I forget the first time I saw the “Kill Bill”
trailer on the Internet, but I know I’ve been excited ever
since.
OK, so the airplane is obviously a product of CGI, and the last
lines of dialogue Uma Thurman and Lucy Liu trade are cornier than a
Kansas barbeque, but the rest is spectacular: the old Asian man
jumping on top of Thurman’s sword, the kitchen knife
fight.
Quentin Tarantino, where have you been for the last six years,
“Little Nicky” cameo notwithstanding?
I’m sure I’m not alone in my sentiments.
Tarantino’s name is the first to appear on the screen in the
trailer, quickly followed by Tarantino’s voice declaring
“Action” as there is, indeed, action. Tarantino is
clearly marketed as the major creative force behind “Kill
Bill,” which is fair enough.
So when I heard Harvey Weinstein and the rest of Miramax were
considering forcing Tarantino to cut part of the film because it
was too long, I was ready to start writing the script “Kill
Harvey.” Miramax is notorious for forcing filmmakers to cut
films that are “too long” (see Martin Scorsese’s
“Gangs of New York”), but Tarantino helped bring
Miramax to prominence with “Pulp Fiction.” How could it
make him cut?
With “Kill Bill,” Tarantino and Miramax reached a
compromise: The film will be released in two parts, with the first
out tomorrow. The second comes out in February. The plan marks a
sharp about-face within Miramax in the handling of long films made
by prominent directors, but more interestingly, it begs the
argument that a movie isn’t necessarily only one movie.
“Kill Bill,” along with the second two
“Matrix” films and “The Lord of the Rings”
trilogy, was filmed in one shoot, and tells a continuous story that
must be seen in its entirety in order to be understood.
It’s a change from the way sequels have been filmed in the
past, such as the “Star Wars” films. If more studios
and filmmakers begin to employ such practices, stories will get
longer, but movies will get shorter. It’s a risky venture, to
be sure. If the first fails in the box office, the second is
doomed. But if successful, films could potentially start making
twice their normal box office numbers.
Of course, this is not a completely new practice. Serial short
films used to be a staple of the movie-going experience, but the
serial feature film seems to be a new trend worth paying attention
to. And if nothing else, it’s better than seeing the scenes
as “deleted” on the special edition DVD.
E-mail Tracer at jtracer@media.ucla.edu.