In the run-up to and the period after completing his epic Kill Bill, Quentin Tarantino would have screenings for friends of the various old film prints he'd begun collecting. Oftentimes, the films would be beat-up, scratched, and even, in some cases, missing "reels", which is to say, entire scenes would be gone, often as the result of the film itself being burnt by light bulbs during screenings, or, in some cases, because the projectionist decided to take a little "souvenir" for themselves- typically scenes featuring nudity and/or sex, or scenes of action and violence.
Tarantino would sometimes lament these inconsistencies, and wonder to his friends if he should even show a film if it was missing big chunks of stuff, but many liked that it made it like they were seeing the films in an old-school way, bringing a special vibe to the proceedings. QT liked that, and before long, he started intentionally trying to replicate the experiences of his youth, when he would spend huge blocks of time going to see movies, many of which took place in what were called "grindhouse" theaters.
Basically, a "grindhouse" theater was one where the facilities weren't particularly well-maintained, the floors were often sticky and the clientele were questionable. One of Tarantino's earliest jobs, in fact, was working as an usher at a seedy adult theatre- when he was underage, no less. As icky as a lot of these places were, QT relished the experiences, and even missed it to a certain extent.
Back then, one could go to such theatres and see double or even triple features of films for a low price, typically all within the same genre, such as horror, martial arts films or general exploitation films of some kind. Tarantino started adopting this approach to his screenings, showing trailers and interstitials (think "Let's all go to the lobby!"-type ads) before each feature he screened, much to the delight of everyone, just like he used to see back in the day.
After a certain point, post-Kill Bill, QT and Robert Rodriguez began batting about the idea of doing a double feature together themselves, only of wholly original content that aped the types of films typically shown back then as double features. They eventually settled on horror, with RR having long wanted to do a zombie flick- this would become Planet Terror- and QT pitching an idea he'd had about a slasher-type film, only with the killer using a "death-proof" car to take out his victims.
A "death proof" car was basically just what it sounds like, a car that was rigged for stuntmen to use so that they didn't get hurt doing stunts. Because they often had to flip cars or drive them over ramps, or crash them into things, safety measures had to be taken to make the cars as safe as possible, for obvious reasons. Stunt men referred to these rigged cars as being "death proof." Rodriguez was delighted by the term and told QT he should totally call the film that: Death Proof.
Up until then, he had been calling it Thunder Bolt, which he included in the film in the title sequence anyway, as a joke, before inserting the "real" title. This was playing on the fact that, when films would bomb or get a bad review, distributors would often merely change the title and put the films out again, only with slightly different marketing- meaning that you could conceivably see a movie you'd already seen, if you weren't careful!
For the role of the killer, Tarantino considered a host of actors, including Pulp Fiction alums John Travolta, Ving Rhames and Bruce Willis, as well as the likes of Sylvester Stallone, Mickey Rourke, Burt Reynolds and Australian actor John Jarratt, who Tarantino had just seen in the horror film Wolf Creek (which makes a sort of cameo on a drive-in marquee in Death Proof) and been highly impressed by. Most of them were unavailable, though Willis did end up shooting a cameo in RR's Planet Terror. QT did have one last major contender: Kurt Russell.
As soon as Rodriguez got wind of it, he immediately lightly pressured Tarantino into casting the actor, of whom he'd been a long-time fan, as most of us who grew up in the 80's were, thanks to his work with filmmaker John Carpenter. The two had done several seminal cult films together, including Escape from New York, The Thing and Big Trouble in Little China, as well as the popular TV miniseries Elvis. While none of the movies were huge hits at the box office, they had all garnered a cult following in the years since, thanks to home video and cable.
Tarantino finally acquiesced to Rodriguez' well-intentioned insistence, and approached the actor about doing the film. Up until then, Russell had always been the hero of his films- if sometimes, as with the Carpenter films, somewhat of an antihero inclined to play by his own rules. Here, he was playing an outright villain, if a somewhat still likable one, which he'd never done before.
