Quentin Tarantino Interview

MAKING A KILLING

Despite being over an hour late for his appointment with the British media, the master of American cinema bounds into the room with an energy that lights the place up. Even the assembled press, more used to being force-fed stock answers from anodyne Hollywood stars, is excited by the arrival of Quentin Tarantino. Energy seems to radiate from him, his sense of humour is highly infectious and the word motormouth is an understatement to describe his manic style of tackling the questions fired at him.

The director is in town to promote his new film Kill Bill Volume 1, which is Tarantino's first release since 1997's Jackie Brown. A hyper-violent revenge story, it tells the tale of a woman (Uma Thurman) hellbent on avenging her attempted murder by the eponymous Bill (David Carradine) and his gang of deadly assassins. Also starring Lucy Liu, Michael Madsen and Darryl Hannah, the film was partly shot in China which is apt as it borrows heavily from classic Chinese martial arts movies.

Far from worrying about whether his film will be seen as too violent, Tarantino is quick to defend the action scenes. "It's a standard staple in Japanese cinema to cut somebody's arm off and have red water hoses for veins, spraying blood everywhere. I was trying to think of as many different ways of disfiguring and dismembering all of my characters in the fight scenes. I was trying to create the most exciting action sequence in the history of cinema. It took me about a year to write the final fight sequence alone."