Kill Bill

Hey everybody, one of my favorite podcasts, Talking Pictures, is back for another season. You know this. It's from TCM and HBO Max. It's a podcast all about movies and memories hosted by Ben Manquitz and he gets to sit down with some of Hollywood's most influential actors and filmmakers to discuss the movies that inspired him. I've been on the show. It was the most fun and this season he is talking to people like Edgar Wright about pacing and montages in film and Rosie Perez about her acting career and how it kind of just began on accident. He's also talking to Pat Nozwald, Susan Sarandon, Hiramurai, who is a director who did a lot of Atlanta and the great new show Widows Bay, Sally Field, Tony Goldwyn and so much more. This season Ben and his guests are on camera so you can also watch Talking Pictures on HBO Max and Spotify or listen wherever you get your podcast. This spring on Disney Plus, 18 Plus subscription required. T's and C's apply. The year 2003. As your leader, I encourage you from time to time and always in a respectful manner to question my logic. If you're unconvinced a particular plan of action I've decided is the wisest, tell me so. But allow me to convince you and I promise you right here and now no subject will ever be taboo except of course the subject that was just under discussion. The price you pay for bringing up either my Chinese or American heritage as a negative is I collect your f***ing head. The movie Kill Bill. Hello everyone and welcome to Un Spool. Yes, welcome to Un Spool. This is a podcast about good movies, critical hits, fan favorites, must-sees and incase you misdems. We have covered the AFI Top 100 and now we are checking off movies from three major lists. The Letterbox Top 250 films with the most fans, the IMDb Top 250 and the New York Times 1000 Essential Films. And Amy, those lists aren't going to just hold us back because we'll also be chasing our own curiosity too. I am Paul Scheer. I'm an actor, writer and director and I am someone who has spent a lot of time covered in blood for something that I have written or done on set. Let me tell you, it is a terrible experience. It is awful. You are sticky. You are just completely gross. So when I hear that Kill Bill has a 155 day shooting schedule and the majority of that film, Uma Thurman is covered in blood, I feel for her on a deep, deep level. She is sticky for half a year. I have heard that Kill Bill use different types of blood. It use like a certain type of blood that they use in Chinese action films. It use a certain type of blood from Japanese action films, different colors, different consistencies. Have you ever noticed differences in blood? Sometimes, cheap, sometimes a little bit more expensive, but here's the thing. Always a terrible experience. We did a show at UCB when I was first starting out called Kill Gore and it was like the bloody musicals, a bloody show where we literally covered the audience in tarps. We covered the entire theater in tarps because every scene had a massive kill scene. We were ripping out guts. We were breaking heads and the audience was splashed. They were in the splash zone. It was like a Gallagher show or Waterworld stunt spectacular. And I will say that we did that show every year for maybe five or six years straight and the theater couldn't even get the blood stains out of like the upper ceiling. You could always see blood, just the splatter of blood. This stuff is cruel. It's awful. It's worse than sparkles. Man, any cops who went to some other comedy show, they're not knowing what had happened. They'd be so confused. It was always so funny to be like staring up at the ceiling just seeing blood splatter. I did feel like I was like, ah, figuring it out. I'm figuring out that big case, Amy. Well, hi, I'm Amy Nicholson. I'm the film critic for the Los Angeles Times. And one time I got a kill bill pedicure. Yeah. That means yellow toenails, black stripe on them, blood spatters because I was hosting a screening of kill bill on the L Ray network with two of my favorite girls, Jenya Mato and Roxanne Benjamin. So, you know, we got swords, we put on wedding dresses and we were like, we probably have to do a pedicure. I love that there's even a kill bill pedicure available. Maybe I should do it. I do get my toenails painted. I should get that done. This is Austin. This is Austin. Okay. They're going to do that much easier than, than my team. Um, let's talk about this movie. Your nail team. Nail team. Ted, I mean, I'll tell you, my, my team rivals, uh, the crazy 88s. I mean, they truly, you want to talk about an efficient team. They are there. I have to deal with my nails, which are disgusting. Anyway, uh, are your nails really disgusting? My, uh, not my hand nails, but my feet nails are. Look, I don't know what happened. I'm there in shoes all the time. They don't pretty to look at the reason why I'm doing pedicures and I'm painting them is because they're better to look at like that. I take care of my body. I wash, I do anything. I chalk it all up to one time. Just showering without sandals on at the ballies. After that, my feet went from being perfect to just like a mess. You're being humble. You have a 4.97 on wiki feet. I just looked it up. Cause I, I know how to protect that image. Oh, you know what? I just looked up my own feet and the kill bill pedicure is on there. Whoa. Yeah. Somebody was always stealing pictures of my feet from online and then I had to stop posting my pedicures, which I would post cause they're usually comically hilarious. I have, I would say I have a lower wiki score feet than I deserve because I, I cannot paint my toenails. Okay. Well, first of all, what an auspicious start to a Quentin Tarantino episode that we organically started talking about feet. The war is over and both sides lost. Kingdoms were reduced to cinders and armies scattered like bones in the dust. Now the survivors claw to what's left of a broken world. Praying the darkness chooses someone else tonight, but in the shadow dark, the darkness always wins. This is old school adventuring and it's most cruel. Your torch ticks down in real time. And when that flame dies, something else rises to finish the job. This is a brutal rules light nightmare with a story that emerges organically based on the decisions that the characters make. This is what it felt like to play RPGs in the 80s. And man, it is so good to be back. Join the Glass Cannon podcast as we plunge into the shadow dark every Thursday night at 8pm Eastern on youtube.com slash the Glass Cannon with the podcast version dropping the next day. See what everybody's talking about and join us in the dark. Welcome to the realms of peril and glory. Explore the mechanically magical vistas of veil, the paranormal mysteries of liminal London and the cyberpunk chaos of cyborg. Be awed by our incredible guests from familiar shows like Ox Venture and No Rolls Bard. Search realms of peril and glory to find out more. The year. What is it? It's 2003 and Quentin Tarantino has been missing from the movies for six years. Man, that's over half his career. His first film, Reservoir Dogs, premiered at Sundance in January of 1992. Pulp Fiction, his massive breakout, of course, was 1994. Jackie Brown, his film after that came out in 1997. And then that's kind of it. And it's interesting because the fandom around Tarantino has always been complex and fickle. In part, I think because that Pulp Fiction fame was so massive, his personality was so massive too, that a great movie like Jackie Brown, which we've done on the show, it felt in that moment like a let down. Yeah. I mean, Jackie Brown only made $40 million in the theater. Now, Pulp Fiction made 108 and spawned so many copycats that that bad aftertaste of all of those is starting to congeal around Tarantino too. It's like a byproduct. You know, people are, was this guy all that we made him out to be? I mean, is he just like a copycat guy of the movies that influenced him? Yeah. And meanwhile, Tarantino has been putting his energy into bringing those films that he loves, especially the films from Asian cinema to American audiences. You know, and he's giving this big boost to movies like Wong Kar-Wai's Chunking Express, Jackie Chan and Michelle Yeo's Police Story 3. We've done both of those on the show. And he also had some help on this. The Wachowskis helped popularize the wire fighting techniques of Yoon-Woon Ping and John Woo is over here shooting face off and Mission Impossible 2. And, you know, we're seeing more doves than ever in the cinema. Um, but, you know, it seems like we are missing a voice. And, you know, even with this six year break, it feels like it is time for Tarantino's most epic salute to Asian cinema, which is Kill Bill. Now Tarantino and the star of Kill Bill, Uma Thurman, came up with the idea of this character called The Bride. Ages ago, they were playing mini shuffleboard while they were shooting pulp fiction. They're talking about it. Oh, that'd be fun. Ha, ha. And then he goes home. He writes a treatment and then post pulp fiction, life gets crazy for both of them. Finally in the year 2000, they bump back into each other at an Oscar party and get more serious about the idea. The story is about a female assassin, codenamed Black Mamba, that is Uma Thurman, who gets betrayed by her fellow killers in the deadly Viper assassination squad. They're L driver, O Ranishi and Reneita Green. That's of course, Darryl Hanna, Lucy Liu and Vivica Fox, as well as their boss, Bill and his brother, Bud. That's David Carradine and Michael Madsen. Now Bill's her ex-boyfriend and he sent them all to a small chapel in El Paso, where the very pregnant bride was getting married. Well, actually having a wedding rehearsal and they kill everyone. The groom, her friends, the priest, the priest's wife, and even the piano player played by Samuel Jackson. And they try to kill the bride too, but instead she winds up in a coma. This is the story of her revenge and it is such an epic that they shot the film for 155 days and that whole time Tarantino was claiming he thinks it's going to be one movie. But