 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
The Bitch is Back!
Everything about Kill Bill Vol. 2 has been kept top-secret. Until now. Uma Thurman and Quentin Tarantino spill their guts on why it had to be even more brutal than Vol. 1.
By Clark Collis
Quentin Tarantino waits until I’m sitting comfortably before reaching across the table and savagely plunging his fingers into my right shoulder. “This is the Eagle’s Claw—it’s all about grabbing and ripping,” says the director, doing just that. “It’s like your hands become talons. Guys who really do Eagle’s Claw can pick up those gigantic vats of wine with just their fingers.”
Under normal circumstances, having your shoulder blade rearranged by the most influential filmmaker of the past 30 years would be more than a little troubling. The Reservoir Dogs auteur may have a reputation for being king of all film geeks, but in his case geek does not equal pussy. This is the man, after all, who once dealt with a rude taxi driver by beating him up. But, mercifully, I’m not about to become another victim of Tarantino’s wrath—I’m merely being given a demo of the skills the director learned while prepping his latest
cinematic creations, Kill Bill Vol. 1 and Vol. 2.
“We didn’t learn real martial arts,” explains Tarantino, who actually rolled up to our appointment at Los Angeles’ Four Seasons hotel in Kill Bill’s bright yellow “Pussy Wagon” pickup. “I’ve always been into kung fu, but I don’t have the fucking patience to do this shit for nine years. We learned movie martial arts, which is funner, actually. But if I tried to use that movie shit, I’d get my ass kicked.”
They may only have been learning “movie shit,” but that didn’t keep Tarantino from insisting that key Kill Bill cast members endure an intense three-month course of physical training prior to the start of what has become one of the most talked-about movie projects of all time. Originally due to begin shooting in 2001, the project was delayed when star Uma Thurman became pregnant. Tarantino and Thurman had teamed to cook up her character—vengeance-fueled hitwoman the Bride—way back on the set of 1994’s Pulp Fiction, and Tarantino refused to consider replacing her.
Once production finally started in Beijing, the budget swiftly ballooned from its original $39 million to $55 million. The House of Blue Leaves sequence alone, in which Thurman dispatches dozens of Lucy Liu’s bodyguards, took eight weeks, the same as Pulp Fiction’s entire shooting schedule. Not that it was all work—at least not after Tarantino discovered that in China it was possible to buy “E that was beyond acid.”
 |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
)
)
)
