Amelia

Posted by John Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/12/21/the-december-comfort-watches-2025-day-21-kill-bill-vol-1/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=58819

There are better movies that Quentin Tarantino has written and directed than Kill Bill: Vol. 1, but I strongly believe there no other film of his that is more him than this one. Most of those other films — Inglourious Basterds, Django Unchained, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and of course Pulp Fiction, are about other things, ranging from a day in the life of various petty criminals, to rewriting history because it’s just so much cooler that way. And while those other films are very clearly done in a way that only Tarantino could or would choose to do them, this is the one film above all others (even and including Kill Bill: Vol. 2) where it is all about what Quentin Tarantino wants. His wants. His needs. His desires. This film, from the top of Lucy Liu’s head to the bottom of Uma Thurman’s feet, is a distilled cinematic trip through Tarantino’s id. And what a trip it is.

The plot, which is really just the thinnest of scaffoldings for Tarantino’s obsessions: Uma Thurman (whose character is not given a name in this film, and when and if anyone says it, it’s bleeped out) plays a super mega badass hot assassin chick who after years of, you know, killing the shit out of people, decides to leave it all behind when she finds out she’s pregnant. This does not thrill Bill (David Carradine), her boss and also boyfriend, and he makes that point known at her wedding, not to him, when he and the other members of the super mega badass hot assassins he fields into the world show up and shoot everyone and every thing at the venue, including the bride. When she wakes up from a coma a few years later, babyless, she naturally does what anyone in her position would do: Makes a list of everyone who tried to kill her with the goal of returning the favor.

That’s it! That’s the movie! Thank you and good night!

But of course that’s not actually the movie. The movie is not the plot, the movie is how the plot gets done. And for Tarantino, who is a pop culture magpie and has also fundamentally never stopped, in his heart, being a thirteen-year-old boy, how it gets done is by piling on every single movie and television genre he’s ever loved. Japanese anime and crime films? In here. Hong Kong action cinema? Absolutely one hundred percent on call. Spaghetti westerns and blacksploitation? Present in visuals, score and sound design. The actors from these genres that Tarantino idolized? They’re in the cast. From Michael Parks’ aping of Charlie Chan to Thurman wearing Bruce Lee’s yellow athletic apparel, this film is not just filled with cinematic Easter eggs, it’s a whole goddamned Easter parade.

Why did Tarantino do this? Because this is who he is, man. He is the first superstar Hollywood director to have come out of the video store era — he even worked in a video store for a while in Manhattan Beach before making a go of it in the film industry — and he’s a self-taught filmmaker. Not for him the hallowed halls of USC or NYU’s film schools; he just watched a boatload of movies, from classics to complete crap, and gave each of them equal weight in his weird little brain. It’s very clear that Tarantino does not have a bias against genre for agreed-upon “important films.” He likes what he likes, and fuck you if you don’t like it, too. It’s not his problem if you don’t.

Which I think is fine! At the end of the day, there is no high culture or low culture, there’s just the culture that sticks, and that’s what’s used as the building blocks in the next round of creation. One era’s pop culture is another era’s “classic” culture — and here we haul Shakespeare and Dickens onto the stage to wave before unceremoniously shoving them into the orchestra pit with a crash — and ultimately what sticks, what makes it through the sieve of time and the sheer mass of creative output, is what the new generation of creative people love, champion, reference, combine and in some cases just flat out imitate.

What’s in Kill Bill: Vol. 1 is everything that made Tarantino. At this point, he’s made Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown, won an Oscar and is a reliable (if not staggering) box office draw, and was responsible, directly and indirectly, for a whole cottage industry of mostly violent, mostly indie, mostly dude-centric films in the 90s. If anyone is at this point allowed to make a film that is basically them playing with all their favorite cinematic toys, it’s going to be Tarantino.

There’s one other thing, not to be discounted: Tarantino may be crawling both into his mind, a bit up his own ass, with Kill Bill: Vol.1, but he also remembers that he’s got to make the film actually entertaining to the people who are not him. Kill Bill was originally written and shot as a single film, but during the assembly process, Miramax studio head Harvey Weinstein (in the days when the only way women got told he was a raping creep was through whisper networks) suggested making two films out of the material. Weinstein is criminal scum who will hopefully die in jail, but his film instincts here were correct; it allowed Tarantino to overweight the really cool action stuff into Vol. 1, while letting the more somber and emotional aspects of the tale carry Vol. 2, i.e., the one everyone saw because they had bought into the first film and were left high and dry by one of the best cliffhangers in cinematic history.