two months before Kill Bill premieres at Cannes, the buzz starts that maybe it's going to be cut into two films. I could watch a four hour Kill Bill. Maybe Kevin Costner could watch a four hour Kill Bill. All right. You know, I'm a movie junkie. All right. But if you're, if you're not a movie junkie, you're not going to be a movie junkie. All right. You probably would OD was very patient and very crafty and shrewd and waited until it was Harvey Weinstein's idea. All right. This is a story that he kind of collaborates here on unspooled when he was a guest on our show. He talked a little bit about that, how he kind of tricked the Weinsteins into believing it was going to be one film, but he always knew it was going to be two. I don't know what the true story is, but it feels like he was ahead of this. Yeah. I mean, if so, he's a master manipulator. I don't know how to manipulate people. I'm like, can I have this? Then like, no. I said, okay. Well, I mean, it's ambitious that this script would ever be considered one film. I mean, it's a massive undertaking. And I don't know whether or not being split up into two films helped or hurt it because Kill Bill volume one was released on October 10th, 2003. And Kill Bill two was released on April 16th, 2004. Together they made about 330 million. And a couple of years after that Tarantino put them back together into a single massive movie that he had in mind, which recently got a re-release called the whole bloody affair. Now, Kill Bill has been anointed 152 on the IMDb top 250 and 43 on the letterbox film with the most fans. And I got to say, Annie, I have never watched both films back to back, you know, as one piece and wow, what a difference it makes for me. I completely agree. And we can just jump right in with this. I think when you watch Kill Bill back to back, a couple of things immediately pop out that make the film feel doubly resonant. One of them being, I think if they had made this a giant movie, a giant movie with an intermission, Uma Thurman would have absolutely gotten an Oscar nomination. Absolutely. Yes. I mean, I never fully connected with this film. I really loved elements of it, right? But when you watch it play out and you see the journey that she makes from the beginning to the end, it's, it's incredibly fulfilling. And they also, you know, in this new whole bloody affair, they take, take out that reveal that the bride's daughter is still alive, which I think hits so much harder when it happens in real time. Yeah. When you finally get all the way around instead of them having it right at the end of, of part one. Yeah. I mean, what you feel is the exhaustion of her quest, right? When you watch it all at once, you feel how long and how heavy and how faded in a way this is because Kill Bill, I think has a really unusual mental structure in that it's very PC, it's very segmented. It has lots of different looks, but it doesn't feel as though it's structured like a cereal. It feels like an epic that where you know where this is going, right? It has that tone of fate, not that tone of suspense, which are very different things. She is going to kill Bill. Yeah. It's like kill Bill question mark. It's here we go. We're just doing this now. Just the how and the when is going to be answered, but we know the why and we know it's going to happen. Yeah. And then the trick is making us feel so invested for every minute of it, which I think he proves right on in the first half of it in volume one, where you know that she's going to get to cross off the name Oren Ishii right up at the beginning of the film, but we wait until the very end to see how it happens. And even then our hearts are just in our chest. You know, you talked about Uma Thurman's performance in this, and I think it's a really wonderful performance and it's stylized and cool. We talked about brick and the way that brick takes language and makes it feel of the now, even though it's kind of out of place. And I realized in watching kill Bill, she also has a different kind of speaking style. Right. It's not exactly naturalistic, not like the other Quentin Tarantino films, especially from her character's mouth. Other characters, I think speak a little bit more in that cadence that we're used to in a Quentin film, but she is more stylized. I could see that. I think this is a film that's really aware of when we are watching this character, whose name we don't even know until like the third hour of the film put on an act. Right? Right. Because this movie, one of my favorite moments about watching it in its totality is seeing the moments where she's not exactly playing herself. Like when she goes to Japan to try to get the sword, her famous gigantic sword, that's going to be the thing that she fights back with. And she puts on this affect of being a normal American. What are the Japanese? Do you know? Oh, let's see. Arigato. Arigato. I already said domo, right? Yeah. Konnichiwa. Oh, hello. Konnichiwa. Please repeat. Konnichiwa. Perfect. Good. Good. Good. You said Japanese words like you Japanese. Now you're making fun of me. No, no, no, no. Serious business. Pronunciation very good. You say Arigato like we say Arigato. Well, thank you. I mean, Arigato. I love that scene. She's with, you know, the great actor Sonny Chiba because you see a few things in there, not just the range that Uma is willing to put into this character, but this film's unusual approach to. I'm just going to say talking about feminism because most of this movie is about a female fighter. We have spent the last decade watching films about female fighters that have to be like, here I am. I'm a tough girl. This is about sticking up and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah for like my gender. This film doesn't do that. This film just knows she's a great fighter. Everybody respects as a great fighter. It's never a question. The times you see her get treated like a girl or when she's looking like a normal girl, right? It's not like, Oh, that person can't fight and kill. It's like, no, that person can absolutely fight and kill. It's normal women in this movie who we see get treated very sweetly, but in a way that's not this terrifying effect she can have on people. That idea of like acting and presenting this other version of you is really interesting from an assassin point of view. You have to fit into different cultures and you have to make yourself feel like you belong everywhere. But I do think this movie revolves around this core idea that the reason why she's killed or attempted to be killed is because she has decided that she's going to act for the rest of her life, right? With this guy working in what, like a record store, right? She is a doctor. Tommy, her like guy, Fieri looking him bow guy. Yeah. And, and I think that that's that idea that she would live this life is offensive to bill on multiple levels. You know, that end scene, he does talk about why he did what he did, but it's interesting that she wanted to lean more into that instead of get out of that. You know, and that to me, I think is an interesting choice just from a character point of view, someone who felt more comfortable living a lie than being who she actually is. Yeah. That scene, which is really up at the top of part two. When we go back to the church, when we see her put on this act before her wedding day in its totality, when you get to watch this film all at once, that's when you also get to appreciate Uma Thurman's real performance, how nervous she is, but how she's acting kind of like a little ditzy, a little sweet. The way she introduces Bill to Tommy pretending that Bill is her father. You must be Tommy. Uh-huh. Arlene's told me so much about you. Honey, you okay? Oh, I'm fine. Tommy, I'd like you to meet my father. Oh my God. Oh my God, this is great. I'm so glad to meet you, sir. Oh, dad. The name is Bill. Well, it's great to meet you. Bill, Arlene told me you could make it. Surprise. That's my pop for you. Always full of surprises. Well, in the surprise department, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. I mean, she is about to marry a man who doesn't know her at all and keeping that up for the entire rest of her life. And also what I love in that scene is you get this little glimpse of the fact that she actually briefly has other friends, like female friends that she's met in this new life that she's only had for a couple months ever since she got pregnant and they just have her back. Right? Like I think a thing that Quentin Tarantino can do so well in this movie as a tiny sketch in his next movie, Death Proof, as an entire film is talk about female friendship and it's just there. I wish he got a little more credit for that because the tiny little glimpse we get of this friends here, I just want to know more about them, even though we can't have this film be any longer than it is. Right. But you get to see just what it's like when people really care for her. This is Harmony. We're all the family this Elangel's ever going to need. I'm not feeling very well and this bitch is starting to piss me off. So while you all gather on, I'm going to go outside and get some air. I'm a brevin sorry. She's going to go out and get some air. Yeah. Given her delicate condition, she just needs a few minutes to give it to God, she'll be okay. I love that. And you know, knowing how this film is structured, we are, you know, we're jumping all over the place, but I think that Tarantino makes this really smart move in shooting it chronologically. I believe that that gives us the performance that should have gotten Uma Thurman and Academy Award because that's what we are getting to see. She really is transforming not to say that an actor can't do scenes out of order, but I believe that that only helped the performance because we're really seeing that travel through that change. She could track it. This is a movie that I think is very hard to track because it's so much action. Like if you took out all the action, like how long would this movie actually be? I don't think that long, right? So there's every one of those dialogue scenes