By Tomohiro Machiyama
 
 

TM: How did you come up with the name O-Ren Ishii? 

QT: It wasn't like “I'm going to honor this movie or this thing,” but finding the right name for your character is one of the most important things about writing them. You almost can't really go forward until you get the right name. And what is the right name? Well, who the fuck knows that? You'll know it when you hear it. So as I'm just formulating the movie, I'm also watching a bunch of stuff to get myself going again on it. They used to show the Sonny Chiba TV show Kage no Gundan(Shadow Soldiers) on a Japanese TV station out here in Los Angeles during the eighties. Me and a bunch of my friends used to get together and watch it. And we'd tape it. So I'm going through my tapes from the eighties to look at the show. And one of the female ninja (played by Etsuko Shihomi, AKA Sister Streetfighter) on Kage no Gundan 4 was named O-Ren. I thought "Well, that a pretty name. And it's unusual too." Also the combination of O-Ren with the name Ishii I thought worked really good together. I wasn't necessarily trying to do an overt homage to Kage no Gundan, even though I love that show, but once I saw that name, I went with it. Then, that became her name. Lucy Liu fell in love with it. Everyone responded to it. Even Japanese people were like, "well .. that's a Japanese name, a very unusual one, but it's a good name." About Kage no Gundan for a bit. There's like multiple sequel shows. You know, Kage no Gundan 1, 2, 3, 4. Every time they did a new series it was always a different Hattori Hanzo. It was set a little further in history. Hattori Hanzo number three, Hattori Hanzo number four. It just kept on going down. So now Sonny Chiba is playing Hattori Hanzo one hundred and still continuing that character. Now the thing about this is that, the audience doesn't need to know any of this. I'm very much a believer that if you're creating your own universe and your own mythology, you can have no question unanswered. But here's the thing: I don't have to answer the questions to you the audience. You just need to know I know the answer. I can tell you the whole story of how Hattori Hanzo ended up in Okinawa and why he didn't make a sword for 30 years, and who the bald guy is. I can tell you that. I don't have to tell you this during the watching of the movie, but you need to know how large this world is. This is how much I'm going to tell you now, and what I don't tell you, you can figure out. You can make up your own things. I know what's going to happen with Nikki (Vivica A. Fox's daughter). She will grow up and she will seek her revenge. I could go backwards. Once we get all done with this, we're talking about the concept of doing a couple of prequels with maybe Production IG just doing full-on animation. You know, the origin of Bill for instance. But I could do it with any of the characters. As far as actually continuing the story…again, I don't know about shooting this in live-action or animation or writing it as a paperback, who knows? But it would be every ten years. Right now, The Bride is 30. The next one would be at 40. The last one would be ten years later when she's 50. 

TM: How about the quotation which went something like "if you want revenge, you have to be willing to kill God and even the Buddha"? 

QT: That was actually paraphrased - I rewrote it, just like I did with the Bible in Pulp Fiction - from the speech of the Yagyu ninja that Sonny Chiba would repeat at the beginning of every episode of the Yagyu Family Conspiracy TV show. And at the end of the movie, when Uma is in her helmet giving that speech, that's the theme from Yagyu Family Conspiracy playing in the background. 

TM: Did you get any inspiration from Seijun Suzuki? 

QT: It's funny…I'm not inspired by his movies as a whole, but by certain shots and just his willingness to just completely experiment to try and get images that are really cool or psychedelic. I'm very inspired by that. To me, his films…well, he's a little bit like Russ Meyer for me. It's easier to like sections of his films than the whole movie. I'm not putting him down, its just that I think he works better in sequences and scenes. And some movies work better than other movies. As for Russ Meyer, Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! is a complete masterpiece. That was one where everything worked. Suzuki did that with Branded to Kill (1967, Japan) even though I do like the first half better than the second. When you bring up Suzuki, are you more or less thinking about the Kabuki fight in the House of Blue Leaves with the silhouettes?

TM: Yes. 

QT: To me that was more something in my brain from Japanese cinema in general than Suzuki stuff in particular, but I do know what you are talking about. You'll see it again in Volume 2 when The Bride is in her training session with Pai Mei (Gordon Liu), there a big silhouette sequence against a big giant red background. Every 15th movie in Hong Kong had an opening sequence where the characters were doing martial arts in front of a background. Sometimes you saw them, sometimes you didn't. An usually the theme music from Isaac Hayes' Shaft was playing! 

TM: Here's a very general question. Should I laugh at this movie, or not? 

QT: I don't think you should laugh AT it, I think you should laugh WITH it. 

TM: Because I heard you laughing through the screening. 

