S4E47: Reservoir Dogs

I'm totally anti misogyny, however tipping, in the U.S. is historically based on racism. Tipping was used as a means to circumvent hiring newly freed slaves, for work. At their own will, newly freed people, could offer services, at businesses then patrons, at their own discretion, could tip them for said services. I for one am pro abolishing tips in favor of paying service staff a living wage.

Even if I don’t entirely disagree, and I don’t, honestly the Quentin Tarantino forced hate makes me want to high-smarm this *podcast*. Deeply irritating to caveat an analysis of a movie you liked with “by the way the director has never made anything else that’s good and anyone who thinks otherwise is a moron”

I love Abby's little "yay"s

Dev’s point about this being a story men tell each other (with all the implications of that) is *really* important.

It's been too long for me to remember what I really thought of this movie, but in general I rank it as "at least it's not pulp fiction". Overall the only Tarantino flick I liked was Inglorious Basterds.

WAIT, ANY CHANCE OF THE SUPERIOR TARANTINO FILM, JACKIE BROWN?!?

While I have agreed with like 99% of your scums, this is the one that I was really surprised/disappointed by because I don't think that Tarantino was actually criticizing the elements of masculinity the film opens for criticism... I think he just wanted to make a 'cool' movie that rips off City on Fire, and anything substantial it ended up saying was simply present in all of the source material he digested/plagiarized/ripped off/adapted

The QTEU? The Quick Time Event Universe?

Couldn't figure out how to post this otherwise. Has the KJB Krewe addressed this? Joe Cornish's parody theme song for "Quantum of Solace" OMG how did I not learn of this previously?!? 🤡 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=h6CoNUE5Zho

Can I also add to the requests for City On Fire, but also on a Chow Yun Fat theme Once A Thief, which has one of the wildest reveals in cinema. Also the first Gemma Arterton/Russell Brand St Trinians movie is a heist film. And it’s as odd as it sounds.

Fun Fact: the warehouse is also a MORTUARY

The drama society at my university actually did do a stage adaptation of Reservoir Dogs, in the early 2000s. I didn't see it, but I assume it was appaling, having seen other productions directed by the same guy, including an abysmal Macbeth done in the style of the Matrix, with extra dialogue written by the director 💀

It was slightly jarring for November and Devon to talk at length about how sexy and cool Mr Blonde is and how titillating the torture scene was, then turn around and give it a 1 on violence because "the violence isn't meant to be cool, its meant to be scary." No its not! It's meant to be titillating! That doesn't change because it succeeded!

'Film about misogyny where women don't have a perspective' was also my read on Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. I think it's fundamentally about the abuse of women in Hollywood - a main character murdered his wife and it's treated as a quirky backstory, Roman fucking Polanski is hanging around in the backround - but viewed entirely from the perspective of men, men who are complicit and don't bother to notice it. Idk if it's actually saying anything though, or how generous I should be to it.

Nova can we please set you up with an actual old man so you can get Bailey C'resier out of your system it's been two months

Okay, now that you've done this, it might be interesting if ya'll did City On Fire. It the Hong Kong flick (with Chow Yun Fat) that "inspired" this one. Also, I have to recommend Heist (2001) if for no reason other than how can you not?

the amount of movies you have to have already watched in order to make this movie an enjoyable experience to consume is always going to make movie commentators biased. i hate it with my life it is boring

I remember when I first saw this movie I was very naive, and all the racism was so over-the-top that it felt to me like QT was thinking "these guys are criminals and therefore bad guys, and therefore they must be racist." Like, calling white people the n-word not because the n-word is itself offensive but because being called black is the most offensive thing you can think of? That's a level of racism that I couldn't conceive of. In the many years since, I learned that there are indeed still people of that kind of racist and even more, and that's just fucked. I also thought this was the kind of on-the-nose depiction of how awful crime is that it almost felt like an after school special that was saying "you think wearing a suit and walking in slow motion in black and white is cool? Well look how horribly racist and sexist and violent these guys are." Maybe I learned the wrong lesson, but I wear a lot of Hawaiian shirts and walk at regular speed. I will never die in a four directional mutually destructive shootout. Quentin Tarantino's whole oeuvre is a depiction vs endorse debate, but I would love to hear the pod's (and especially Dev's after that comment) opinion on Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, because I felt like I was going insane that nobody I talked to seemed to agree that the main theme was male violence against women. There wasn't an overarching plot, the characters' respective goals didn't really go anywhere, other than as a series of vignettes about male violence, often for stupid reasons or no reason, and mostly against women and girls. Like, they have the Manson cult thing at the end which didn't contribute anything to the stuff about the acting or the stunt performance or Brad Pitt's wife killing thing, except that it was an excuse to have Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio brutalise some women. If someone writes a love letter to me and it comes out like that, I would feel offended and re-examine my entire life. Maybe it was a hate-letter to Hollywood and nobody got it? IDK.

