THE WICKED WEST

 

A few years ago, I decided to write a followup to my 2004 book Nightmares in Red, White and Blue, a cultural study of American horror films. 

At first, I imagined it as a book about horror remakes, reboots and “re-imaginations”—because those were dominating the genre at the time.  (This was somewhere in the lull between “torture porn” and PARANORMAL ACTIVITY.)   I outlined the book, started doing research, and even wrote a first chapter… then changed my mind.

When I came back around to the project a year or two later, I decided to make it a book entirely about supernatural / metaphysical horror films—focusing especially on films made since the mid-1980s.  I had been working for several years on a Discovery Channel series called A HAUNTING, which seemed to be in line with the latest trends in the horror genre, and I had strong opinions about why and how such stories work.  So I started writing.  Again I created a full outline, did some in-depth research, and completed a first chapter.  I was feeling pretty good about it, but somewhere along the line I got distracted.

One of the things that distracted me was exploring L.A.  Every weekend, my wife and I would go hiking at scenic spots in and around the city, and I quickly realized that every scenic spot in and around L.A. has been featured in a movie at some point.  Many of the more remote locations have a long history of use as filming locations, especially in westerns.  Although I had never been a particular fan of westerns—I naively thought it was a genre built on clichés—visiting these filming locations prompted me to start watching some studio-era westerns I'd never seen.  I found a great old-fashioned video store called Eddie Brandt’s Saturday Matinee that had a lot of stuff never released on DVD.  After that I was hooked.

Somehow, over the next few years, my prospective horror book became a book about westerns.  Initially, I thought of it as “a book about the other great American film genre about violence."  I had an idea that westerns generally presented a very conservative perspective on violence, while horror films are more liberal.  But that simplistic notion disappeared once I actually started watching the movies.  My hope is that end result of my cinematic exploration will be a compelling introduction to the genre for people like me: members of a certain generation (raised on action, horror and sci-fi films) who have never really given westerns a chance. 

2015 was a big year for westerns.  Films like THE HATEFUL EIGHT, THE REVENANT, and BONE TOMAHAWK made a big impression on younger moviegoers—in part, I think, because they aren't what we expect from westerns.  They are adventures, thrillers, horror films.  But still westerns.  Personally, I don’t believe that any genre is ever pure.  I can’t write about the horror genre without also writing about psychological thrillers and dark sc-fi, and sometimes even comedy.  I don’t think anyone can, or should, write about westerns in this day in age without also considering “hidden westerns” that are more readily identified with other genres.  (I borrow the term "hidden westerns" from filmmaker John Carpenter, who has made more than his fair share of hidden westerns.) 

When I started obsessing about westerns, I noticed that the most comprehensive and authoritative books on the subject tend to assume that the genre basically died in the mid-1970s, with maybe a few gasps of new life in the early 90s and late 2000s.  Being a horror fan, of course I love the idea that the western genre is undead… returned from the grave, somehow transformed by its years in purgatory.  Hence the title of my book: The Quick, The Dead and the Revived.

It’s not a book about horror-westerns.  It’s a book about the most intelligent and influential western films from 1939 to 2010, in the same way that Nightmares and Red, White and Blue was about the most intelligent and influential American horror films from 1931 to 2000.  I tried to examine all of the classic A-westerns.  There are three chapters alone on the 1950s, the decade that produced the most iconic films in the genre.  There’s also a chapter on spaghetti westerns, as well as chapters on urban westerns of the 1970s, space westerns of the 1980s, neo-westerns of the 1990s, and the postmodern westerns of the 2000s.  I think the book proves, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the genre remains vital—if still somewhat hidden and underappreciated.

Now, because I know that my name on a book cover is probably not going to draw my fellow horror fans to the western genre, I want to point to some places where the two genres overlap in interesting ways.  I think most horror enthusiasts are vaguely aware of the more overt attempts to blend the two genres—mostly B-movies and DTV features about ghosts, vampires and zombies in the Old West.  Stuff like CURSE OF THE UNDEAD (1959), BILLY THE KID VS. DRACULA (1966), Charles Band’s GHOST TOWN (1988), DEAD NOON (2007) with Kane Hodder, etc.  I’m not a big fan of that type of horror-western.  I prefer more subtle overlaps.

Gary Cooper and Boris Karloff in UNCONQUERED

For example, I can’t watch Cecil B. DeMille’s western UNCONQUERED (1947), which stars Boris Karloff as the villainous Chief of the Seneca Indians, without thinking about how DeMille typecast Karloff as another “monster.”  (UNCONQUERED is a very un-PC movie.)  In a similar way, I can’t help but think of John Carradine’s performance as a rather effete Dracula (in HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN and HOUSE OF DRACULA) when I watch him in westerns.  And Carradine was in a lot of westerns, including some of John Ford's best work.  Likewise, Lon Chaney Jr.—best known for his performance in THE WOLF MAN and its sequels—made more western films than anything else, right up to the very end of his career.  Even Vincent Price dabbled in the genre, most notably in Sam Fuller’s THE BARON OF ARIZONA (1950).

My favorite early horror movies are those that came out of RKO in the 1940s, under the auspices of producer Val Lewton and directors Jacques Tourneur and Robert Wise.  So I was thrilled to find that Lewton’s only western, APACHE DRUMS (1951), plays like a forerunner to George Romero’s NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD.  (I was, in fact, so excited that I emailed Romero to ask if he’d ever seen it.  He said he hadn’t.)  Tourneur and Wise also made their own forays into the western genre.  Tourneur’s STARS IN MY CROWN (1950) is only marginally a western, but it’s a personal favorite of mine.  I think of it as an Old West version of Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine, although STARS was made a few years before Bradbury wrote his novel.  Wise directed one of my favorite noir westerns, BLOOD ON THE MOON (1948), starring Robert Mitchum, as well as one of the most intense westerns of that time period, TWO FLAGS WEST (1950).  And speaking of noir westerns…

There are some obvious crossovers of film noir and the western films.  Hardboiled detectives on dusty streets, that kind of thing.  But I don't want to name them, because much prefer straight westerns that have a streak of dark naturalism or fatalism in them.  I love vaguely metaphysical westerns like PURSUED (1947), YELLOW SKY (1948), and COLORADO TERRITORY (1949), so I wrote an entire chapter about these psychological / noir westerns in my book.  

Robert Mitchum in the noir western BLOOD ON THE MOON

Once you get to American cinema in the 1950s, it’s almost impossible to avoid talking about westerns.  It was by far the most popular genre of the day, in film and in television—although science fiction gave it a good run for its money.   That said, it should come as no surprise that some of the best-known sci-fi and horror filmmakers of the day made some pretty innovative westerns. 

Andre De Toth is primarily remembered as the director of the 3-D Vincent Price vehicle HOUSE OF WAX (1953), but he was actually more of a western enthusiast than a horror enthusiast.  John Ford personally recommended him to direct RAMROD (1947), and De Toth cast his wife Veronica Lake in the lead female role, opposite Joel McCrea.  De Toth went on to make six more western films with screen cowboy Randolph Scott in the 1950s, plus one with Gary Cooper (SPRINGFIELD RIFLE, 1952) and one with Kirk Douglas (THE INDIAN FIGHTER, 1955). He rounded out the decade with one of my personal favorites, DAY OF THE OUTLAW (1959)—a particularly bleak film featuring one of Robert Ryan's best performances.

Andre de Toth

Jack Arnold—the man behind Universal’s monster movies IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE (1953) CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON (1954), and TARANTULA (1955)—made MAN IN THE SHADOW (1957) starring Orson Welles as a cold-hearted rancher, Audie Murphy’s best western NO NAME ON THE BULLET (1959), and the blaxploitation western BOSS NIGGER (1974) with Fred Williamson.

William Castle and Roger Corman each made several westerns in the 50s, although the merits of those films are debatable.  Some have argued that Corman’s directorial debut, FIVE GUNS WEST (1955), was the inspiration for ensemble action movies like THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN and THE DIRTY DOZEN.  Corman himself, however, was quick to abandon the genre—although he later produced two compelling westerns from director Monte Hellman, THE SHOOTING (1966) and RIDE IN THE WHIRLWIND (1966), both starring Jack Nicholson.  And I’ve always been fascinated by Corman’s claim that he helped to develop the Gregory Peck vehicle THE GUNFIGHTER (1950), one of the most iconic westerns ever made, when he was still a lowly script reader at Fox. 