is incredibly important. And to be able to be in line with that as you're shooting, I think just gives her performance a pop that you wouldn't normally get if you were to shoot it the same way it was written. Yeah. Although the other funny thing about the action sequences is they don't feel that indulgent. No, right. That really popped out to me on this watch. Like I picture them going on forever because in a way they do go on forever because she's dispatching so many people, but the individual dispatches, she's like, can't trust that person. Just kill them. Not let me draw this out with a bunch of fancy sword play and tease them and make clips. She's like, oh no, no. As soon as I get an opening, we're ending this now. There's a, it takes the threat of violence seriously that way. Absolutely. But let's be real. The house of blue leaves sequence, you know, where she confronts or Enrishi that took eight weeks to film eight weeks shooting that one fight sequence. They used a hundred gallons of blood in that sequence alone. Um, and. You know, his intent here was to create one of the greatest, most exciting sequences in the history of cinema. And I got to say it works, but I have a question for you. Do you think it works better in the cut apart films or the films that are put together because I love the black and white choice in the cut apart films. And yes, it's beautiful in the color, but I don't know if I don't know. I don't know what I feel about the changing that sequence to color, which is what it already was. Yeah. Yeah. What you're talking about is how he shot that scene in color for the worldwide release, but he felt like in America, I should have that scene be in black and white because if people see all the blood that I'm using, not only will Paul sheer personally feel offended and horrible. How dare you make all those actors so sticky. But his big concern was that American audiences would just only talk about the violence and they wouldn't talk about the plot of the movie at all. So he made it black and white to take away from the luridness of the blood. Kind of just cause you didn't trust us. Right. Yeah. And, and I, and I think that the film is shot to accommodate that color. It definitely looks good. I just like how the film switches stylistically and it's such a extensive fight scene that that I think makes it a little bit more digestible. You know, it doesn't overstay its welcome, but I think it gives you a little bit more breathing room or just a little bit more of a chance to enjoy it. It doesn't get exhausting because it's changing something visually. From the parents behind law and order comes a mystery the whole family can enjoy. Patrick Picklebottom, everyday mysteries. Step into the whimsical world of Patrick Picklebottom, a precocious 11 year old with a love for reading and an uncanny ability to solve mysteries. Inspired by the beloved children's book of the same name, this podcast vividly brings Patrick's tales of deduction and everyday adventures to life as he unravels baffling indigmas and solves clever cases. Patrick Picklebottom, everyday mysteries is perfect for kids and is just as entertaining for grownups who love a good mystery. The whole family can listen now wherever you get your podcasts. Life moves too fast. Scrolling, swiping headlines, sound bites. Nobody's really seen even the people everyone thinks they know. I'm Evelyn. I'm a television producer and director. I've spent decades behind the camera on the podcast, Reppin. I have real conversations with actors, creators and change makers. We're going beyond the headlines and we're going to hear about the risks they took and the lessons that shape their lives. Reppin is about being human first. Listen to Reppin wherever you get your podcasts. Wait, I love that you're talking about breathing room though, because it's right after the major carnage that we go to the backyard, you're suddenly like, wait, it's snowing. It definitely was not snowing earlier this day. Like you're just going to break all the rules now. Okay, great. And what you hear is two people in a Zen garden breathing. Like he takes that pause that you're describing right there and makes the final, final, final combat scene really count. Also leading up to it, there's just so many funny little stories that I like. I mean, the people that she's fighting in this gigantic epic scene, these are like Yoon Woo-Pang's fight choreography school trainer guys. These are the people that he's been doing stuff like the Matrix films with. And one of the funny moments was that there's that little kid, the youngest fighter that she lets go once and then he comes back and tries to kill her again. So she has to yell at him and treat him like a mom. Right. I mean, that was basically improvised on the set, like that they see this kid and they're like, oh, you know what? I just don't think the bride would have the heart to kill him. And they're like, okay, great. You can save this person's life. But it means you have all these moments where you get to see this character, not only express herself through violence, but express herself through empathy. She doesn't consider herself the empathetic of a person, but she's like, I'm not going to be remorseful or anything. I have a thing. But she's also begging Go Go to walk away. Like she looks at young people and she turns the tiniest, tiniest, tiniest, tiniest bit maternal. Go go. I know you feel you must protect your mistress, but I beg you. Walk away. And I think that's another part of how the snowballing effect of watching this entire movie gives you a better sense of her entire character. You see the mom that she wishes she was in those moments too. I, I 100% agree with you. I, there's so much I want to unpack. I want to just talk about this house of blue leaves sequence, you know, which you could probably spend an entire episode breaking down. I think as I've gotten a smarter or more open to the world of film, I've seen a lot more since I originally saw this, you know, in the interim between seeing this film originally and now seeing it again, I have seen things like Lady Snowblood and when I watch Lady Snowblood, I'm like, oh my God, this end sequence, that sequence in the snow is like a shot for shot homage to Lady Snowblood, right? It, you know, Oh, Ren is in this white kimono. Uh, there's like that blood spray on the white snow, uh, the flower of carnage, uh, playing over the scene, right? Like there's so much in here. I also am somebody who now owns like the, the blue rays of, uh, you know, was it shot, the, uh, the Shaw Brothers, uh, blue ray set, right? Which is a me, I've watched many of those and you're like, Oh my God, one armed swordsman, you know, you see this like that arterial spray and, you know, bodies flying through the air. You're like, there's so many things that I, I see that he is taking. And then I also see like that sequence, you know, obviously, well, I shouldn't say obviously, I now know this because I've watched enough YouTube essays to, to break it all down. But, you know, the Chinese boxer is really the sequence that he homages. Some people might say rips off more than others, right? It's, it's this, um, this Jimmy Wang, you movie, uh, it's like this casino fight. And, you know, it's basically, uh, Wang, you fought off like a hundred enemies in this, you know, and the bride, I think face is like, you know, 88 or who knows, right? Um, but it's like at this intense scene and I was like, Oh my God, like when you see it, you're like, Oh, that's where he got this from. It's, it's kind of exciting that he is popularizing. I think it also opens up a conversation though too. It's like, is he riding on the coattails of these great films? Because now when I watch something like Black Panther, I'm like, Oh, Black Panther is ripping off kill Bill, uh, that casino fight scene. But then I'm like, Oh, well, they're actually just ripping off Chinese boxer. Well, yeah. I mean, I guess to really wrestle with Quentin Tarantino, we have to figure out where we fall on the scale of ripoff to homage. I tend to give him the credit of being more on the homage scale because somehow when he puts his pieces together, he's like, he's like, you know, in the 2000s, when suddenly people were doing remix albums where they're just like mashing together songs. And somehow they might just turn out to be just as good as the original song. Right. He doesn't mash things together in a way that feels even best worst case, like the Zucker brothers, you know, like never, ever, ever, ever, ever feels like, and here we go, a parody. He's working with the matrix guys, the matrix choreographers at a point in which everybody was making fun of the matrix or summoning bullet time. And yet nothing in here feels that lazy. Yes. And that's kind of where I fall on it, which is. I think the interesting aspect of it is Quentin Tarantino wants to make the best, most exciting fight sequence in the history of cinema. So he honors the people before him that have attempted to do it or have done it best. And then I think he synthesizes it and makes it into something that kind of honors, but also transcends the sources. Right. Like it, it does feel uniquely his own, but it also feels like, I guess the difference or the thing that I've kind of allowed myself to contemplate is he views himself as an equal to them. He's like, Oh yeah. So the way I would be inspired by PTA or Martin Scorsese or, you know, whoever he's kind of looking at these great, you know, Asian films and going, yeah, I'm contemporary of them. I'm going to just, if I was working at the same time as them, I'd be making it this way. And I believe that there's a truthfulness to that. I don't think it's just like, I'm ripping this off. I hope no one finds out. Now I will say that if you release this film in 2025, I think it would have had a harder time because people could have found these things a lot quicker. Yeah. But then he's like, also the person who's been bringing them here too. So you're right. He's not being shy about it. I mean, I like how, I like how Uma describes the way she sees