After the massive, worldwide success of Pulp Fiction, which grossed a whopping $213 million+ on a miniscule $8 million budget and won awards all over the country, including the coveted Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and the Oscar for Best Screenplay, Quentin Tarantino basically had a license to print money and could do practically anything he wanted. Somewhat understandably, he opted to have a little fun before tackling the difficult prospect of following up a film that was so universally beloved.
Firstly, he wanted to follow through on his initial idea to do a proper anthology, which had been the plan for Pulp Fiction before Tarantino scrapped the idea and decided to make it a non-linear film divided into various stories all revolving around the same group of characters. But for Four Rooms, he wanted to follow the well-tread format of most anthologies, which is to say a set of stories typically all written and directed by different people.
In addition to himself, he drafted a talented group of filmmakers he'd met while touring Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction all over the country to various locations at different film festivals. There was good friend Robert Rodriguez, who was coming off the independent film success of the ultra-low-budget El Mariachi, and had just shot the sequel-cum-remake, Desperado, with stars Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek, both of whom would appear in his anthology segment as well.
Rodriguez was present on the set of Pulp Fiction at times and even directed a few scenes, the ones in which Tarantino himself acted. As a return favor, Tarantino shot a cameo in Desperado and invited Rodriguez to direct a segment of Four Rooms. The following year, the two would collaborate yet again on From Dusk Till Dawn, which we'll cover in my next review.
There was also writer/director Allison Anders, whose film Gas Food Lodging had also been a huge hit on the film festival circuit the same year as Reservoir Dogs, winning many awards along the way. It's well-worth seeing, especially if you're a Fairuza Balk (Return to Oz, The Craft) or Dinosaur Jr. fan, and I know you're out there. (See what I did there?) Anders brought with her the star of that film, Ione Skye, of Say Anything fame.
Finally, rounding out the group, was writer/director Alexandre Rockwell, of In the Soup fame, another film that was blowing up on the film festival circuit at the same time as Reservoir Dogs. It was Rockwell that came up with the general premise of the film, aka the hotel setting and having each story take place in a different room.
He brought along with him his then-wife, Jennifer Beals, of Flashdance fame, who had also starred in Soup, alongside Dogs star Steve Buscemi. Beals and Tarantino were also longtime friends, with Beals even letting QT crash on her couch when he was struggling financially back in the day.
As a pay-it-forward-style payback, QT also cast her in his segment, playing the same character as she did in her husband's segment, thus making her the only actor to appear in multiple segments besides star Tim Roth, who played the much-beleaguered bellhop, Ted, who appeared in all of them. (On a side note, the role was originally written with Steve Buscemi in mind, which could have been interesting.)
Writer/director Richard Linklater, of Slacker and Dazed & Confused fame, was also supposed to contribute, but was unable to do it because of a prior commitment. Had he participated, the film simply would have been retitled Five Rooms, but with his dropping out, it went down to four, obviously.
As with most anthologies, the various entries are of wildly varying quality, with Tarantino's naturally a stand-out and the concluding story of the collection, if not the best of the bunch. Personally, I really like Rodriguez' segment, "The Misbehavers," though it lacks a proper ending- still, it's hard to beat that final shot of the segment, so I can see why he quit while he was ahead.
The film revolves around a single evening- New Year's Eve- at a swanky hotel, the Mon Signor, and the misadventures of Ted ("Don't call me Theodore") the bellhop on duty, played by QT regular Tim Roth, in a quirky turn seemingly inspired by silent films and perhaps a little Jerry Lewis, who also played a bellhop in The Bellboy.
After a cute animated opening sequence that was modeled after similar ones in the Pink Panther films- note that the animated "Mr. Orange" in the shot of the Reservoir Dogs figures that makes up the A Band Apart production company logo is shown morphing into Ted the bellhop, as the same actor played both- we get right into the action with Anders' segment, "The Missing Ingredient."
The slight-but-enjoyable story revolves around a coven of witches that meet up at the hotel in an attempt to resurrect their goddess, Diana. Diana is played by Amanda De Cadenet, who some of my British readers might recognize as the co-host of The Word and The Big Breakfast, but is perhaps better known in the US as a celebrity photographer and interviewer, hosting Lifetime's The Conversation and later, Undone, talk shows.
The witches are played by the aforementioned Ione Skye, Valeria Golino (Big-Top Pee Wee, Rain Man), Sammi Davis (Mona Lisa, The Rainbow), Lili Taylor (also of Say Anything), Alicia Witt (TV's Twin Peaks, Cybil) and none other than Madonna, previously the subject of one of QT's rants in the opening of Reservoir Dogs. Madonna apparently was tickled by the whole thing and loved the film and even jokingly gave QT a copy of her then-latest album, Erotica, signed "It's about love, not dick- Love, Madonna"! 😂
It's hard to complain about a segment which finds Skye and Davis topless for the majority of their screen time, but truth be told, there's not much to this one. Basically, everyone was tasked with obtaining a particular ingredient to add to the sacrificial bowl used to bring back Diana, but the wily Skye swallowed hers, which was- well, there's no proper way to say this, so I'll just go with sperm. (I guess we know her answer to the eternal question!)
