The following is an article I wrote for the publication CREATIVE SCREENWRITING. It’s about writing a script with an eye toward producing it on a limited independent budget, as Quentin Tarantino supposedly originally planned for RESERVOIR DOGS.
Forget PULP FICTION. Forget about Bruce Willis, Samuel Jackson, Uma Thurman the comeback of John Travolta, about the most lavish and laudatory critical praise any filmmaker has received in a generation. Forget about being selected as the opening night film for the New York Film Festival or winning the Palm D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival or the seven nominations for Academy Awards, including Best Film, Best Director and Best Screenplay. Because before all that, there was Quentin Tarantino’s first movie.
But also forget about RESERVOIR DOGS with its high-profile cast of Harvey Kietel, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Steve Busciemi and others, forget about the 1.2 million dollar budget — forget all that because before that movie existed, Tarantino was going to make a little $30,000.00 movie on a shoestring budget starring no-name talent. It too was to be called RESERVOIR DOGS.
After receiving $30,000 as up-front payment for his first sale of a script (TRUE ROMANCE), Tarantino was anxious to direct his own first movie. Not wanting to wait for some mirage-like future day of Hollywood financing, a possibility that could recede further out of reach the closer he might get to it, he decided to take the TRUE ROMANCE money and use it to make a “garage style no-budgeter”. The story goes that Tarantino’s producer, Lawrence Bender, read the script and asked Tarantino for one month to try and find more money. Then, in a very fruitful chain of events, Bender got the script to a friend of his who was the aerobic instructor for Harvey Kietel’s then wife, Lorraine Bracco. Ms. Bracco passed it on to Harvey just before the couple split up — two weeks later and the avenue of opportunity would no longer have existed. This combination of chutzpah and serendipity led to Bender snaring Kietel as Mr. White (and the movie’s Executive Producer), better financing and a professional cast who could articulate Tarantino’s form of jet-fueled hyper dialogue. And thus the RESERVOIR DOGS we know was made.
But the better financing and cast did not change Tarantino’s initial approach for the movie — making a “no-budget garage movie”, designed and written to be made for almost no money. At NYC’s Independent Feature Film Market Tarantino publicly stated his desire to someday go back and make RESERVOIR DOGS the way he originally planned it, down and dirty. Most likely we’ll never see this version, but we can look at the script and see how the original intent is plainly there, how it was designed to be shot economically by avoiding expensive scenes. And instead of viewing these restrictions as limiting and damaging, we can discover how this approach may have indeed helped him create one of the more original and auspicious filmmaking debuts. Instead of being artistically confined by budgetary constraints, the writer is forced to explore familiar territory in new and different ways; without money to throw at the screen employing time-honored movie clichés, the writer is forced to confront them head-on, re-inventing whatever genre they are working in, bending it to their minuscule budgetary will, embracing the restrictions whole-heartedly and using them to their advantage.
There are several techniques to write a movie that will make it cheaper to produce: include more dialogue scenes than actions scenes, make multiple use of a minimum of locations to save on the number of “company moves” a production company has to make, set expensive scenes requiring lots of setup time O.S. (off-screen) so their expense is not incurred and many others. But each technique carries a different price to pay, a steep dramatic price that in the long run can be too much for the movie to bear; while you might manage to shoot the picture for your limited budget, no one might care to see it. Tarantino side-steps these potential pitfalls and uses them to his advantage.
Of the several things you can do to make a movie cheaper to produce, first and foremost is to have the characters talk. Unfortunately the industry has coined a derogatory term for these movies: talking heads. It is the kiss of death. But writing interesting dialogue is not a problem for Tarantino; it’s been established as his forte. And designing a no-budget movie around your strength is one of the smartest things a hopeful filmmaker can do, but when a movie has to depend totally on dialogue, it puts the stress on the writer — even one of Tarantino’s talent — to write extremely good dialogue to make up for the lack of action. It pushes the writer to be much more clever and deft, to squeeze as much as possible out of each word so that while not much in terms of physical action is happening on the screen, the words themselves carry the movie’s physicality.
What is most important is that even though the dialogue must carry the weight of the movie, it can not make the fatal mistake of telling us what is going on. Ninety percent of TV fare is an excellent example of what not to do. Made for (by Hollywood union standards) a limited budget and tight shooting schedules, all they do is talk — talk, talk, talk, talk. At the drop of a hat the characters tell us everything in glorious detail, from what lies in the deepest recess of their soul (which of course we know is exactly what everyone in real life does) to what their bowel movement that morning was. The number of pages-per-day shot and put in the can rises quickly but, in an unusual inverse equation, our interest in the characters plummets even faster. The problem is not so much that the characters talk too much (after all theatre, where all the characters can do is talk, has been doing it for several thousand years now), but that they tell us too much — they tell us what is obvious, what we can plainly see for ourselves, delivering straight forward exposition like it is the bard’s most precious couplet, filling life-long friends in on information that no real person would ever need reminded.
In RESERVOIR DOGS, Tarantino’s characters talk a lot too, but they tell us very little directly about themselves or about the story they are involved in; instead they talk to each other and allow us to eaves drop in on what feels like real, private conversations. And through these casual, unguarded moments, we learn about them.
