Dialogue With Quenton Tarantino

Hollywood's prince of pulp is back, and he's more obsessive than ever. Six years after the acclaimed but comparatively modest "Jackie Brown" and nearly a decade since "Pulp Fiction," writer-director Quentin Tarantino has returned to epic form with Miramax Films' "Kill Bill-Vol. 1." The film is the first installment in a two-part blood symphony founded on the leitmotif of revenge and played out with martial arts bravado so relentlessly ambitious that Hong Kong may adopt him as one of its own. The indefatigable Tarantino sat down with The Hollywood Reporter's Dylan Callaghan to discuss "Kill Bill," the World War II epic he's planning and his favorite romantic comedies. The Hollywood Reporter: You've said that when you start penning a new movie, the first thing you often do is find an opening scene based on a song. Is that still the case? Quentin Tarantino: It's been the case pretty much from the beginning, actually.

THR: How does that work?

Tarantino: How it works exactly is that I've talked before about how I kinda dive into my record collection to find the music that has the rhythm the movie will work at. Well, that's exactly how I do it in a very general way. The specific way I do it is I write and think of the movie in chronological order — at least in terms of the movie itself. In other words, I start at the beginning and work my way through to the end. I often don't know 100% how it's going to end. I have ideas of where I'm going to go and what I want to do, but I'm working my way through it. It's kind of the way a lot of novelists write, not the way a lot of screenwriters write. The point being is that the opening-credit sequence is very important to me. The reason it's so important is that it is the only mood moment that is allowed in today's Hollywood blockbuster filmmaking.



THR: Is it then the most crucial mood moment in any film?

Tarantino: I think it is. You're setting up. You're setting up the mood and the flavor and the anticipation of what it is you're getting into. Also, great opening-credit sequences — (searching for words with hands outstretched) they're just so special. It's just like, why not do a great one? They're just so much fun. The right use of music, the right font in the opening credits — you know that's why I pick all my fonts, I design them all, I mix them up — with the right music, the way it plays and pulls you in, it's just so exciting and wonderful and moving. So when I (first begin a new script), I have to — before I can really go any further — I have to find the opening credits.



THR: Was that the case with "Kill Bill" and "Bang Bang" (Nancy Sinatra's trancelike version of the Sonny Bono song "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)" over "Kill Bill's" opening sequence)?

Tarantino: