An exclusive encounter with 'the' Quentin Tarantino.
Alert: There are no details of Kill Bill Vol 2 given away if you have not seen the movie.
I loved Kill Bill Vol 1. Of course, I only saw the movie last week. I refused to see the movie in the theatre on principle that no studio should chop a single movie into two to make money.
Anyway, I thought the first movie was great. Since I love Japanese Anime and Yakuza movies, Volume Uno was dead on (no pun really).
So here is Sachin Gandhi's brief summary of Vol 2: Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, more blah blah, really blah, and more blah. Did I remember to insert some more blahs?
Okay, so here is the interview:
So what do you think of the Kill Bill movies?
They are the greatest movies ever made. I am truly God. No one can challenge me.
With this movie, I have proved that a great director never needs an editor. Editors are a wasteful resource. No one should have the right to chop a director's vision.
Hmm. Okay. So can you give us the real story of why there are two movies?
Well, the original movie was 190 minutes long. I was told I had to chop it by 30 minutes or so. I refused. No blipping way was some studio head going to slice my masterpiece.
Every scene I shot is a work of art. And people need to see it that way.
So you were forced to split the movie?
Not really. I decided to repackage the movie as chapters. Also, by having two movies, I got to insert scenes that were not meant to be part of the movie.
You see, the original movie was only 190 minutes long. But if you add the length of the two single movies, 94 + 137 minutes = 231 minutes. So that's 40 extra minutes that I would not have had a chance to have in the original movie.
Can you give us an idea as to which scenes were inserted?
I can't say that. You will have to wait to see Kill Bill Director's Cut to get the full Kill Bill viewing pleasure.
So fans will have to rent/buy three separate DVDs to get the whole picture?
I don't see anything wrong with that. Like comic books, my movies are a collector's item. They should be cherished as such.
That much for the brief interview. Here is what the American critics think of Kill Bill Vol 2:
"The movie is a work of art."
"Every scene is to be cherished."
"If I had a choice to have eternal happiness or watch a Tarantino movie, I would watch his movies over and over again."
So there you go. Everyone has stamped their authority on Tarantino. They are bending over backwards (like they do with Steven Spielberg) for QT.
I loved Vol 1, didn't mind Vol 2. But seriously, should people simply praise every mumbo jumbo scene a director has in a movie? When a director refuses to edit any scenes and drags a movie simply for the cool factor?
Almost every director has tons of footage they want to use in a movie. Those extra scenes are left on the chopping table.
Nowadays, studios tack those deleted scenes onto the DVD -- this enhances the appeal of the DVDs.
But all the extra scenes were inserted in Kill Bill.
Each of the two movies has brilliant scenes, but one can still wonder what the original film was supposed to be. How was the pacing set in the original?
Vol 1 was fast action -- slice, dice, chop.
Vol 2 was much slower with more time for character development, and a broader story outline.
Does that mean the original movie was spliced equally with a fast scene followed by a slow scene?
Yes, the two movies are packed with great action, brilliant acting (Uma Thurman nailed the role to death, no pun intended!), and great homage scenes towards Westerns, Japanese Anime, Kung-Fu and Yakuza movies.
But in the end, the audience still had to pay twice for a single movie.
