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Quentin Tarantino and Edgar Wright, two big-name directors and superfidelies, were invited by Empire magazine to sit down and talk about the three-hour movie, what would they talk about? Here's the essence of what they're talking about. In order to make the text version more readable, we have rearranged the title, director's name or genre of the film that the two directors talked about, with the title, director's name or genre as subtitles, and have made small modifications to the sentences to become more fluent, so they are not verbatim translations of the original program. For reasons of space, some of the content that is too scattered or not very relevant to the topic has not been included in this article, please understand. (When two conversations from different sections are used before and after in the same chapter, I separate them with ****.) ）
Because the content is too long, the full text is published in three parts, and today is the first one.
Listen/edit TWY
QT: I've forgotten the last time we were in the same room, but Edgar was probably one of only five people I contacted in Israel after the outbreak. 【Wright laughs】
EW: I remember when we last met, we did a Q&A in London for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and you and I, David Heyman and Robert Richardson, and then we went to dinner in the evening — with Alfonso Cuarón!
QT: Yeah, it was really the last time we saw each other...
EW: That's right, the last time we shared a room, we wrapped up the whole restaurant and talked until after four o'clock in the morning.
Edgar Wright and Quentin Tarantino
Empire: Do you still have contact during the pandemic?
QT: Yeah, he'll talk about it later, we've got a "movie club" thing.
EW: That's right, we're also going in a fandom way, and I think the biggest takeaway from coming down because of the pandemic is probably being able to fall down the rabbit hole of a movie in this way, and when we've been living like this, we'll talk about that later.
Alien 2
A sequel that exceeds expectations
Empire: At the heart of Empire magazine, edited by Wright, is to celebrate those memorable theater times. Quentin, I'm sure you've had this memory many times, can you give you a few of the moments that have had the most impact, sitting with the audience and watching a movie, and then being stunned by something on the screen?
QT: [...] The first thing I want to focus on is the kind of moment that makes people cheer and cheer, and I chose two of them. The first moment, obviously the most special, is when you've ever seen a movie for the first time; and there's another moment, a film I've seen in theaters 12 times, and every time I see that moment, the audience reacts exactly the same way. The first was in the '80s when I went to the theater with a bunch of video studio buddies to see the first day of the screening of Alien 2, at the Avco Cinema in Westwood.
There were four factors that made that screening special. First, it's James Cameron's first film after Terminator: You were completely shocked when you first saw Terminator, and you were sitting in the theater on the night of that film's release, and you couldn't believe that an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie would be so great! Wright laughs: You're completely stunned. Then this one is his next first film, and it is usually difficult for directors to make the same good one immediately after the particularly successful first, and it is difficult to catch up with the previous work.
Second, it's the sequel to a great movie, Alien. And it's a real sequel, not the kind of "trilogy" that is finely arranged before filming, no, it's the kind of thing they say, "This first one sold well, we're going to do it again." A true sequel.
The third point is that the reaction of film critics has been unusually fierce.
The fourth point, which is integrated with the first three, is the audience's expectations for this film, which is really high to the heavens. Since it's a sequel, we probably already know a little bit about what we're going to see, which's not like Terminator surprised us, not as surprised as the first "Raiders of the Lost Ark" that surprised you on Friday's premiere night, and the Matrix, the first one that surprised you, we knew it was Alien, and we understood that world.
Alien
So you come to the theater, at the intersection of Wilshire Avenue and Westwood, with all your video hall guys, not the kind of situation where the last one didn't finish waiting in line for the next one, and we bought the ticket at four o'clock on Friday afternoon, and the result was that the line had circled from this street to the next street and then through the parking lot where we parked, like in Human Centipede, winding throughout Westwood Village, and you stood there for an hour and a half, and then they started letting people in.
It was premiere day, 4:30 p.m., and everyone was very excited, and James Cameron himself was there, and he wasn't saying he was going to come for a Q&A, not to be a special guest, not to nag the audience, no, it was his night — the first day of his hard-earned film, he was here to oversee his Los Angeles premiere theater experience, he was here to make sure the theater was taking care of the people in line, to make sure the projector was working properly, to make sure that the sound was okay with the sound.
Probably 10% of the people present knew what he looked like! I recognized him and I said, "This fucking James Cameron!" He directed on the spot, like a market researcher, to make sure everything was in order. Then we went to the theater, and it was full, crowded... [Wright laughs] and then the movie started.
After I said those four factors made people particularly expectant, the film did what was impossible: it completely exceeded our expectations, even better than the critics, who had no idea what they were talking about. It was even better than we'd hoped, better than any sequel we've ever seen, arguably one of the best popcorn movie experiences of our lives, and to be honest we didn't experience a few particularly good popcorn movies back then. But the best part of the whole movie, the moment that makes us "wow", is not when she climbs into that Transformers-like thing...
EW: Power loader.