his brain working. It's actually the great genius of being a self-taught, self-created person is that nobody ever, nobody ever told him probably or encouraged him that he could be good at something, you know, that he would be good at something when he was young and, and, and how to do it. So since he probably, I mean, I don't know, can't speak for him, but he had to teach himself everything. So he's completely original. He's, his imagination, his freedom creatively. What I hear in her is her describing a guy who's just voracious, right? Wants to learn, wants to think and hearing the way you put it as like looking around and seeing people as his contemporaries. I think that is his blessing. And it's also what I think often gets him in trouble, you know, cause when he goes around saying like, I don't think Paul Dayno is good in, in there'll be blood. I don't think he considers himself punching down, even though it plays as punching down to the rest of us. I think that he likes to talk. Right. And I think that like his talking sometimes gets him caught in things that he may or may not want to defend in a couple of days. Right. It's, it's the talk of the video store clerk. Yeah. Which is we all love movies here. We're talking, right? Right. It's the shit talking that we all do. Now the difference is that's on a podcast, right? And everyone has stood up like Paul Dayno was like murdered in the streets. Uh, and believe me, I think Paul Dayno is fantastic. I don't need to get out there and be like, I stand with Paul. But, Oh yeah. And I actually believe Quentin Tarnier is deeply wrong. It's the vulnerability of that character that makes it interesting. The fact that you're not seeing him as the equal right away. And I will say, and, and I think it, yeah, I mean, absolutely. And I think the end speaks for itself in that respect, but I will say that. That mentality, that excitement to talk about film, that excitement to make film is what we're seeing here. Like he is, and I use this in the most loving way. He is still that kid who's making films on a super eight, right? He had this quote where he's like, let's just pretend we're kids and making a movie in our backyard. You know, how do we make these effects? Cause he does use practical effects. Like they didn't use CGI here. They use like 70s Chinese cinema practical effects, you know, fire extinguishers and condoms used to create blood spurts and explosions. Um, I love that he's doing that. I love that he is, you know, these movies aren't that expensive. Each half costs like 30 millions. I think at the end of the day, it's like, it's like a little under $60 million for the entire, uh, film, like 55 to 60. I mean, that's wild. They're just like, hi, I'm a normal movie movies that are being made for like more than that. Now that don't deserve that amount at all. Nothing is made for that cheap, you know, like, and I, and so I do believe that it's coming from this earnest place of I want to, I also not only want to give it an homage. I want to try it too. I want to make it too. And, and I, and I think that if you had anyone else do this, like kill bill is a singular movie. I don't think anyone else can pull this off. I think it is his synthesis of those four or five movies for the sequence that make that sequence great. Right. He didn't just rip off a sequence. He, like you said, he's mixing them together. It's an alchemy. It's a recipe that feels. I mean, that's what, that's what I took away. I was like, wow, no one else could make this movie. Everything works. Like you could see it all failing in someone else's hands. Well, yeah, it's what I find inspirational to him as a critic. The way that when he talks about a movie, he can watch a movie that's normally considered bad, and it's not like he's going to come out saying, that's a great movie, but he can watch this movie and Pete and take it apart and say, that's an amazing camera angle. That's an amazing plot idea. That's an amazing performance. That's an amazing line with the actress and deliver it well. He can pull us all apart and then remix it from there. He's not just like the horror movie directors who are like, I like 80s and I like stabbing. Here you go. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. He has discrimination and taste within all of that. All I would also say he has his own style and taste. You know, here's a guy who said one of the best films or the best film of the 21st century is black Hawk down. It was a great movie. It's obviously, I don't think it's the best movie of the 21st century. Like, but I like that he's that opinion. He's not trying to follow in anyone's tracks. And to that point, he is also loyal to his opinion. You know, he, he talked or wrote about Sonny Chiba in the script to true romance. And guess what? Sonny Chiba is in this. Like he, he is, I think, leaving breadcrumbs for all of us to follow. So we can be like him and be that nerd that loves this. Right. He, he's kind of like leading us in and then saying, now you go experience, you go find like the reason I have Shaw scope, that box set and the reason why I watched Lady snowboard was because of Quentin Tarantino. And I enjoyed those films separately while also getting the similarities. And we talk about that all the time. We see all these similarities across great films. Yeah, I would almost say that he's hinting about kill Bill inside of pulp fiction. I mean, remember what Uma Thurman's character in that movie did for a living? It was a show about a team of female secret agents called Fox Force five. What? Fox Force five. Fox is in where a bunch of Foxy chicks forced as in we're forced to be reckoned with and fives in this one, two, three, four, five of us. It was a blonde one, Somerset O'Neal. She was a leader. The Japanese Fox was a kung fu master. The black girl was a demolition expert. French Fox's specialty was sex. What was your specialty? Knives. I love that idea of like the Fox force five mutating over shuffleboard into this entire film. I mean, one quote that he has about kill Bill that I really like. He says, yes, this is my samurai movie. Yes, this is my badass chick movie. Yes, this is my spaghetti Western and my comic book movie. Yeah, it is all that stuff, but it's also my Joseph von Sternberg movie. Joseph von Sternberg, of course, being the director who forged his career in this like collaboration that he had with Marlene Dietrich. And it's his real respect for, I think, what Loomis Thurman can and should do, what he should show of her that I think unites all of these different elements in the movie. Yeah, I mean, as we're talking about this idea of what is homage, what is a tip of the hat, what is just wanting to play in the same sandbox. This movie is advertised by a look, the look that you painted your nails by the look that Uma wears, that yellow tracksuit, right? Something that Uma Thurman didn't know what it was a reference to, right? She had no idea that that was like Bruce Lee's tracksuit. I love it when she goes into the restaurant and she's wearing like a yellow leather bike suit and then she unzips it and then there's the yellow tracksuit underneath it. So great. And you know what? And I think that like that's the fun of it is I think that, you know, that look is iconic as her look. It is also iconic as the look that Bruce Lee had in Game of Death. And I think that's the secret sauce that he has, which is to allow the original to stand on its own feet and also create something that is newly iconic. I don't think that like she washes over that. Yeah. And I'm not going to say that his sense of what is right is always perfectly right. I mean, one of the things that I found really fascinating going back and reading a book about the making of it. And actually, if there are nerds out there who really want to get in deep about the making of Kill Bill, David Carrity and wrote a diary about his experience making the film. Oh, wow. It's fascinating. And he does not hold back. I mean, he's even like, and then I went off and bowed my wife in a car. He's like, great. But like, yeah, but he talks about how when they started getting in shape to do Kill Bill, that they were all in a gym for eight hours a day, working out for months. Everybody was there in Quentin Tarantino was there too, working out because he was planning on playing the character, Pay May, you know, the person who like, yes, he was planning on playing the 1000 year old grand master who teaches a supposedly 15 years old at the time, according to David Carrity. And that's what she was supposed to be playing. Right. Teenage girl, how to sword fight. And oh my God, thank God he didn't do that. No, that would have been terrible. That would have been terrible. I mean, that's Gordon Lou, the star of the Shaw Brothers film, Shallon Master Killer. Like, yes. Oh my God. And that's that would have been that would have been one of those like that. I guess the way I'm seeing it, it would be the unironic version of Robert Danny Jr.'s character in Tropic Thunder. Yeah. Oh, it would have been awful. It would have been awful. And he was committed to, I mean, he went through the workouts. He was really ready to do it. It was the house of the blue leaves shoot that you're talking about. The finally changes mine. I think it was like week five of going through that shoot. He was like, you know what, I'm just having too much fun directing. I don't want to start playing a character too. Well, you know, God, that time away when he wasn't making movies, he was acting. Right. Cause he was on Broadway at one point, right? Doing like, don't be afraid of the dark, right? That, that thriller that was probably in there. Cause he wanted to act, right? He was on golden girls when he was younger. You know, he'd done, um, for rooms, I believe, too. Like he had popped up in a handful of things. Um, and I think people are, get back to making movies. Um, I will say that I'm so happy. It's David Carradine. Who is Bill? Bill is a great character. And there's so much to live up to because we really have two scenes. You know, the, the confrontation in front of the