I adore Quentin Tarantino’s movies. Pulp Fiction is a personal top fiver. Reservoir Dogs is excellent and Jackie Brown is severely underappreciated. The Kill Bills and Death Proof are somewhat entertaining but fatally flawed. I’ll probably see Inglourious Basterds, although I don’t have particularly high hopes.
Tarantino’s films are amazingly quotable and that’s because his characters are always talking. I’ve known for a long time that his approach to dialog is what fascinated me, but Matt Zoller Seitz and Keith Uhlich of The L Magazine have put together a short text essay on dialog from Tarantino movies and an accompanying video essay as support. Said video is embedded below. The combination neatly sums up what I’d tell people I love about these movies.
There are some other Tarantino dialogs, probably not Socratic enough to fit Seitz’s bill, that tickle my fancy:
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Reservoir Dogs: Mr. White explaining to Mr. Orange various brutal crowd control techniques for a robbery and then ending matter of factly with, “I’m hungry. Let’s get a taco.”
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Pulp Fiction: Fabienne trying to convince Butch pot bellies are sexy, “Shut up, Fatso! I don’t have a pot! I have a bit of a tummy, like Madonna when she did ‘Lucky Star,’ it’s not the same thing.”
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Jackie Brown: Ordell explaining to Lewis why he hangs with Melanie even though she’s a bit of a flake, “You can’t trust Melanie but you can trust Melanie to be Melanie.”
P.S. Two video embeds in a row. Whoohoo! I’m a modern blogger.