QT: Yes, power loader. Because at that time, you wouldn't think Ripley was going to die, she was going to beat that thing, and you didn't have anything to worry about... But when she's in that compartment with Newt, and then the face-hugging worm is hiding right among them, not as passionate as the rest of the movie, the movie makes you feel for the first time that it's going to scare you to pee. It was so scary that the audience couldn't move.
And when Reese appears, shoots through the window, and goes through the window to save her, the audience is all --crazy!' The audience, they didn't want to say that they were going to fly into the sky and high-five each other or anything, but they were all shaken off their seats, because then they finally breathed a sigh of relief. For me, it's like the climactic moment of a concert, a perfect performance.
"Fury Soldier"
Revenge movies are made to cheer the audience
QT: One of the reasons I love revenge movies so much is because when you watch these revenge movies, when the bad guys do the atrocities against the protagonists of the story, and then you see the protagonists come back and sweep away the evil, they're made so that the audience can scream at the screen, for that purpose, for what we call the audience reaction. They capture the audience.
Even if it's a bad shot in this subject, you will still be fascinated by these bloody, and the effect will still be very good. My favorite revenge film of all time is John Flynn's Rolling Thunder (1977).
I first saw it in 1977, also on the day of its premiere. But I didn't go to the theater to see the film, because it was a double-film co-production with Enter the Dragon (1973), so I went to the theater to see "Dragon Fight", with my mother and her boyfriend.
Dragon Fight Tiger Fight
"Fury" just happens to be a film that is released along with it. I came here to watch Dragon Fight, so we finished watching it, and then the next One, Fury, started, and I watched it. It turned out to be the most talked about film in my life, and then its bloody ending climactic scene was perhaps the most exciting moment I've ever experienced in a movie theater.
But the interesting thing is, the movie came out in 1977, and I loved it so much that I was in the next seven or eight years, as long as I was in L.A., as long as there was any movie theater (I didn't have HBO or anything like that, I didn't have any cable TV at the time, HBO didn't exist at the time, there was no videotape or anything), as long as any movie theater in Los Angeles played this movie, I would definitely go to see it.
No matter where. Sometimes even I don't have a car and have to take three buses to that movie theater. For the first three to four years of this period, I went to the kind of "torture room" theater, usually in downtown Los Angeles or in Lakewood or Long Beach, to watch that kind of double or triple movie, one of which was in the Palace Theater of Long Beach, and it should be the only time I went to the Long Beach neighborhood alone, probably the only time I went to the Long Beach neighborhood... The theater featured the kind of three-film run, which was "The Howling" (1981), "Good Guys Wear Black" (1978), and "The Strange Soldiers".
EW: Wow.
QT: And at some point in the 1980s, "Furok" started to appear in that kind of Vietnam War-themed double-film series, like "The Boys in Company C" (1978), with Go Tell the Spartans (1978), with Who'll Stop the Rain (1978), and once with "Who'll Stop the Rain" (1978). The night was released in quick succession from Raiders and Apocalypse Now, and that night passed particularly slowly. [Wright and the host laugh] Like I said, as long as there is a release, I will go to see.
Apocalypse Now
Then, after I collected a 35mm copy of it, when I was at the Austin Film Festival, I put it there twice and the whole room was full; I also had a private screening of the film for a friend; and then at the New Beverly Theater, seven times after I took over the theater.
Every time it was shown, it didn't matter whether the theater was full or just six people, there was a moment when the exact same reaction was triggered: when the protagonist played by William Dewane tracked down the man who killed his wife and son, and then he went to the home of The Tommy Lee Jones character, at first he was calm, the two of them had dinner together, the Tommy Lee Jones family was nagging the whole time, he was a Vietnamese veteran sitting there without saying anything, and then Dewane leaned in and said to Tommy Lee:" Can I speak to you alone?" Then they walked into the bedroom of the Tommy Lee Jones character, and they barely said a word, and Devane didn't have any such polite "Here's the thing, I told you..." nonsense.
No, there is nothing like this. William Devane said only one sentence: "I found the murderer of my son." Then Barry De Vorzon's music rang out, "Din!" Then Tommy Lee Jones paused for three seconds, 1, 2, 3, and said, "I'll go get the gear." The audience went completely insane—whether it was five people in a hall, or four hundred and fifty-five people in a hall. Everyone lost their minds at that moment, and the action scene that happened next fully met their expectations.
EW: I remember the first time I watched it, you put it on me, and probably the only time I watched the film was at your house.
QT: To make sense, I usually show it to others, especially if I haven't seen it, I usually put it on you immediately.
A movie that makes the audience angry
"Human-Beast Hybrid", "120 Days of Sodom"
EW: It's also the opposite, it's that I really like a movie, but the other audiences here are particularly annoying, and it can be a very memorable experience for me. It doesn't have to be full, and having only ten people in the auditorium can sometimes be a great movie-going experience. Quentin, I know you've proven that even six people can do it. I watched "Human-Beast Hybrid" at the Chinese Theater one afternoon, starring Sarah Polly and Adrian Brody. I went to see it alone, and then there were probably a dozen more spectators in the room. Quentin, have you seen this one?
