Tarantino sits on the concrete, knees pulled to his chest, nursing an oversize Chinese beer and munching a sandwich packed with the yeasty Australian spread Vegemite. The day is over and he's chatting with the caterers and Thurman's stand-in, telling anyone in earshot that he'll be hosting a screening of the 1982 Jamie Lee Curtis thriller ''Road Games'' in his hotel room later that night. Around the corner, Daryl Hannah, who costars as The Bride's one-eyed archrival, Elle Driver, strums an acoustic guitar. The 39-year-old director flashes a smile: ''This is when I'm happiest. I'm making movies. I'm watching movies. And in between, I'm living the life of Riley. I mean, we're in China!''
Of course, they were almost in Europe making an entirely different film. What Tarantino was really doing during the five years between ''Jackie Brown'' and that Vegemite sandwich was writing a World War II epic called ''Inglorious Bastards.'' ''It was basically my bunch-of-guys-on-a-mission movie,'' he says. ''And I'm still going to do it. It's one of the best things I've ever written, if not the best.'' But it was also taking over his life -- like something out of ''Wonder Boys,'' Tarantino couldn't stop writing. ''The last five years? Oh, he was definitely writing,'' says Bender, with a laugh. ''I think he probably wrote enough for three World War II movies.''
And as far as everyone was concerned, at least one of those three movies would be next. That is, until the filmmaker ran into Thurman with her husband, Ethan Hawke, at the Miramax Oscar party in 2000; they hadn't seen each other for two years, but he left their reunion committed to doing ''Kill Bill,'' and a year later the script was finished.
So, finally, ''we were in Cannes, all ready to announce that we'd be there in 2002 with ['Kill Bill'],'' says Bender. ''That's when Quentin came to me and Harvey and said, 'Uh, guys, Uma's pregnant.''' He groans good-naturedly.
And so it wasn't until this past June that ''Kill Bill'' -- a movie so gory that a single scene required 100 gallons of blood and so elaborate that the same sequence took nearly as long to shoot as all of ''Pulp Fiction'' -- began in Beijing. Thurman stepped into the role Tarantino had written for her, that of a vengeance-thirsty assassin who is left for dead at the altar by her former employer (the titular criminal mastermind Bill, played by David Carradine) and his associates (Hannah, Lucy Liu, Vivica A. Fox, and Michael Madsen). ''You've really got to be four different kinds of freak to get this script,'' muses Carradine, who was offered the role after Warren Beatty backed out. ''You've got to be into trashy movies and epic movies and kung fu and samurai stuff and comic books and cartoons and spaghetti Westerns and gangster movies. Lucky me. I'm into all of it.''
Unfortunately, not everyone was. So Tarantino handed out 35 videotapes (everything from ''The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly'' to obscure Japanese anime) to key cast members and had kung fu double-feature screenings that stretched long into the night at his L.A. home. Then, just three months after having her son, Levon (her daughter, Maya, is 4), Thurman arrived in China for training. In a few months she lost 50 pounds and gained martial-arts skills at the hands of wirework expert Master Yuen Wo-Ping (''The Matrix''; ''Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon''), and the approximately $45 million movie started smoking like a hitman with a Red Apple cigarette.
''What I always tell people is that I have two universes, okay?'' says Tarantino, watching Thurman limber up between takes. ''There's the Quentin universe, the 'movie' universe that 'Reservoir Dogs,' 'True Romance,' and 'Pulp Fiction' take place in. That universe is realer than real life. Then I have what I call a 'movie movie' universe. Basically, okay, when the characters in 'Dogs' or 'Pulp Fiction' go to the movies, these are the movies they see. So that's 'From Dusk Till Dawn' and 'Natural Born Killers.' This is the first time I've directed a movie in the 'movie movie' universe. I just wanted to do something fun...'' He trails off as the first AD approaches, glaring at the journalist with a look that says ''Listen, pal, we're already a month behind schedule'' and performing the universal pantomime for a rolling camera.
Tarantino looks up and turns his attention to the set, where Gordon Liu, with a flowing white beard, stands perfectly erect in full robes, preparing to whack Thurman on the head with a heavy, gnarled staff. That grin bursts on Tarantino's face as he pops up, points, giggles, and utters his favorite word in the whole wide world: ''Coooooooool!''
You Might Also Like
- DVD Review Kill Bill -- Vol. 1 (Apr 13, 2004) | Chris Willman
- Movie Review Kill Bill -- Vol. 1 (Oct 10, 2003) | Owen Gleiberman
- Photo Gallery 25 best action movies since '83 (1988) | Marc Bernardin
- All About Kill Bill -- Vol. 1
- Movie Commentary Uma Thurman kicks butt in the ''Kill Bill'' movies (Oct 10, 2003)
- DVD Commentary Uma Thurman made our list of favorite movie hitmen (Apr 13, 2004)