Russell relished the opportunity to do something different, and even more so, the opportunity to work with QT, who had a knack for "resurrecting" actors that had faded somewhat from public view over the years. He readily accepted the role, and QT set about finding the rest of his cast.
One thing Tarantino wanted to do with the film that wasn't exactly typical of a slasher film was to have strong female characters all around. While it was certainly de rigueur to have one "good" girl in the pack of main characters that was often smart and clever and able to defeat the killer in the end, Tarantino wanted them all to be witty and charming and relatable, so that viewers would get attached to them and not want them to die.
One of the first people cast was actress Rose McGowan, who was dating director Rodriguez at the time. McGowan had first gotten people's attention in the insane road movie The Doom Generation, from button-pushing writer/director Gregg Araki, one of many films cited as being Tarantino-esque, in light of the filmmaker's success. She then broke into the mainstream in the smash hit slasher flick, Scream, from director Wes Craven.
McGowan's star continued to rise, though her choices were sometimes iffy. Her films include not one but two Pauly Shore movies- Encino Man and Bio-Dome- the lesser road movie, Lewis & Clark & George, the Poison Ivy rip-off Devil in the Flesh, and the oddball Monkeybone. She also did the slightly better-received Phantoms, the Heathers-esque teen flick Jawbreaker and reunited with Araki for a small role in his typically atypical cult flick Nowhere, before mainstream success with the popular TV show Charmed put her back on top.
However, along the way, she ran into trouble, literally, when, while at Sundance promoting a film in 1997, she was allegedly raped by then-Miramax head Harvey Weinstein, and subsequently sued him for it. At the time, the lawsuit was quashed and settled out of court, but the damage was obviously done, as Weinstein wanted nothing to do with the actress (or vice versa, for that matter).
In spite of this, several of her high-profile boyfriends, including Ben Affleck (with whom she co-starred in Phantoms) and Rodriguez (with whom she did Planet Terror) managed to get her cast in their movies for Dimension Films, an offshoot of Miramax run mostly by Harvey's brother Bob, and more focused on genre efforts.
Needless to say, Harvey wasn't thrilled by it, and some have alleged that he intentionally under-marketed the films in question in an effort to purposely tank them at the box office, which, if true, sadly worked. (More on that later.) Karma got him in the end, though, as a virtual army of actresses publicly accused him of sexual harassment, abuse, rape and a litany of other charges, many of which are still pending as of this writing.
Tarantino stood firmly by Rodriguez by also casting McGowan in his film, pointing out that oftentimes, back in the 70's and 80's, actors would bounce from one film to another, typically for the same production companies, resulting in their being in multiple releases at the same time in theatres.
This would also be reflected in a handful of other actors that appeared in both his and Rodriguez' Grindhouse films, i.e. Marley Shelton, Michael Parks and his son James (who played the same characters in Kill Bill) and the so-called "Babysitter Twins," aka Electra and Elise Avellan, aka RR's nieces-in-law.
However, he did want to distinguish McGowan's character in his film from the one she played in RR's film, so he had her wear a blond wig for Death Proof, which, much to his delight, made her resemble an actress he loved from the late 60's-the early 80's, German bombshell Barbara Bouchet (Casino Royale, Don't Torture a Duckling). McGowan's particularly fantastic in Rodriguez' film, but she's pretty good in Death Proof as well, though her screen time is substantially lower.
Other gorgeous actresses soon followed. For the key role of DJ "Jungle" Julia, an extension of the character referred to as "Unruly" Julie in his early film My Best Friend's Birthday and as Robert Downey Junior's character's assistant of the same name in Natural Born Killers, he chose second generation Hollywood star Sydney Tamiia Poitier, daughter of famed Oscar winning actor Sidney Poitier.
Poitier had been toiling away on TV, appearing in several failed shows before landing a decent one in the cult hit teen series Joan of Arcadia, where she played the best friend of Amber Tamblyn's titular Joan. (Tamblyn, too, had a similar background, being the daughter of celebrated character actor Russ, of West Side Story and Twin Peaks fame.) She also landed a recurring role on the much-beloved cult show Veronica Mars around the same time.