In the very first scene, an eleven page monster (right off the bat Tarantino fires an opening salvo against standard convention — normal Hollywood practice stipulates a scene be no longer than three to four pages in length; this is a convention Tarantino routinely trashes. One thing that should be stressed about independent filmmaking — since you can’t compete against the big boys and girls, don’t try to play by their rules) that takes place in one room, several characters we know nothing about sit around in a diner and do nothing but talk. A major plus when you are scheduling and budgeting a movie with no money, these are the kind of scenes production managers love, ones where they can proudly proclaim at the end of the day, “We knocked off 11 pages today — that’s one-ninth of the script already in the can!” The only trouble is that these scenes are usually deadly on the screen, especially in the opening moments of a movie. Again, standard wisdom dictates you don’t open with dialogue heavy scenes — audiences haven’t fully settled into theirs seats and aren’t attuned to the actor’s voices and rhythms; it’s very easy to miss what is being said. Typically in these scenes the exposition dumptruck backs up to the screen and, with its hydraulic jack straining, excretes its deadly cargo into the poor audience’s lap, burying them in piles of info about prior events and characters they can’t absorb because they have yet to settle into who is whom and what is what.
But RESERVOIR DOGS’ opening eleven pages tell us nothing about the characters or the story; instead, we learn the secret meaning to Madonna’s song “Like A Virgin”, about who killed whom in “The Nights the Lights Went Out In Georgia”, about theories of tipping, about forgotten names in address books… About anything but about the characters themselves and what their story is. In other words, we are entertained and intrigued.
INT. UNCLE BOB’S PANCAKE HOUSE – MORNING
Eight men dressed in BLACK SUITS, sit around a table at a breakfast cafe. They are MR. WHITE, MR. PINK, MR. ORANGE, MR. BROWN, NICE GUY EDDIE CABOT, and the big boss, JOE CABOT. Most are finished eating and are enjoying coffee and conversation. Joe flips through a small address book. Mr. Pink is telling a long and involved story about Madonna.
MR. PINK
“Like a Virgin” is all about a girl
who digs a guy with a big dick.
The whole song is a metaphor for big dicks.
MR. BLUE
No it’s not. It’s about a girl who
is very vulnerable and she’s been
fucked over a few times. Then she
meets some guy who’s really sensitive–
MR. PINK
–Whoa… whoa… time out Greenbay.
Tell that bullshit to the tourists.
JOE
(looking through his address book)
Toby… who the fuck is Toby? Toby…
Toby… think… think… think…
MR. PINK
It’s not about a nice girl who meets
a sensitive boy. Now granted that’s what
“True Blue” is about, no argument about it.
MR. ORANGE
Which one is “True Blue?”
NICE GUY EDDIE
You don’t remember “True Blue?” That
was a big ass hit for Madonna. Shit,
I don’t even follow this Tops in
Pops shit, and I’ve at least heard of
“True Blue.”
MR. ORANGE
Look asshole, I didn’t say I ain’t
heard of it. All I asked was
how does it go? Excuse me for not
being the world’s biggest Madonna fan.
MR. BROWN
I hate Madonna.
MR. BLUE
I like her early stuff. You know,
“Lucky Star”, “Borderline” –
but once she got into her “Papa
Don’t Preach” phase, I don’t
know, I tuned out.
MR. PINK
Hey, fuck all that, I’m making a
point here. You’re gonna make
me lose my train of thought.
JOE
Oh fuck, Toby’s that little China girl.
MR. WHITE
What’s that?
JOE
I found this old address book in
a jacket I ain’t worn in a coon’s
age. Toby what? What the fuck was
her last name?
MR. PINK
Where was I?
MR. ORANGE
You said “True Blue” was about
a sensitive fella. But “Like a Virgin”
was a metaphor for big dicks.
MR. PINK
Let me tell what “Like a Virgin”‘s about.
It’s about some cooze who’s a regular
fuck machine. I mean all the time, morning,
day, night, afternoon, dick, dick, dick,
dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick.
MR. BLUE
How many dicks was that?
MR. WHITE
A lot.
MR. PINK
Then one day she meets a John Holmes
motherfucker, and it’s like, whoa baby.
This motherfucker’s like Charles Bronson
in THE GREAT ESCAPE. He’s diggin’ tunnels.
No she’s gettin this serious dick action,
she’s feelin’ something she ain’t felt
since forever. Pain.
JOE
Chew? Toby Chew? No.
MR. PINK
It hurts. It hurts her. It shouldn’t hurt.
Her pussy should be Bubble-Yum by now.
But when this cat fucks her, it hurts.
It hurts like the first time. The pain is
reminding a fuck machine what is was like
to be a virgin. Hence, “Like a Virgin.”
The fellas crack up.
(pages 1 – 3)
And on it goes for another eight pages. Never do we learn why they are gathered here, all dressed in black suits and bearing the peculiar names of different colors. But we are greatly intrigued and want to find out. Nor do we learn much in terms of story, but we are pulled into their world and want to stick around and learn more. And that shatters another convention often heard espoused by story editors and studio executives: to know in the script’s first ten pages what the story is about. They want to see all the major elements introduced so they can know what to expect from the rest of the movie. Typically the protagonist is clearly established as well as an idea of what his goal will be and who or what his antagonist will be. This leads to a sense of security — the audience feels safe in reasonably assessing what the major concerns of the story will be and who they are supposed to feel allegiance to. All they have to do then is sit back and watch to see if their guesses were correct and the only pleasure comes in how clever the writer and filmmakers are in pulling it off. But Tarantino doesn’t give the audience that comfort; instead, in his first eleven pages he introduces over half dozen characters, any one which could turn out to be the protagonist (again remembering that in the original “no-budget” intent, there were not going to any “names” in the credits or above the marquee to tip us off), setting up the macho, crude world of camaraderie his characters populate. We’re left on our own to figure who or what this movie is about after nearly ten minutes of watching. It’s only in the last moment do we even get a hint that there is more to this movie than a testosterone-filled breakfast club:
The eight men get up to leave. MR. WHITE’s waist is in the F.G. As he buttons his coat, for a second we see he’s carrying a gun. They exit Uncle Bob’s Pancake House, talking amongst themselves.