As such, she's tasked to get some more pronto, and lucky Ted gets to be the culprit. Hard to believe he complains about it later, much less that he hesitates and has to be "bewitched" to do it, but such is the case here. Skye, who looks like a combination of Twin Peaks' Audrey Horne (aka Sherilyn Fenn) and actress Alexandra Daddario (American Horror Story: Hotel, True Detective) is a knock-out, so Ted should be thanking her, quite frankly.
Anyway, needless to say, this is the titular "Missing Ingredient" of the segment, and she ably retrieves it and the ceremony continues, with Diana's curse broken and her reborn to the world at the end. That's really all there is to it. It's cute and it's fun seeing Madonna play a mom (!) to Alicia Witt- who wears a T-shirt with the word "Pussy" on it for most of the segment, BTW, lol- but there's not much to this one.
Faring slightly better is Rockwell, with his segment, "The Wrong Man." The fun begins when a "long-haired hippie scum" partygoer (played by producer Lawrence Bender, basically reprising his Pulp Fiction role, only with more dialogue) calls for some ice, but gives out the wrong room number. When Ted arrives, he finds a man holding his wife hostage at gunpoint- or is he?
The man in question is Siegfried (David Proval, Mean Streets), who promptly holds Ted hostage as well. His wife is Angela (Jennifer Beals), and he suspects she is having an affair... with Ted. Ted, of course, is completely innocent, and tries his best to defuse the situation, but it only gets worse and Ted realizes that it's actually some sort of kinky role-playing scenario that he's unwittingly been drawn into.
Eventually, he manages to escape, only to run into someone looking for the aforementioned party. Ted doesn't stop him when he goes for the room Ted just left, and we hear the "game" begin again with a new "player" as he hastily runs away. This one is only slightly better than the previous installment, story-wise, but sorry, guys, there's no nudity this time around.
Although if you've ever wanted to see Beals bound and ball-gagged, you're in the right place. Apparently, her husband did- which may be why they divorced shortly thereafter. Still, she doesn't get to talk much here, so it's a good thing she crops up later, decidedly unbound, albeit barefoot, as is QT's wont. (Talk about out of the frying pan into the fire.)
You do get to see Ritchie from The Sopranos kiss Tim Roth, so there's that, if that sort of thing floats your boat. And it is amusing to see Lawrence Bender puke out a window onto Roth's character when he tries to flee the room through a window, but overall, there's not much to this one, either.
Thankfully, Rodriguez delivers the goods with his entry, "The Misbehavers," which may be my favorite of the bunch. In this one, a husband (Antonio Banderas) and his wife (Tamlyn Tomita, The Karate Kid II, The Joy Luck Club) have second thoughts about bringing their two kids (Lana McKissack and Danny Verduzco) to the New Year's Eve party they're going to, so they recruit Ted into serving as a babysitter- along with the TV, that is.
The husband says all he has to do is check up on the kids every 30 minutes or so and they'll be fine watching TV until around midnight, when he's to put them to bed. However, if anything happens to them... it's Ted's head. He gives Ted, who initially protests, a cool $500 to sweeten the deal and off they go. Well, as you might have guessed from the title of the story, the two kids are a handful, and are constantly calling Ted and requesting stuff and being general pests.
At one point, the boy discovers that the adult channel is working and starts to watch a stripper (played by Salma Hayek- sorry, guys, she also stays clothed), much to his sister's consternation. They also watch Bedhead, Rodriguez' early short, which you can also watch here, as well as a cartoon that later will crop up in From Dusk Till Dawn.
The story is partially inspired by (spoiler) the urban legend about someone staying in a hotel room and smelling a rank odor. After a certain point, they pinpoint it to the bed itself and investigate, only to discover that there's a dead body hidden in the box springs, which is also what happens here.
When Ted is summoned to take care of it, all hell breaks loose- the boy smokes a cigarette and tosses it over his shoulder when Ted arrives, starting a fire with the spilled champagne he and his sister were drinking. Meanwhile, the sister finds a hypodermic needle in the bedside drawer and stabs Ted with it in the leg, then he grabs it and is holding it up in the air with one hand while grasping the leg of the dead hooker with the other, when, naturally, the father comes home.
He catches all of this in the act in one of the greatest still frames I've ever seen in a film (see pic above). My only complaint about this one is that we never see the situation reconciled. One would think that Banderas' character would go through the roof, but I guess not, as Ted is back to business as usual right after, in the next segment. Maybe he was so drunk he just waved it off?
