(source: Premeire Magazine Online, Feb. 18, 2001)
by Brain Koppelman
One of the writers of Rounders discovers that there?s no escaping the influence of the Pulp Fiction creator.
I have a friend, a novelist of serious critical renown, who has lately turned to screenwriting. While talking shop one night, he let slip that he keeps a copy of the Pulp Fiction screenplay right next to his computer. He does this, he said, to keep himself honest?to stop himself before he even starts to imitate Quentin Tarantino. I smiled when I heard this. It was a writer?s smile, crooked and smirking, borne of the fact that I was not alone in my suffering?that he, too, felt what I call ?the Anxiety of Tarantino.? Like all Hollywood diseases, the Anxiety of Tarantino has long periods of dormancy but always seems to surface at the worst possible time. Now, for instance. Knockaround Guys, a film David Levien and I wrote and directed, is nearly completed. The story of the sons of wise guys who find themselves caught between law-abiding society and their criminal relatives, Knockaround Guys is an extremely personal film. We grew up around these people and knew we would tell their stories long before Tarantino left that video store. But today we are on the soundstage, watching a color dupe of our movie while Foleys are being mixed in. Under the sound of a fist hitting flesh plays ?Romeo?s Tune,? by Steve Forbert. The song, a lilting folk-rock number from the ?70s, really makes the scene: It elevates what could have been a routine bar fight into something darker, more distinct. I look around at the mixing engineers?as hard to impress as bartenders in comedy clubs?and their faces reveal that the moment is playing. They are involved. All is well in my manipulative filmmaker?s heart. But then, everything shifts. I am no longer hearing ?Romeo?s Tune.? Instead, I hear ?Stuck in the Middle With You,? by Stealers Wheel. And Vin Diesel stops dishing out punishment so Michael Madsen and that poor hump Marvin the Cop can step in. I am hit with a full-on case of the Anxiety of Tarantino. The Anxiety of Tarantino has its antecedent in Harold Bloom?s literary theory ?the Anxiety of Influence.? Bloom, the famed Yale University professor, says that all work created after a truly great work exists in the shadow of that work. My anxiety is that all films created after Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction exist in their shadow. In the same way that any star-crossed lovers will echo Romeo and Juliet, all young men with guns must reckon with Vincent Vega and his brother Vic. Bloom further states that the writer wrestles with the ghosts of past works each time he sits down to create his own, that the only way to create an original piece of literature is to repudiate or extend that which has come before. Thus, filmmakers have to accept that when Uma Thurman drew that little rectangle on the screen, and when Samuel L. Jackson took that last big sip of Brad?s tasty beverage, everything changed: The postmodern gangster film was born. Any film made after that about young men with guns would either be a rejection of the idea of the postmodern gangster?a throwback to a time before movie gangsters were hip and erudite?or an extension of it?even more-existential hit men, with even more cultural awareness; but it would be one or the other. It?s the same with the techniques Tarantino employs?chronology flipping, narrative jumps, ironic music. He didn?t invent these tricks, but he sure put his brand on them. When Levien and I started writing Knockaround Guys, it was as if Tarantino were in the room with us, loudly clearing his throat whenever a character of ours said something a little too cool, or our story strayed from a straight line, or two wise guys ended up with guns pointed at one another from close range. But as our script grew into something real, as we got deeper into the filmmaking process, we realized we had only two choices: do what we thought worked for the movie, or sit around trying to figure out what Tarantino wouldn?t do. It?s no choice. So our guys wear the clothes that young hoodlums wear, talk as cool as the fellas we grew up listening to; and if a guy needs a beating, they throw him one. And if, at first, it brings Quentin to mind . . . well, fuck it. We want you to get so caught up in the story that by the end you won?t be thinking about the filmmaking at all. Perhaps that?s an impossible goal in our show business?savvy society, and I understand why. To me, Quentin Tarantino is one of the masters. When the lights came up at the end of Pulp Fiction, I felt liberated. I had seen something new and strange, and it changed me. It seemed like anything was possible in film. But the freedom presaged by that movie turned out to be illusory. Tarantino covered so much ground that he hardly left any untouched. Of course, it?s not just filmmakers who need to wrestle down the ghost of Tarantino, but the critics as well?many of whom are already pinned to the mat. Just click over to the Movie Review Query Engine (www.mrqe.com) and you?ll see what I mean. Nearly every review of every movie dealing with men and firearms mentions Tarantino?s name, as if leaving it out would be the critical equivalent of a Romanian gymnast deciding he didn?t want to do the pommel horse in his all-around routine?simply unacceptable in competition. Even the redoubtable Roger Ebert can get caught in the trap. In reviewing Christopher McQuarrie?s movie The Way of the Gun, Ebert picked up that the character names Mr. Parker and Mr. Longbaugh were an allusion to an earlier film, but he got the film wrong. Ebert focused on the appellation ?Mr.? to draw a comparison to Reservoir Dogs, but totally missed that Parker and Longbaugh were the given names of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. What more could McQuarrie have done to telegraph that his was a different kind of film?a western of sorts?about birth, death, and the consequences of a life outside the lines of society? Nothing. Where does this leave guys like me, who grew up watching the films of Coppola, Scorsese, Mamet, and the Coen brothers, and always wanted to make personal films in their tradition? Right where Harold Bloom says it does: fighting against what has already been created and trying to make some room for ourselves. And if that doesn?t work?if we open the papers on the day of release only to find Quentin?s name in paragraph one of every review?what then? We can always turn to the costume drama. Unless Tarantino gets there first.