(pg. 12)
And the movie is off and running. Utilizing his natural strength for dialogue, he has written an eleven page scene that is not only a major money and production schedule saver, it breaks standard conventions while immersing us into the characters’ world instead of merely introducing us to them.
Of all the screenwriting commandments, the holiest and most coveted one is: SHOW ME, DON’T TELL ME! If a writer chooses to ignore this commandment, they rob themselves of the medium’s most powerful tool: visual story-telling (after all they are called motion pictures). But, in a major break from this commandment and standard structure, Tarantino jumps past an extremely important element of any script, what Robert McKee calls the inciting event and Linda Seger calls the First Turning Point. In a single audacious move that simultaneously eliminates the production’s most expensive scene, ignores accepted screenplay structure theory and turns a genre convention inside out, Tarantino boldly deprives a heist movie of its most essential element: the heist itself!
In a typical Hollywood movie this would have been the opening scene: a big action production number with slow motion gunplay, squirting full blood effects and everything laid out in a editor’s wet dream of shots (think of Tony Scott’s direction of Tarantino’s TRUE ROMANCE.) And it is a logical choice for most movies — the scene would have jump-started an audience with a jolt of blood-rushing adrenaline, introducing the characters in action (we certainly would have gotten an immediate insight into Mr. Blonde’s character!) and hooking them with pyrotechnics. To do a scene like that right, it takes time and money, lots of both, but a larger issue is what is the movie really about? Is it about a heist, or is about the characters involved in the heist and what happens to them? Obviously the answer is that it’s about the characters. So instead of even bothering to show the heist, Tarantino jumps right past it and takes us to its consequences. Had he the money, would he have been able to resist the lurid temptation to detail the heist gone bad? After all, in the earlier TRUE ROMANCE Christian Slater’s character’s vendetta against the pimp and other subsequent similar scenes are written out in full, juicy details. Lacking the time and funds for such an indulgence, Tarantino bypasses it completely and thereby focuses us in on his characters.
Following the 11 page diner scene are the credits; immediately afterwards the action picks up in progress:
When the credit sequence is finished, we…
FADE TO BLACK:
Over the BLACK we hear the sound of SOMEONE SCREAMING in agony.
Under the screaming, we hear the sound of a car HAULING ASS, through traffic.
Over the screams and traffic noise, we hear SOMEBODY ELSE SAY:
SOMEBODY ELSE (O.S.)
Just hold on buddy boy.
Someone stops screaming long enough to say:
SOMEBODY (O.S.)
I’m sorry. I can’t believe she killed me.
Who would’ve fuckin’ thought that?
CUT TO:
INT – GETAWAY CAR (MOVING) DAY
The somebody screaming is MR. ORANGE. He lies in the backseat. He’s been SHOT in the stomach. BLOOD covers both him and the backseat.
MR. WHITE is the Somebody else. He’s behind the wheel of the getaway car. He’s easily doing 80 mph, dodging in and out of traffic. Though he’s driving for his life, he keeps talking to his wounded passenger in the backseat.
They are the only ones in the car.
MR. WHITE
Hey, just cancel that shit right now! You’re hurt.
You’re hurt really fucking bad, but you ain’t dying.
We have no idea what’s transpired; all we know is MR. ORANGE is gut shot by some woman and these two men are separated from the others. Who was the woman that shot MR. ORANGE? Why did she shot him? Where are all the other guys? What the hell did happen!? Using black leader and sound effects (you can’t get any cheaper than that!) Taratino arouses our interests in these questions and they drag us further forward into the story in a way a slam-bang, gun-blasting scene never would have. Had he chosen to show the heist as it went bad, the film and our interest in it would slow down now, a natural cooling off phase as we catch our breath from the visceral excitement of the violence and merely watch what happens next. But the not knowing, the dying to find out, actually edges us forward in our seats, our interest and attention picking up.
But instead of simply telling us directly what we missed, which is the common mistake writers make, he lets tiny pieces of information slip out, information that entices us while it raises new questions and possible scenarios, making us all that more desperate to listen.
MR. ORANGE lays his head back on the mattress. Spent from his outburst, he quietly mutters to himself.
MR. ORANGE
Take me to a doctor, take me to a doctor, please.
Suddenly, the warehouse door BURSTS open and MR. PINK steps inside.
MR. PINK
Was that a fucking set-up or what?
MR. PINK sees MR. ORANGE on the floor, shoot and bloody.
MR. PINK
Oh fuck, Orange got tagged.
Throughout this scene, we hear MR. ORANGE moaning.
MR. WHITE
Gut shot.
MR. PINK
Oh that’s just fucking great! Where’s Mr. Brown?