Jack Nicholson and Millie Perkins in THE SHOOTING

Edgar G. Ulmer is not as well known as Castle or Corman (although his following seems to grow every year) but he made a western that is more interesting than anything either of them did in the genre.  I’m not sure what to say about THE NAKED DAWN (1955), except that if you are a fan of Ulmer’s work (which includes Universal’s THE BLACK CAT and DETOUR), you should definitely check it out.  It's a unique film in the genre.  Ditto Ray Milland’s directorial debut A MAN ALONE (1955), a very strange—eerily effective—little western.  And while we’re on the subject of strange…. Did you know that Rod Serling wrote a western?  It’s called SADDLE THE WIND (1958), and it’s pretty good…. Although not as good as some of the western episodes Serling wrote for THE TWILIGHT ZONE.   Serling also reportedly wrote an early draft of Marlon Brando’s ONE-EYED JACKS (1961), but we probably shouldn’t give him credit—or assign him blame—for that one.

Gene Fowler Jr. is another name that is familiar to classic horror fans.  He directed the cult classics I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF (1957) and I MARRIED A MONSTER FROM OUTER SPACE (1958).  He also directed SHOWDOWN AT BOOT HILL (1958), a respectable B-western that gave Charles Bronson his first lead role and paved the way for Roger Corman to cast Bronson in a comparable breakout role in MACHINE-GUN KELLY (1958).  Even more striking are Fowler’s credits as an editor.  He worked on Fritz Lang’s WESTERN UNION (1941), Sam Fuller’s RUN OF THE ARROW (1957) and FORTY GUNS (1957), Clint Eastwood’s first American western HANG ‘EM HIGH (1968), and the controversial A MAN CALLED HORSE (1970).  

Charles Bronson and John Carradine in SHOWDOWN AT BOOT HILL

Italian westerns are, of course, some of the most violent and horrific westerns around, reflecting a backlash against the genre in the late 60s and early 70s.  Horror icons like Mario Bava, Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci were part of the trend.  Bava directed one of the many pseudo-sequels to the immensely popular RINGO (RINGO IN NEBRASKA, 1966), as well as the western-comedy ROY COLT AND WINCHESTER JACK (1970).  Not his best work, but entertaining.  In addition to creating storyboards for the opening sequence of Sergio Leone’s ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (1968), Argento co-wrote the Zapata western THE FIVE MAN ARMY (1969) and the ultra-violent CEMETERY WITHOUT CROSSES (1969).  According to some sources, he was also involved with CUT-THROATS NINE (1972).  Fulci likewise has three hyper-violent westerns to his name: MASSACRE TIME (1966), FOUR OF THE APOCALYPSE (1975) and—depending on who you ask—A BULLET FOR SANDOVAL (1969). 

As far as I’m concerned, FOUR OF THE APOCALYPSE is the nastiest postscript on the spaghetti western subgenre—although Sergio Corbucci’s THE GREAT SILENCE (1968) remains the best.  Others point to DJANGO, KILL! (1967) as the darkest Italian horror-western.  It's certainly the weirdest.  And there’s no question that DEATH RIDES A HORSE (1966), one of Quentin Tarantino’s favorites, is filled with indelible horror imagery.  These films all influenced increasingly dark and bloody American westerns, like WELCOME TO HARD TIMES (1967), THE STALKING MOON (1968), SOLDIER BLUE (1970) and Robert Aldrich’s ULZANA’S RAID (1972).  

Did I mention Robert Aldrich’s other westerns?  The filmmaker who gave us WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? (1962) and HUSH… HUSH, SWEET CHARLOTTE (1964) also gave us APACHE (1954) and VERA CRUZ (1954), both starring Burt Lancaster.  I remember when I went to the Deaville Film Festival in 2009 with my NIGHTMARES IN RED, WHITE AND BLUE documentary, the thing I was most excited about was the fact that they were screening all three of Aldrich’s major westerns.  The French still appreciate this genre, even if most (younger) Americans don’t. 

I could go on.  Christopher Lee co-starred in a British-Spanish western that pioneered the rape-revenge subgenre (HANNIE CAULDER, 1971).  Charles Bronson starred in a Native American version of JAWS (THE WHITE BUFFALO, 1977).  PSYCHO’s Anthony Perkins made an excellent law-and-order western with Henry Fonda (THE TIN STAR, 1957).  HALLOWEEN’s Donald Pleasance played terrifying villains in the revisionist westerns WILL PENNY (1967) and SOLDIER BLUE (1970).  John Carpenter has written several westerns, including an early script that was optioned by John Wayne’s production company (and later made--badly--as BLOOD RIVER, 1991).  I’d argue that Wes Craven made a western (THE HILLS HAVE EYES, 1977).  George Romero's most recent Dead movie (SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD, 2009) was an homage to the Gregory Peck western THE BIG COUNTRY (1958).  The list goes on and on, and I’ve included many these titles in my book. 

