Eponymous, max

Henry Louis Gates Jr.: Why do you think we’ve had to distance ourselves from the pain as we have — which makes your representation shocking?

Quentin Tarantino: I don’t know the answer to that question because I don’t feel that way. I can’t understand why anybody would feel that way. I think America is one of the only countries that has not been forced, sometimes by the rest of the world, to look their own past sins completely in the face. And it’s only by looking them in the face that you can possibly work past them. And it’s not a case where the Turks don’t want to acknowledge the Armenian holocaust, but the Armenians do. Nobody wants to acknowledge it here.

(via)

suicideblonde:

INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS Fits Perfectly into Quentin Tarantino’s Movie Universe and Influences the Entire Filmography

By now, most Quentin Tarantino fans are aware of the connections interlaced throughout all of his films. John Travolta’s Vincent Vega in Pulp Fiction is the brother of Michael Madsen’s Vic Vega in Reservoir Dogs, Harvey Keitel’s Mr. White worked with Alabama from True Romance, the plot basis for Kill Bill is described as the synopsis for a TV series in Pulp Fiction, etc.

Now the epiphany that Eli Roth’s character of Donny Donowitz aka “The Bear Jew” in Inglourious Basterds is the father of the movie producer Lee Donowitz in True Romance has inspired a truly mind-blowing theory that the rest of the films (chronologically speaking) in Tarantino’s filmography take place in a world where [Inglorious Basterds spoiler] World War II came to an end when Adolf Hitler was brutally murdered in a movie theater by the Basterds.

This initial connection was brought up in an article on Cracked, but a poster on Reddit (via David Chen’s Twitter) has more eloquently summed up what this means for Tarantino’s movieverse:

As it turns out, Donny Donowitz, ‘The Bear Jew’, is the father of movie producer Lee Donowitz from True Romance – which means that, in Tarantino’s universe, everybody grew up learning about how a bunch of commando Jews machine gunned Hitler to death in a burning movie theater, as opposed to quietly killing himself in a bunker. Because World War 2 ended in a movie theater, everybody lends greater significance to pop culture, hence why seemingly everybody has Abed-level knowledge of movies and TV. Likewise, because America won World War 2 in one concentrated act of hyperviolent slaughter, Americans as a whole are more desensitized to that sort of thing. Hence why Butch is unfazed by killing two people, Mr. White and Mr. Pink take a pragmatic approach to killing in their line of work, Esmerelda the cab driver is obsessed with death, etc. You can extrapolate this further when you realize that Tarantino’s movies are technically two universes – he’s gone on record as saying that Kill Bill and From Dusk ‘Til Dawn take place in a ‘movie movie universe’; that is, they’re movies that characters from the Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, True Romance, and Death Proof universe would go to see in theaters. (Kill Bill, after all, is basically Fox Force Five, right on down to Mia Wallace playing the title role.) What immediately springs to mind about Kill Bill and From Dusk ‘Til Dawn? That they’re crazy violent, even by Tarantino standards. These are the movies produced in a world where America’s crowning victory was locking a bunch of people in a movie theater and blowing it to bits – and keep in mind, Lee Donowitz, son of one of the people on the suicide mission to kill Hitler, is a very successful movie producer. Basically, it turns every Tarantino movie into alternate reality sci fi. I love it so hard.

Cool.

Two recent events have led me to reconsider all the film’s the meant something to me growing up—because they either seemed emotionally powerful, or to have an important message—but which I now worry were seen through glasses of ignorant angst or naïveté. The events were a rewatching of Dead Poets’ Society, which as it turns out is truly corny and cliched, and someone telling me that, upon their own rewatching, they found American Beauty to be a significantly more ham-fisted film than they remembered. In my mind, American Beauty remains a nuanced piece of cinema that revealed the angst and boredom of the suburban American dream. This got me thinking of other movies that meant something to me, which I fear might have lost something over the years.

• Fight Club - A statement on the pointlessness of materialism and the rat race. (I had already questioned this movie before based on the fact that so many people, whose taste nary aligns with mine, are so enamored with this film.)
• People vs. Larry Flynt
• Requiem for a Dream
• Natural Born Killers - I did re-watch this one (and even wrote a college paper on it), and in fact found that beyond the surface criticism of the mainstream media and the violence it propagates, there was some really interesting, dark stuff that made me think about morality, psychology, justice, etc.
• Crash - Even at the time Crash was released, people complained that it was about as subtle as Religulous
• Boondock Saints - I re-watched this one maybe Freshman year of college, and even at that point was able to see through the trite dialogue and objectionable cliches that were at a younger age quite appealing.
• Good Will Hunting - Fuck you, this movie rocks. Even if, as a whole, it’s not especially subtle, the performance all around—from Damon and Williams, to Affleck and Affleck—are really top notch, not to mention the smart dialogue and touching direction.
• The Usual Suspects - It’s kind of hard to criticize a movie that is so reliant on a twist. The second viewing can still be really enjoyable as you look for all the stuff that you overlooked (think Sixth Sense), but after that, the experience necessarily changes.

Any I’m missing?

I just read a (so-so) article about the (not-so) recent controversy over Blue Valentine’s NC-17 rating and it’s impact on the advertising a studio will back for the movie (no mention was made of the crazy PR opportunity that comes with such a rating on a high-profile film). While I will probably see this movie, since I like Ryan Gosling (how great was Half-Nelson?!) and Michelle Williams (how great was Dawson’s Creek?!), what I really wanted to mention was the documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated.

Ever since really loving Bowling for Columbine, only to later realize that despite his sense of humor and effectiveness as a filmmaker, Michael Moore was an arrogant jerk and his films’ were inexcusably one-sided, I have approached documentaries from a position of heightened skepticism. Despite this grain-of-salt approach, however, I fully recommend This Film Is Not Yet Rated.

It’s an independent documentary that examines the opaque organization that is the Motion Picture Association of America (i.e. the people who give movies their ratings). Among its complaints are that Hollywood has more input into the ratings it’s movies receive than independent films do, that female sexuality and homosexuality are treated as more risque and garner stricter ratings than male sexuality and heterosexuality, and that sexuality in general is treated as a more mature subject mature than violence. One important point that the aforementioned article does bring up is how the trend for acceptable levels of violence has increased at a tremendous rate (consider that the first 3 Die Hard movies were R and the most recent was an easy PG-13).

One last thought (perhaps connecting in Bowling for Columbine): I think the distinction between bloodless violence (considered less serious) and bloody violence needs to be reversed. I remember after the Columbine shootings, people were constantly talking about how violence in video games led to real life violence. In this matter, I think bloodless violence (and violent video games as well for that matter) are much worse in that they minimize the impact of violence. Anything that makes it seem less real and more accesable (which is what will get you the more lucrative PG-13 rating), makes the real thing seem less significant and terrible. Movies like Die Hard, The Transporter and all the other PG-13 action movies, make violence seem fun and light-hearted (especially when Sly Stallone has a quick one-liner after he shoots 15 people dead on the spot). I would compare those to a movie like Irreversible (which I fully recommend to anyone not squeamish, although one viewing was more than enough for me)—a movie that makes the full impact of violence (physical, sexual, etc) so visceral and uncomfortable that one cannot help but be repulsed by the actions and anyone taking pleasure in them. While officially released as unrated, Irreversible would have surely deserved the NC-17 rating, had it been submitted to the MPAA.

Update (11/18/2010): The lovable Harvey Weinstein has taken up the cause. Glad he’s on our side.