by Patrick Taggart
Look at me.
I’m the guy who’s going to tell you the way it is. As if you couldn’t see for yourself. Take a look at Get Shorty and
Coldblooded, and maybe a couple of other films in the last year or so
and there it is, as plain as the .45 I have stuck in your eye socket and with
which I will scatter your little brains all over your solid maple futon and
cause you to spill that nice cup of Ruta Maya cappuccino.
What you’re seeing is creeping Tarantinism, the Pulp Fictionalization
of Hollywood.
Granted, this is not such a giant stylistic upheaval as to dictate that every
film rated PG and beyond from now on must star John Travolta and at least one
bald black man who wears nice suits and speaks more articulately than most
Ph.D. candidates. But the influence of Tarantino and his enormously vital, fun,
and darkly funny Pulp Fiction is beginning to be felt. Big-time.
I was tempted to say that the first ripples came from films like Shallow
Grave and The Seduction. Both are terrific black comedies involving
underworld types and a few of the most appealing anti-heroes since the early
1970s — when anti-heroes last thrived. But both were made around the same time
as Pulp Fiction and may not have been influenced directly at all by
Tarantino’s film. I do think that the critical and commercial success of
Pulp helped smooth their way into theatres. (Last Seduction had
been dumped on cable before interest in noirish thrillers was rekindled.)
The first film that clearly bears Tarantino’s imprint to these eyes is Robert
Rodriguez’s Desperado. Remember that Pulp Fiction opens with a
talky scene at a diner in which two young lovers and hold-up artists discuss
plans to tap into big money. That is followed by a talky scene in which two hit
men (Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson) discuss television pilots and the
erotic-emotional implications of a foot massage. Those two scenes alone tipped
us to Pulp Fiction‘s wry, hip sensibility, and at the same time made us
aware how alone in the movie world it was.
Well, Desperado also opens with a talky scene, this one a virtual solo
by Steve Buscemi, a veteran of Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs. This time the
effect is diffuse, and no one will convince me that Rodriguez, a master of
spare dialogue in El Mariachi, wrote that scene himself. It just went on
and on, and did not have a terrific payoff. It may have been the worst scene in
the film except for Tarantino’s own cameo, in which he told a lame joke I still
don’t get.
Of Rodriguez’s two films, El Mariachi is clearly superior — an
inspired, clean, economical, low-budget gem. Desperado is slower and
slicker, but it still benefits from the Tarantino force field that surrounds
it. In addition to the dialogue, which possesses a kind of street-smart
literacy and lyricism, the gunplay scenes have an invention and verve not
present in Rodriguez’s first film. In the post-Pulp world, almost every
killing is at least a little bit funny.
The new Get Shorty has more than a couple of ties to Tarantino’s
masterwork, the most obvious being star and cool guy du jour John
Travolta. Danny DeVito, who stars as the diminutive movie star Martin Weir, was
an executive producer on Pulp Fiction. Producer Michael Shamberg was
involved in both pictures.
Get Shorty is far from a Pulp Fiction clone, even if it is about
a small-time hood who collects mob debts and finds himself surrounded by crooks
of surpassing arrogance and/or stupidity. Director Barry Sonnenfeld, working
from a terrific script adapted from the Elmore Leonard novel, creates his own
world that bristles with surprise, wry comedy, and actors who seem to be having
the time of their lives. As with Pulp, the dialogue is smart and
literate (a couple of hoods argue whether e.g. or i.e. is
appropriate in a particular sentence), and the violence mostly played for
fun.
While it owes little directly to Tarantino’s film, I wonder if this is the
same film we would be seeing had it opened five years ago instead of today. Or
would it look more like Leonard’s 52 Pick-Up? (Leonard once
complained that movies favor plot more than character and that all of his
books-turned-films were flops. It would be interesting to have his opinion on
this intensely character-driven new film.)
Coldblooded bears the Tarantino imprimatur a bit more boldly. At the
center of the action are — what else — a couple of debt collectors and hit
men. The humor is droll and so dark you can take a pie cutter to it and serve
it up as a big slab of Chocolate Intemperance. Jason Priestley stars as a
taciturn, eternally befuddled, and possibly dim bookmaker who is “promoted” to
hit man. (Forrest Gump, meet Vincent Vega.) He is taken under the wing of
experienced hit man Peter Riegert, who instructs him in the finer points of the
trade. (How to properly taunt before whacking, etc.) Much like Samuel Jackson’s
character in Tarantino’s film, one of these men will find religion late in the
game.
Coldblooded is the first film of writer-director M. Wallace Wolodarsky,
and he is not so much under the spell of Tarantino as beneficiary of the
altered landscape Pulp Fiction produced. Movies like this would have had
to work much harder to find a way into the marketplace a few years ago.
Tarantino and his films will no doubt continue to influence the way movies are
made — and seen. So far, the effect seems to be positive. Some have criticized
the sensibility that makes a film like Reservoir Dogs possible, and even
fans of that film can perhaps see why. But if the primary fallout is to be
literate scripts, layered characters, and buckets of irony and black humor, so
much the better.
Hollywood films have needed more intelligent dialogue for years, and if we’re
occasionally presented with the unlikely situation of a couple of goons
rhapsodizing about metaphysics, divine intervention, and the proper use of
exempli gratia, it’s a small price to pay.
This article appears in November 3 • 1995 and November 3 • 1995 (Cover).