So, horror fans… welcome to The Wicked West.  Read on.

MOVIES MADE ME #53: Pulp Fiction (1994)

 
Let me set the scene.  It's October 14, 1994.  My best friend and I have convinced about 15 people from our high school to come with us to the very first screening of PULP FICTION at the Seminole movie theater in Charlottesville, Virginia.  We've been waiting for this for a little over a year... ever since we saw RESERVOIR DOGS on home video and started reading about Quentin Tarantino's next project.  In the meantime, we watched TRUE ROMANCE at least a dozen times, and saw NATURAL BORN KILLERS four times in the theater.  Those were test runs -- Tarantino stories filtered through the sensibilities of other directors -- but PULP FICTION is the real deal.  The second coming, so to speak.

The lights go down and suddenly we're in a greasy spoon diner, listening to a criminal couple (one of whom is vaguely recognizable as Mr. Orange, with a British accent) contemplate their next crime.  It's a natural segueway from TRUE ROMANCE and NBK, both of which were riffs on the Bonnie & Clyde formula.  The rapid-fire dialogue is unmistakably Tarantino's... but it's not just what these two loveable hoods say, it's how they say it.  They're gleeful.  They love what they do.  They love their life together.  And their enthusiasm is contagious.  Watching and listening to them, I am absolutely, hopelessly, stupidly giddy.  They conclude their dialogue with a syrupy sweet declaration of love, then jump up on the table, waving their guns in the air, barking expletives and trying to sound as mean and surly as they can.  The juxtaposition is hilarious.  Cue the surf music.  (Surf music???) 
And the opening credits, rising across the screen like they're on one of those old piano rolls.  The tone is set.

Next, we're in a car with John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson.  Travolta has been missing in action for a few decades now... but he's back, with love handles and hair extensions, talking about American fast food in Amsterdam.  And he's playing... Vincent Vega?  Mr. Blonde from RESERVOIR DOGS???  I read somewhere that Michael Madsen was originally supposed to reprise his role, but backed out.  Tarantino turned to Travolta, having had a man-crush on him since WELCOME BACK, KOTTER.  And what a difference that makes.  After that RESERVOIR DOGS scene where Mr. Blonde cuts off the cop's ear, I can't imagine having as much fun with Michael Madsen in this movie.  Of course, much of the fun comes from the way that Travolta and Jackson (sporting an impressive jheri curl Afro) play off of each other.  Travolta is like a little kid playing dress-up.  Jackson is a self-professed "bad motherfucker."  These guys are professional hitmen, but they're not the usual breed of Hollywood hitmen.  They don't fight like the characters in RESERVOIR DOGS.  They know and respect each other.  They talk like best friends in high school.  No doubt they have their issues and agendas, but mostly they're having fun.  You'd have to be some kind of cold-hearted cynic not to be amused by their banter about foot massages, or by the way Jackson prefaces a murder with an impromptu ad for a Hawaiian hamburger.  I'm not saying you have to appreciate the warped morality of the characters, only that you can't deny their enthusiasm.

What's amazing about being young is the way you're often able to make some of the dumbest choices imaginable, get yourself in some of the worst possible situations, and still come out unscathed.  That's what happens to Vincent when he meets Mia Wallace.  Watching them interact on their unlikely date feels like being high.  Every little thing they say and do is funny, because there's so much tension between them -- related to circumstances and, of course, sex.  Tarantino lets it build slowly.  Then, when the tension is at its peak (with Travolta advising himself to simply go home and jerk off), he drops a bomb on us.

The following scene is as shocking as Vic Vega's scene in RESERVOIR DOGS, but the tone is completely different.  This time, the shock turns into playful theater of the absurd, and the laughs keep coming... This sequence reminds me that there is a very thin line between humor and horror.  Tilt the details and the performance one way, and you've got RESERVOIR DOGS.  Tilt it the other way and you've got PULP FICTION.  Of course, Eric Stolz and Roseanna Arquette do their part.  Comedy is all in the timing, and everyone's timing is spot-on.  Tarantino caps off this story (which is, in my opinion, the heart of the film... or at least the adrenaline shot to the heart of the film) with one final, definitive character moment.  Mia tells her gloriously bad ketchup joke, and Vincent blows her a kiss after her back is turned.  Beautiful.

