By Tomohiro Machiyama

A MESSAGE FROM THE MANAGEMENT

This interview was conducted in Los Angeles on August 28, 2003 during a press junket for KILL BILL: VOLUME ONE held exclusively for the Japanese media. In this one-on-one chat, Quentin Tarantino goes deep into the many influences for KILL BILL; it's mythology, and even the future for his characters beyond the two-part film. Originally conducted by Tomo Machiyama for Japan's Eiga Hi-Ho (Movie Treasures) magazine, Japattack is proud to present this interview for the first time anywhere in English transcribed from the original recordings. The usual spoiler warnings apply.
 

PREVIEWS OF COMING ATTRACTIONS

Hi, I'm Tomohiro Machiyama. I usually write only for Japanese Magazines, but I would like you people who cannot read Japanese to read my interview because Mr. Tarantino told me a lot of information that American critics and viewers might never know. The night before this interview, I first spoke with Tarantino at a party after the screening of Kill Bill. Unfortunately, I didn’t bring my tape recorder. We were both totally smashed, but I remember these things he told me. 

The bloody killing spree at the climax of KILL BILL is a kind of re-enactment of Shogun Assassin (Kenji Misumi, 1972, Japan *Bigger image). And he also admitted to adding a dash of Ichi the Killer (Takashi Miike, 2001, Japan) in it as well. For the orange sunset sky behind the airplane, he wanted to evoke the look of the opening scenes from Goke, BodySnatcher from Hell (Hajime Sato, 1968, Japan). He ordered the staff to shoot a miniature set of Tokyo like a landscape from the giant monster movie War of the Gargantuas (Ishiro Honda, 1966, Japan). He even screened a video of Gargantuas to Daryl Hannah because in his mind, Kill Bill is a kind of War of the Blonde Gargantuas. So, I didn't ask about these things in the next day interview. Are you ready? Here we go. 

AND NOW…
OUR FEATURE ATTRACTION 

Tomohiro Machiyama: Can you give me some comments about some of the films referenced in Kill Bill? 

Quentin Taranatino: Ok. Cool, cool. 

TM: The scene where Go Go Yubari (Chiaki Kuriyama) stabs a guy who approaches her for sex…was this from Battle Royale (Kinji Fukasaku, 2000, Japan)?

QT: I went out to dinner with Kinji Fuaksaku and Kenta (Kinji's son) and I was going "man, I love this movie! It is just so fantastic!" And I said, "I love the scene where the girls are shooting are shooting each other." And then Kenta starts laughing. So I ask, "why are you laughing?" He goes, "the author of the original Battle Royale novel would be very happy to hear that you liked that scene." And I go "why?" And he says, "well, because it's from Reservoir Dogs!" Even when I was watching it I was thinking "God, these 14 year old girls are shooting each other just like in Reservoir Dogs!" And Kenta said, "he took that from Reservoir Dogs, so he'll be very proud that you like that!" 

TM: I'm wondering why you changed the name of the girl force from Fox Force Five, in Pulp Fiction, to DiVAS in Kill Bill? 

QT: Well, the thing is, as similar as they are to each other, they are different. Fox Force Five were crime fighters. They were secret agents. The Deadly Vipers are NOT secret agents! They are killers! But the idea is very, very similar. It's like the flipside. 

TM: The DiVAS look like The Doll Squad (Ted V. Mikels, 1973, USA), right? 

QT: Oh yeah, very similar. They definitely have that Doll Squad or Modesty Blaise look to them. Those girls just look cool in their turtle necks. Honey West was an American TV show, and that's in there as well. 

TM: How about The Bride Wore Black (1968, Francois Truffaut, France)? 

QT: Here's the thing. I've never actually seen The Bride Wore Black. 

TM: Really? 

QT: I know of it, but I've never seen it. Everyone is like, "oh, this is really similar to The Bride Wore Black." I've heard of the movie. Its based on a Cornell Woolrich novel too, but it's a movie I've never seen. The reason I've never seen it is because…I've just never been a huge Truffaut, fan. So that's why I never got around to see it. I'm not rejecting it, I just never saw it. I'm a Goddard fan, not a Truffaut fan. So I know of it, I know all that stuff, but it's a movie I've never seen. 

