode 1 of the Tarantino interpretation of the Tesla podcast. The Interpretation of Film podcast. Yes. Tesla, thank you for having me. Thank you. And that's it, everybody. Thanks for listening. Good night.
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