MR. WHITE
Dead.
MR. PINK
Goddamn, goddamn! How did he die?
MR. WHITE
How the fuck do you think? The cops shot him.
MR. PINK
Oh this is so bad.
(referring to MR. ORANGE)
Is it bad?
MR. WHITE
As opposed to good?
MR. PINK
This is so fucked up.
Somebody fucked us big time.
MR. WHITE
You really think we were set up?
MR. PINK
You even doubt it? I don’t think
we got set up, I know we set up. I mean really,
seriously, where did all those cops come from,
huh? One minute they’re not there, the next minute
they’re there. I didn’t hear any sirens…
Whoever set us up, knows about this place. There
could’ve been cops sitting here waiting for me.
For all we know, there’s cops, driving fast, on
their way here now.
(pages 16 – 17)
By page 16 we still aren’t sure what happened, but now we know it was some kind of illegal activity (remember, they never said a word in the opening scene about what they were going to do. JOE Cabot simply says, “Okay ramblers, let’s get to rambling.”), that it went bad and both innocent people and some of the men were killed and wounded, plus, and this is the thread that pulls the story forward for the first half of its 2nd Act, the tension of the characters wondering, arguing and fighting whether they actually were set up or not. Little by little we’re filled in on details as sketched in by MR. WHITE and MR. PINK, but never is the whole picture shoved down our throats, providing too much to digest.
MR. WHITE
Okay, let’s go through what happened. We’re in the place, everything’s going fine. then the alarm’s getting tripped. I turn around and all these cops are outside. You’re right, it was like, bam! I blink my eyes and they’re there. Everybody starts going apeshit. Then Mr. Blonde starts shootin’ all the–
MR. PINK
–That’s not correct.
MR. WHITE
What’s wrong with it?
MR. PINK
The cops didn’t show up after the alarm went off. They didn’t show ’til after Mr. Blonde started shooting everyone.
MR. WHITE
As soon as I heard the alarm, I saw the cops.
MR. PINK
I’m telling ya, it wasn’t that soon. They didn’t
let their presence be known until after Mr. Blonde
went off. I’m not sayin’ they weren’t there,
I’m sayin’ they were there. But they didn’t move
in ’til Mr. Blonde became a madman. That’s how
I know we were set up. You can see that, can’t you,
Mr. White?
MR. WHITE
Look, enough of this “mr. White” shit—
MR. PINK
–Don’t tell me your name, I don’t want to know!
I sure as hell ain’t gonna tell ya mine.
MR. WHITE
You’re right, this is bad.
(page 19-20)
This back and forth parrying carries on between them for a sixteen page dialogue section that is the one place where Tarantino’s reliance on dialogue drags the movie’s pace down. Relieved only by a flashback of M. Pink’s escape from the bungled job, a quick handheld scene on the street as Mr. Pink commandeers a getaway car, even Tarantino’s sure hand with clever dialogue can not stand the burden. The dialogue is never too heavy-handed or “on the nose” as the two men sketch in the details of the diamond heist, but it goes on for just too long. Tension is used to try and reduce the burden of the section’s length: not knowing for sure whether they were set up or not, they question whether to risk getting Mr. Orange some medical attention or not, wondering if they themselves are at risk just standing around waiting in the warehouse for the others to show up. The tension builds to the point where the two men are literally at each other’s throats, but the scene can’t help but be bogged down by its sheer size and the static quality of two men in a bare room.
But again it’s construction will make any no-budget production manager’s mouth water — two actors in a bare warehouse talking for nearly 16 pages. In fact, out of a 100 page screenplay, 45.5 pages take place in the warehouse. The longer a production can stake itself out in one location, the more it can squeeze out of limited resources; no time is lost on company moves wrapping out of one location and loading into another, and the “learning curve” of how to work with the restrictions of each location is greatly lessened, allowing more productive time to be spent actually filming and not figuring out where the hell the best place for an electrical tie-in is and where should craft services be set up so it won’t be in shot. The trade-off for that production luxury can be a sense of claustrophobia for the audience that, beyond being merely stifling, can make a movie feel, sorry to say it, cheap. While the audience might not be able to express why it feels this way, the lack of different scenery and such little niceties as exterior cutaways can slowly add up to create this feeling. What an author has to do is anticipate this and use his/her limited resources wisely, acknowledging that a sense of claustrophobia is going to be created and embrace that and make it work for the movie. RESERVOIR DOGS does this, making us feel isolated in these violent men’s world, unable to see anything beyond their limited scope. Trapped in the warehouse, waiting for the arrival of the Godot-like Joe who will solve everything for them, there is no feeling of escape or choice. Not cutting away during the course of this long scene adds to the tension; the audience knows no more than the characters and must suffer the same troubling doubts they do. The paranoia of whether they have been set up or not builds, turning them on each other like rats put into a cage and shocked without purpose — lacking logic for their pain or an avenue of escape, they attack one another.
MR. PINK
One question: Do they have a sheet on you,
where you told him you’re from?
MR. WHITE (O.S.)
Of course.
MR. PINK
Well that’s that, then. I mean, I was worried
about mug shot possibilities already. But now he knows:
a) what you look like,
b) what your name is,
c) where you’re from and d) what your specialty is.
They ain’t gonna hafta show him a helluva lot of
pictures for him to pick you out. That’s it right,
you didn’t tell him anything else that could narrow
down the selection?