TM: I thought of it because The Bride has that list of names she checks off. 

QT: Oh, is that in there too? 

TM: How about Hannie Caulder (Burt Kennedy, 1971, USA *Bigger image) ? 

QT: Oh yeah. Hannie Caulder is definitely in there. That was definitely of the revenge movies I was thinking about. I had a whole list of revenge movies, especially female ones like Lady Snowblood (Toshiya Fujita, 1973, Japan *Bigger image). But one of them definitely was Hannie Caulder. You know who I love in Hannie Caulder so much is Robert Culp. He is so magnificent in that movie and I actually kind of think there's a bit of similarity between Sonny Chiba and Uma and Raquel Welch and Robert Culp in Hannie. 

TM: How about Dead and Buried (Gary Sherman, 1981, USA)? 

QT: Ok, yeah. I've seen Dead and Buried. So what's the connection?

TM: Daryl Hannah disguises herself as a nurse and tries to kill the Bride in a coma with a syringe. 

OT: Oh! Yes! Lisa Blount! The girl from An Officer and a Gentleman! Yeah, exactly. Actually, to tell you the truth, there's another movie that I kind of got that idea a little bit more from. And that's John Frankenheimer's Black Sunday (1977, US). There's a scene where Marthe Keller goes into the hospital and disguises herself as a nurse and she's going to kill Robert Shaw with a poisoned syringe. 

TM: The character of Daryl Hannah is based on They Call Her One Eye (AKA Thriller, Bo Arne Vibenius, 1974,Sweden)?

QT: Oh, definitely! I love Christina Lindberg. And that's definitely who Daryl Hannah's character is based on. In the next movie, she's wearing mostly black. Just like They Call Her One Eye, she's got some color co-coordinated eye patches. And that is, of all the revenge movies I've ever seen, that is definitely the roughest. The roughest revenge movie ever made! There's never been anything as tough as that movie. 

TM: It was supposed to be a porno.

QT: Well, it has those insert shots in there. I remember showing Uma the trailer to They Call Her One Eye, and she said, "Quentin, I love that trailer…but I don't know if I can watch that movie! I'm actually scared to watch it. It looks too tough." I showed Daryl the movie. I gave her the video tape. She watched it without subtitles, just in Swedish. And she said, "Quentin! You had me watch a porno!" I said, "yeah, but a good porno!" She'd never had a director give her a porno movie to watch as homework! 

TM: How about Master Killer (AKA 36 Chambers of Shaolin, Chia-Liang Liu, 1978, Hong Kong)?

QT: I'm a huge fan of Master Killer and of Gordon Liu in particular. He's fantastic. He doesn't look any goddamn different today then he did back then. And it's just so cool to see both him and Sonny Chiba in the same film together. They are every bit the superstars. Living legends. As I am framing shots, I'm thinking "I can't believe Gordon Liu is in my movie! I can't believe it." And to have been so influenced by seventies kung fu films and to have, as far as I'm concerned, my three favorite stars of kung fu from three different countries .. Gordon Liu representing Hong Kong. Sonny Chiba representing Japan. And David Carradin representing America. That's a triple header. A triple crown. If Bruce Lee was still alive, he'd be in it. If Fu Sheng was still alive, he could be in it too.

TM: So will David Carradine play a flute in the sequel? 

QT: Oh yeah! He does! You saw that in the trailer, right? And it's actually “The Silent Flute". It's a flute he made, he carved it out of bamboo. And that is the silent flute from the movie Silent Flute (AKA Circle of Iron, Richard Moore, 1979, US). You've got a great thing with David because Bill really is a mix of Asiatic influences and genuine American Western influences. 

TM: Not only was he on Kung Fu, but he was also one of The Long Riders (Walter Hill, 1980, USA).

QT: Yeah, and who else are you going to get to do that?

TM: How did you get the rights to use the music cue from Master of the Flying Guillotine (Jimmy Wang Yu, 1975, Hong Kong)?