Alas, true stardom has eluded the actress, but she has worked steadily to this day, which is something. Other notable credits include: Clint Eastwood's True Crime, Nine Lives (which also includes an impressive female cast and well-worth a look), Hood of Horror, The List, Too Late, Clinical, and roles on the TV shows Grey's Anatomy and its spin-off Private Practice, Hawaii Five-O, Chicago P.D. and Homecoming. She also had leading roles on the short-lived Knight Rider reboot and on the Canadian show Carter, which was just renewed for a second season at the time of this writing.
"Jungle" Julie's friends include Jordan Ladd, as BFF Shanna (not "Shaunna," whatever you do); and Vanessa Ferlito as the somewhat mistreated Arlene, aka "Butterfly." Ladd, like Poitier, is another second gen-Hollywood star, as the daughter of Cheryl (the two look uncannily alike), of Charlie's Angels fame, and actor-turned-producer David Ladd (Get Shorty, The Serpent & the Rainbow). Tarantino saw Jordan in pal Eli Roth's debut feature, Cabin Fever, and cast both her and Roth from that in his film.
Ladd was also in the aforementioned Nowhere with McGowan, as well as Never Been Kissed, Waiting..., the superhero spoof The Specials, Broken Lizard's slasher spoof Club Dread, and David Lynch's excellent Inland Empire. She's also become a bit of a Scream Queen, thanks to roles in films like Embrace of the Vampire, Madhouse, Hostel II, Scary Endings, Brentwood Strangler, Stage Fright and Grace.
Meanwhile, Ferlito got her first big break in the boxing drama Undefeated, alongside comedian/actor John Leguizamo, followed by a role in Spider-Man 3, and the cheerleader-themed comedy Man of the House, which is the film that got Tarantino's attention.
She then landed a recurring role on TV's 24, followed shortly by getting cast as one of the leads on CSI: New York. The same year she made Death Proof, she also appeared alongside co-star Rosario Dawson in Descent, though the two don't have any scenes together in this film.
Other notable roles include: On Line (another film of hers that got QT's attention), Spike Lee's excellent 25th Hour, Shadowboxer, an early effort from director Lee Daniels; Gridiron Gang (alongside Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, who is mentioned at length in this film), Nothing Like the Holidays, Madea Goes to Jail, Julie & Julia, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, Stand Up Guys, and roles on the TV shows The Sopranos, Third Watch, Law & Order and leading roles on Graceland and NCIS: New Orleans.
Moving on to the other pack of girls, these less ill-fated, there's Abernathy, played by the aforementioned Rosario Dawson, who's been a favorite of mine since I first saw her in the cult flick Kids, her debut feature. That controversial film led to bigger roles in movies like He Got Game, Light It Up, Down to You, the underrated cartoon spin-off Josie & the Pussycats, Sidewalks of New York, Chelsea Walls and Ash Wednesday, before she got her big break in the blockbuster Men in Black II.
This led to bigger, if not necessarily better, roles in big-budget would-be blockbusters like The Adventures of Pluto Nash, The Rundown, Alexander, Rent, Eagle Eye, Zookeeper, Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, Fire With Fire and Unstoppable.
Personally, though, I prefer her roles in more low-budget efforts like 25th Hour and Descent (both with Ferlito), Shattered Glass, This Revolution, Clerks II, A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, Girl Walks into a Bar, 10 Years, Hotel Noir, Trance, Gimme Shelter, The Captive, Raze (also with co-star Zoë Bell) and the Rodriguez-directed Sin City movies. She's one of the most gorgeous and talented actresses out there in my book. She also potentially has a line on being the hottest First Lady ever.
The real de facto leader of Abernathy's group, however, is Kim, as fiercely played by theater-based actress Tracie Thoms. Thoms first caught my eye in the short-lived, quirky early Bryan Fuller (Pushing Daisies, Hannibal) TV series Wonderfalls, which she co-starred in with fellow Juilliard alum Lee Pace. She followed that up with the far more successful TV procedural series Cold Case.
