Screenwriter Rob Edwards Goes Further into Tarantino’s Screenplays

When I was a kid, I remember a documentary where George Lucas described STAR WARS as a western. My brain hadn't formed the requisite cells to understand what he was saying but, over time, I started to imagine Han Solo in his leather vest, slightly different boots and fewer photons in his side arm, driving a stage coach across the prairie with a young boy and an old man trying to stop an evil man in a black hat and his army of soldiers from burning down a town of, I don't know, orphans and kittens. Anyway, it all started to make sense.

Similarly, if you look at The Princess and the Frog as a "princess movie," you miss the point. It's a buddy road picture. As writers, we should see that it owes more to The Defiant Ones than to Snow White. With that in mind, let's continue part four of our three part series breaking down Quentin Tarantino's style.

Remember, in Part One we learned that it's as important for young writers to study the works of the masters as it is for musicians to learn to play the great composers rather than learning how to play and compose at the same time. In Part Two we learned what to focus on. In Part Three I shared some of my own notes on what I found when I applied the techniques learned in Part Two to Quentin Tarantino. Now, in Part Four of our three part series, I'm going to share everything that I couldn't stuff into part three. Here goes…

ENVIRONMENTS

Just as Frog is a road comedy, Tarantino's work seems to owe more to the Kung Fu genre than anything else. In fact, there's an intersection between Kung Fu movies and Westerns and these are apparent in the worlds of Pulp Fiction, True Romance and Reservoir Dogs. We're trading pistols for samurai swords and black suits for gis, but the bad-ass shines through.

Even in Django, which is actually set in the wild west, Dr. Schultz's job is the same as Vincent Vega's. In the Bills, we're in an actual urban Kung Fu movie and there's no diminution of Tarantino-ness because we've been there all along.

When I'm looking at environments, I also like to look at things like night versus day, rural versus urban, comedic or tragic, heroes versus antiheroes, magic and spirituality versus their absence. What I'm looking for is an answer to the question "whose world are we in?" In this case, we're in the world of the gun for hire. We're largely unattached. We work at night stealing, killing, drinking and trying not to get blood on our suits. Even if we were in outer space, we'd be there to kill somebody or steal jewels.

THEMES

Thematically we're in interesting territory here because there's a glorious moral ambiguity here. You can't wrap up a Tarantino theme with a quick "cheaters never prosper" or "it's better to have friends than money." Instead we have a code. "The way of the sword." We kill those who need killin.' The law be damned. Street justice brings equilibrium to our protagonists. Forgiveness comes at the blade of a Hattori Hanzo sword.

I like to look at Tarantino movies as buildups toward "cathartic violence." Movies that end in "cathartic violence" need First Acts that justify those actions (I told you I love structure). Think of movies like Taken and Man on Fire. We need to make the case for things to get lethal on the protagonist's side while also making the case for the unlikely rehabilitation on the antagonist's side. So, when Nazi's die at the hands of men trying to stop the war, it's all good. When Klansmen slave owners eat dirt at the hands of a slave yearning to be free, we sign the check. When Butch erases his debt to Marsellus with a tiny act of unselfishness and Marsellus, in turn, fixes to go Medieval on the hillbilly boy, we cheer. Why? You know why. And, before you start thinking I'm some kind of sociopath for enjoying this stuff so much, remember that most Disney villains die equally horrific deaths. They just happen at the bottom of cliffs. As writers, we're using the same tools for different audiences.

INFLUENCES

A lot has been made about the filmmakers that have influenced Quentin Tarantino. Maybe too much. Some of the fun of watching his work for me is that I'm just a grade lower as a film geek and I enjoy the Easter Eggs of seeing the movies he's influenced by updated, polished and served up.

Do your own homework here. Taking a look at some of the films (even those referenced by name within the films themselves) will be illuminating.

QUIRKS

This is the fun part. I had a field day here and I found a bunch of things. I'll share a few of them with you…

First, you may remember that I mentioned comparing your filmmaker to others in the genre. I started looking through other… let's call them "comps"… and I noticed something. There is only one chase scene in any Tarantino movie that I could find: Death Proof. Inglorious had the only traditional "shoot out" that I could find. The shoot out moments are there, but Quentin makes a choice here that all writers should take note of. He writes standoffs. Men in a room, pointing guns at each other negotiating and hoping the most reasonable among them will prevail. Even the final "battle" in Kill Bill involves two people sitting at the dinner table.

When you think about it, car chases and shoot outs are like songs. You just wait for them to end so you can see the results and get back to the story. Standoffs keep the story going. We should all take note.

Second, there's always a "gun on the table." I'd been watching his movies for days before I caught this one. I'd get so wrapped up that I couldn't get up until the movies were over. Why? Because there was so much tension in every scene. In every scene, I'm pretty sure somebody (or everybody) is going to die in the end. The scene between Clifford and Vincenzo in True Romance is a great example of this. The "La Louisiane" scene in Inglorious is another. It never seems casual because we all know, at some point, the Nazis are going to spoil the party and bullets are going to fly. When you consider that only one character survives this encounter, you realize that the whole point of the scene was to complicate Plan A (a structural tentpole in action films). Sometimes it's good to look at why things happen rather than what things happen. Tarantino finds a way to take structural dogma, cover it in tension and make it interesting (see Meta Structure above) The scene is also educational. I never knew Germans held up three fingers differently than Americans do.

Third, you have to mention the monologues. They're like music. Each has its own flavor and shape so it's worth it to study them independently.

So, there you have it. The whys, the hows and the results. I hope I've made an argument for the necessity of all writers to do something like this as often as possible. As for me, I have similar sets of notes on everyone from Hitchcock to Judd Apatow. I find that each foray opens up a new world for me and gives me a greater understanding of what it takes to become a better writer. For me, it's been an education greater than anything I got in film school and I hope it will take you on adventures that are just as eye-opening. Let me know what you discover in the comments below. Class dismissed!