The second story, written by Roger Avary, revolves around Bruce Willis.  When PULP FICTION came out, Willis's stock in Hollywood wasn't as low as Travolta's, but his alternately sweet and stoic performance as prize-fighter Butch certainly didn't hurt him.  Though Willis is even today known as an action guy, the film fuses his tough guy persona with his best comedic instincts.  Avary takes the time to develop Butch and his girlfriend Fabienne (Maria de Medeiros), making them just as endearing and ultimately just as vulnerable as Vincent and Mia.  Then he drops the bomb.  Actually three bombs: the almost surrealistic murder of Vincent Vega, the equally startling reappearance of Marcellus Wallace, and of course the "gimp" scenario.  Who could have predicted, in early 1994, that the surprise hit of the year would feature a comedic ode to the most notorious scene in DELIVERANCE?  I read somewhere that Tarantino wanted to highlight the comedy by editing the scene to the tune of "My Sharona."  He couldn't get the rights to use the song, but I will still never listen to "My Sharona" the same way again.  Of course, the scene works just as well without it.  Why?  Because it's clear that the storyteller is not playing by any kind of rules.  We have absolutely no idea what's going to happen next...

The third story is, in my opinion, a bit of an anticlimax.  It's nice to see John Travolta (back from the dead) and Samuel L. Jackson back in action, but I'm underwhelmed by Tarantino's performance as Jimmy and even Harvey Keitel's performance as The Wolf.  In the end, of course, Jackson's change of heart and the circular framework of the film leaves things on a high note.  As the credits roll, I can't help feeling sad to leave this crazy Hollywood underworld.  Especially after seeing Tarantino's earlier films, I feel oddly connected to the characters (and the actors) who keep popping in and out of his strange cinematic universe.  It's fun to see Steve Buscemi (Mr. Pink) in his cameo as Buddy Holly.  It's even more fun to see Christopher Walken riffing on his own madman screen persona.   I start laughing at Walken's performance all over again as soon as Butch asks Fabienne, "Do you know what my father had to go through to get me that watch?  I don't have time to go into it, but he went through a lot..."  I can't help myself.

For the actors, as for the viewers, a Tarantino movie is always a wild, wild ride.  The filmmaker himself explains his intentions this way (in a 1994 interview with Film Comment): "What I feel about the audience - particularly after the Eighties where films got so ritualized, you started seeing the same movie over and over again - intellectually the audience doesn't know that they know as much as they do.  In the first ten minutes of nine out of ten movies - and this applies to a whole lot of independent films that are released, not the ones that can't find a release - the movie tells you what kind of movie it's gonna be.  It tells you everything that you basically need to know.  And after that, when the movie's getting ready to make a left turn, the audience starts leaning to the left; when it's getting ready to make a right turn, the audience moves to the right; when it's supposed to suck 'em in, they move up close... you just know what's gonna happen.  You don't know you know, but you know... Admittedly, there's a lot of fun in playing against that, fucking up the breadcrumb trail that we don't even know we're following..."

In this type of film, you never know where you'll end up.  You can fight that or embrace it the way the characters do.  Speaking for myself: When it comes to Tarantino, I'm always along for the ride.

MOVIES MADE ME #52: True Romance (1993)

It's not hard to understand why a young movie geek would fall in love with TRUE ROMANCE.  It's a movie that boldly asserts that even a socially-inept goofball (who spends all his time rhapsodizing about Spiderman #1 and fucking Elvis) is capable of, and deserving of, true intimacy.  It's as naive and yet as sincere as any teenager falling in love with the world one movie, one novel, one comic book, one song, one restaurant, one human being at a time. 

Writer Quentin Tarantino imported his own personal passions (for Elvis, Sonny Chiba, too much sugar in his coffee, etc.) into the character of Clarence, a comic shop manager who meets the love of his life and suddenly finds himself in the middle of an Elmore Leonard-style variation on BONNIE & CLYDE or BADLANDS.  Clarence is a fuck-up, but his love for spitfire call girl Alabama is as pure as the driven snow.  He'll do anything for her... and that includes killing without remorse. 