Let's see what tidbits I can remember about this movie when it came out without consulting Wikipedia or IMDB. This is all from cast/crew interviews at the time: 1) The second half is a shot-for-shot remake of a Hong Kong flick, 2) Harvey Keitel basically did all the casting, 3) Roger Avery is the reason it got made, and 4) Tarantino was oblivious to any and all subtext in the work. He thought it was cool, "Because it's fun, Jan!" This became more obvious in interviews around Pulp Fiction when he would get questions about subtext, and he would stare rather blankly at the person and more-or-less react: "What? I don't understand." Hmmm, I thought I would remember more. Oh well.

Side bit about Vic Vegas (brother of Vincent Vega) PO; that's the brother of Jack Scagnetti, Tom Sizemore's character in Natural Born Killers.

id like to humbly suggest First Cow (2019) as a film for heist season :)

I've been hesitant to submit a suggestion, but if the Tarantino box is open and "truck" season is still going then you might be interested in Robert Rodriguez's "From Dusk Till Dawn." It's a somewhat evil object, but Harvey Keitel's character does offer a fairly strong definition for trucker.

I give this movie 1 out of 5 bites of a cupcake, just the frosting, but like the frosting after it’s been half melted from sitting at a picnic for 4 hours then way too dried out by a couple days on an open plate in the forage

He DID say he wanted to do an R rated Star Trek, i think that could be interesting!

Definitely my favorite Tarantino film by far. I wonder if you'd consider Killing Zoe, French heist film which has really similar vibes to this.

The Penguins of Madagas-Hard R: Directed by Quentin Tarantino

I feel like I’ve seen this movie through cultural osmosis because it unleashed so much Movie Guy behavior (derogatory) in the mid-90s. The snobby knowingness and all that stuff… it might’ve laid some of the groundwork for the horrible things that came out of internet fan culture later. Not necessarily the movie’s fault, but it’s there. On the other hand I remember one of my friends in middle school using a video camera to make kind of a Reservoir Dogs/Breakfast Club type movie and getting a part in that. And if this inspired people to make something creative of their own it does speak well for it.

I really do think the high water mark for Quentin Tarantino was Jackie Brown, and perhaps in a different universe that would have been the direction he could have gone in. I do enjoy Reservoir Dogs, but I haven't watched it since the early 00s and I'm not sure if I'd still like it as much as I did back then. Honestly expected this movie to score worse, the new violence metric saved this movie.

Abby mentioned the interesting hypothetical of what if Tim Roth’s handler was a woman, and in fact there are one or two deleted scenes in which Tim Roth’s handler also has a colleague named McCluskey (a reference to a Burt Reynolds character which Tarantino revisited in OUATIH) who is indeed a woman with multiple lines of dialogue!

Great episode! I'd love to see a Western season sometime.

Love you guys and love the finger on the scale thing but you are giving that film a VERY benevolent reading when it comes to racism and misogyny and I think you are being a bit too biased. Which yeah sure is your right but it’s putting some past moral issues you’ve had with certain films in perspective and it’s a bit of shame

Between this episode and BGSC's recap of Clue, I'm getting my fill of characters named after colors.

There's this remarkable tenderness and eroticism to Tarantino's first three films that I feel is very under discussed...

I think you may have mixed up Les enfants terribles (Jean Cocteau) with Au revoir les enfants (Louis Malle) – and the story is much less cute when you're mispronouncing the title of a film about the Holocaust...