Thoms and Dawson had just worked together twice in the films Rent and Descent and ran lines together prior to their audition for Death Proof, determined to work together again, as a sort of package deal. Tarantino was blown away by their inherent chemistry and cast them both after a fantastic audition together as their respective characters, in which they both knew all their lines, sans scripts, despite having only just received them shortly beforehand.
You might also know Thoms from such films as The Devil Wears Prada, Sex & Breakfast, Peter & Vandy, Good Hair, I Will Follow (an early film by celebrated filmmaker Ava DuVernay), Safe House, Meeting Evil, Looper, Raze (also with Dawson and Bell), Annie, Equity, The Drowning and The Basement. She's also done lots of TV, including prominent roles on As If, Love, Gone, 9-1-1, UnReal, The First and the upcoming Truth Be Told.
She's a theater regular, and was in Rent on Broadway on two separate occasions, once alongside Neil Patrick Harris, which was also filmed for posterity. (That's in addition to the movie version, of course, which would make it three times.) Thoms is nothing short of fantastic here, and I'm kind of shocked she wasn't a bigger star after this film. Then again, Tarantino is a tough act to follow.
Low-key kind of awesome is Mary Elizabeth Winstead, as actress and erstwhile cheerleader, Lee Montgomery. I've been a fan of hers for some time as well, thanks to an ex that loved the oddball supernatural soap Passions, which was her first big break, such as it was.
While not much of a showcase for her talents, I did remember her from it when she started cropping up in lots of horror movies, including The Ring 2, Final Destination 3, Black Christmas, Monster Island, The Thing (a prequel to co-star Russell's classic flick), Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, 10 Cloverfield Lane and the TV series Wolf Lake, The Returned and the woefully underrated BrainDead.
However, Winstead is also a fine dramatic and comedic actress, as shown in films like Sky High (also with Kurt Russell), Bobby, Factory Girl, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, Smashed, The Spectacular Now, A.C.O.D., Faults, Alex of Venice, Kill the Messenger, Swiss Army Man, The Hollars, All About Nina and the TV show version of Fargo.
She'll soon be seen in the DC superhero flick Birds of Prey as Huntress, alongside Once Upon a Time in Hollywood star Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn and in the Will Smith action flick Gemini Man, so her career is soon to be full-on peaking, if those films are halfway decent. And yeah, that cheerleader outfit is the bomb.
My only complaint here is that we never get to discover her character's ultimate fate- she is, after all, left alone with known rapist Jasper (Jonathan Loughran, reprising his role from Kill Bill)- and she also misses out on all the "fun" with the other girls in the end. Way to throw a girl under the bus, ladies! 😔
Last but certainly not least is a star-making turn from former (and current) stunt-woman Zoë Bell, ostensibly playing herself, in her first official big-screen appearance. I say official because, as indicated, she's been a stunt woman for years before this film, notably for Lucy Lawless on Hercules and Xena before her big break doing an impressive array of stunts as Uma Thurman's stunt double in Kill Bill.
Tarantino was so delighted with Bell that he wrote this role especially for her. When he told her, she just assumed it was a cameo before she got a hold of the script and saw how many times her name was on the page. Freaking out, she worked overtime to learn her lines, which were considerable.
It may seem not that big a deal to outsiders to play a character based on oneself, but this is Tarantino we're talking about, so I can see where all that dialogue would be overwhelming, even if a lot of it was grounded in reality and based on actual events that happened to her.
Fortunately for QT, Bell's a natural and rose to the occasion, which led to an acting career even she probably never expected, including roles in the TV show Lost, the excellent Bitch Slap (from the warped minds of her former employers at Hercules & Xena), Angel of Death, Gamer, Whip It, Game of Death, Oblivion, Raze, Mercenaries (with Kill Bill co-star Vivica A. Fox and a host of other kick-ass ladies), Camino, Paradox, Freshwater and all of Tarantino's subsequent features, though she doesn't act on screen in Basterds.
As impressive as Bell is as an actress here, she's positively eye-popping as a stunt woman in the film's best sequence, the climatic car chase showdown between the girls and Kurt Russell's Stuntman Mike. The sequence is pretty awe-inspiring, what with Bell doing all her own stunts, which include spending a good chunk of said chase on the hood of a Dodge Challenger! The sequence is alone worth the price of admission, quite frankly.
