When did you realise that two groups of girls were going to be the focus of DEATH PROOF?
QT: That was, like, the first impetus to do it. For the last three or four years I`ve had a whole lot of different female friends I have different clusters of female posses that I hang with and that`s kind of been the case for the last five years. I have male friends too, but the dynamic of a bunch of girls that hang out together, and that whole posse aspect, has been more my reality for the last few years. I get to hear all the stuff they talk about and joke about, their camaraderie, and most of the girls in this movie are based on one person, or a combination of this person and that person. But I knew I wanted to follow these girls. That`s what I do I`m a writer. I soak up this stuff and I`ve gotta do something with it. Then, I started thinking about the idea of doing something that, even though it`s not a slasher film because it doesn`t have a slasher film structure seemingly has a slasher film structure. So with that in mind, I was like, Oh, you know? That`s the p erfect format to have a bunch of girls together and have them all hang out. Except they have a little better dialogue! (Laughs) But it just presented itself, this chance to introduce this group of girls. We`re all hanging with them, and hanging with them till something happens.
Had you been planning to make a more female-slanted story before DEATH PROOF?
No. Id wanted do a movie with groups of female characters but it hadn`t really found a home yet. Then when Robert Rodriguez told me he was doing PLANET TERROR, a zombie movie, it started me thinking... Y`know, I`m always going on little genre kicks all of a sudden I`ll get on a spaghetti-western kick and start watching them all the time and I was just coming off of a slasher-flick kick, I started revisiting all those again and having a really good time. So when he brought that up, I thought, `Oh man, I can do a slasher film that`d be great.` But then the thing I like so much about slasher films are the things that make them limiting. They`re all the same, and that`s actually part of their charm. It`s a perfect genre for subtext. That`s why you can do so much subtextual film criticism on them, because they follow the same pattern. And to fuck with the pattern too much is to fuck with the genre too much. I was like, `OK, that would then make this too self-reflexive.` It w ould be too much of a reflex exercise to do that. So I thought, `How can I do it my way and get what I want out of it?` And also, breaking off from the whole slasher film, I realised I`d never really done an exploitation movie before. Even though we spent a lot of time shooting it, I wanted to have that opportunity, as if I was doing this in 1977, on a 20-day schedule... It started reminding me of the kind of movies I could imagine I would have made back in the 70s, something like THE CANDY SNATCHERS (1973), an exploitation movie that has all these weird elements.
In hindsight, most exploitation films were actually very personal; they were made by directors who basically were given a checklist of things to include nudity, violence, car chases but then left alone by their producers.
Yeah. DEATH PROOF is following a slasher-film structure but there are so many fucked-up elements to this, and that`s what makes these classic exploitation movies so great. Like THE CANDY SNATCHERS some people saw it the week it came out, and maybe caught it in drive-ins or on the lower halves of grindhouse double bills, but it`s not like that movie was talked about during the 80s, the way NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD was. So people are finding it again now. Now, literally years and years later. And there`s something really there. It`s like MACON COUNTY LINE (1974) you don`t know this movie from the very beginning, it just keeps unfolding. And in the case of some of the ones I really like, it keeps unfolding in a really fucked-up way. You`re going, `Oh my God!` Now, there`s something kinda cheesy about those movies too. I`m not going for that cheesy factor myself, in terms of the making of the movie, but one of the things I always loved about exploitation movies is that, even in the midst of all this whatever, you all of a sudden start caring about the characters. You care what happens to them and you get caught up in it, even in this silly movie. And all of a sudden it`s not silly any more because you actually give a fuck about what happens to these people, and I love that. Especially when you`re watching it with modern audiences. When I do my film festival in Austin, I say, `Look, there`s some funny stuff in these movies but, please, laugh because it`s funny, not to show that you`re superior to it and show how cool you are don`t laugh at it, laugh with it. And if you resist the temptation to just ridicule this shit and take it at face value, you`ll be surprised. All of a sudden youll get into the movie. And yeah, maybe it`ll do all those things you might be chortling about if you were left to your own devices and I hadn`t told you not to do it, but all of sudden you give a fuck. Now when did that happen? You have to remember, though, that whe n you watch these movies with modern-day audiences, it`s a whole different experience. When I watched these films in the real grindhouse cinemas back in the day, there was always this laugh here and that laugh there. There was a lot of laughing going on! We were all into `em. When something really funny happened, we laughed, like when someone said something really funny or somebody got blown away in a really cool way. But there wasn`t a lot of chortling going on. We took this shit very seriously. This is what we wanted to see.