Whatever the case, Ted lives to bellhop another day, but understandably, by this point, he's had enough and wants to bail. He calls the manager, played by stand-up comedian Kathy Griffin, making her second appearance in a QT film here. In the scene with her are a host of QT's fellow Video Archives employees, along with Marisa Tomei as a stoner type, which is fun.
Griffin manages to talk Ted down off the ledge, mostly because of the presence of the hotel's star resident at the moment, eccentric director Chester Rush, played, of course, by Tarantino himself, whose residence the manager can't afford to lose. Ted begrudgingly agrees, and so begins the final segment, "The Man from Hollywood," directed by Tarantino.
The segment is loosely inspired by the short story "Man from the South," by famed author Roald Dahl, of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Matilda fame, which was also the source material for the Twilight Zone episode discussed in the segment, which QT wrongfully identifies as the "Man from Rio." However, he was right about it starring Steve McQueen and Peter Lorre. (You can watch it here via YouTube.)
Anyway, the basic set-up is this: after seeing the TZ episode, one of Chester's friends, Norman (Paul Calderón, also from Pulp Fiction), makes a similar sort of bet with him. If he can light his lighter ten times in a row, he'll win Chester's beloved sportscar. If not, however, then they'll chop Norman's pinky off!
Where Ted comes in, is, as the drunken revelers don't trust themselves to wield the butcher's knife and cleanly cut off Norman's pinky, they need someone sober to do it. Ted balks at first, but Chester offers him $1000 to do it, and Ted finally acquiesces. (Spoiler) Norman then promptly blows it on the first try!
QT's segment is fun, with lots of show-offy, rambling dialogue, but it's no given Pulp Fiction segment, that's for sure. Indeed, I suspect this segment might be Ground Zero for when QT started to get on some people's nerves in earnest. His Chester is pretty obnoxious and comes off as the kind of drunk guy that approaches you at a party that you can't get away from fast enough.
Meanwhile, there's his uncredited co-star Bruce Willis- who is uncredited because he did the role for free and for "fun" as a favor to QT, thus breaking the rules of the SAG, as all actors must be paid for their work. Willis is equally obnoxious, basically just shouting into his cell phone for most of the segment and rambling incoherently for the rest. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if none of this was scripted, and everyone concerned just improvised their way through the general premise.
That said, the movie is entertaining on a purely surface level, and you can certainly tell everyone concerned had a good time making it. Even though the stories are all pretty meh, it's fun seeing the constant stream of familiar faces, and spotting all the in-jokes, which, in addition to the casting, include "cameos" from QT's faux product placement items, Red Apple cigarettes and a tasty beverage from the Big Kahuna.
QT also engages in some showy direction, including an admittedly wow-inducing first shot, which goes on for several minutes and gives us the lay of the land in the penthouse suite to impressive effect. And, of course, it wouldn't be a QT project without a shot of someone's feet, in this case, Jennifer Beals. There's also an allusion to Vincent's car, the '64 Chevelle Malibu, which is the same car that Chester puts on the line in the bet at hand- or pinky, as it were.
Overall, though, this is the kind of movie that looks like it was more fun to shoot than it is to watch. It's worth seeing once, for sure, especially if you're a fan of any of the aforementioned people- especially Skye and Davis, for obvious reasons. But yeah, there's just not a lot of there there, if you know what I mean, and I think that you do, if you've seen it.
Rounding out the year, Tarantino also took his first stab at guest directing an episode of a popular TV show, in this case, ER, then in its very first season. QT shot the penultimate episode of the season, "Motherhood." The episode is worth a mention here because it's how QT met star George Clooney, who he would subsequently draft to co-star with him in From Dusk Till Dawn, his following project.
I used to watch ER as a tween/teen (it was on for nearly 15 years!) with my mom, at least until I moved out to attend college. Even then, I continued to watch it, and we would talk about it whenever I called home or she called me, so it was a fairly important touchstone in my life at a particular time in which I was going through a lot of important stuff, including graduating four levels of school- middle school, high school, a 2-year program at a liberal arts college (in film studies) and subsequently getting into a University later on and obtaining my Bachelor's Degree. (I would then keep going to Graduate School, by which point, I do believe the show finally ended.)
Anyway, I don't think I've seen the show since, and it was never a show I bought on DVD or re-watched in reruns. So, re-watching it for this was cool, as I'd forgotten some of the people that were on it and, of course, QT couldn't resist casting a few familiar faces from his work in cameos: QT repeat offender Kathy Griffin (as a Boy Scout troop leader!), plus Brenda Hillhouse and Angela Jones, both from Pulp Fiction.
For one thing, I'd practically forgotten what I crush I had on star Sherry Stringfield- she was a real cutie back in the day, with her husky voice and her scrappy attitude. I couldn't resist looking her up to see what she'd been up to, as I've sort of lost track of her over the years.