Speaking of which, I attended the premiere of this film, which in retrospect may not have been the brightest idea. Unlike the other films, which I attended on opening day, I actually went to this one on a rare midnight premiere on a Thursday. Not that I had to get up the next day, but you try remaining coherent after drinking most of the night and then going to a three-hour-plus movie (including the non-fake trailers) at midnight, lol.
While everyone had a great time at the screening- there was a hilarious moment after the first feature ended when a guy stood up and addressed the crowd jubilantly: "Tarantino has done it again!" and promptly left, even though Tarantino's movie hadn't even screened yet, lol 😂- I was pretty out of it by the time Death Proof came on, and as those have seen it know, even in it's edited ninety-minute-ish form, it's near-relentlessly talky throughout.
I'm not gonna lie- I nodded off a few times during all the talky scenes, which I never did in those days under the worst of circumstances in a public place, much less at the movies. Now you could chalk all that up to my being drunk off my ass, except for the fact that, when I next watched it, in its uncut form, separate from its sister feature, Planet Terror, I was still pretty bored to tears by a lot of it- a first for a Tarantino movie for me.
Even Jackie Brown, which I was a little underwhelmed by at the time, was still moderately entertaining in the moment, and I certainly didn't get bored with it, even at over two-and-a-half hours. And mind you, this may be the most Tarantino-iest Tarantino movie ever- I mean, for God's sake, it opens with a shot of Poitier's feet over his own credit, shortly thereafter followed by a shot of feet in front of an obscure film poster (possibly the most QT shot ever- the only way it could be more QT is if the feet were coming out of a trunk) and features more shots of them than in any of his other films, and that's saying something. And he did the cinematography this time around, so it's definitely all his doing. I mean, just look at this:
Here's a photo of him counseling Kurt Russell on how to touch Rosario Dawson's foot!
And here's a poster of QT seemingly admonishing himself for all the unbridled feet fetishizing:
That said, a funny thing happened this time around. With expectations firmly lowered, I actually really enjoyed it this time around. I think it was a combination of two things: one, the fact that it's nice to see this many women in a movie like this engaging in smart, witty repartee- not exactly a hallmark of most slasher movies. I grew up on a steady diet of the oft-reviled subgenre and though I'd argue that some of the characters in them are more likable than generally given credit for, it's actually rare for them to be genuinely well-written.
The dialogue in Death Proof may be a bit aimless and have nothing to do with anything more often than not, but it's also pretty endearing once you've seen it a few times. Basically, what Tarantino has done here is to create a hybrid of a slasher movie and what can loosely be called a "hangout" movie, a la Dazed & Confused. That film is an admitted fave of QT's- he also references another similar (if lesser) Linklater movie, SubUrbia, via star Nicky Katt, the "Circle A" clerk that sells Abby the Italian Vogue at a marked-up price.
Anyway, I found that I really liked spending time with these women, even the initial bunch, which are more overtly slasher bait than the second group. Yes, Pointier's character is a bit of a bitch, but most groups of girls have at least one, so it would actually be more dubious if QT didn't have one here.
But she sure is sexy, and I genuinely like the other two girls, including the guy's girl, Shanna, who seems cool and fun, and the more sensitive Arlene. I don't know about you, but my heart would have melted, too, if Stuntman Mike said to me what he said to her: "There are few things as fetching as a bruised ego on a beautiful angel." Aww. What a great line. (Points also to the hilarious bit with actress Marcy Harriell- another Broadway vet from Rent- where she pretends to be a guy approaching Arlene.)
The second group is what seals the deal, though. I'd watch an entire movie of these girls hanging out in retrospect, I must say. Thoms' character is such a bad-ass behind the wheel, trash-talking Stuntman Mike while ramming him with her car; and Bell is the very definition of awesome, as she gleefully rides on the hood, and later on, completely adorable as she pops up like a bunny rabbit after flying off said hood into the brambles.