I think the dialectics of being "cool" vs sincere/vulnerable was (at least as represented in media) the #1 Gen X cultural concern at the time. I think it was a mask that the ever present crisis of masculinity was wearing. In this film, sincerity is what kills in the end. I think in that way the film is very nihilistic. Gen X was obsessed with being cool, but also sensitive to being inauthentic, so an undercover cop is a perfect metaphor to explore that. This film is very of its time in that way but I think all of that is entirely unintentional. I think I'm overall less charitable on him as a director and his films. To me his stuff is always a bit of a Frankensteins monster, and any meaning or insight it has to offer has been cribbed from other, better films kind of thoughtlessly and probably unintentionally. A very "rule of cool" film that, if it's good, or has anything to say, is good by virtue of its source material. If there's sincerity to be had it's in QTs fanboy needing out. Really the only thing it cares about. I should note that a wonderful accident is the camera in the opening is taking the over the shoulder pov of a waitress taking orders as they debate tipping. I honestly believe this to be unintentional, but it works extremely well. It represents to me how QT has seen so many films I think he cribs without understanding what other, better directors were saying, just that it looked cool. So his assemblages have a nonsensical yet compelling art to them even if they are essentially meaningless mimicry done with technical mastery

My favorite "heist planning" scene so to speak in a movie is from the Dirty Dozen. The men have completed their training and now they are about to raid a Nazi fortress. The plan is broken down into steps, which rhyme and can be chanted like a song or a poem. That really planted a seed in me, presumably it's based on real tactical practice and makes the plan way, way easier to remember

Fitzcaraldo for hoist season, hurray!

Speaking of Lee Marvin, have you all considered "Paint Your Wagon"? There's a heist, there's polyamory, there's Clint Eastwood singing, there's singing about the heist....

This is like the 5th time I’m hearing about this Disco Elysian Larp and I just need to know where I can sign up for the next event.

OMG... PLEEEEEEZ watch Madame Web!!!!! The sheer delight I would experience at that is indescribable.

Iirc one of the cops in the commode story imagine spot IS Marvin who gets tortured by Mr. Blonde

Is Feet Israel related to Israel Hands from Treasure Island?

I‘m so glad the reasons I really love this film also stood out to the KJB crew- I do really see it as a solid film, albeit with the seeds of Tarantino‘s later bullshit but not yet as unbearable as he will become. I like some of his later stuff with Heavy Caveats, but this is solidly top three films for me. I love a film which feels like a play and I need the proposed All Female Off Broadway Version injected directly into my veins

Cumtown mentioned!

Crazy that nova mentions this inspired payday but didn't mention that in the Heat(1995) episode, sincerely a payday2 player with 2400 hours that is in a payday 2 steam gc with 4 other trans women

Also as long as I am spamming comments, I would love to nominate Michael Mann's Thief for heist season. It has the really greasy 1970s new york, a bunch of the actors are either actual cops or criminals or both, and maybe most importantly it fucking rules

The bit about the racism being realistic for the characters but also Tarantino just wanting to shock white libs makes for an interesting Watsonian vs. Doylist conversation that brings to mind a film I'm curious for you to get to - Kingsmen: The Secret Service. That has the infamous bit where the Swedish princess offers her arse to the MC if he succeeds in saving the world; this can be read as a satirical bit in the context of the film being an Up-to-11 spoof of Moore-era Bond, and I've seen women write about it as part of a lineage of fictional and real women engaging in a taboo sex act they want to do in the context of giving sexual favours to a man, or receiving it as a favour from a man, which I think are interesting things to consider and which at least a couple of the hosts would likely have Thoughts on, based on prior discussions. And then you've got the director saying "Lol, I put that in there to piss off feminists."

For what it is worth, as someone who was graduating high school when this came out AMERICA as a whole was pretty acutely aware of the mistreatment of Black folks and other POC since the King riots were a few months before this movie dropped. It was a big deal in the national discourse that it had not been in my lifetime previously. It is more saturated now, of course, but it is not like as a nation folks didn't know what the score was

Banger ep, crew.

Always amazes me that nobody’s tried to do a stage version of this. It’s halfway there already , most of it’s on the one set. And I bet you could do something really theatrically interesting with the flashbacks.

Would a transfem or transmasc Reservoir Dogs remake be better?

"You kill anybody?" "A few cops." "No real people?" "Just cops."

Yay! Reservoir Doggos! On the day that marks my one month on estradiol! And yes, Nova, one hundred percent Michael Madsen did something to me too gurllll

Oh, oh, now do City on Fire (1987)!