QT: We bought the rights to it. First, we had to find out what it was (Super 16 by German group Neu!). Once we tracked it down, we went to them and just commissioned it and they gave it to us. That little bit of music is even on the Kill Bill soundtrack album. (imitating music) "Doing! Doing! Doing!" 

TM: I can't remember the title, but there is a Hong Kong movie where Jimmy Wang Yu fights with 100 enemies. The fight in the House of Blue Leaves reminds me of it. 

QT: That's from Chinese Boxer (Jimmy Wang Yu, 1969, Hong Kong *Bigger image). It's where he's created the iron fist. He's turned his fist into iron and they're burned black. He's got a surgical mask over his face and he's got these mittens on his hands and Lo Lieh is the bad guy and he goes into the casino. Well, did you know that this is very historically important movie? That was the first full-on open handed contact movie in Hong Kong. Chinese Boxer is the first movie where the hero didn't fight with swords. He just fought with his hands. That was the first time that was done. I mean, there are kung fu movies before that. But this kind of like, what we know today as a real kung fu movie. Before that, they were doing wushu, swordplay; and even though they were doing it in a Chinese style, they still had one foot in the Japanese samurai movies. But with Chinese Boxer, they took that foot away. And that fight scene is so fantastic. That's become one of the staples of the genre: one against a hundred. Well, that was the first one. Wang Yu directed it too. It was so cool because I remember showing Yuen Woo-ping that scene to show him something I wanted to capture and Woo-ping goes, "Hey! That's my dad!" His father was one of the guys in the movie. You know, when all the guys are circling Wang Yu, he's the one with the chain. His dad was Simon Yuen, the old guy from Snake in Eagle's Shadow and Drunken Master. That's Woo-ping's father. 

TM: How about Takashi Miike's Fudoh (1996, Japan)?

QT: I haven't seen Fudoh. I know of Fudoh. I've seen the trailer for it. I couldn't be a bigger fan of Miike, but I've never seen Fudoh. I've been meaning to see it, but that's one I haven't seen yet.

TM: I thought the idea of the Crazy 88s was inspired by the teenage gangs from Fudoh. 

QT: I just thought that once O-Ren became the queen of crime in Tokyo, which is kind of a reference to Black Lizard (Kinji Fukasaku, 1968, Japan) because O-Ren runs the city the way Black Lizard did…she wouldn't have a bunch of bruisers. No! She'd have a bunch of moptops. This isn't in the movie, because I'd have to stop and tell the audience this but the Crazy 88s are…because O-Ren is half-Chinese and half-Japanese, so is her army. So there's 44 Chinese people and 44 Japanese people! But that's part of the mythology I would only go into if I wrote a book. The black suits are from Reservoir Dogs. And the masks are from Kato. I just thought that it looked really cool. Now, while I'm saying that I haven't seen Fudoh, I'm not saying I haven't been influenced by Takashi Miike. Personally, my favorite cinema right now is this violent pop cinema coming out of Japan. As far as a group of directors that are my favorites…and there's a lot of American directors that I really like…my favorite as far as a group is all the directors doing those kinds of movies in Japan. Obviously, I'm talking about Takashi Miike, Takashi Ishii, Sogo Ishii.

TM: How about Teruo Ishii? 

QT: Oh, Teruo Ishii is a fantastic director, a great director! I love Teruo Ishii. Also, Kiyoshi Kurosawa. And the other guy…I know him, I'm friends with him, but I keep forgetting his name…the guy who did Shark Skin Man and Peach Hip Girl and Party 7 (Katsuhito Ishii). He actually did some work on Kill Bill. He did the character drawing that starts the anime when you see O-Ren when she was eight and then you see Boss Matsumoto, you know, just those two drawings? He did those drawings for me just as a present. He didn't do any of the anime. That was Production IG. But he did those character drawings and I ended up using them in the movie. And, not only that, he did a drawing of Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah) in her nurse's outfit and she had a red cross on her eye patch. And I thought it was such a good idea that I put it in the movie. His name is in the credits, but he didn't get paid for it or anything. It was a gift. I met him in Hawaii and we became friends and I see him whenever I'm in Japan.
 

-Go to Tarantino Interview part 2

-Go to Kill Bill review
-Go to David Carradine interview
-Go to Lawrence Bender interview