There are plenty of ways Tarantino could have told this anarchic story of two young lovers.  In the mid-1990s, it was natural to compare it to David Lynch's WILD AT HEART (1991) or Oliver Stone's NATURAL BORN KILLERS (1994).  Tarantino also provided the story for the latter, but Stone re-wrote the script and shifted the focus from character drama to the filmmaker's own heavy-handed statement on violence in the media.  (Don't get me wrong: NBK is an amazing movie, but it's not endearing in the way that TRUE ROMANCE is.)  WILD AT HEART is also a deeply personal statement about searching for a source of light in an increasingly dark world.  Lynch has said that it was his reaction to the L.A. riots, his way of saying, "Can't we all just get along?"  Speaking for myself, I can't really imagine getting along with Nic Cage and Laura Dern in that movie.  I'd rather steer clear. 

Clarence and Alabama may be naive as hell, but they have a contagious joie de vivre that makes them likeable even when they're killing people.  While watching the movie last night, my wife astutely compared it to the vampire flick NEAR DARK.  Death and destruction follow Clarence and Alabama the same way they follow Caleb and Mae in NEAR DARK, and yet the young lovers in both films somehow manage to retain their romantic innocence.  In fact, I'd have to say that TRUE ROMANCE is Quentin Tarantino's most unashamedly heart-on-its-sleeve movie, in spite of the fact that he didn't direct it.

Producer Bill Unger wanted Tarantino to direct TRUE ROMANCE as a followup to RESERVOIR DOGS, but Tarantino declined, saying he'd written the script so long ago that it would be like marrying an old girlfriend.  Tony Scott brings a very different directorial style to the story -- he relies more on edits for kinetic energy -- but he clearly understands the value of the dialogue and characterizations in the script... and, in light of Tarantino's cachet after RESERVOIR DOGS, he had no trouble assembling a stellar cast of character actors to deliver the goods. 

What I realized while watching the movie last night is that every significant character is as passionate about something as Clarence and Alabama are about each other.  Gary Oldman's pimp is passionate about power-play.  He relishes psychoanalyzing and intimidating Clarence as much as he likes his eggrolls.  Dennis Hopper, in addition to having such a strong devotion to his wayward son that he's willing to die for him, relishes insulting Christopher Walken.  He does it quietly, casually, methodically (and in the most aggressively un-PC way), which shows how much he enjoys it.  He's as restrained as Oldman is over-the-top.  You can also see Walken's admiration for the man he's going to kill.  He appreciates the calculated brilliance of Hopper's insult, and he appreciates how rare it is for people to maintain the courage of their convictions.  James Gandolfini demonstrates the same type of appreciation in the scene where he beats Alabama to a bloody pulp.  Once it becomes clear that she will keep fighting until her dying moment, he becomes surprisingly somber.  "You got a lot of heart, kid," he says quietly, no doubt thinking that it will be a shame to snuff out that light.  Of course, he finds out the hard way that it's not easy to snuff out a four-alarm fire.  And that, I think, is what this movie is all about.

Like RESERVOIR DOGS, this is an actor's movie and even the minor roles / characters get their moment to shine.  Michael Rappaport, Brad Pitt, Bronson Pinchot, Saul Rubinek, Tom Sizemore, Chris Penn and Val Kilmer all turn in brief but distinctive performances.  As a viewer, I like these characters... all of them.  They're all having fun.  They're all enjoying their lives.  For that reason, even though their world is full of violence and mayhem, I like being in this world with them. 

Tarantino's only quibble with the movie is the ending.  Tony Scott changed the final note so that TRUE ROMANCE resonates as a kind of crazy fairy tale, instead of a hyper-charged slice of life.  Scott's rationale was simple: He liked Clarence and Alabama too much to rip them apart.  The ending doesn't seem false to me -- partly because the lighthearted score of Hans Zimmer has suggested all along that we're watching a movie where sincerity and passion can tilt the scales of justice.  And then there's Alabama's voiceover: "I kept asking Clarence why our world seemed to be collapsing and things seemed to be getting so shitty. And he'd say, 'That's the way it goes, but don't forget, it goes the other way too.'"  Throughout the movie, this note just feels right... because, like the characters, the movie has a lot of heart.

MOVIES MADE ME #51: Reservoir Dogs (1992)

 
In 1993, my best friend Ben and I used to go to our local video store every Monday.  They had a deal where you could rent seven movies for 50 cents each.  Between the two of us, we rented 14 movies for the week.  We weren't watching movies.  We were consuming them.