She's done a lot of TV, including a slew of what appear to be Lifetime-type movies, and she was a regular on the Stephen King adaptation Under the Dome and on on of the Criminal Minds spin-offs, Beyond Borders. She was also in the disco-era flick 54 and in the remake of The Stepfather. Far as I can tell, she's still a bit of a babe.
Other fairly famous alum on the episode include: Khandi Alexander, who went on to star on CSI: Miami; Andrea Parker, who had a juicy turn on Pretty Little Liars (she was "dead" Alison's mom... and more, as it turned out); CCH Pounder, who was just fantastic on The Shield; Tamala Jones (Lanie on Castle); Angel Aviles and Seidy Lopez, both from Mi Vida Loca- Aviles was also in Desperado with QT; Julie Carmen, of Fright Night 2 and In the Mouth of Madness; Lisa Zane, of Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare and The Nurse; and Christine Harnos, of Dazed & Confused and Hellraiser: Bloodline.
There's also guest-starring turns from character actress Kathleen Wilhoite, as Stringfield's character Susan's sister, who goes into labor in this episode, amusingly singing The Beatles' "Blackbird" after Noah Wylie's hapless Carter is unable to find the cassette she insisted on bringing along. Everyone joins in, as Wilhoite screams her lungs out, trying to stay on tune, which is a nice moment.
Cult fans will know Wilhoite as Lucy's sister on Twin Peaks, the wacky medium in the horror favorite Witchboard, and for roles in movies like Private School, Angel Heart, Road House and Fire in the Sky. She's a total scene stealer here.
As Susan and sister Chloe's mom, there's Valerie Perrine, who superhero fans will immediately recognize as the much put-upon Mrs. Eve Teschmacher in the original Superman movies. She was also in Lenny, about the legendary stand-up comedian Lenny Bruce, Cannonball Run, The Electric Horseman, the aforementioned 54, What Women Want and the legendarily bad Can't Stop the Music, with Bruce Jenner and the Village People.
I mistakenly went into this thinking it was the one where two rival gang members shoot at each other from their respective operating tables, which seems like it would be directed by Tarantino, but wasn't. (I wasn't able to find out the name of that episode- maybe someone out there knows?) However, it does feature a girl being brought in with another girl she was fighting with, who then resumes the fight inside the ER, punching the girl repeatedly, as she is being operated on!
There are some quirky flourishes that are pure QT, though: the shots of Susan and Carol (Julianna Margulies) sunbathing on lawn chairs on presumably the roof of the hospital, and later on, strolling cooly down the halls in black sunglasses; the fact that he can't seem to stage a scene without a whole lot of stuff going on in the background (at one point I swear I saw someone busting a move, lol); and the sometimes odd staging of certain scenes.
In two particularly effective ones, we see Dr. Peter Benton (Eric La Salle, who would go on to be a solid TV director in his own right) visiting his mother's hospital room for the last time after she has unexpectedly died. The scene is shot from a wide angle from across the room, with Dr. Benton being comforted by his sister while a lone "Get Well Soon" balloon lingers, sadly, right above his mother's bed just above her body. It's heartbreaking.
In the other, Dr. Benton is comforted again in the aftermath of the previous scene. This time, he's shot closer up, but completely from behind, as we see his reflection in the window. I can see where La Salle might have objected to these emotional moments being shot from afar, sans close-ups of his face, but boy, does it work like gangbusters in the moment- and mind you, I hadn't seen this show in ages and was watching it pretty much completely out of context, somewhat struggling to remember who everyone was and what their relationships to one another were. Now that's effective direction.
Tarantino received critical acclaim for his work, as did stars Stringfield and Wilhoite, both of whom were nominated for awards, including an Emmy nod for Stringfield, though she didn't win. While the show itself went on a bit longer than it should have, with many of the original leads leaving it in the years to come, including Clooney, to pursue other things, those early years in particular are well-worth seeing.
If you're interested, I'd say go until all the OG players are mostly gone- say, around season seven- and maybe quit while you're ahead, unless you get addicted and have to see it through to the bitter end. the show definitely gets a bit meh towards the end, but some of the OG cast members do return here and there. The show is readily available on DVD and likely on various streaming services. (Hulu for sure.)
Tarantino rounded out his year with appearances on the TV show All-American Girl, with pal Margaret Cho, with whom he did a Pulp Fiction send-up, hosting Saturday Night Live (with musical guest Smashing Pumpkins) and a featured role in the indie comedy Destiny Turns on the Radio. I haven't seen that last one in ages, but I don't remember it being particularly good. It might be high time for a re-watch, but not at this time, as we've got bigger fish to fry.
Join me next time as QT hits the silver screen again for From Dusk Till Dawn, which he also scripted and stars in, with director Robert Rodriguez at the helm this time around. See you then! 😃
No comments:
Post a Comment