wedding rehearsal and then the confrontation at the end and the ease in which he is so calm, so cool, so collected and so violent is shocking. I like that end scene. I know she wins. I know she kills Bill. But man, I'm nervous about her chances when I'm watching that scene. He is, he is able to play it perfectly. And I thought, well, this is a part that he definitely wrote for David Carradine. Turns out, no, wrote it for Warren Beatty and Warren Beatty didn't want to be away from his family while he was shooting. Uh, then he was like, well, maybe it should be Bruce Willis. Now, both of those guys, I think make a lot of sense and could be very cool and very violent, but David Carradine, I think carries something so unique and also unique to this world of Asian cinema, you know, with his iconic role on Kung Fu, not that that is an Asian, uh, you know, that's an Asian show, but I feel like it's a mashup. It's Western meets swordplay meets solemnity meets philosophy. Yeah. And, and you know, that, that idea that like Bill carries a flute, that was only because Carradine came to those workout sessions with his flute. Yeah. And I mean, Warren Beatty, by the way, was attached originally because that was the name that could help them get this movie made. Honestly. And of course, Warren Beatty, if Warren Beatty says he's interested, why not? But Warren Beatty was pretty blunt about saying to him, this is a quote, I don't give a shit about Kung Fu. I hate spaghetti Westerns. I wouldn't go to a Japanese samurai if you paid me. And he got kind of annoyed with the whole idea of it. And then as a twist of fate, Uma Thurman gets pregnant and related to that Joseph von Sternberg quote, Tarantino said, if Joseph von Sternberg is getting ready to make Morocco and Marlena Dietrich gets pregnant, he waits for Dietrich. Well, Beatty didn't want to wait. Beatty was like, I feel like you actually wrote this mentally, even though it is me with David Carradine in mind, that you want me to do that kind of character. So you know what, just have David Carradine do it. And David Carradine had been really wanting to work with Tarantino for a long time. Right. Like they had met once, I think, watching Jeff Goldblum play piano. And he was trying to figure out ways to get in front of Tarantino, because I think he just had this feeling. A psychic told him at one point that they were supposed to meet and work together. So he once, when he heard that Quentin Tarantino was back doing Quentin Tarantino Fest, that film festival he used to do in Austin, where he would just marathon all of the movies that he loved. David Carradine, who didn't have a ton of money because he was always a really busy working actor, working in a lot of stuff, but not for a lot of money, flew himself to Austin in coach, just to kind of meet him. And they wound up doing this Q and A together, really bonding. And finally, this script comes around to him. And by this point, Tarantino and Uma have enough clout to get this film financed, even with David Carradine in the role. And, and I think that it just goes to prove that Quentin Tarantino, when he finds or pushes someone who is incredibly talented, but perhaps forgotten about for a while, uh, to the forefront, that's where I feel like everything really clicks. I mean, you know, we just talked about Jackie Brown. I mean, maybe it was a while ago, but I feel like it's so fresh in my memory. You know, Robert Forrester, the way that he just ignites the screen. And, you know, obviously Pam Greer, you know, we had that with John Travolta and Pulp Fiction. So many people pop and there is a sense of that. I want to play in that playground. I want to, I want to make a David Carradine movie. I want to make a John Travolta movie like that sense of playing with the, the toys of his youth that I feel like make these performances just next level. Yeah. And he gets these actors who really want to prove themselves. Although sometimes David Carradine seemed to have some nervousness about it. Like he thinking back to like these people who were like, quote, unquote, like resurrected and stuff. David Carradine has this liner. He says, he was lumping me in with the losers. I could feel the coffin nails being driven in. And I love that image because it doesn't make you think of the bride getting buried alive in the second act. And also people could screw this up. You know, like there's the character of Esteban, who is the guy that lives in Mexico. Oh, love that. That is, yeah, that, that like is Bill's foster father of a sort. And that was supposed to be Ricardo Montalban, but he bailed at the very first plot reading. And so Quentin was like, screw it, Michael Parks, you're already here playing a different character. Do you just want to read for this? And he was like, great, you're hired. Wow. That's so interesting. You know, and he is somebody that when I look at him on IMDB, I'm like, oh, you don't look anything like this character. Like they, like, so now I guess there's a part of me that, well, I guess there could be a world in which he could have passed for Asian Quentin Tarantino, because Michael Parks does not look Latino at all. Oh, no, I mean, he's already playing like what the sheriff earlier on in the film. Yeah, right. Who knows? I mean, but yeah, we miss the bullet, I still think. And we instead got this neat synergy because of course, like Gordon Lou played a character in the seventies who fought. Hey, me. Gordon Lou fought pie. The real, you know, the character pie may in a couple of movies when he was younger. So now it's kind of cool. He's older now. Now he gets to, he was always the hero. Now he gets to be the bad guy. Now he gets to play the villain that he was always fighting against. One funny thing about David Carradine's book, though, is as I was reading it, I kept thinking, why are you working out so much? Like you don't do that much fighting. I mean, most of the first film, you're this offstage figure. We hear your voice over on the phone, but he had a big fight scene that was caught out where he was supposed to battle Michael J. White in that. Oh, yeah. And there's little bits of it online where the scene would have taken place is when Uma and Bill, well, where the bride and Bill are sitting by the campfire when she's young before she starts to go get training and he's playing the flute and he's telling her about what the training is going to be like, there's a scene where that she's still in that same outfit and they're walking through, you know, kind of narrow Chinese alleyway with like produce everywhere and he comes across Michael J. White, who must get revenge. And he's Michael J. White is doing that kind of hilarious dubbed kung fu voice, but he's doing it himself. Can I help you? You bastard. The only thing you can do for me is die. You kill my master, Darmel. And now I'm going to kill you. You see, I'm with a lady friend. Can't we do this another time? Nice try. But today is the day you die. It'll if you don't mind. It's only take a minute. I mean, it's a cool fight. There's like a neat little thing where David Carradine takes his sword and kind of tosses it out of the scabbard and then grabs it again really neatly. That sort of dexterous thing that you can only do if you really know what you're doing. But there's absolutely no need for that scene to exist as much as I like Michael J. White. By the way, I'm watching that scene as you're talking about this. And yeah, it's a very cool looking scene. But I like in many respects that we never see Bill be violent. Right. He carries much more weight. Um, you know, being this menacing man who seems. Almost ineffectual in a way, right? Like he he feels like his time has passed. And now he's he's the Charlie sending out the angels. Um, and. That's why when you see the violence, when he shoots her with that dart, when he has the gun, it's way more intimidating the way that the ending, the tension that you feel there in that scene. There's a part of me, it's like, could this relationship work? Like, I don't know how to feel about them. Like, I feel like he does love her, but but he knows he's going to die. But he's also not going to go down easy. Like there's there is something here. There's a chemistry here, but there's also like this weirdness that he is so much older. And I think that that plays into what the Warren Beatty, like the sex appeal of what Warren Beatty is and was, you know, I love all of that. So I think the more you show of him, the less effective that ending becomes. Yeah, there's this mystery here, right? Like we don't know that much about the relationship. They don't talk to us that much about the relationship. The film doesn't hold our hand to say this was definitely bad from the get go. Like I remember having kind of a weird hiccup with this film when it first came out because yeah, it's like I'm a young film lover. I don't trust when I'm that young, that Quentin Tarantino doesn't know what he's doing, casting people with that big of an age gap. And also in my defense, this was also a time when Hollywood was just like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, she's 25, he's 50, makes perfect sense in a lot of movies. So I wasn't quite sure if I should run with the idea that Quentin Tarantino knew that this was an abusive relationship or if he just thought David Carradine was so cool, obviously Uma wanted to date him, right? Right. And now the older I get, the more I can sink into trusting him, that he knows that that dimension is there. Obviously he does. It's a hotheaded thing about being a young kid. You're convinced you know everything. You're smarter than everybody. But he still doesn't tell us outright, hey, this was bad. He lets the mystery kind of sink in all around. And he also lets the love be there too. So it's incredibly murky. Yeah. And you know, it's interesting to find like a moral compass in this film, right? Because I think the movie, you know, we see these attendants at the hospital being just, you know, it's that sequence. What you're about to see there, it's a great beginning of revenge, right? To see how these