Human-Beast Hybrid
QT: Sure, I've seen it.
EW: So in this film, there's a plot that's kind of a bit of a bottom line, and it's the kind of moment that makes this movie. In short, the protagonist has sex with the monster, and the movie seems to exist for that plot.
Then, when I saw it, one of the audience members started to get really angry, and the person stood up and shouted at the screen, you-mom! Then after the movie was over, the people also stood up and walked out of the theater and said, This is the most movie I've ever seen in my life! Then there was a woman there shouting "Fuck you", and I was next to me and applauded, "Human-Beast Hybrid", good job! Splitting the whole audience in half, I was so impressed.
QT: It's also one of the situations I want to mention, which is that when you say that you want to provoke an audience reaction, it doesn't have to be positive, it doesn't have to be cheering, but the point is the experience of watching a movie with strangers.
I'm the owner of a classic cinema myself, and I can tell you that it's one of the hallmarks of this kind of cinema, and every time a theater shows Pasolini's 120 Days of Sodom over the past four decades, there has inevitably been a situation of audience violence. This has been the case with every screening for the past four decades, and there are always a few people who can't stand it and start to stir up trouble.
120 Days of Sodom
I remember when I first watched it in '88 or '89, oh no, it was '90, with my ex Grace in New Beverly, when I hadn't bought it yet. Anyway, it was already very late in the movie, and then a woman in the back row stood up and shouted, "Pasolini was beaten to death in the streets of Rome and I said it was a beautiful job!!!."
EW: [Laughs] Wow.
QT: This kind of thing happens at every Sodom screening, unless it's the kind of Pasolini retrospective, the kind that buys a package. But if it's just an ordinary screening, even in an art theater, when people don't know much about what they're going to see, there will always be a violent reaction at some point.
EW: As you can imagine, but I've only seen this film once, at home.
QT: That's like you haven't seen it! You have to be trapped with the other forty spectators to count...
EW: Okay, okay, I know. But when people ask me what movies you don't dare to watch a second time after watching them, I think that when I watched "Sodom", I saw that half of them chose to stop and walk outside the house and have a daylight intermission, and I wanted to stand in the sun for fifteen minutes and then go back to finish the movie.
QT: I'm not saying you have to look at it again, I mean you've lost a great opportunity.
The robber scene of Django Liberated
QT: I often have some comedic routine in my films, either the audience will cheer and applaud, or the film will not work at all, a complete failure, and this is an example of this in my 9 films. Sometimes the director has to act as a conductor, as if he were conducting a symphony orchestra, as far as possible to make the audience react emotionally, but I don't work that way, I don't have a symphony orchestra, I just finish the film, and in the end the audience is the symphony orchestra itself.
I've seen the film 35 times with audiences all over the world, but I was most impressed by the first time I showed it to the marketing staff, because it wasn't until that moment that I realized how exciting the scene was, the robber scene in Django Rescued, which evoked more hysterical laughter than any movie I've ever seen.
Django Rescued
The scene was also a favorite of all in the script stage, with Sony Columbia's Amy Pascal saying that half of the reason she wanted to release the film was because of the scene. But the scene is so likable in the script that I'm a little worried that it's going to disappoint in the finished film, and I'm afraid that it's going to lose something when you translate the script with the actor's performance, and the scene is in a strange position in the movie. So after we finished shooting, the scene was long, a five-minute non-stop comedy bridge, and the film itself was already very long.
My editor was quite satisfied with the scene, it felt really funny, and it was what I wanted. So a reporter came to the post-editing room to interview me, and I would have lunch with them, and when I was done, I asked them if they wanted to see a clip from a movie, and they said it was great. Sometimes some directors will come to visit or pass by.
So I showed the footage to all kinds of visitors four times, and we showed them this, but not once we got the reflection we felt we wanted, as if they didn't know what they were watching, completely incomprehensible, like in "Deadly Magic" Christian Bell performed a magic trick, but the audience didn't realize what was happening, the magic worked, because the audience was not seriously watching.
So it was a very disappointing situation, when we first showed the distribution company on the editing stage, we tried to cut out the scene and show it to them, and then Amy Pascal said where the did the robber scene go? So I said we just wanted you to see what the movie would look like without this scene, and proved that without this scene, the narrative of the film is still valid.
So, when the marketing department did the first test screening, we added the scene back, and then observed the audience's reaction before deciding whether to do it or not, because I was not confident at this time. However, at that screening, the audience saw that it was full of laughter for five minutes, and the whole theater boiled over — so I guess I'll add it.
EW: I think it's very important that the tone before the play and the foundation laid by the story are so that the play will be successful.
QT: That's exactly right, because it's not a funny piece, you can't pretend that it's a separate chapter.