When I decided to become a director, it just came on TV, Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West [1968]. It was like a book on how to direct, a film so well designed. I watched to see how characters entered the frame and exited the frame.
I can tell you the exact narration on the first page was, “Six guys wearing black suits, black thin ties are sitting around a table eating breakfast in a restaurant. Their names are Mr. Brown, Mr. blah, blah, blah” and then, BOOM, the dialogue starts. I didn’t want to describe the characters, like, “This guy has blonde hair, this guy’s fat, this guy’s old.” I wanted the characters’ personalities to be expressed through the dialogue.
The film you see is exactly the script. That’s the structure which always existed. We didn’t do anything in the editing room, like jumping around. I think one of the reasons the film works on a tension level is because of the use of real time. The real time of the movie is an hour, the time they’re in the warehouse. It takes longer to see because it goes back and forth in the story. But they’re stuck in the warehouse, and every minute for them is a minute for you.
Actually, someone made a suggestion to me, “Quentin, you’re so wild. Your cinematographer shouldn’t be the adult telling you, ‘No, no, you can’t.’ You should find someone more wild than you so that you’ll be put in the position of the adult.” Who gives you a great piece of advice like that? That was exactly our situation.
I had all these movies I wanted to watch with Andrzej. “I want you to look at this and look at that.” And he’d say, “I will watch any movies you want, but we must watch them with the sound off.” So we watched eight movies I wanted him to see completely silent. I’d never done that before, and that’s the difference between night and day. Then you really see the photography, the color, the style the film is being shot in. It’s an eye-opener.
MC/HN: As the budget was very small, did you prepare with your actors before the shoot? QT: We had two straight weeks of rehearsal, which was an immeasurable help. I demanded it, saying, “Look, not only is this the right thing to do, but it’s going to save us money because we’re not going to be sitting around asking important questions while the clock is running.” That’s how it worked. We hammered things out. Of course, you’re never giving a performance in rehearsal. It’s like the difference between living with somebody and being married to somebody. The day you’re shooting, that’s when it really comes together. But you’ve answered questions on rehearsal days. Also, rehearsal is very much discovery. The script is a map and the rehearsal is a journey, but you don’t know where you’re going. And an actor like Harvey needs to go all around the world to get to where he starts. But when we started shooting, BOOM! We knew what we were doing, no messing around!
I imagine that it can be in pre-production when you can start losing your grip on the artistic side of the movie because you’re dealing with money and time and schedules. You’re dealing with everything except the script. So just when the machine started going and going fast, I was able to escape, far far from Hollywood, in the middle of the mountains at the beautiful Sundance resort. The only thing I was doing was diving into the script for eleven straight days. It was remarkable. I mean, I’ll never have that again. Just when everything is supposed to be hysterical, I had serenity and calmness.
MC/HN: What’s your next project? QT: I’m writing it now. It’s called Pulp Fiction. MC/HN: A picture about the Pope? QT: Exactly! No, not “Pope.” “Pulp.” It’s a crime film anthology. Three crime stories like the old Black Mask magazine. The stories are completely separate, and they’re the same stories you’ve heard a zillion times. You know, the staples of the genre, but hopefully taken where you’ve never seen them taken before. It’s like the same group of characters in each of the different stories. A guy who’s the star of the first story can be killed in two seconds in the third story. It’s one of those scripts I won’t know if I’m successful until I write the last page. I’ve written the first story, and so far, so good. So, we’ll see.