men have been, you know, sexually assaulting her while she's in a coma. And I think that you, I think you adopt an anger towards men in a certain way. Like these men are always going to take her, underestimate her, are always going to try to take advantage of her. She has to, and she plays into lies and disguises and she can manipulate. And she's going to be the strongest person in the room. It's interesting that she, you know, her revenge is primarily against women. But I do feel like this movie instills a distrust of men. And there's only one person that I think walks that line in an admirable way is Michael Madsen or not admirable. I think he is the most grounded in reality, right? Like he has fallen from grace. You know, I think he's the only viper that kind of has realized something more. Like I think, you know, Vernetta Green, she's kind of like put it behind her. I think Darryl Hanna is still caught in the cycle of it. Oren is just become her own bill, right? It there, like there's something about this character who's like the conscience of the film in a way. Yeah. And yeah, he is repellent too, but he seems to be punishing himself, right? Like why else would this guy who has been, you know, a very successful hitman? And I think earlier versions of the script were like really explicit about how much money Bill was making for everybody, even though it doesn't look like he shared that much. Right. But why is he cleaning toilets at a strip club even after he got fired? Right. There's a punishment there or this whole thing about him telling his brother that he sold his sword, that he pawned his fancy Hanzo sword for like 250 bucks. And then realizing in the fight scene, no, he didn't. He actually kept it. He just what, didn't think he deserved it. We don't know. But he didn't think that he had the right to hold it. I think on some level, he has that line I really love where he's talking about, is this quest even justified that the bride is on? That woman deserves her revenge. And we deserve to die. But then again, so does she. I love that. I also think that there's something about this character where you're talking about like he has been beaten down. And you know, the whole thing about the hat. The hat? Yes. OK, so Michael Madsen brought his own cowboy hat to set, right? And on Tarantino's like, look at this fucking hat, you know, and then he's like, no, I got to wear this hat. And he's like, OK, fine, wear the hat. And, you know, and and then you could tell the Tarantino's like, I don't like this fucking thing needed off. So he writes a new scene where his boss at the strip club says, take off that shit kicker hat and and when he takes it off, I think it's this moment of seeing him out of his outfit, right? Like, you know, he's just sort of like he is. Like, I think he has a pathos there. Like he becomes this guy that is a little bit more interesting. Like, I don't know. I think that you look at him, you become sympathetic to him. Maybe he's the only person who defeats the bride, right? He's got no pride. But yet he's also underestimated, right? This person at this bar is like, go fuck yourself. You're a piece of shit. But I think that, you know, the bride thinks, oh, this guy is going to be easy. He's a drunk. He's a loser, you know, and he's aware of her sneak attack. He basically takes away her chance to use the sword on him. He lied about selling the sword, right? Like he, he is. I think that, like, he also is the only person that has lived a life like her that knows what it's like to be betrayed and underestimated. So I find it, I find him to be like her equilibrium in a way. Oh, that's interesting, because part of me really wants to side with with Darryl Hannell's L driver when she shows up and she's like. You did not have any right to be the person who took the bride down. Right at this moment, the biggest I feel is regret. Regret that maybe the greatest warrior I have ever met met her end at the hands of a bushwacken, scrub, elky piece of shit like you. That woman does better. I love that dimension to this scene because you would think that El driver would be like, great, she's gone, whatever. You know, she's trying to kill her earlier on with a syringe and Bill has to tell her to call it off. She seems to have these like personal things even against, against the bride. Like I kind of feel like you get the sense from the way she talks to Bill when she's on the phone, that she used to be the bride to him, that she used to be his girlfriend and she's the one who's still kind of manipulated. And in his thrall, you know, they always say, I love you back and forth to each other. You don't really hear that from Orenishi. You don't hear that from Vernetta Green. The fact that they're both blondes, you know, the fact that they both went studying with the same master. Right. I think there's a sense in her character, like of personal resentment. Like this is her replacement. And then the minute I started thinking about the two of them really just haven't at it. All right. It was like, man, Uma Thurman versus Darrell Hanna. And it sounds like a Tokyo monster movie. All right. And I even told her, I said, like, you know, if I could have come up with a way that I could have had you guys take a couple of pills and like grow 60 feet tall so you could have fought over Tokyo, you know, in models like War of the Blonde Gargantuan, you know, I would have done it. I thought that might have been a stretch. All right. You know, I thought for two seconds, maybe they could have a big old fight in a miniature golf course. All right. So, you know, but so to have all of that be going on in the background and then say, even with that, you didn't deserve to kill her. Michael Madsen, right. You, she deserved better. That is so gray. And I love it. Well, you know, don't you think that I don't know, like I feel like again, because they think that he is garbage. They don't value him either. Right. And he is this person, like he is the warrior. He's living the life. He's not living in a fancy place. He is living by the code. Right. Like he's like you said, he's cleaning toilets. He's like he's not he's not overtly angry. He could destroy everybody everywhere. He could take his brother's money. He's I think what he does is actually activate so many people because he is playing possum. He's lying. And she doesn't even know. Now does she easily kill him? And yeah, like I think that in a weird way, I hate that she kills him because. I feel like he's the he's the T should have been the smarter guy, but I don't know. I maybe I'm giving too much of this character. I just feel like he's the only one that I feel like has a heart or has something like he's going to still kill her. She, you know, she broke his brother's heart. That's it. Right. And he's and there's a part of me thinks maybe he was going to manipulate, you know, L and and get that sword back to, I don't know. I just think I think it would have taken the money. The person that I really hate is the guy who's sitting with him by the campfire when they're burying Uma Thurman and some just random freaking guy. And he is like, eh, I've seen better than Uma Thurman. And you're like, you don't even deserve to know her at all. Right. You don't deserve to say anything like that. But this film has it approach to sexism that I find. Bracing and interesting in that, yeah, it's just there sometimes, like the creepy orderly at the hospital. There are horrible things that happen to women in this movie, but it doesn't feel like I spit on your grave type. Like that's not what defines this character. You know, yeah. And, and yeah, I like he is. I guess what he is, is he's a badass without being a misogynist, right? Yeah. Or a misogynist without that being all he is or right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, because he's nice to, he's nice to that stripper too. Like he like, and I think when he kills her, he kills her as a warrior. Like he's not killing her to like defile her or be like, or like he's not, you know, it's a hard, it's a, it's a fine line that I'm finding this. But that is an important line. That is an important line that people treat her like a war. Yeah. Yeah. Man, man. Yeah. I, I, I do like it. And I feel like there is something, I just to go back to what you're saying about L too, the rage that she has. She's like, they each represent something very different. Vernetta Green. Is she living a lie? I don't know. I don't know who she's married to. I don't know what her life is, but she's living the suburban lie. I love that fight scene. It's such a good way to say it. I love that fight scene. It's such a good way to start this movie that like being knocked up, doesn't change anything. No, I'm pulling up in the pussy wagon and like understanding where that comes from later on is great, but like your mother had it coming. I mean, and it's so intense. And I think it also sets a tone with like, here you go. Here's this warrior that is going to kill a mother in front of her child, or at least in the room adjacent to her child. Like that to me sets the parameters for the film. It's a badass fight. They're equally matched. But she, you know, we don't know that much about her character, but I think that that moment when the daughter walks in and they both kind of just straighten up and, you know, wipe off their sweat is pretty fascinating, but you can't trust anyone. And she's living a lie. I think that Elle is living in a world of revenge. Like you said, she's coming after this person who took what she represented or like took her place. And, you know, Oren, it's interesting because Oren seems to be the person who almost has forgotten her origin. Like, like she, yes, she's elevated above this. She's gone and she will fight. She will take out. But I don't, it's almost like each battle represents this remembrance of who we were. We can't run away from our actions. This whole movie is about, we can't run away from who we are. It starts with that. If you want to start chronologically with the killing of her through the end, we have to pay for what we are