Dissecting the Troublemakers, Robert & Quentin

By Memo Salazar 

I keep waiting for them to shoot their wad.

Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino are two filmmakers that, in a way, represent their generation the best- a generation that refuses to mature. Born without ever tasting the hardships of the depression or the extended pain of a world war, we have grown up soft and pampered, wanting all the benefits of adulthood without giving up any of the securities we had as kids. If film is our culture’s clearest voice, the mandate is clear: long, thoughtful and introspective movies are O-U-T, our version of “art films” being shallow, toothless and pseudo-grandiose statements like American Beauty. Give us movies clever enough not to insult our intelligence but shallow enough to keep us distracted from facing our issues… Pulp Fiction being the quintessential movie in this regard.

Don’t get me wrong- I don’t hate fun films per se and I really do like both Robert and Quentin. They’re talented, each in their own way, and if kitschy b-movies are all they can aspire to, well, at least they make them with passion. Their limitations are more indicative of our sorry state as a culture than of themselves as filmmakers, and I usually find myself enjoying their latest offerings, half expecting to see them finally blow it by making such a self-indulgent mess, even their own cleverness can’t save them.

They’ve both come pretty close- Robert, the less pretentious of the two, has never claimed he was an artiste and usually succeeds in making extremely ingenious, creatively-executed and meticulously-crafted junk food- his one distinct failure being Once Upon a Time in Mexico, a Lucas-like mess of self-indulgence full of stupidly-written characters and convoluted storylines all intersecting into a long, pointless nothing. Even then, many of the action scenes are really, really great, chopped up and spit out with an energy hollywood still can’t quite figure out. Quentin, on the other hand, is smarter, but with a lot more hubris; when source material is good, as in Jackie Brown (his best film to date) his dialogue shines and his creative risks find their mark (perfect laconic pacing peppered with genuine dialogue, in that case.) When he has absolutely nothing to say, well, you get things like the first half of From Dusk Till Dawn or the latter part of Kill Bill Vol. 2 or his contribution to Four Rooms, which wasn’t “bad” but was far from good. Four Rooms is interesting in that, out of the four indie darlings of the time, only Robert’s entry was really worthwhile- really, really worthwhile, as it turned out. It almost made the other 3 shorts worth trudging through. Okay, maybe not, but it’s still a really wonderful short film.

When these two kids team up, it’s usually to the detriment of their careers. Four Rooms didn’t do Robert any favors, and From Dusk Till Dawn wanted to be really fun but got really monotonous as Clooney & Co. kept killing and killing and killing and killing in not-so-clever ways. The boys do much better on their own; Robert’s last film, Sin City, was surprisingly successful in transplanting overly-stylized Frank Miller dialogue and visuals onto the screen. It shouldn’t have worked, but it did… really well. Meanwhile, Quentin’s Kill Bill opus seemed to exhaust everything he could possibly want to do in the “let’s revisit all the shit I loved growing up” genre. It was the ultimate fanboy masturbation fantasy, one which only ran out of steam towards the end, when Quentin tried to get cute and serious. Apparently, Kill Bill was successful enough to convince uncle Harvey to hand the boys a bunch of money for another round of b-movie fun, the result being Grindhouse, a double-feature where each kid contributes a self-contained, b-movie feature.

Robert’s entry, Planet Doom, starts us off with 90 minutes of pure ingenuity. I really don’t know how he does it, but Mr. Roberto still manages to come up with ingenious ways of killing, maiming, and blowing things up. Dialogue has never been his forte, so he’s wise enough to keep it to a minimum, letting his hyperactive imagination and amazing editing skills take you for a ride reminiscent of early Peter Jackson and Sam Raimi, back when they both were making brilliant, low-budget schlock. There’s not much to say about this film, other than it’s exactly what it claims to be, a faux-70’s-styled zombie-fest done right, which rarely happens. My only (admittedly petty) complaint is that it was clearly shot digitally, with a shitty film grain filter thrown on top to make it look “old”. After all the hype about Grindhouse being such an homage to old, scratchy films, you’d think he’d at least shoot it on, you know, film. These kids and their damn computers!

Then comes Quentin’s Death Proof. The idea is great- so great, I’m not going to spoil it- but before you get to this greatness, you have to endure what feels like hours of the worst Quentinesque dialogue you’ve ever- I mean ever- heard; the kind that film students were churning out all through the 90’s after watching Pulp Fiction 50 times in one week. It’s Quentin sounding like someone trying to sound like what they think Quentin is supposed to sound like… snappy, back-and-forth chattering about absolutely nothing which, in this case, literally gave me a headache. Keep in mind, the audience has just watched a full-length zombie feature, and now they have to sit through several scenes of boring, pretentious, hipster wannabe dialogue? And just when the action starts to kick in, Quentin forces us to another couple of rounds of more shitty, pointless, annoying dialogue before the film really takes off. When it does, it’s a riveting ride with an ass-kicking ending, but the shit one must endure to get there might convince several people to just stop watching.

Grindhouse tries to give you a flavor of what it was like to grow up on old, shitty b-movies, and it sort of succeeds in that regard. Robert does his job well, and Quentin kind-of-gets there by the end, but it takes him a while. You can see what he was aiming for- start off slow so that the twist and punch really hit hard… and it would have worked if Quentin’s setup wasn’t so bad bad bad. A whole ‘lotta hot girls jabbering about nothing for what seems like hours just doesn’t cut it. The film’s gimmick of having “missing reels” to skip over part of the story only reinforces the pain, since someone clearly lost the wrong section of Quentin’s film. Has the big Tarantino become so powerful that no one dares tell him how utterly boring and pointless his dialogue had become? Apparently so- if his two inept acting cameos (one in each film) are any indication, no one- not even Robert- says “no” to QT. And judging by the extra 40 pounds he’s put on, neither does his lunch. (Ba-dum-ching! Thank you! I’ll be here all week!)

Once again, I find myself wondering what these guys will pull off next, and how well it’ll come out. At some point, they have to run out of steam, right? I mean, you can’t keep making clever homages to old dumb shit over and over without, at some point, crossing that line into making old dumb shit yourself… right? I mean, the writing is on the wall for these two clowns, right? Right?

Who knows. They’ve lasted longer than they should have, and, I have to admit, I’ve enjoyed their stuff a lot more than I should have. It’s creative and passionate, two things rarely found in the greater Los Angeles area. As long as their egos don’t get the best of them, here’s hoping they don’t stop having fun.