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"Reservoir Dogs" The existence of Harvey Keitel, who turned ordinary young men into men
2018.01.28
Meeting Harvey Keitel drastically changed my destiny.
For Tarantino, his late teens and most of his twenties were a time when "nothing went right." As you know, he wrote screenplays while working at a video rental store in Manhattan Beach, and dreamed of the day when he would get a Being There to become a director and actor. In 1987, he wrote, directed, and starred in the amateur film ``My Best Friend's Birthday,'' which he shot among his friends. This is the story of a man who breaks up with his girlfriend on her birthday, and her best friend who works hard for him. However, this work was actually destroyed in a fire in the laboratory, leaving only 36 minutes of film behind. It can only be said that he is extremely unlucky for his first directorial work to end up in such a situation, but it is said that the essence of this work later became the original idea for ` `True Romance .'' Indeed, this man seems like someone who doesn't just get up even if he falls down.
The script he wrote with all his heart was ``Reservoir Dogs.'' The writing period is 3 weeks. It's an old typewriter and the formatting is messy. Full of typos. This is a piece of work that was written almost entirely out of sheer force. But when my friend Lawrence Bender read it, he found it extremely interesting. It was filled with a rough charm that poured all the passion into it. The two immediately start working together to make something of this.
Tarantino himself had no intention of selling this script to a movie company. I wanted to direct this film by myself, without being directed by anyone. But is that possible? The most they could do at that time was raise $30,000. In fact, the original idea was to make it a black and white film using 16mm film.
However, from this point on, an unprecedented development that surpasses that of a movie begins to engulf them. One phone call changed my fate. No, to be more precise, it was a Arrival left on the answering machine. The voice, with a Brooklyn accent, uttered such a shocking name that even Tarantino, a film geek, was shocked to hear. The owner of the voice was Harvey Keitel.
"Quentin, I read the script. It's interesting. The lines are great. Let's work together. Of course, you're the boss. Let me help you."
"Reservoir Dogs" © Photofest / Getty Images
Why did such good fortune come to me? When you unravel the background, a story similar to that of a ``warashibe choja'' emerges. It all started when Lawrence Bender handed the script for Reservoir Dogs to his acting class teacher. The teacher first showed the script to his wife. His wife was also an actress who belonged to the Actors Studio, and was apparently acquainted with Keitel, who worked at the same studio. That's how the final baton was passed, and he finally got the script. In less than three days, America's leading actor learned of Tarantino's talent, even though he was still an unknown film director, and he was eager to appear in the film.
It was an unexpected turn of events that no one could have predicted. They had no other merits other than an interesting script, but now they have gained a powerful ally. Thanks to Keitel's name, fundraising was a success, and production costs soared to $1.5 million. Naturally, the Hollywood community was buzzing about this script.
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