MR. WHITE (O.S.)
If I have to tell you again to back off, man you
are gonna go round and round.
Mr. Pink walks out of the C.U. and turns his back on MR. WHITE. MR. WHITE’s POV PANS over to him.
MR. PINK
We ain’t taking him to a hospital.
MR. WHITE (O.S.)
If we don’t, he’ll die.
MR. PINK
And I’m very sad about that. But some fellas are
lucky, and some ain’t.
MR. WHITE (O.S.)
That fucken did it!
MR. WHITE’s POV CHARGES toward MR. PINK. MR. PINK turns toward him in time to PUNCH hard in the mouth.
END OF POV
MR. WHITE and MR. PINK have a very ungraceful and realistic fight. They go at each other like a couple of alley cats. As MR. WHITE SWIGS and PUNCHES, he SCREAMS:
MR. WHITE
You little motherfucker!
MR. PINK YELLS as HE HITS:
MR. PINK
Ya wanna fuck with me?! You wanna fuck with me?!
I’ll show you who you’re fucking with!
The two men end up on the floor KICKING and SCRATCHING. MR. WHITE gets MR. PINK in a HEADLOCK. MR. PINK reaches in his jacket for his gun, and pulls it out.
MR. WHITE sees this, immediately lets go of MR. PINK, and goes for his own weapon. The two men are on the floor, on their knees, with their guns outstretched, aiming at one another.
MR. WHITE
You wanna shoot me, you little piece of shit? Take a shot!
(Pages 29 – 31)
And while maintaining this claustrophobic tension, Tarantino continues to fill in the backstory very carefully, doling out exposition like Scrooge hands out Christmas bonuses: one stingy nugget of coal at a time.
MR. PINK
Could you believe Mr. Blonde?
MR. WHITE
That was one of the most insane fucking things
I’ve ever seen. Why the fuck would JOE hire
somebody like that? What you’re supposed to do
is act like a fucken’ professional. A psychopath
is not a professional. You can’t work with a
psychopath, ’cause ya don’t know what those
sick assholes are gonna do next. I mean Jesus
Christ, how old do you think that black girl was?
Twenty, maybe twenty-one?
(pages 22 – 23)
Which also serves as a great setup up the next character to enter the warehouse, the infamous Mr. Blonde. Not given the specific details of Mr. Blonde’s rampage, we are left to fill in the details, allowing the writer to use the cheapest and most vivid tool he has — the audience’s imagination. Tarantino uses this device to its greatest effect in the notorious “torture” scene, which will be discussed in a bit. But first Mr. Blonde has to make his entrance.
VOICE (O.S)
You kid’s don’t play so rough. Somebody’s gonna
start crying.
INT. WAREHOUSE – DAY – MEDIUM C.U. ON MR. BLONDE
The voice belongs to the infamous MR. BLONDE. Mr. Blonde sits on a counter, drinking a fast food coke and eating a hot dog…
MR. WHITE
You almost killed me, asshole! If I had any idea
what type of guy you were, I never would’ve
agreed to work with you.
MR. BLONDE
You gonna bark all day, little doggie,
or are you gonna bite?
MR. WHITE
What was that? I’m sorry, I didn’t catch it.
Would you repeat it?
MR. BLONDE
(calm and slow)
I said: “Are you gonna bark all day,
dog, or are you gonna bite.”
MR. PINK
Both of you two assholes knock it the
fuck off and calm down!
(pages 34-35)
Things pick up after Mr. Blonde’s arrival; after a little more “pissing contest” banter, he reveals he has a kidnapped cop tied up in the trunk of his car. Finally, after 33 pages (relieved by only a few quick cutaway scenes), the script breaks out of the warehouse and “opens” the film up a tiny bit.
While one major location can greatly help the production budget, lumped all together on the screen at once it can get tiresome, even with skilled writing. Movies were made to move, even if it is from one location to another. One way to balance the budget-saving use of one major location with a movie’s desire to move is to scatter the location’s scenes throughout the story instead of bunching them up all close. While Tarantino does let the pages in the warehouse stack up, especially in the long sequence mentioned above, he is smart enough to eventually cut away.
With Mr. Blonde’s arrival, the film moves to it’s first major new scene since the “dogs” walked out of the diner and begins to seriously tackle the movie’s backstory. In a 9 page flashback (notice that even though he is cutting away, Tarantino is still not setting any records for brevity) set in one room with three characters (another production manager’s wet dream), we learn specifics about Joe Cabot, the mastermind behind the heist and Mr. Blonde’s relationship between JOE and JOE’s son NICE GUY EDDIE. Tarantino’s signature, dead-on, male buddy-buddy talk enlivens the scene, but what really makes the scene work is the fact that up to this point –page 39 — we have been spoon-fed so little exposition we are starved for any information that may shed light on the heist and the characters caught in its fiasco aftermath.
JOE looks at Vic (Mr. Blonde). Vic has no idea what they’re talking about.
JOE
How would you feel about pullin’ a heist
with about five other guys.
VIC
What’s the exposure like?
JOE
Two minutes, tops. It’s a tough two minutes.
It’s a hold up, daylight, during business hours,
dealing with a crowd. It’s a jewelry store. They’re
getting a big shipment of South African diamonds
on a certain day. They’re like a way station. It’s
gonna get picked up the next day and sent to
Hamburg. When you walk through the door, you’ll
know right where to go for the rich stones.
