Quentin Tarantino, 1992
#21 of 28 in the 20th century series
I first heard of this film from one of the free weeklies that I read back in college to keep tabs on movies and restaurants. I forget whether it was the San Francisco Bay Guardian or the East Bay Express. Whichever it was, it didn’t say much—just that a twentysomething writer/director had made a splash at Sundance with a debut movie called Reservoir Dogs, made on a budget that was, if not a shoestring, then at least more Sub Pop than Geffen. The second time I heard about Reservoir Dogs was when the instructor of my Film 50 discussion section mentioned during office hours that she had seen it and that this Quentin Tarantino guy was sure to become one of the star filmmakers of the 1990s. The third time I heard about Reservoir Dogs was when the entertainment editor of my old high school newspaper, Kerry McLaughlin, emailed me to say that it was the best movie she’d ever seen and that she was starting up a whole zine about it (to be called “Tip Like Pink”). This last data point was what finally gave me the impetus to go see this thing.
Reservoir Dogs didn’t have a wide theatrical release. It only made it to 61 theaters. I don’t think it made it to Berkeley. It did make it to Emeryville, though. And in November of 1992, my roommate, who had a car, organized a small outing to the big theater down there. Now, those who weren’t around in 1992 may not be in a position to appreciate how revolutionary Reservoir Dogs was. It’s like The Catcher in the Rye. What’s the big deal about this book?, many modern readers ask. This Holden Caulfield guy sounds like every other teenage narrator! And, yeah, that’s true—for the past seventy years every teenage narrator has sounded like Holden Caulfield, because of The Catcher in the Rye. Similarly, it may be hard to imagine how it would feel to walk into a theater, not knowing what you were about see, and immediately be presented with Mr. Brown’s unorthodox interpretation of “Like a Virgin”. Within a year or two, people sitting around firing pop culture references at each other would be so commonplace as to become the stuff of beer commercials, but that just wasn’t really a thing in mass media pre-Tarantino. It was a thing in real life, which is why it resonated. Tarantino basically started his movie with the Scooby‑Doo conversation! I’ve talked about the Scooby‑Doo conversation in previous articles: if a bunch of new college students from different walks of life are hanging around in their dorm lounge in the late ’80s or early ’90s, what can they bond over? Time after time, the answer turned out to be the same: “Hey, what do you think Fred and Daphne got up to while the others were off looking for clues, hmm? And what were those Scooby Snacks, anyway? Some kind of dog amphetamines?” Then to go straight from Mr. Brown’s disquisition to the tipping conversation? Again—a bunch of mobsters gathered at an eatery, deeply engaged in their idea of scholarly debate, is not going to be new to anyone who’s seen The Sopranos. But do we get The Sopranos, or at least that version of it, without Reservoir Dogs? And some of Tarantino’s patter transcends genre—I can’t think of a movie or TV show that would have had a character refer to a shootout as a “bullet festival” prior to 1992, but I can think of plenty afterwards. Reservoir Dogs may not have been a direct influence in every such case, but it certainly represents an inflection point.
Moving onward, imagine what an audience in 1992 would have made of a credits sequence with our cast walking in cool slo‑mo, in slim-fitting suits and sunglasses, scored to… “Little Green Bag”, which like the rest of the soundtrack is purportedly being played on K‑Billy’s “Super Sounds of the Seventies”. The 1970s were the subject of widespread contempt before they were even over (vid. Disco Demolition Night); by the late ’80s and early ’90s, that contempt had mellowed out into ironic amusement. Bring a Fonzie lunchbox or Bee Gees LP to school and you were instantly a successful prop comic. Does the incongruity between subject and soundtrack translate today? And then to make the transition from the opening credits to Mr. Orange shrieking in panic as he bleeds out in the back of a car… the violence was the center of the discussion about this movie upon its initial release, but it’s not as if it somehow broke new ground in gore after a decade-plus of slasher flicks and shoot-’em-ups. The difference is that this was violence with consequences, violence in a world in which getting shot means screaming in terrified agony for minute after excruciating minute, not just flying off the side of the screen, dispatched and forgotten. Violence intended to make the audience hurt along with the characters, not revel in the gruesome special effects. If the Nightmare on Elm Street guy walked out of Reservoir Dogs, you can imagine how shocking it would have been to the audience in that theater in Emeryville.
Of course, Tarantino’s subsequent career throws into doubt his intentions here—Kill Bill, Death Proof, and Inglourious Basterds absolutely do revel in violence—but, focusing on this film in particular, consider the infamous ear scene, which doubles down on the incongruity between bloody torture and anodyne ’70s music. (When my brother, for a school project, made a home movie around this time that included what was meant to be a scene of hardcore violence, he overdubbed some Nine Inch Nails to try to amp up the intensity. Tarantino goes with Stealers Wheel.) Often left out of discussions of the ear scene is that it doesn’t exist for its own sake: it is the lead-up to the movie’s central plot twist. Obviously, Quentin Tarantino didn’t invent plot twists, but the one that pays off the ear scene is next level—not only is it an “OH MY GOD HOLY FUCK I CAN’T BELIEVE THAT JUST HAPPENED” moment, but it’s one that is not just a shock, but is shot through with relief, even triumph. The ear scene is so tough to watch that we’re praying that it will end, that someone will stop this monster, and someone does—and it’s the character we least expect. Imagine how this moment would have landed with an audience before Tarantino brought these sorts of plot twists into vogue! Imagine the roar that would erupt in the theater all around you!
Unfortunately, I have to imagine it as well. See, we didn’t watch Reservoir Dogs that night in 1992. We drove down to Emeryville, looked up at the marquee, saw Reservoir Dogs on it, and bought tickets to a movie called Jennifer 8. I voted for that one too—I hadn’t received that email from Kerry yet, nor had I yet taken Film 50. I wound up renting Reservoir Dogs in the summer of ’93, and was blown away by it. Later I taped it off one of the cable movie channels and watched it quite a few times—the VHS tape is still sitting in a box in my storage space. I saw it enough times, in fact, that even though I hadn’t seen it in the 21st century, I still had it pretty well memorized and it consequently didn’t do much for me this time around. And yet when I started in on this article, I found myself focusing not on why it fell flat on the tenth viewing, but on why it felt like a cinematic earthquake on the first. I just wish—as much as I avoid movie theaters in the cell phone age—that that first viewing could have been at that theater in Emeryville. Instead, the movie we did see was already half-forgotten as we drove back to Berkeley. My roommate parked his car, and as our little group walked back to our dorm complex, a figure emerged out of the dense, eerie fog: one of Berkeley’s many street people, with ragged clothes and a bushy, unkempt beard. He peered at us. “Whut are yew?” he demanded, his voice echoing down Dana Street. “Whut the HELL are yew?!” We didn’t give him an answer as we hurried past him. But in retrospect, the answer is obvious—we were people who’d missed the chance to see Reservoir Dogs in its first theatrical run, that’s what.
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