Meanwhile, Winstead sings like an angel- and looks like one, too- if you haven't seen the uncut version of her singing Smith's "Baby, It's You," which she learned right before shooting (!), click here immediately. And Dawson gives a tour de force of facial acting without saying a word, in the scene where she goes from perplexed by what Bell is doing on the hood, to mesmerized, to positively delighted by it. Woo-hoo, indeed.
That actually brings me to the second reason I dug it more this time around: the girl power factor. Especially in these post-"me too"/"time's up" times, the fact that this movie serves as a case of table-turning on the guys is even more readily apparent and relevant than ever. In the first section, the girls all call the shots- even when they're downing them- and basically play these guys (Eli Roth, Michael Bacall and, to a lesser extent, Omar Doom, who at least gets to make out with Arlene, albeit on her clock) for all they're worth.
Granted, Stuntman Mike gets the best of all of the first group in the end, including McGowan's character, but that's only because it perfectly sets up what happens next, as the next group of girls ably turn the tables on Mike this time around, giving him way more than he bargained for. Was there a more feminist moment of the 2000's than Mike first crying like a wuss after Kim shoots him, and then getting the unholy hell beat out of him later on by all three girls, Faster Pussycat Kill Kill-style? You gotta love it.
So, yeah, not unlike Jackie Brown, this one did have to grow on me over time, but I must say, just as I enjoyed that film more on an emotional level the most recent time around, so did I enjoy this one on a purely fun, visceral level this time around. The action- especially that first slow motion car crash and the chase at the end- is fantastic and these are a group of girls I can totally get behind hanging out with, even for nearly two hours, which is way longer than any slasher movie has any right to be. (Of course, some might argue the original, edited version plays much better for that very reason.)
By contrast, Planet Terror, which I totally adored at the time and thought was infinitely better, turns out to be an entertaining but somewhat slight B-movie that doesn't really aim for much more than delivering the gory goods. Unlike Death Proof, it actually really does seem like a film from the period in which it's aping, circa the late 70's/early 80's. RR called it the film John Carpenter never made between Escape from New York and The Thing and that seems about right.
But it doesn't hold up to repeat watchings the way Death Proof does, and that's because QT has a hidden agenda here that RR doesn't. RR set out to make a movie that perfectly replicates the Grindhouse era and succeeded- QT really didn't. He wanted to do it, but instead succeeded in making a film that's way more progressive than the majority of such films were at the time. Tarantino just help being who he is. That's why his film holds up way better in retrospect.
Ideally, it really is worth seeing the films at least twice- once within their proper Grindhouse double feature context, complete with the fake trailers and old-school adverts, and then once again, as stand-alone, extended films. It's really the only way to determine which version you prefer.
As much as I'd love to have a do-over of my original experience where I was a little more sober, I don't think it would have made that much difference in the long run. I actually needed to mature more as a human being to get what QT was up to here, as with Jackie Brown. Now I do.
Sadly, Grindhouse totally tanked at the box office at the time, though the films fared much better on home video and as rentals later on, when viewers could take their sweet time watching them at their own pace. As I mentioned before, some think that producer Harvey Weinstein purposefully under-marketed the Grindhouse films because QT and RR actively went against his wishes in casting McGowan.
I don't know if it's true, but shame on him if he did, as it would have been fun to see more of these sorts of double features, and both QT and RR went on record as saying they would have done more if it had been a hit. As it stands, it only made about $25 million on a whopping estimated $53-65 million-dollar budget, a stinker by any estimate.
I suppose that's what you get spending that much money on what was supposed to be a homage to low budget movies. Maybe spend a little less money next time? Still, good things did eventually come of it, as RR ended up bringing his faux Machete trailer to actual life and it really was a hit that spawned a sequel, with another (Machete in Space) allegedly coming eventually.
It also humbled Tarantino yet again, this time leading to arguably his most mature work to date: Inglourious Basterds, which we'll be covering next time. Only a handful of movies to go, but miles before I sleep, lol. (Okay, that may have more to do with all the construction going on during the day at my townhouse- stupid termites. 😝)
Join me next time for my take on that film, and be sure and go and see Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, if you haven't already!
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