The fellas are good, me and Nice Guy picked ‘em.
Nobody knows anybody else. Nobody’s connected.
I don’t use connected guys for this shit.
VIC
What’s the cut?
JOE
Juicy, man, real juicy.
Toothpick Vic smiles. So does NICE GUY EDDIE.
(Page 46)
Aha — exposition! When the flashback’s over, we’re kicked back into the present with NICE GUY EDDIE’s arrival at the warehouse finding the boys beating Mr. Blonde’s tied-up cop, trying to uncover information about the supposed “rat” in their midst. After taking command of the situation and ordering Mr. Blonde to stand guard over the cop and the gut shot, passed-out MR. ORANGE, NICE GUY EDDIE takes MR. PINK and MR. WHITE to ditch their cars. And thus begins the movie’s most notorious scene: Mr. Blonde torturing the cop.
Leaving aside the questions of morality and taste for others to debate, the construction of the scene is designed to brilliantly maximize its impact while keeping in mind its budget-minded origins — the most heinous act of physical torture, the slicing off of the cop’s ear, takes place off-screen, once again allowing Tarantino to utilize a writer’s most powerful (and cheapest!) weapon in his/her arsenal — the audience’s imagination. Beyond saving money in eliminating the on-screen effect, it does something even more ingenious: it forces the audience to participate in the filmmaker’s creation, making them active collaborators in the unseen carnage as opposed to passive bystanders ogling flashy car wreck-like special effects.
Maybe this is why the movie has been so passionately derided for its violence when, in actuality, it really lacks much in the way of graphic on-screen violence. The violence doesn’t happen so much on screen as in the audience’s head as they are required to supply the missing images. Again, in the earlier written TRUE ROMANCE, the violence is detailed and exploited; in comparison, RESERVOIR DOGS is almost chaste.
INT. WAREHOUSE – DAY – MR. BLONDE AND COP
Mr. Blonde closes the door after them. He then slowly turns his towards the cop.
MR. BLONDE
Alone at last.
C.U. COP’S FACE MR. BLONDE (O.S.)
Now where were we?
COP
I told you I don’t know anything about
any fucking set up. I’ve only been on the
force eight months, nobody tells me anything!
I don’t know anything! You can torture me
if you want–
MR. BLONDE (o.s.)
–Thanks, don’t mind if I do.
COP
Your boss even said there wasn’t
a set up.
MR. BLONDE (O.S.)
First off, I don’t have a boss. Are you
clear about that?
(SLAPS the cop’s face.)
I asked you a question. Are you clear
about that?
COP
Yes.
MR. BLONDE
(O.S.)
Now, I’m not gonna bullshit you.
I don’t really care about what you
know or don’t know. I’m gonna
torture you for awhile regardless.
Not to get information, but because
torturing a cop amuses me. There’s
nothing you can say, there’s nothing
you can do. Except pray for death.
He puts a piece of tape over the cop’s mouth.
COP’S POV
Mr. Blonde walks away from the cop.
MR. BLONDE
Let’s see what’s on K-BILLY’S “super sounds
of the seventies” weekend.
He turns on the radio. Stealer’s Wheel’s hit “Stuck in the Middle with You” PLAYS out the speaker. NOTE: This entire sequence is time to the music.
Mr. Blonde slowly walks toward the cop. He opens a large knife. He grabs a chair, places it in front of the cop and sits in it. Mr. Blonde just stares into the cop’s/our face, holding the knife, singing along with the song. Then, like a cobra, he LASHES out. A SLASH across the face. The cop/camera moves around wildly.
Mr. Blonde just stares into the cop’s/our face, singing along with the seventies hit. Then he reaches out and CUTS OFF the cop’s/our ear. The cop/camera moves around wildly. Mr. Blonde holds the ear up to the cop/us to see.
(pages 54 – 55)
The finished film doesn’t religiously stick to the script — the scene doesn’t play out only in the Cop’s POV. In fact, the way the scene was ultimately shot may accentuate the horror of the moment even more than the way it was initially written. After allowing Mr. Blonde to use the knife for a few initial slices to the Cop’s face, Tarantino drops the Cop’s POV, the pure “audience as victim” camera angle, and shoots from behind Mr. Blonde facing the cop. As Mr. Blonde goes in to slice the ear off, the camera drifts away from the actual cutting of the ear, not allowing us to see the horrible act; worse, we hear the Cop’s agonizing screams, forcing us to supply the missing visual, which is the most effective approach Tarantino could use. But this didn’t alter the script’s approach, it merely refined the initial concept: don’t show the violence, let it happen off-screen in the mind of the audience.
Again, more than a tremendous cost-saving move, it immediately elevates the material from another FRIDAY THE 13TH wannabe, where the only talent and creativity is on the part of the effects crew, to something that gives the audience credit for having an ability to participate in the movie and then forces them to, whether they want or not.
(An interesting note — according to production legend, even with the effect written to happen off-screen and the substantial extra money Kietel added to the budget, Tarantino couldn’t afford the makeup job he wanted for the cop’s slashed and earless face. Doing what all good independent filmmakers must do, he found an extremely creative way to hire the makeup artist he wanted; bartering the only thing he had lots of, writing talent, Tarantino wrote a screenplay for the makeup artist based on the artist’s idea for a vampire movie! Entitled FROM DUSK TO DAWN, this script was made by Robert Rodreguiz (another filmmaker who took inventory of what he had available to him and devised a script to take advantage of those elements and his super low no-budget EL MARIACHI) with Tarantino acting and producing. That’s true inspiration for any aspiring filmmaker looking to cut cost and attract talent and crew!)