(There is now a Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair, which unifies the two volumes into a single long film, with a couple scenes added, some amended, and some others dropped, including that banger of a cliffhanger. I have not seen this version yet but this will not stop me from suggesting that a more-than-four-and-a-half hour version of the film is not what Tarantino would have been able to get away with had Weinstein not allowed his film to be split into two. I for one would be curious to see what a no-longer-than-three-hours edit of Kill Bill would have been, using footage from both volumes, as it would have had to have been. We will never get that, though, and in any event I think the film was best served being twain.)

Kill Bill: Vol. 1 is about Tarantino and all the things that make him tick, but it’s Uma Thurman who is in it the whole damn time, save for a few interludes and reaction shots. Thurman was not a passive vessel for this film — the story is credited to “Q & U,” meaning both her and Tarantino — and the whole thing rides on her shoulders. It’s not an exaggeration to say that this film is the defining one in her career, the one where Thurman gets to do it all: Be aggressive, be vulnerable, be a badass, be scared, play tough and play vulnerable. And, also, hack through literally dozens of people with a samurai sword, which is the dream of so many people, regardless of gender. None of the world of Kill Bill is real, none of it can be real (see John Wick for another example of this). But it doesn’t matter if it’s real, it matters if we believe in it while it’s happening. It’s up to Thurman to make us see it. She does.

I’ve noted above that this film is clearly Tarantino’s most personal project, and I would like to point out how absolutely weird it is that this is the man’s statement of being — until, that is, you think about it. If you’re, say, Steven Spielberg, you make The Fabelmans. If you’re Ingmar Bergman, you make Fanny and Alexander. If you’re John Boorman you make Hope & Glory. All semi-autobiographical movies about the early days of the filmmaker in question, or at least, about a stand-in who represents the filmmaker.

The thing is, Kill Bill: Vol 1 is exactly that thing. This movie is all about Tarantino’s early days, all the things, cinematically, that he imprinted upon. And while Thurman’s character cannot be separated from the actress and should not be, a idea of a secret badass in a desperate battle against the legions who want them dead? Oh, that’s absolutely the sort of power fantasy that kept young Quentin up at night, the wheels of his imagination turning.

This is Tarantino. You want to understand him, watch this film. He’s put himself out there for you to see. All you have to do is look.

— JS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/12/21/the-december-comfort-watches-2025-day-21-kill-bill-vol-1/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=58819

Posted by John Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/12/20/the-december-comfort-watches-2025-day-twenty-a-fish-called-wanda/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=58812

I have thought a number of films have been riotously funny, but only A Fish Called Wanda made me laugh so hard that I was in very real danger of pissing myself right there in the movie theater. It was 1988, I went to see this movie with my friend Marty Glomski, and — to be fair — I did buy myself a soda to enjoy while I watched the film. Normally such a thing would not be a fraught action, but then there were scenes involving inept assassination attempts, and I ended up laughing so hard and so long that my bladder very nearly couldn’t take it any more. I swear to you I was two seconds from peeing my jeans. I wanted to stop laughing so I could stop spotting. I could not. It was mortifying, and delightful.

I cannot guarantee you will laugh as hard at A Fish Called Wanda. If you did, however, and you fell victim to laugh-related involuntary micturition, just know that you are not alone. There are probably legions of us. John Cleese should have invested in adult diapers before writing this film.

The story of how A Fish Called Wanda came to be is interesting in itself. Back in the 1970s and 80s, when John Cleese wasn’t busy with Monty Python or Fawlty Towers, he had co-founded a company called Video Arts, which created training videos for corporate clients (they were allegedly funny corporate training videos. I’ve not seen any, I can’t say). One of the directors for these corporate videos was Charles Crichton. Having Crichton directing corporate training videos was a little like having Scotty Pippen on your basketball team at the Y. In a past life, he directed films at Ealing Studios, including the Academy Award-winning The Lavender Hill Mob, generally regarded as one of the best British comedies of all time.

What was Crichton doing making training films? Well, look, folks, show business is a tough gig. You’re on top one day and the next you’re trying to spice up a video on how to file reports.

That said, John Cleese was certainly aware who he had on staff, and eventually he and Crichton started scheduling time to think up a comedy crime caper, which would eventually become A Fish Called Wanda. The plan was for Cleese to star and Crichton to direct. One catch: When the film was being pitched, Crichton was well into his middle 70s, which worried the money guys. In order to get the film made, Cleese agreed to be co-director. What did that mean for Cleese? Apparently not much! Cleese was open about not having any experience in feature film directing. He was basically there if Crichton keeled over during filming.