That's how we discovered RESERVOIR DOGS.  I think Ben watched it first, because I remember watching it alone, getting about halfway through, and calling him to talk about it.  I couldn't make it through the movie... not because I was put off by the violence (which was the case with a lot of initial viewers), but because I was too excited to sit still!  I remember vividly my reaction to the scene where Harvey Keitel, a gun in each hand, casually unloads on a cop car.  There's nothing flamboyant about his actions.  He's just doing what he has to do.  Tim Roth watches, horrified, but does nothing.  The two men, dressed for a funeral, walk away from the bullet-riddled cop car, the siren still blaring loudly -- demanding some kind of emotional reaction.  The two men offer no reaction.  I was doing all of the reacting.   I couldn't hold it in.  I suddenly wanted to tell everyone I knew about this movie.

I suspect that a lot of early reviewers may have been just as excited as I was by the pure cinematic energy of the scene, then disgusted by the "moral implications" of their excitement, and finally angry at the filmmaker.  I can understand that, but it didn't make me think that RESERVOIR DOGS was "sick."  It made me think that Tarantino was the most compelling filmmaker of his generation.  I was adrenalized not simply by the onscreen action, but by the storytelling.  I was enthralled by the dialogue (juvenile, yes, but hilarious), the unconventional narrative structure (which Tarantino calls novelistic), and the amazingly assured way that the filmmaker controlled the tone of his scenes (often funny, sometimes shocking, always somehow believable in their you-can't-make-this-shit-up absurdity).  I watched the movie over and over again, and my amazement continued.

Within a few weeks, I had memorized the dialogue for the opening scene.  (I admit I had a little help from the published screenplay.  Some of the overlapping bits are nearly indecipherable.)  Ben and I used to quote it casually like we were in some kind of invisible acting class.  That's right.  We were geeks.  And it gets worse... We started keeping scrapbooks (not one, but two dueling scrapbooks) of news clippings and magazine articles related to Tarantino's forthcoming movies.  That was the level of our obsession.  We forced all of our friends, and even a few family members, to watch RESERVOIR DOGS.  When my dad got to the Michael Madsen / Stealer's Wheel torture scene, he got up and left the room, saying simply but curtly, "I don't need to watch this."  I think that was the moment when I realized that Tarantino wasn't for everyone.  He was for us -- a generation of seen-it-all movie geeks looking for something new.  Something that didn't follow the usual formulas. 

The endless news clippings and magazine articles pointed the way to other films that might whet our appetite.  We gravitated toward anything and anyone that Tarantino claimed as influences: Howard Hawks, Jean-Luc Godard, Sergio Leone, Sam Peckinpah, Paul Schrader, Brian DePalma, Abel Ferrara, Dario Argento, John Woo, THE KILLING, THE ASPHALT JUNGLE, POINT BLANK, THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE, JOHN CARPENTER'S THE THING, etc.  He became our film school teacher.  All of this "study" left me with a vague notion of how to make a movie: Indulge yourself on the things you love, learn what you can from your obsessions, then fuse those lessons with the truths you know from personal experience.  Make the fantasy real.  Let it live in your world.

In a 1992 interview with Positif magazine, Tarantino says, "People come up to me and say, 'You write great dialogue,' and I feel like a fraud taking credit for it.  It's the characters who write the dialogue.  I just get them talking and I jot down what they say.  To me, dialogue is very, very easy.  As long as I care about the people and I know them, they just go off.  And that's why my dialogue is about things that don't have anything to do with anything." Later, he told LA Magazine: "I don't play God with my work or clean it up.  I don't know what these guys are going to do.  I set up the situation and they start talking to each other and they write it."  The characters in RESERVOIR DOGS are constantly improvising, the way we all improvise every day, in everything that we do.  The difference is they're doing it with total self-confidence.  That's what makes this such an endlessly exciting film.

Tarantino XX begins TONIGHT!

Antelope Valley

You’ve seen this movie before.

A pair of young city-dwellers drive out into “the country” to explore some remote curiosity. Maybe they’re on the way to visit a relative, or tracking a local legend, or – in the most hopeless cases – taking a “shortcut” to some commercial-friendly vacation destination. Whatever the case, the movie doesn’t end well. They make a wrong turn, pick up the wrong hitchhiker, get trampled by Lady Luck and/or Mother Nature before being tortured and killed by giant insects or an inbred family of hungry cannibals.