And at the end of the torture scene, where Mr. Blonde has gone out to his car, retrieved a can of gasoline, poured it over the cop and prepares to throw a lit match on him, the forgotten MR. ORANGE revives and shoots Mr. Blonde.
Mr. Blonde falls down dead. MR. ORANGE crawls to where the cop is, leaving a bloody trail behind him. When he reaches the cop’s feet he looks up at him.
MR. ORANGE
(feebly)
What’s your name?
cop
Jeffery.
MR. ORANGE
Jeffery what?
cop
Jeffery Andrews.
MR. ORANGE
Listen to me, Jeffery Andrews. I’m a cop.
jeffery
I know
(Page 56)
And thus ends the first half of the 2nd Act. The tension in the first half that pulled the story forward was “Is there a rat in our midst?”; with this question now answered, the tension driving the second half of the Act 2 becomes the audience’s concern of whether MR. ORANGE will be found out by the others. And Tarantino exploits this by now breaking out of the long, claustrophobic scenes and finally relaying the full backstory leading to MR. ORANGE’s participation in the heist, building our empathy with his character. He does this by employing an interesting technique, the most striking of the 2nd half — breaking a huge monologue of MR. ORANGE’s into several scenes. Most producers faint when they see large monologues — dictum dictates that monologues are for the stage and not for the screen and beginning screenwriters are discouraged from writing them. If MR. ORANGE’s monologue was scripted as a continuous, uninterrupted monologue instead of being broken down as it is, it would run nearly 6 pages long. This is unheard of in studio films where a more visual (and costly and timely) way would have been demanded to convey the monologue’s information. But, lacking a studio’s resources or typical viewpoint, the independent filmmaker should not try to emulate studio pictures. The monologue starts out as a assignment by MR. ORANGE’s undercover “advisor”, Holdaway, tells him he has to learn an anecdote about an incident that will make MR. ORANGE seem more real and acceptable to JOE Cabot and his boys. He gives him one written down on a piece of paper and tells him: holdaway It’s like a joke. You remember what’s important, and the rest you make your own. The only way to make it your own is to keep sayin’ it, and sayin’ it, and sayin’ it and sayin’ it, and sayin’ it. (Page 62) So MR. ORANGE (Freddy in real life) begins practicing the anecdote, pacing back and forth in his apartment. All of page 63 is devoted to MR. ORANGE doing this, going through the setup of the anecdote, rehearsing it somewhat, “…reading it pretty good, but he’s still reading it form the page…” At the bottom of the page: freddy …So, either I’m going to tell all my friends to find their own source, or you give me a bunch of weed, I’ll sell it to them, give you the money, minus ten percent and I get my pot for free. So, I did it for a while… Freddy exits frame. CUT TO: EXT. PARKING LOT – DAY Another empty frame, except obviously outside. Freddy enters frame from the same direction he exited in the previous scene, finishing his sentence. When we move to a wider shot we Freddy performing his monologue to Holdaway in a parking lot. Holdaway sits on the hood of his beat-up car. Freddy paces back and forth as he performs his story. freddy (continuing) …but then that got to be a pain in the ass… (pages 63 – 64) Continuing the action both visually and through the ongoing anecdote, Tarantino moves us smoothly from one location to another. Freddy continues his monologue to Holdaway through the middle of page 65. Two locations (two shots as written) cover two-and-a-half pages of script. When we cut to a new location, we move from his practicing it alone or under Holdaway’s tutelage to him performing it before JOE and his boys. freddy (continuing) …She had a brick of weed she was sellin’, and she didn’t want to go to the buy alone… CUT TO: INT. BOOTS AND SOCKS BAR – NIGHT Freddy, JOE, NICE GUY EDDIE and MR. WHITE all sit around a table in a red-lighted smoky bar. Freddy continues his story. The crooks are enjoying the hell out of it. freddy …Her brother usually goes with her, but he’s in country unexpectedly. MR. WHITE What for? freddy Traffic tickets gone to warrant. They stopped him for something, found the warrants on ‘im, took ‘im to jail. She doesn’t want to walk around alone with all that weed. Well… (Page 65) Now the anecdote is being used for real — he’s performing for his life now in front of the men. They pop in once in a while with questions, making him ad lib on the spot, making him bring it more to life than just a memorized story. Then, in the boldest move, Tarantino takes it one more step; instead of just having Freddy relaying the story, he cuts to the scene as if the story is actually happening and has him live it. freddy …Now I’m carrying the weed in one of those carry-on bags and I gotta take a piss. So I tell the connection I’ll be right back, I’m goin’ to the little boys room… CUT TO: INT. MEN’S ROOM – TRAIN STATION – DAY MEDIUM ON FREDDY He walks through the door with a carry-on bag over his shoulder. Once he’s inside, he stops in his tracks. We move into a CU. freddy (v.o.) …So I walk into the men’s room, and who’s standing there? FREEZE FRAME On Freddy standing in front of six Los Angeles County Sheriffs and one German Shepherd. All of their eyes are on Freddy. Everyone is frozen. freddy (v.o.) …six Los Angeles County Sheriffs and a German Shepherd. (Page 66) And now we see it unfold as if it really happened, as if the totally fabricated anecdote Freddy is telling was a real, true event. And the beauty of these four scenes’ structuring is how we see and experience Freddy’s progression from merely learning a story to relay to making himself believe it; as it becomes real for us, we know that he has made it real for himself and, therefore, the men of the gang