Are there any particular examples of that?
The guy who did it really, really well in that regards because his films always danced around self-parody but never fell in was Jack Hill. In both SWITCHBLADE SISTERS (1975) and COFFY (1973), you`re watching `em, you`re into them, but you have this weird feeling. It`s almost like a neat internal struggle. Because maybe youll spend the first ten or 20 minutes laughing at the movie. Then all of a sudden you`re not really laughing at it any more, you`re kind of caught up in it and you`re laughing with it. You actually realise that here`s a rhythm to the dialogue. Especially in the case of SWITCHBLADE SISTERS, where it`s on-the-beat/off-the-beat dialogue every word doesn`t work as a rhyme, it`s in fact the wrong word, which becomes its own weird rhythm. And by the time Maggie and Lace are trying to kill each other it`s actually really sad. These girls should be together it`s fucked up! And you care about Coffy and her situation. You want her to kill those guys! So you have that internal struggle: `Is this a cheesy movie or not?` And then all of a sudden you think, `No, it`s not. It`s actually really funny. But I`m taking it in, too. Shit... when did I start to care?` There`s that little Bermuda Triangle line, where you cross over and start to invest in the characters. If they die, you give a fuck.
Making DEATH PROOF, did it feel like you were Jack Hill for a few months?
It was probably closer to Jack Starrett [director of 70s thrillers RACE WITH THE DEVIL and CLEOPATRA JONES] on this movie, with the car chase aspect and all. But the truth of the matter is, no, I was me. I`m doing my version of a slasher film, which doesn`t look like any slasher film, or resemble any slasher film you`ve ever seen before. It has the structure of a slasher film, it has some of the same intentions in it, but it`s my weird, crazy version. It`s about as much like slasher films as RESERVOIR DOGS is like other heist films but it doesn`t mean it doesn`t belong in the genre. If you had a video store and you were going to highlight heist films for a week, I`d expect RESERVOIR DOGS to be on that shelf. Same way, if you`re doing slasher films or car-chase movies, I expect DEATH PROOF to have its own place on the shelf, and it`s up to the world to decide how well it fits in.
In terms of casting, did you get everyone you wanted?
I was over the moon when I got Kurt Russell he was perfect for me. But with the actresses, I didnt really offer it to anybody else. I wrote these characters that I felt really strongly about, and then it was just a big audition process finding the right people to play em. Somebody asked Jordan Ladd, I think, Oh, did you get the part because youre Cheryl Ladds daughter and Alan Ladds granddaughter, and you were in CABIN FEVER? And she was like, NO! I won that part! I was THE BEST! And believe me, if I wasnt, somebody else would be standin here!
The role of Stuntman Mike was originally going to be played by Mickey Rourke. Did you have to rewrite it for Kurt?
I didn`t rewrite it at all. I`ve been known to do that. When it didn`t work out with Warren Beatty [in KILL BILL] I cast David Carradine, and little by little I kept rewriting it. We had a big long training period, so as I got to know him I kept making little tweaks here and there... It was about a year later before I got round to shooting all the Bill stuff, and it was different. But I haven`t had that experience every single time I wrote a part with someone in mind and they didn`t work out. My whole thing is not to go to the next guy y`know, the one that`s almost like the guy because it gives me an opportunity to rethink my whole movie. Kurt Russell is perfect casting as Stuntman Mike but there`s nothing different about it. It`s perfect casting, it`s just different from Mickey Rourke.
Why is it perfect casting?
There`s a wonderful aspect that Kurt has that is fantastic, and it mirrors Stuntman Mike a lot. He`s a working professional and he`s been in this business for a long time. He`s done all this episodic television he did all those TV series, the HIGH CHAPARRALS and the HARRY O`S. And he`s worked with fucking everybody. Literally. If you`re talking about William Smith or Cameron Mitchell, whoever. So he knows the life that Stuntman Mike`s had. He`s even the same generational age and he knows some of the jumping-off points. Cameron Mitchell would have made a really good Stuntman Mike. So would William Smith, or Ralph Meeker back in his day. Kurt knew all those guys, he worked with them when he was a little kid. But also what`s interesting is that he`s known Stuntman Mikes, and there`s one guy in particular he`s basing it on. And it`s nothing to do with wardrobe or tics. The stunt guys too, they`ve all known guys like Stuntman Mike: he never really actually did a whole lot, but just enough to have a career. To make Stuntman Mike real for me, I worked out his entire career. I actually worked out more about his background than I could ever show in the movie.
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