Oddly, this type of movie frequently gets shot in Antelope Valley, about sixty miles north of L.A. Driving through, it’s not hard to understand why. The high desert landscape is naturally forbidding. Strong winds stir up dust devils in the rocky sand and the only signs of life are Joshua trees – which don’t grow big enough to provide shelter from the sun. Here, a person is completely vulnerable to the elements. The population of the valley – concentrated mostly in the western cities of Palmdale and Lancaster – is growing fast, but settlements to the east still appear inhospitable. One gets a profound sense of loneliness on the empty roads, and hopes that this is not the day the radiator overheats or a tire blows out… because, as Hollywood has proven, this is the perfect place to disappear.

Four teenagers disappeared here in Rob Zombie’s directorial debut, “House of 1,000 Corpses." Their wrong turn landed them in Captain Spaulding’s Museum of Monsters and Madmen – better known as the Four Aces, on the corner of 145th Street and Avenue Q. The Four Aces is a shooting location with three distinct 1950’s-era sets: a diner, a gas station, and a motel. The motel was the main shooting location for the horror film “Identity,” starring John Cusack. This place looks so real that I have to wonder how many people have stopped here for gas, food, and/or lodging. At the same time, I can’t imagine that very many tourists wander by – the Four Aces is well removed from the main roads, and completely cut off from any other visible buildings.

Just down the road sits Club Ed, another shooting location made famous by Rob Zombie. Club Ed was built in 1991 for the Dennis Hopper film “Eye of the Storm,” and later served as the Khaki Palms Motel in Zombie’s “The Devil’s Rejects.” I think the motel section might have also been used in Quentin Tarantino’s “From Dusk Til Dawn.” When we pulled over to the side of the road to snap some photos, the resident/caretaker (who looked strikingly like John Carpenter) came out to protest. I remembered where we were – and that this is more or less how “House of 1,000 Corpses” begins, with nosy tourists annoying the locals – and we politely moved on to the next stop.

On Avenue G, we visited The Sanctuary Adventist Church – known to fans of Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill” as Uma Thurman’s wedding chapel. According to my trusty tour guide (Harry Medved’s book Hollywood Escapes), the diner across the street was featured in the Jean Claude Van Damme action-thriller “Desert Heat”… which I shamefully admit I have seen, and rather enjoyed. Unlike the Four Aces and Club Ed, which have been maintained for future film work, the “Desert Heat” diner looks like any other abandoned building on the western edge of the Mojave Desert… in a word: dead.

A few miles to the southeast, we visited the sleepy town of Lake Los Angeles, named for a body of water created in the 1960s in anticipation of a real estate boom that never happened. Today, the lake bed is completely dry. On its southern edge is a brand new public park, complete with baseball diamond. Strangely, when we visited the park on a Sunday afternoon, not a soul was there. I felt like we had wandered into the Village of the Damned… perhaps, I thought, there’s some kind of taboo about being in the new playground on the Sabbath. But I had to take a chance because I wanted a photo of the nearby Lovejoy Buttes, where giant ants menaced the heroes of the classic monster movie “Them!”

We made one more stop, further east on 240th Street, at Belle’s Diner. This is where Kurt Russell lost his wife in the 1997 thriller “Breakdown.” If you don’t remember the film (and I can’t hold it against you if you don’t), it’s about a yuppie couple who are driving from Massachusetts to San Diego when a group of backwater boys kidnap the wife and hold her for ransom. The remainder of the movie is silly as hell, but I always enjoy watching Kurt Russell fighting for his life. We watched it on DVD a few nights ago and recognized Moab, Utah, from our cross-country drive around this time last year. The similarities to our own trip were eerie. Since I knew I would never survive the ordeal that Kurt Russell went through to rescue his wife, we decided to head back for civilization.

Some day soon, maybe we’ll venture further east into San Bernadino County – home to Dry Mirage Lake (where Steven Spielberg filmed the desert scenes for “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”), Victorville (where Jack Arnold shot portions of “It Came from Outer Space” and “Tarantula”) and Lucerne Valley (from the original “The Hills Have Eyes”). For now, we decided to stick with the movies…

Four Aces motel

Four Aces diner

Club Ed

Club Ed

Kill Bill

Desert Heat

Lovejoy Buttes

Village of the Damned

Belle’s Diner