Breaking Tarantino's Code
July 24, 2008 10:58 PM   Subscribe

 
Alternative Youtube link.
posted by phaedon at 11:12 PM on July 24, 2008


WOW! phaedon, thanks for posting this!

i'm a huge tarantino fan, and i'm kind of shocked that i didn't pick up on some of this before. in fact, this short might just inspire another re-viewing of his entire ouvre, chronologically.

wow. just, WOW! if it's true, he's a helluva lot more brilliant than i gave him credit for. and i've always thought he was pretty freaking brilliant.
posted by CitizenD at 12:00 AM on July 25, 2008


he's a helluva lot more brilliant than i gave him credit for.

Don't get me wrong; I love this kind of conjecture, and I love Tarantino....but he steals from himself as much as he steals from everyone else he admires. I don't think very much of that was premeditated, and there's a good chance much of it was coincidental. Fun, but flimsy.
posted by carsonb at 12:05 AM on July 25, 2008


There's no way that Mia Wallace and the Bride are the same person - their characters are just too different. Same with Jules and the organ player. There are plenty of links throughout Tarantino's corpus, and they've been well-documented. But not everything is a link. The author of this video is pretty much claiming that if an actor appears in two different Tarantino movies, then he or she is playing the same character in both. That's going way too far.
posted by painquale at 12:58 AM on July 25, 2008


Nice find, and a great short film. Thanks!

I knew some of these connectons, but not nearly all. As said I guess some were intended and some were not, but there are some great connections beeing drawn here. Tarantino seriously knows his films, and that makes them even more fun to watch.
posted by Drix at 2:05 AM on July 25, 2008


Interesting!
posted by flippant at 2:39 AM on July 25, 2008


When Quentin Tarantino himself is done watching this, he's going to look up from a mirror on his desk, wipe his nose, open his eyes real wide, and then have a one sided conversation with whoever is nearby for about two hours.
posted by redteam at 3:04 AM on July 25, 2008 [9 favorites]


The dialog is very worth watching. Nicely done.
posted by dabitch at 4:00 AM on July 25, 2008


Good stuff.

CitizenD wrote: wow. just, WOW! if it's true, he's a helluva lot more brilliant than i gave him credit for. and i've always thought he was pretty freaking brilliant.

You did get that the film is ripping the piss out of daft fanboys inventing theories, right?
posted by jack_mo at 4:02 AM on July 25, 2008


On this FPP: Love it. Seu Jorge is great in anything.

On the "Not Fooling Anyone" stuff: I've always wished Tarantino were less coy about all the stuff he's ripping/riffing off (take your side.)

Since in every film, some of it is obvious to me (an old film fan but not a hardcore student) that I always just assume the rest is a pile of references I don't get.

He does do a bit too much of happily letting people assume that he originates the things he perpetuates, but it's a convenient schtick. He's always got "Of course it's from Blood in the Streets, what are you, some kind of freshman film imbecile for not getting that?" to fall back on.

None of this explains why every character has to talk exactly the same, though.
posted by rokusan at 4:27 AM on July 25, 2008


404
posted by Eideteker at 4:58 AM on July 25, 2008


wicked fun times.

can anyone tell me what Seu Jorge is supposed to be getting at, or is he just supposed to sound mysterious and non sequitor?
posted by es_de_bah at 6:17 AM on July 25, 2008


The author of this video is pretty much claiming that if an actor appears in two different Tarantino movies, then he or she is playing the same character in both.

I only made it half-way through (at work). Did he explain how Mr Pink came to be the Buddy Holly waiter in Pulp Fiction or Tim Roth Mr Orange and Pumpkin the robber?

Or Jimmy (Mr Brown) not recognising The Wolf (Mr White) when he came to clear up the mess, or vice versa when they were at the diner in Resevoir Dogs?

In any case given Tarintino's lack of control over casting True Romance and NBK the theory collapses.

Good fun though thanks for posting. Pop culture will eat itself!
posted by therubettes at 7:05 AM on July 25, 2008


Great post. Great short film.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 7:52 AM on July 25, 2008


"Federer is the tennis player version of Tarantino."

Haha... Awesome.
posted by Menomena at 8:04 AM on July 25, 2008


Yeah, this was a sort of ho-hum fish-in-barrel shoot until Federer comes up. A shaggy dog story, but an excellent one.
posted by rusty at 8:21 AM on July 25, 2008


(stares at blue MetaFilter background)

Is that what I think it is?
posted by hal9k at 8:28 AM on July 25, 2008 [1 favorite]


The Scagnettis are brothers, like the Vegas. But, yeah, they all do sort of exist in the same universe, and he recycles characters at will. I think the real secret to Tarantino's recent films is his longstanding film nerd love affair with actor Michael Parks.
posted by Astro Zombie at 8:29 AM on July 25, 2008


That's just silly. Everyone knows that it's Marsellus Wallace's soul in that briefcase. That's why he has a bandaid on the back of his head in the scene where he's talking to Butch in the bar. That's where his soul came out.
posted by diogenes at 8:31 AM on July 25, 2008 [3 favorites]


Really cool short! I really dig tight, short, well scripted films like this. Also, Tarantino has made some awesome movies, but what really fascinates me is....

Our brains are (currently) the best pattern recognition machines in the world. The most versatile at least. Try staring at a "noisy" carpet for a while, if you need proof. Any good storyteller leaves enough bits and pieces and odds and ends lying around that we can draw any number of conclusions on our own, reflecting our current state of mind. And they are infinitely more meaningful to us than spoon fed material. In a whole corpus of work, a good storyteller hands us the material for an unlimited amount of speculation, theories, arguments, and interpretation.

Seems like Tarantino is one of the best at this. At least my mind takes readily to it...
posted by no1hatchling at 8:40 AM on July 25, 2008


I definitely liked the Fox Force Five conection, but the rest of it was a little meh to me.

If Tarantino did deeper films instead of pulp, there's be more to look for in them than recycled character names and occupations.

No Four Rooms? That's a real shame.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 10:59 AM on July 25, 2008


I guess I really didn't think that the point of the post was "Hey, look at this cool theory about Tarantino", so much as "Hey, look at this engaging, well-written short film."
posted by Squid Voltaire at 2:55 PM on July 25, 2008


There's no way that Mia Wallace and the Bride are the same person - their characters are just too different. Same with Jules and the organ player.

During the "cleaner" sequence in Pulp Fiction, Jules says, "That's just Kool and the Gang." Then, in Kill Bill Vol. 2, the organ player claims that he used to be a member of Kool and the Gang. Coincidence? I think not!
posted by jonp72 at 8:27 AM on July 26, 2008


I thought the film was more of an ode to overthinking a plate of beans. The connections drawn get increasingly far-fetched as it goes on--the guy that dies at the beginning of Pulp Fiction later becomes an organ player? Really?

Also, now I know the correct way to end this sort of conversation. Just make the one comparison that is so whacked-out and irrelevant that nothing else can stand up to it.
posted by LogicalDash at 11:43 AM on July 26, 2008 [1 favorite]


Samuel Jackson doesn't die in Pulp Fiction, but you're right this is a bit far-fetched.

I still like it though!
posted by P.o.B. at 12:24 PM on July 26, 2008


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