Crichton did not keel over. In fact, for the film Crichton (and only Crichton, not Cleese) was nominated for an Academy Award for best director. Don’t feel too bad for Cleese, he got nominated (along with Crichton) for an Oscar in the screenwriting category. Having landed on top again after years in the corporate training video wilderness, Crichton promptly retired and spent the rest of his life fishing. Good for him.

Plotwise, Wanda is a tale of heists and con-men and women, crosses and double-crosses and one barrister who somewhat befuddledly finds himself in the middle of it all. That could be Cleese’s character, Archibald Leach (film fans will recognize this name, and if you don’t, look it up), a bland tall legal type whose life is lower-wealthy-class boredom. That is, until he meets Wanda (Jamie Lee Curtis), who is not a fish, but is an associate of George Thomason, Archie’s client, who has been recently accused of a bank robbery involving quite a lot of diamonds. Wanda enchants Archie, because she is smart and looks exactly like Jamie Lee Curtis at her hottest. But, I think it should be obvious, Wanda has something on her mind other than climbing Cleese.

That’s enough of the plot. You just need to know that the people involved in the heist are all trying to screw each other, sometimes figuratively and sometimes literally. There is no honor among thieves, which is not great for any of them but is fabulous for us, because Cleese and Crichton, as screenwriters, put absolutely fantastic words into their mouths, and make them to grand and ridiculous things. For a movie that at least initially comes off as a small and maybe kinda square bit of British japery, things get weird fast.

A lot of that weirdness comes in the form of Otto, played by Kevin Klein in a bit of ego annihilation so complete that he won an Oscar for it. When I say ego annihilation, I mean no one who was concerned about their ego in any way could have played Otto as he did, as the ugliest of all possible ugly Americans and the platonic ideal of Dunning-Kruger. The first time I saw this performance, I just thought it was funny; in subsequent watches it becomes obvious just how much good work Kline is doing here. The scene where Wanda chews him out for messing up her assignation with Archie is a masterclass of facial acting. His words in the scene are good. What his face is doing got him that statuette.

Be assured, however, that Kevin Kline is not the only one engaging in ego annihilation here. None of the principals, who aside from Cleese, Curtis and Kline also includes Michael Palin, get out of this film with their dignity intact. Short of Melissa McCarthy shitting in a sink, I’m not sure another film has put so many of their actors through the wringer for a pile of laughs. It’s not about gross-out comedy (speaking of that McCarthy scene), it’s about the humiliation of their characters, unstiffening that stiff upper lip, in the case of Cleese’s character especially.

Which — confession time — is not the kind of humor I usually like! Cringe humor (the kind of humor that makes you cringe in sympathy for the embarrassment the characters are going through, not the kind of humor that is eye-rollingly corny) is actually one of my least favorite forms of humor. I think my sympathetic response for people making fools of themselves is too strong for me to enjoy the comedy of it. It mostly just makes me want to leave the room until the embarrassing parts are over. Not here, though, and I think it’s both the skill of the writing from Cleese and Crichton, and actual abandon to which the actors give themselves, that simply overrides my desire to curl up into a ball at their misfortunes. Wanda isn’t exactly farce but it’s near enough to it that, for me, at least, it’s inoculated against cringe.

Wanda remains one of the funniest films of all time, but it’s okay to note that 80s films are gonna 80s, and this film does that. The plot line about a character’s stutter was at the time and now continues to be the least successful attempt at humor in the film, and there’s a bit that Otto does that straddles the line for casual homophobia. Also, truly, if animal endangerment bothers you, go ahead and skip this one. You won’t be happy, even if I find at least one of those scenes one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen in a theater. What can I say, I’m a terrible human.

I keep coming back to why it was this film made me almost pee myself in public. I think it comes down to the simple fact that very little about this film was what I had expected when I sat down to watch it. I figured it was going to be funny; after all it had a third of Monty Python in it. But I think I went in expecting to chuckle. This wasn’t Monty Python, it was by all indications just a standard issue mid-80s comedy, and again the first several minutes of the film gave the impression that was where things were going.

But then. And then. And then after that. It kept laughing in the face of my expectations, and I kept laughing in surprise. I just did not see it coming.

— JS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/12/20/the-december-comfort-watches-2025-day-twenty-a-fish-called-wanda/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=58812