QT: I don't hold a Japanese audience to the same rule that I would hold a black audience to. A black audience is like, "Ha ha ha ha!" You Japanese are a little more subdued when you watch a movie. Just because they're not going "Ha ha ha ha!" when they're watching it doesn't mean they're not enjoying it. I was having a good time because I was able to watch the audience without being intrusive. So I was smiling all the way. All my movies are funny, but I also wanted to go up and down, up and down. I want you to laugh, laugh, laugh, and then stop you laughing and show you something else. Maybe start you crying, and then get you laughing again. I want to just constantly keep moving. For me, if I'm watching a movie and I'm going from laughing to crying, that's me having a good time. That's when I know I'm seeing a movie. I'm being jerked around emotionally and it's great. 

TM: I guess I'm thinking specifically about the scene at the end of the duel with Lucy Liu. 

QT: It's supposed to be kind of amusing and poetic at the same time. And also just a teeny-tiny bit solemn. When you see her head, it's funny. And then her line, "that really was a Hattori Hanzo sword.," that's funny. But then, the next shot is not funny, when she tips over and Meiko Kaji is singing about revenge on the soundtrack. So, it's all together. Funny. Solemn. Beautiful. Gross. All at the same time.

TM: Do you think American audiences have this kind of taste?

QT: The thing is, for some people they'll be seeing things they've never seen before. In Hong Kong, in China, in Japan, in Korea, they are going to have a context for where some of this stuff is coming from. Even when it comes to stuff like Macaroni Westerns (the Japanese name for Spaghetti Westerns). Most young people in America have never seen a Macaroni Western. That actually can be an extremely good thing! You know where these things are coming from, but it's still kind of a new experience to see Kill Bill, right? Well, for them, imagine how new it is going to be. 

TM: About the Ironside musical theme. That music is very popular in Japan. That theme was used on an "Inside Edition" style tabloid show. 

QT: Here's the thing. They use that theme in Five Fingers of Death (Chang Ho Cheng, 1973, Hong Kong *Bigger image) and every time, the screen glows red. You know it from this tabloid show, but when I was a kid, I knew it from Ironside. 
So every time the screen would glow, people in the audience would bust up laughing because it was the Ironside theme. But at a certain point, they actually begin to like it better in the movie. By the third time they hear it, the audience is going "YEAH! KICK ASS LO LIEH!" I think it works great. And in Bill the third time you hear it, you know she's going to kick ass! Uh .hey, can I ask you a question? Did you have a favorite scene in the film? Can I ask you what was it? 

TM: I think the fight with Go Go Yubari (Chiaki Kuriyama). 

QT: That's mine too. I'd never shot action before, and this was my chance to really do it, and that was my first action scene. That was how I learned to do it, on that one. And I think that my be, so far, my favorite thing I've ever shot. Just cinematically, director-wise, I think that might be the best thing I've done so far. 

TM: During the fight, Go Go is kind of a Master of the Flying Guillotine. 

QT: She definitely is. That was Chiaki doing most of that stuff. She spent three months learning how to mess with that ball. People ask me, "where did you get that ball from?" Actually, I didn't really take it from any movie. I mean, I've seen Hong Kong movies where they swing things, but this one I kind of created. So people say, "what's it called?" And I say, "the Go Go Ball!" 

TM: Do you think Japanese audience will understand the line, "Silly rabbit, Trix are for kids?"

QT: Oh yeah, the Trix commercial. There's all of these Japanese and Chinese things in the movie that I have no expectations that Americans will get at all and that's one of the things that I don't expect anyone outside the US to get. In my thought, that was a something O-Ren and The Bride used to say to each other when they were Deadly Vipers on a job. It was a private joke between the two of them. 

TM: How about the samurai swords on the airplane? 

QT: Well, this whole movie takes place in this special universe. This isn't the real world. It's funny that you bring it up because in the original script, Bill was going to have a different introduction. This is back when I was writing the part for Warren Beatty. The idea was that Bill would show up at this casino carrying a samurai sword, and the bodyguards, who also have samurai swords, ask him to leave it at the front desk. Warren goes, "wait a minute, hold it Quentin Everybody has a samurai sword?" I go "yeah." He says, "how does that happen?" I say, "that's the world that this movie takes place in. Everybody has a samurai sword." And he goes, "oh! So this isn't real life?" I go, "no! this is a movie movie universe and in this universe, people carry samurai swords. Not only do they carry samurai swords, not only can you bring a samurai sword on an airplane, there's a place on the airplane seat to put your samurai sword! Now, I'm not saying you can do this on every flight, but on Japanese airlines you better believe there's a place for you to put your samurai sword! 

TM: I think maybe you should have directed Road to Perdition because it was inspired by Lone Wolf and Cub.

QT: I haven't actually seen that. I remember me and Samuel Jackson saying "oh shit! This is just Lone Wolf and Cub! What the fuck is this?" I wouldn't mind seeing it, but it just looked so arty. You know, drowning in art. That was one of the things I wanted to be really strong about when it came to Kill Bill. This isn't an art film mediation on these movies. This is the genuine article. The real deal. And that was one of the ideas behind splitting it in half. There just seems something pretentious about a three hour exploitation film. But two! Two exploitation movies! That's ambitious. 

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