and what we did. And I don't know. I think that's a very interesting movie in that way, too. Like just morale, the morality of it. Yeah. Like the interesting way that when she goes to Hansen and says, make me a sword, it's her obligation, like obligation. That's fascinating. And that he's able to pull off this stunt script wise of giving us this extended backstory about Oren Ishii, everything she's been through, everything she's had to do to survive and get where she is. And then still be like, okay, and now she must die. Right? Like there's so much empathy for her in that. And the extended cut gives you a whole other sequence of this elevator fight against the person who like really pulled the trigger in her family or like a stab to the sword. And like, by the end of that, you can't imagine that half an hour later, they'd be like, okay, die, but you do. Well, I do. You know, I want to go back to what you said, too. Like this idea that there's the quote in the movie that Hatori Hanzo says, right? Revenge is never a straight line. It's a forest and like a forest, it's easy to lose your way to get lost, to forget where you came in. And I do believe that like this movie is all about revenge, but what does revenge get you? All these people who have been killed. Does it help? She does deserve revenge. Uh, but I mean, does it would she have been better off just living? But I don't know, you know, because the movie is also posits a world where you can never just go on living, you have to kill to get out, right? There's something there, you know, it's like. Yeah. And it doesn't take a firm stance because our last real shot of her is that scene where she's in a bathroom holding onto a stuffed animal and sobbing. But the way she's sobbing is both angry, hurt, sad, happy. It's every emotion. And so he's not saying, and now she did it high of five. Like she comes out, she hugs her daughter, but there's every emotion in there. So it's not me tidy. Now, do you agree with, I think that there's been this argument about the power because you brought up Oren and her journey as well, which is very similar to the bride's journey, right? This idea of like the women have to be kind of brutalized before they can be strong, right? And, uh, this idea of like resilience discourse, right? Like it's sort of like we can enjoy it. It's spit on your grave. What you say, like it's like we can like, we, we see somebody like oppressed, beaten down, and then they rise up to be even more violent. Like, but we are also sympathizing with these characters because they've been attacked by violence, but yet we then celebrate them because they are actually being violent, right? Like we are creating this cycle. I wonder if part of why this movie seems to walk that line for me and get through it is it doesn't feel like celebratory as much as respectful. Right. Right. Like it's not like high five. It's like, whew, that was hard. There's a human cost to all of these things, right? And, uh, and. You know, it like, yeah, I think that that's, I think that that actually helps. It's not like death wish. I would even argue it's not like taken, right? These movies about revenge or these classic structures where it's like, I'm going to go and get everybody that fucked me over. It's, it is, uh, you know, I, I think maybe there's a part of me that thinks that this movie is about learning to trust is also accepting betrayal. Like you can't ever trust fully without understanding that, that you're opening yourself up for complete and utter destruction by somebody else. I think that that's a big thing for a lot of people in relationships. Like I can't open to this person. Can't like show my true side because what if they hurt me? It's like, well, they will. They will hurt you. Yeah. Whereas a lot of the most rousing scenes, I would say in this movie are the ones where she'd managed to do something on her own. Right. You know, she wiggles her big toe. She gets herself out of the grave. You know, it's about her own strength in those moments as much as it is like blood and vengeance. And then you leave on this like last image or, you know, not the very last image, but you leave on this ending where it's like the bride crying on the floor. It's and it's, I mean, it's really fright. It's, it's like she can breathe. Um, yeah, it's definitely a different ending than death proof, which I love. But I think the ends of like what? Like a freeze frame high five or something. Right. Right. We did it. We killed the bad guy. Right. Yeah. And that movie is wonderful, but it's, he's going after something very different. I just, I find this movie really fascinating and watching it together, you know, and look, you can really do it at home. You don't have to go see the, the one in the theater. Yes, there are going to be some things that are different and interesting. I'm sure it's going to come to, uh, to VOD very shortly. Uh, but it's, it really is just a kind of pushing these to like making it tell you one story because it isn't, it's not like Lord of the Rings. It's, it is just a movie that stops. It's a movie that has a cliffhanger. You know, it's not, it's not a movie in two parts as much as it's a movie that is cut in half. You know, the last thing that really, really, really hit with me when I watched it back to back is that it's bracketed by these two fight scenes, right? Vernita Green at the beginning, Bill at the end. And in both of those fight scenes, there's a moment where the person she's come to kill is like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I know we're at my house. I know the perfect place to do this though, right? Vernita Green is like, let's do it at the baseball diamond. The Little League field will do it at two in the morning. Let's be all in black. And when you start watching this film, you're like, oh yeah, maybe that scene's going to happen because that feels like the tone of what you're expecting a copycat, Magpie, mashup artists like Tarantino to do, you know, put that fight in the Little League field, go for it. And he doesn't. He's like, boom, she winds up just dying a minute later right in that kitchen, right where she stands. And the same thing happens to Bill. Bill's like, hey, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. What if we go to the beach? It's a full moon. Right. We'll do swords. And he once again is painting the scene of the kind of movie that, of the kind of shot, the kind of fight scene that you think is going to be in this film that like reaches for something so big. And again, he dies in the backyard just a couple of minutes later. And what I think really landed with me in that bracketing is that this is a domestic story. You can take it away to this like visionary image of what a kind of giant action cinema epic would be. And you get that in the middle, but beginning and end, it's going to circle right back around to being about violence happening in the home. Yeah. Absolutely. And, and I think that that's the universal theme here too. Do you become, I mean, and the tricky thing about this movie is she was always this or she wasn't always this. We don't know how she became. And we know that she trained, you know, obviously there are certain things, but she, when she's on her revenge tour, she's, yes, she's getting back in shape for her revenge, but she is, you know, you know, it's not like she learns to fight and then goes out and does this. You know, so I do think that that's the universal theme of like, is it worth it to become one of them? But I think that this movie, I think that this movie, I don't know if it needs to answer it fully, but I'd like that it poses it and exists in, I don't know. Yeah. And I think that there's always these, you know, like there's an interesting quote or I don't know if it's a quote, but it's just the idea like, you know, sometimes you need dirty hands to do a dirty job, right? Like, you know, it's like you, I think that we try to keep ourselves clean, but we got to get dirty if we want what we want. You know, she gets back a lot of things, but I think she also loses really her only friends, but she gains her daughter, um, her love and, you know, and, and it's, it's people who don't know necessarily how to communicate who they are to each other in a way too. They don't not share these feelings that they're having. They use them all through violence, which is also domestic violence. So there you go. There you go. And, and not because I want to just hit it for one second, because I think we really covered a lot of this movie and, and I know we're running shorter on time, but I do want to talk about how even that plays out in the new anime sequence. Like the sequence, the anime sequence is very cool, uh, seeing it originally, but now it is longer. It's about eight minutes longer. And you see that violence when Oren in this extended version kills pretty Ricky in the elevator shaft, right? Like you see that too. Like he's like, there's like, uh, do you see more, you see more of her, uh, journey through violence, which I think actually parallels the two characters really well. Yeah. That great image of a little girl holding onto an elevator shaft by her fingers. Yeah. And this anime sequence, by the way, uh, this is done by production L, uh, IG, which did ghost in the shell. And, uh, I feel like it, it's really, I love this. I love this. And I don't think that they were originally intended to be animated, but I think the film was like, now if he was going to make this movie, it probably wouldn't have been animated. We would have seen it, uh, you know, done in re in the, with real actors. But I, I love that he uses all that stuff. And I think that's going back to my original argument about black and white mixing in with color. I like that the movie has tonal shifts like that. I mean, I hate to add a tonal shift onto this podcast. And I don't, I've been on the fence about even mentioning him because I don't think he deserves much credit for what works in this film, but the Weinstein of it all being almost like the secret kill bill manipulated behind the scenes. He is the kill bill figure of this, right? Like he has his people, his legions. And he is, I mean, wow, I didn't even think about that. Like the idea that he will, I mean, he has been known to be vindictive. He is known to wreck people's careers and to come after people, right? Like it's, it's interesting that this movie, you know, obviously when we talked to Quentin on our show, he was very positive about, uh, Weinstein, uh, you know, in supporting him, uh, but you could see how that, that person could be very manipulated, especially to women. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Darrell Hannah is so good in this that of course the immediate question is like, why didn't she do a gazillion things right after it? A hundred, yeah. And she has been really open that like Weinstein sexually harassed her when the film was doing its publicity tour. He tried to touch her breasts. He tried to break into her hotel room twice. Uh, the first night she had to escape from him on the fire escape. The second night she had her makeup person with her and they barricaded the door with furniture. And then he did it again a third time when the press tour made it to Rome. He got a key to her, to her hotel room. He barged in. Luckily she had a different makeup person there with her. And then he kind of told her like, I'm just here to make you come to a party downstairs. And so Darrell Hannah, as an obligation, got dressed up, went downstairs. There was no party. He asked her to flash him. It was just the two of them. And when she told him to fuck off the next morning, the plane left without her on it, uh, and he canceled all of her flights, her hotel room, everything for her trip to Cannes. And she said after that she couldn't get a meeting in this town. He told everybody she was really difficult. Wow. Yeah. I did not know that. And then this is obviously not the only like lasting effect in this film. I think a few years ago, uh, you know, 2018, there was this release of footage from this film, um, because near the end of filming, um, there was a, uh, a scene where Uma's driving. It's that sequence. It's a kind of an amazing sequence. You know, uh, it kind of looks like the fifties where she's, uh, Uma Thurman is driving this car and the, and the wind is blowing her hair and, um, and she crashed that car at 40 miles an hour. Uh, you know, so the seat wasn't secured. The road wasn't safe to drive on. Uma Thurman did express discomfort about driving the car. Um, and that moment at the end of filming, she's like, you're, you try to kill me. And I think Quentin Tarantino was incredibly defensive about that. And, uh, they've had their falling out. So that's the reason why they never worked together again. Yeah. I mean, the whole thing is just awful. I mean, Quentin Tarantino, his, where he really felt like he messed up for sure, a doubly and all of that was that he was so convinced that the drive was safe, that he did it himself. But then what switched last minute is that they drove the road in a different direction. And so when you drove the angles from a different way, he was so confident that it was okay, it was not okay to do it back. Right. The opposite direction. I think in the heat of production, so many things happen. And there's an embarrassment. There's, there's so much going on here. I think one of the interesting things about this story is that, you know, Quentin Tarantino agreed to release this crash footage to the New York times. You know, he, I think looking back on it is something that he's been incredibly regretful about and remorseful. And I think he's called it one of the biggest regrets of his life. Yeah. He gave her this footage so Uma Thurman could expose it and let it see the light of day and he did with full knowledge. It would cause him personal harm. Um, and this is from Uma Thurman's statement, you know, and she said, I'm proud of him for doing the right thing. And it was out there. And, um, you know, of course, Miramax was looking to protect themselves. And they were like, we'll only release this footage if you never, uh, basically Sue us for your pain and suffering, which is so fucked. Right. It's like, you know, and cause she did, you know, she did get hurt. Um, she had the concussion and neck injuries and leg injuries. All this to say, I feel like we have two stories here. One, which is a serial rapist, a sexual assault, uh, you know, person who's never really, uh, apologized in any meaningful way to the women and, uh, that he is attacked. And then another who, you know, I think through different lens and through some time realized that he did make a mistake and then helped give voice to something that was really important to a collaborator that he had and that he respected. And I feel like they, they, is it perfect? Absolutely not. Am I like trying to be a Quentin Tarantino apologist? No, I'm just saying that like two things can be true. Right. If you make amends for what you've said and done, and it's at least something. Um, yeah, that's where I come down on it too. It doesn't mean that it's perfect, right. Done, but people can, people can really be sincere in making an effort. And I want to value that because I don't like it when people really try to put things right and the people like, well, fuck you, you did it too late or whatever. Like, it's like, huh, how are we ever going to make any progress if we can't let people make progress? And I do think even though she kills Bill and rightly so, that's the beauty of that final scene and kill Bill. She's on truth serum. The, the discussion part. He's talking about Superman and the masks that we wear. And you see at least from both of their points of view where they were coming from, why they did what they did. And I think there is conclusion there. I think there is a finality to it beyond the fight. Right. I think that they see each other whether or not it's right or wrong. I do think that David Carradine is apologizing. I do think that she's apologizing. I think that they are being real. I love that she's on truth serum because it forces her to have this moment where she's got to let her guard down and you wouldn't believe it any other way. That's what I really find interesting about that scene, but it is about like, I do think it is, it's not just about facing Bill and killing him. It's about making amends and then killing him, you know, which again, not a, not necessarily a world to not necessarily like a model to follow, but yet I do believe it is a solid ending for revenge films, which we don't often see. We often see like the, you know, like the last kiss, goodnight, like die screaming, you know, kind of ending where like, well, you know, and I like that there at least is these are humans. And, you know, people can grow and change and make choices that are different. And for the record, letting somebody think somebody they love is dead when they're not is quite cruel. I mourned you for three months. And in the third month of mourning, you, I tracked you down. I wasn't trying to track you down. I was trying to track down the fucking assholes I thought killed you. So I find you. And what do I find? Not only are you not dead, you're getting married to some fucking jerk. And you're pregnant. I overreacted. So Amy, you know, keeping in this vein of, you know, revenge and vengeance, I think it's only appropriate that we attack Napoleon Dynamite, a movie about one man's journey, one man's journey to get his due. To get his tauts back. Yeah, get his tauts back. Actually, I'm glad we're doing this because I'm getting ready to head to Sundance for the very last Sundance that will be in Park City. And so the films and the filmmakers that rose up out of Park City are very much on my mind. I mean, hey, reservoir dogs. So what I think of Sundance, Napoleon Dynamite is right up out there as like a movie, a style of comedy that Sundance just was like, ta-da, this exists now. Carry on, go forth. We have launched it. I'm glad we're going to do this. I don't know how I feel about this movie. I'm glad we're going to do this though. I recently saw for the very first time. How about that? Wow. Yes. So I will rewatch it and talk more about it with you. You can get Napoleon Dynamite wherever you get your streaming films, but also make sure you check out our sub-stack where we go deeper into these films that we're talking about. We've had some great sub-stacks lately. So join us. It's for free. It's on sub-stack. It's nice. You'll like it. Unspooled is produced by Amy Nicholson, Paul Scheer, Molly Reynolds and Harry Nelson. Sound engineered by Corey Barton. Music by Devon Bryant. Episode art by Kim Troxel. Show art by Lee Jamison and social media production by Zoe Applebaum. This is a Rome production. See you next week. Bye for now. Legendary stories, awe-inspiring sound and endless adventure. Welcome to the realms of peril and glory. Explore the mechanically magical vistas of Vale. The paranormal mysteries of liminal London. And the cyberpunk chaos of Cyborg. Fall in love with our core cast or be awed by our incredible guests from familiar shows like Ox Venture, Three Black Halflings and No Rolls Bard. Ignite your imagination and discover the realms of peril and glory today. Go to realmspod.com or search realms of peril and glory wherever you listen to podcasts. For eight years, we've been asking the same question over and over again. How did this happen? My name is Mandy and I'm Alyssa and we're the hosts of Moms and Mysteries, the true crime podcast with over 55 million downloads. We're two Florida moms who are obsessed with mysteries. Each week we do deep dives into fascinating true crime stories. We cover everything from infamous cases like Casey Anthony to the bizarre and complex crimes right here in our home state like the shocking murder of FSU professor Dan Markell. We bring you the facts, but with warmth and width, you'd only get from two friends who have been hooked on mysteries since childhood. Join us for new episodes of Moms and Mysteries every Tuesday night. Listen to Moms and Mysteries on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcast.