quentin craze

dilemma. this is already my fourth revision, and i'm still on the first sentence.

i'd like to write about my encounters (yes, plural) with writer-director extraordinaire, quentin tarantino, and i scowl at my amateur and unsatisfactory writing. this experience, as i always say, is like god coming down to earth and all the inks of the world tremble.

okay, stream-of-consciousness is my best bet. for i do not want to write this article carelessly or with upper-class airs, but with great reverence.

august 11. queued outside cinema 5 of the gateway cineplex are us cinephiles. i kind of like this assembly of mostly geek-looking, long-haired bespectacled people -- all of us eagerly (and in my case, sleeplessly) waiting for cinemanila's best gift to date -- quentin tarantino. he created kill bill, that's like saying he created my long-lost mother in beatrix kiddo's vengeful persona.

promptly at 1pm, he arrives. i am expecting him to emerge from the elevator, heavily guarded(and for my own humor, maybe with a machine gun?)au contraire, he passes rather conspicuously through the gateway food court - no panic, no screaming. jai pointed out a good irony; if it were richard gutierrez, the place would just be one bloody havoc.

full of smiles and hi's, he makes his way inside the cinema, only to come out a few minutes later to smile and say hi again. he goes towards the cinemanila office and in doing so, has to pass right through us. he shakes jai's hand and jai is numb. i am waiting for me to drop dead.

then his seminar. the rules: no video, no autographs, no photos. either you're here or you're not here. "this seminar isn't for glamour, this is for art." i cannot agree more.

okay, time for questions. one asked, "do you consider the repeatability aspect when you create your films?" answer: "yes, i am egotistical enough to admit that. and when you watch my films for the second or the third time, i hope you discover something more in them than when you first saw them."

next question. holy f$%*ing motherf%&#*!! is he pointing at me? yes, b!tch, you. take the mic and don't lose it.

i start to say, "i'm sorry i'm kind of trembling." the audience giggles. i giggle too.

proceed. "i'd like to ask about your casting process. you don't strike me as traditional...so do you have a defined method in choosing your actors.. say, do you base it on filmography, or for lack of a better term, do you rely on impression, trusting your instincts kind of thing? you said in the bonus features of reservoir dogs all tim roth had to do was to walk on that room.. no words, no lines, just walk and you immediately cast him."

answer: "no defined method. you talk to them about casual stuff, you talk to them about the movie and your vision. i never go for popularity... because the actor has to own the dialog and believe in the dialog.. because when i wrote that script, i've put every little detail in it already - the shot, my commas and periods, my if's and's and but's except one thing. i've put every single thing except their voice...and i just realized, just now, that my characters are actually more important than my movie."

maybe that's the cue for the warm-up stage. more questions, more tales, more laughs, more quotable quotes. i feel like i'm watching an opera but the notes just go on higher and higher. quentin (first name basis, huh) has an uncanny ability of saying even something so casual strike the listener as something profound.

but as all good things come to an end, so does the speech. amongst his finest of fine words my favorite is, "the beauty in art is that you're never done. there's always new joys waiting to be discovered... i don't classify myself as a master of the arts, in fact i'm a student seeking professorship in the arts, and the day i graduate is the day i die."

this article was written on paper 15 august 2007.

p.s. my other close encounters with this first-rate director include: the gala screening of death proof where he declared, "whoever said that the filipino audience is subdued doesn't know a f^$!" and the screening of kill bill 1 and 2 (my personal favorite) where he sat among the audience and laughed at his own lines. i watched volume 1 by myself and i retreated to the back of the moviehouse, avoiding distraction. he arrived shortly and he was one seat apart from me. somehow it felt casual. no phony charm. no beg-me-to-sign-and-the-more-i-will-resist. just laidback moviewatching.
looking back now, i am reminded how through the entire adventure he remained remarkably, incredibly and humbly human.

note: quotes are not verbatim and may have been paraphrased.