listening to him. Four scenes in four locations and six-and-a-half pages; tight, innovative storytelling that keeps in mind its budgetary restrictions and uses them to its greatest advantage. (This whole emphasis on script pages is not suggesting it’s more important to shoot huge chunks of screenplay pages than it is to put something substantial and important on the screen. The idea is that if you structure your script carefully to take advantage of whatever it is you have most readily available to you, you will then be able to allocate your resources more effectively so when you do have scenes requiring a lot of characters or locations or angles or effects, you’ll be able to shoot them because you have planned accordingly.) From here on out, the movie becomes more conventional in its scene structure. That’s not to say it becomes a conventional movie, just that in terms of its screenplay structure the scenes become shorter and use more locations. It certainly doesn’t become a travelogue, but it does take advantage of more venues than the first half. But even when it ventures into a potentially pricey area, such as a scene in a moving car, the focus is concentrated on the characters, not the physical environment. No mention is made of passing scenery or any fancy driving. The car interior becomes just another location, allowing the filmmaker to concentrate on the dialogue and the characters saying it. In one three-and-a-half page car scene, there are only four action/description sentences in the whole piece and everyone deals directly with the characters; two are “They all laugh.”, the other two are a variation of “The car reacts to how horrible that would be,” both referring to a story of a guy whose girlfriend super-glued his penis to his stomach. In a different scene, two-and-a-half pages long, beyond the opening action/description sentence that tells us who is sitting where, there is not another line of description — the scene is pure dialogue, again keeping us centered on the characters. The logistics of shooting moving scenes are never easy, but when you only have to worry about what is happening in the car as opposed to outside of it, it makes things much more possible. And finally, in the first last shot of the film, after the all the intensity of the climactic bloody Mexican standoff (yes, there is some on-screen violence but it is mostly restricted to gunfire and a few squibs, which even EL MARIACHI used) Tarantino once again puts the camera where it will get him the most effect at least expense of time and budget — squarely on his actor’s face. We now hear SIRENS, the SOUNDS of more CARS DRIVING UP, MEN RUNNING to the warehouse. While all this noise is going on, MR. WHITE tries to stand but FALLS DOWN. He somehow makes it to where MR. ORANGE lies. He lifts MR. ORANGE’s head, cradling it in his lap and stroking his brow. MR. WHITE (with much effort) Sorry, kid. Looks like we’re gonna do a little time. MR. ORANGE looks up at him and, with even more of an effort: MR. ORANGE I’m a cop. MR. WHITE doesn’t say anything, he keeps stroking Orange’s brow. MR. ORANGE (continuing) I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. MR. WHITE lifts his .45 and places the barrel between MR. ORANGE’s eyes. The CAMERA MOVES into an Extreme C.U. of MR. WHITE. The SOUNDS of outside STORM inside. We don’t see anything, but we HEAR a bunch of shotguns COCKING. police force (o.s.) Freeze, motherfucker! Drop your fucking gun! MR. WHITE looks up at them, smiles, PULLS the trigger. BANG We hear a BURST of SHOTGUN FIRE. MR. WHITE is BLOWN out of frame, leaving it empty. (Page 100) All the sound and the fury of the closing moments are conveyed off-screen through sound effects; the camera is focused solely on MR. WHITE’s eyes, where the real drama of the movie’s ending is happening. And ultimately, that is what it is all about — finding what will tell the dramatic truth of a moment on-screen. Hollywood has become more and more terribly enamored of it’s technological prowess; not just with its digital dinosaurs and high-tech effects, but even with it’s camera gear and lighting packages. In the Post-MTV movie era, flash and style has long since beaten substance. Just looking at Tarantino’s script for NATURAL BORN KILLERS and the visually aggressive, image splatter-fest of a movie Oliver Stone made from it shows how even Tarantino’s work is subject to this gross pandering. In a another example, Kevin Bacon in MURDER IN THE FIRST gives a career-high performance as an abused convict at Alcatraz; unfortunately, thanks to the ever-spinning, tumbling, panning and zooming camera of Marc Rocco, you almost don’t get to witness it. Allowing his eagerness to play with his equipment (pun only slightly unintended) to over-ride the importance of simply capturing the drama of his actors’ performances, wonderful moments are ruined. Unable to partake of such technically superior temptations, independents must instead concentrate on the simple things: capturing what is truly essential to the movie’s story. All this is not to say that Tarantino wouldn’t have written a wonderful directorial debut if he had had unlimited access to money; PULP FICTION shows that his quirky sensibility of violence, humor and non-linear storytelling are firmly in place even with more money and bigger stars (but even the budget for PULP FICTION was modest — it was produced for a third of the cost of the regular studio picture.) But the script to RESERVOIR DOGS shows how if a writer realistically looks at what resources he or she has available to them to make a movie, and fully embraces those restrictions and plots (in every sense of the word) to use them to their fullest, to mine their possibilities in helping create something new, they may find themselves discovering new gold in well-covered territory. Quentin Tarantino certainly did.